ELEVENTH, CLOSING LECTURE
Dr. Steiner
begins by saying, only the very, very least of what the subject of
the course contains or calls for, has been able to be included in
this short time; he hopes to come again and to continue, at any rate
on kindred subjects. He then expresses about the Scandinavian
folk-spirit what is repeatedly indicated in these last lectures. It
is, that through the Scandinavian people especially, Spiritual
Science might become volkstümlich. I am really at a loss
to translate this word. It means ‘popular’ not in the
superficial, rather trivial sense in which we mostly understand the
term, but in the sense of being united with the life-forces of a
‘folk,’ — of an entire people, — permeating
all its culture from the bottom upward, finding expression as it were
in song and ballad, in laughter and in tears, in work and
play.
The Norse
mythology, says Dr. Steiner, reveals how their folk-spirit has
retained in a childlike form deep wisdom which is one day destined to
find expression in a maturer and more conscious form. And this in
turn would tend to ‘popularize’ — in the best sense
of the word — what is to-day finding expression in a more
sublimated, philosophic form: our modern Spiritual
Science.
Further
examples are now given of how the pictures of Germanic and Norse
mythology contain the truths of Occult Science. Dr. Steiner refers,
for the first time explicitly, to what was certainly in the
background of the great race-creating process outlined in the fourth
and sixth lectures. It is described at some length, in
Occult Science
and in other lectures, how the great majority of human
souls, about the time when the Sun had left the Earth, could not
abide the hardening conditions but rose to other planets, Saturn,
Jupiter and Mars, Venus and Mercury; and how these souls, in late
Lemuria and afterwards all through Atlantis, — after the
hardening forces of the Moon had left the Earth — came back
again and entered human bodies, for the first time under the
Earth-conditions now obtaining. Such, broadly speaking, was the
‘first incarnation’ of every one of us, for human life on
Earth — or, should we say, about the Earth — before the
severance of Sun and Moon was not yet incarnation in the proper
sense. A very wonderful event it must have been, this virginal
descent, when we were yet unburdened with earthly Karma. Now through
the watery mists of Atlantis, says Rudolf Steiner, those on the Earth
clairvoyantly beheld this descent of souls out of the Cosmos, their
union with earthly bodies, which happened not at arbitrary times but
sacredly, in cosmic time and season. Of this, the Northern worship of
the Goddess Nerthus — Tacitus relates it — her carriage
drawn into the waters, was a remembrance.
In a most
wonderful Christmas lecture of the year 1916 — not yet
published, but other lecturers, Dr. Wegman and Dr. Stein among them,
have told of it — Dr. Steiner spoke of the Nerthus-mysteries in
greater detail and of their deep relation to the Archangel of the
Annunciation, the Gabriel of St. Luke's Gospel. Their centre was in
Southern Jutland.
The special
virtue of the Northern soul, and of the education it received from
this Folk-spirit of the North, was to begin man's evolution down on
the physical plane, very directly inspired by the preceding stage of
clairvoyant wisdom. Northern peoples therefore feel their Gods
— not only Odin and Thor but others too — as those who
help them forge on Earth the magic tools, transplanting into earthly
forms of skill erstwhile clairvoyant powers. Thus Freyer and
his sister Freya, Angel-beings, of the Wanen.
“Within the physical world, the world restricted to
the outer senses, Freyer was the continuer of all that had hitherto
been received in a clairvoyant form.” What springs out of the
body of the Earth was to the Northern imagination Jotunheim,
[Jotunheim: our edition here repeats the modern
German, Riesenheim, as used by Dr. Steiner.]
the home of giants. Therefore was Freyer wedded to the giant's
daughter, Gerd. His horse was Bluthuf, for through the
blood the Spirit comes to Earth. His magic ship, which could be
folded up into a tiny box and then again unfold its sails as wide as
Heaven, pictures the alternation of the soul in day and night. Into the
convolutions of the brain, into the tiny skull, the soul must fold
its wings in the day-waking state.
Now Dr.
Steiner goes on to speak, as he most often did at the conclusion of a
lecture-course during those years, of Christ's second coming. Since
the year 1899 A.D. the dark age, Kali Yuga,
is at an end. Increasingly in the next centuries there will be people
naturally gifted with a new kind of etheric clairvoyance, even though
they have not undergone occult training. It will for instance take
the form that at important moments in their life they will see before
them in a kind of dream-vision scenes of a future time on Earth. The
Karmic balance, the future Karmic counterpart of their own
present deeds, will be made visible to them in the ether-world. This
heightened sensitiveness to Karmic justice — an enhancement of
what has hitherto only lived in man in the dim feeling of conscience
— will also lead to the perception of the living Christ in the
ether-world. For Christ is now the Lord of Karma. (Of all this, we
may read more fully in the well-known lecture-cycle
From Jesus to Christ,
given the following year, 1911.) During the next 3,000 years,
these experiences in mankind will grow, and will become ever more
frequent.
Dr. Steiner
warns his hearers of a variety of dangers. What he reiterates at
considerable length in the remainder of this lecture must be
understood upon the background of the controversy which was then
rising to a climax in the Theosophical Society. A ‘second
coming’ of Christ in the more physical sense was being spoken
of; at the same time Dr. Steiner was attacked for giving too much
prominence to Western, specifically Christian doctrine. He emphasizes
here that what is taught out of true Occultism must not proceed from
sympathies or antipathies, or from a preference for East or West, or
a desire to appease existing prejudices. All this he goes into most
carefully, as it were out of a deep anxiety that he be rightly
understood. He points out that there are no dogmatic premises —
Christian or of any other kind — in Rosicrucian teaching. He
pleads that it be not taken dogmatically on his or any other person's
authority. It asks to be received freely and with open judgment,
applied to life, tested by the facts of life itself. All that is
given out of true sources can await this test. The Rose-Cross does
not seek to perpetuate the Christianity of the past or to set up
existing forms or dogmas as a standard; it seeks to bring about the
Christianity of the future which will outgrow mistakes and
limitations of the past.
