The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Myths are stories containing great truths, which great initiates have related to men. The Trojan War, for instance, is the narrative of the battle waged between the third and the fourth sub-race of the fifth root-race. The representative of the former is Laocoon, priest of an ancient priest-kingdom, who was at the same time a king.¹ The representative of the latter is Odysseus, the personification of cunning and of the force of thinking which developed within the fourth subrace.

We find that initiates lead the course of evolution also in the North. In Wales we come across a brotherhood of initiates of the pagan period, a priesthood and knighthood culminating in King Arthur and his Round Table. They are faced by the brotherhood of the Holy Grail and its knights, working on behalf of the spreading of Christianity. Art and the development of politics are all connected with great initiates belonging to these two brotherhoods, representing a pagan and a Christian civilisation. The influence of the Holy Grail gradually begins to increase toward the end of the thirteenth century. This is a special turning-point in the civilisation of Europe: cities begin to be founded. The ancient rural civilisation, based on the possession of landed property, is replaced by a city-civilisation, a bourgeois civilisation. This implies a radical change in the whole life and thinking of men.

It is therefore not devoid of meaning if just at the time of the meister-singers' contest on the Wartburg a legend from Bavaria should have come to the fore—the legend of Lohengrin. What was the significance of this legend during the Middle Ages?

At the present time we no longer have the slightest idea of how a medieval soul was constituted; it was particularly receptive for spiritual currents flowing below the surface of things. We find to-day that the Lohengrin legend specially emphasizes the Catholic standpoint. But this element which may disturb us today should make us consider the fact that during the Middle Ages this legend could only have influenced men if clothed in something which was really able to stir human souls. This garment had to be supplied by the ardent religious feeling of that period, so that the legend contained something of what lived within the human hearts. What was the significance of the legend?

An initiation—the initiation of a disciple who advances to the degree of a Teacher.

Such a disciple must first of all become a man who has no country and no home; that is to say, he fulfils his duties just like other men, but he must strive to look beyond his own Self and develop his higher Ego.

What are the characteristics of a disciple?

1. He must overcome everything that is personal and develop the God within him.

2. He must be free from every doubt. The things pertaining to the spiritual world stand before his soul as true facts.

   He must also be free from every superstition since he himself is able to control everything he can no longer fall a prey to illusions.

   Upon a still higher stage the key of knowledge will be delivered to him. He is then said to have acquired the power of speech and becomes a messenger of the super-sensible world. The depths of the spiritual world are then revealed to him. This is the second stage.

3. The third stage is reached when he says “I” to every being in the world, just as he says “I” to himself. At this stage he has risen to the capacity of encompassing the universe. In mysticism a disciple who has reached the third stage is designated as a Swan, he is then a mediator between the Teacher and human beings.

The Swan-Knight therefore appears to us as an emissary of the great White Brotherhood. Thus Lohengrin is the messenger of the Holy Grail. A new impulse, a new influence was destined to enter human civilisation. You already know that in mysticism the human soul, or human consciousness, always appears as a woman. Also in this legend of Lohengrin the new form of consciousness, the civilisation of the middle classes, the progress made by the human soul, appears in the vestige of a woman. The new civilisation which had arisen was looked upon as a new and higher stage of consciousness. Elsa of Brabant personifies the medieval soul. Lohengrin, the great initiate, the Swan of the third degree of discipleship, brings with him a new civilisation inspired by the community of the Holy Grail. He must not be asked any questions, for it is a profanation and a misunderstanding to place questions to an initiate concerning things which must remain occult.

The influence of great initiates always brings about the promotion to new stages of consciousness. As an example illustrating how these initiates work, I will remind you of Jacob Böhme. You already know that Jacob Böhme proclaimed great, profound truths. Whence did he obtain his wisdom? He relates that when he was still an apprentice, he was one day sitting alone in his master's shop. A stranger entered and asked for a pair of shoes. Jacob, however, was not allowed to sell shoes during his master's absence. The stranger spoke a few words with him and then he went away. After a while, however, he called the boy Böhme out of the shop and told him: “Jacob, now you are still small and humble, but one day you will be quite another person, and the world will marvel at you!” What is implied in this?

It is an initiation, the description of a moment of initiation. At first, the boy does not realize what has happened to him, but he has received an impulse.

Also in the legend of Lohengrin we come across such a moment of initiation. These legends are important indications, which can only be understood by those who possess an Insight into the connections of things.

The Lohengrin legend (as explained, it is connected with the legend of the meister-singers) has a decidedly Catholic character. Richard Wagner used it for his Lohengrin poem. This reveals Richard Wagner's high inner calling.

Wagner used another ancient legend-theme in his Ring of the Nibelungs. These ancient Germanic legends set forth the destiny of the Aryan tribe. We must seek the origin of the Ring legends in a period which followed the great Atlantean flood, when the surviving peoples began to migrate over Europe and Asia. These legends are a reminiscence of the great initiate Wotan, the god of the Aesir. Wotan is an initiate of the Atlantean period, and all the other Aryan gods are only great initiates.

We can clearly distinguish three stages in Wagner's treatment of the Siegfried legend.

The first stage is a description of modern civilisation. In Richard Wagner's eyes modern men have become mere day-labourers of civilisation. He sees the great difference between modern human beings and those of the Middle Ages. Modern achievements are in part produced by machines, whereas during the civilisation of the Middle Ages everything was still an expression of the soul. The house, the village, the city, and everything it contained, was full of significance and men rejoiced in it. What do our storehouses, warehouses and cities mean to us to-day? In the medieval period the house was the expression of an artistic idea; the whole street-picture, with the market and the church in the middle, was the expression of the soul.

Wagner felt this contrast, and what he wished to achieve through his art was to place before man something which would make him appear complete and perfect at least in one sphere. In his Siegfried he wished to portray a perfectly harmonious human being in contrast to the labourers of industry. Our great men have always felt this: Goethe had the same feeling, and also Hölderlin, who said: “There are labourers in this world, but no men”, and so forth. Every great man has longed after truly great human beings.

A change could not take place in an external form, for the course of evolution cannot be turned backward. A temple was therefore to arise in which art in a complete and perfect form was to raise human beings above the ordinary level of life. The modern period of civilisation needed this temple, just because modern life is so torn and splintered. This was the first idea in Wagner's mind in connection with the Siegfried-poem.

But a second idea rose up before Wagner's soul as he descended into still more profound depths of the soul.

At the beginning of the Middle Ages an ancient legend found its way into German poetry—the legend of the Nibelungs. This kind of legend contained the deepest feelings of the folk-soul. Only those who really study the folk-soul can conceive what lived at that time within the heart of the German nation. These legends were the expression of deep inner truths, of great truths; for instance, the legends of Charlemagne. These tales were not related as they are related today, they were not connected with the historical Charlemagne, for people possessed a deeper insight into the historical connections. The Frankish kings took on the aspect of ancient Aryan ancestors; the Nibelungs were priest-kings who ruled over their kingdoms and provided at the same time the spiritual impulses. These legends were the reminiscence of a great time which had past. In this light Charlemagne's coronation in Rome was looked upon as something special. The Nibelungs were consecrated priest and kings during a remote past of the Aryan sub-race, and their memory was handed down in the legends of the German emperors. Wagner's attention was attracted by these legends and a character appeared to him which seemed to represent the contrast between the modern period of material possession and the medieval period which was still connected with the ancient spiritual culture. Wagner occupied himself with the legend of Barbarossa. Also in Barbarossa we find a great initiate. We are told of his journeys to the Orient; from there he brings back from the holy initiates a higher wisdom—knowledge, or the Holy Grail.

According to the myth of the 12th and 13th century the emperor is under a spell and dwells in the interior of a mountain; his ravens are the messengers informing him of what takes place in the world. The ravens are an ancient symbol of the Mysteries; in the Persian Mystery-language they symbolize the lowest stage of initiation. Hence they are the messengers of the higher initiates. What was this initiate (Barbarossa) supposed to bring? Richard Wagner wished to set forth how an ancient period is replaced by a new one, with its changed conditions of property. What once existed has withdrawn like Barbarossa. The influence of the initiates becomes crystallized for Wagner in Barbarossa.