There is a
twofold danger. Whereas the old materialism of the West will simply
dismiss the new Christ-experience as fantastic, another kind of
materialism, not understanding that the Christ at His new coming must
appear in a different form, will look for His return in a physical
body as before. Dr. Steiner speaks of the tragedy of false Messiahs
past and future — one Sabbatai Zewi of Smyrna, for example, who
appeared in the 17th century.
Of yet
another danger Dr. Steiner warns his hearers — which we may
feel very immediately at this moment. He turns again to the Germanic
vision of the future, Ragnarök, the ‘Twilight of the
Gods.’ The forces of the old Gods alone will not avail. Thor
and the Midgard snake destroy each other; Odin does not prevail
against the Fenris wolf. Freyer is overcome by earth-born
Surtur.
Dark and
confusing relics of the old clairvoyance, says Dr. Steiner, will be
the Fenris-wolf of the future, fraught with appalling dangers. New
faculties however have arisen in mankind during the long intervening
period of Kali Yuga; these, now maturing in a healthy way and giving
birth to the new spiritual sight, will alone have power to recognise
and overcome the darkness. Germanic and Scandinavian mythology
knows of these future forces and of the Divine Being who is to come.
“It knows indeed that that ethereal Form is living, wherein
shall be embodied what we are now to see again: ‘Christ in
etheric form.’ He alone will succeed in driving out dark and
impure clairvoyant powers which would confuse mankind. ... Widar who
has been silent until now, — Widar will overcome the Fenris
wolf. Whoever recognizes Widar's meaning, whoever feels Him in
his soul, will find that in the 20th century the power to see the
Christ can indeed be given to man again. ...” In Scandinavian
and Mid-European Mysteries and occult schools of the past, says, Dr.
Steiner, “Widar was held in secret, — the God who should
await His future mission.”
In a
significant way, towards the end of the lecture, Rudolf Steiner
speaks once more of the approaching mission of the Scandinavian
folk-soul, and, looking farther forward, of what must subsequently be
achieved by Slavonic peoples. Only a part of what will have to be
given for the development of all mankind during the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch, has yet been able to be given. “The
Germanic-Scandinavian Archangel ... has the inherent power to achieve
this: that what was not yet able to be given in the first half of the
fifth post-Atlantean epoch may be accomplished in the second half,
namely that spiritual element which we were able to recognize in a
germinal, prophetic form in the philosophy and in the feeling of the
common folk among the Slavs.”
Let every
one, says Rudolf Steiner in conclusion — each individual, each
nation or even scattered fragment of a nation — develop what he
has to give and give it candidly, sincerely, — individually.
This will be truest tolerance. Then will the several tongues of flame
mount up together into one great flame upon the altar, the united
progress of mankind. So then he calls again for ‘self-knowledge
of nations,’ in a sincere spirit wherein pettiness and envy
melt away. Often the smallest peoples “have most important
contributions to make, since it is given to them to preserve and
nurture old or new motifs in the soul's life.” The spiritual
movement in which we are is destined to unite mankind; yes, most
assuredly, it will bring about an end of all divisions.
Towards the
end of the long chapter, ‘Evolution of the World and
Man,’ in the
Outline of Occult Science
there is a passage bearing upon this, impressive in its simplicity, and
with it we may fitly close these pages. The feeling to which Dr. Steiner
here appeals — the feeling for the unity of all mankind and
for the power of harmony through individuality — is
indeed living in the humanity of to-day. It is a deeply rooted faith
and will withstand the terrific onslaughts that are now being made
upon it, — though in the trial it will have to find itself
anew. For it is rooted in the Christ-Impulse which has been working
in mankind ever since the Mystery of Golgotha. This, Rudolf Steiner
tells us, was the first phase in the Christ-ideal to be brought home
to the inner understanding of mankind. For in effect, “all that
was poured into human evolution through the coming of Christ, worked
in it like a seed. Only by degrees can the seed ripen ... We are only
at the beginning of Christian evolution. In the successive epochs
that have elapsed since His appearance, it could unveil of its inner
essence only so much as men and nations were able to receive, —
to assimilate to their powers of understanding.”
In old
Lemuria and Atlantis, after the separation of the Moon when Earth was
being newly peopled from the planets, mankind became divided into
racial and other spiritually founded groupings. Diversities celestial
in origin (as Dr. Steiner said again in the letter quoted on page 30)
became more deeply stamped in the material body; became the heavy
load of Karma — not only individual but group-Karma
— separating men. “While this was working itself out,
there could not be the ideal of ‘universal humanity.’
Mankind had gone forth from unity in the beginning, but
Earth-evolution hitherto had led to separation.
“In
the idea of Christ there is first given an ideal to counteract
all separation; in the Man who bears the name of Christ the forces of
the sublime Being of the Sun are living, and in these forces every
human ‘I’ will find its source and its foundation. Even
the Israelites still felt themselves a nation, — the human
being a member of the nation. By grasping — to begin with,
purely in the thought — that in Christ the ideal Man was
living, beyond the reaches of all separation, Christianity grew to
the ideal of a universal brotherhood. Beyond all separate interests
and kinships there arose the feeling that, the inmost Self of man has
the same origin in every one Reside all earthly ancestors
appears-the common Father of all men. ‘I and the Father are
One.’“
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