This thought transpires in the Nibelungs. Taken at first from a more external aspect, but now upon a deeper foundation, it becomes the expression of the profound views of the Middle Ages, setting forth the dawn of a new civilisation. Once more Wagner seeks a still more profound description of this thought. Guided by an infinitely deep and intuitive comprehension of the Germanic sagas, he finally chooses the figure of Wotan, instead of Barbarossa. These sagas describe the setting of the Atlantean period and the rise of the fifth root-race out of the fourth. This is, at the same time, the development of the intellect. The human intellect, or self-consciousness, did not exist among the Atlanteans. They lived in a kind of clairvoyant condition. We find the first traces of a combining intellect in the fifth sub-race of the Atlanteans, the primordial Semitic race, and this intellect continued to develop within the fifth root-race. Self-consciousness arises in this way. The Atlantean did not say “I” to himself as forcefully as a human being belonging to the Aryan race. After the fall of Atlantis this ancient civilisation was brought over into the new one; the Europeans are a surviving branch of Atlantis. A contrast now arises between the Germanic spiritual civilisation and the initiates who work in an occult way and inspire the intellect in its external form.

The dwarfs of Nifelheim are the bearers of the Ego consciousness. Richard Wagner makes Wotan, the ancient Atlantean initiate, oppose Alberich, the bearer of egoism, who belongs to the dwarf-race of the Nibelungs and is an initiate of the Aryan period. When similar new impulses arise something entirely new is born. The bearer of intellectual wisdom is gold. Gold is deeply significant in mysticism, for gold is light, and out-streaming light becomes wisdom. Alberich brings the gold, the wisdom which has become hardened, out of the waters of the Rhine. Water always symbolizes the soul-element, the astral element. The Ego, gold, wisdom, come forth out of the soul. The Rhine is the soul of the new root-race out of which arises the understanding, the Ego consciousness.

Alberich takes possession of the gold, he captures it from the Daughters of the Rhine, the female element characterising the original state of consciousness.

This connection lived in the profound depths of Wagner's soul. He deeply felt what was connected with the rise of the new root-race, of the Ego-consciousness, and he characterised it profoundly in the first E flat major chords of Rhinegold. This streams and weaves musically throughout Wagner's Rhinegold. Wagner's themes were poems originating from ancient myths. In these legends lived something which, filled with force and life, is able to permeate the soul with a spiritual rhythm. What we experience and what we ourselves are, this comes to life and resounds through us in these ancient sagas.

• 1. Laocoon's struggle with the Serpent, the symbol of cunning.

During the course of these lectures we shall see how in his works Wagner rose up to the gods and at the same time came down to the human beings, in order to set forth, within the human race itself, redemption and salvation.

There were Mysteries also in the North. A special being, Wotan, plays a prominent part in these Mysteries. Particularly in the countries inhabited by the Celts the last traces of the old Druid Mysteries have been preserved. In England we may still find them at the time of Queen Elizabeth.

The old sagas relate first of all of Siegfried, an initiate, who was able, after a certain number of incarnations, to give up his body to an old Atlantean initiate for a dwelling. This we may find in all the Mysteries. Even Jesus sacrificed his body to a higher individuality when he was baptized by John the Baptist.

Wotan was initiated stage by stage, in order to bring about the higher development of the Northern tribes. After the transmigration of the surviving Atlantean peoples to the desert of Gobi, a few tribes had remained behind in the North. Whereas four sub-races were continuing their development in the South, four other sub-races developed in the North. Here, too, we find four stages of evolution; the last one is the Twilight of the Gods. The northern sagas tell us about this, and these legends were conceived by the four preparatory races. Wotan passes four times through an initiation within these four sub-races, and each time he rises by one degree. He hangs upon the cross for nine days; he learns to know the things connected with Mimir's head, the representative of the first sub-race. Also in this case crucifixion brings redemption.

During his second initiation he wins Gunlöd's draught of wisdom. In the form of a serpent he must creep into a subterranean cave, where he dwells for three days before he obtains the draught. During his third initiation, corresponding to the third sub-race, he is obliged to sacrifice one of his eyes in order to win Mimir's draught of wisdom. This eye is the legendary eye of wisdom, reminding us of the one-eyed Cyclops, who are the representatives of the Lemurian race. This eye has withdrawn long ago, and modern men do not possess it; sometimes, in the case of newly-born children, a faint trace of this eye may still be seen. It is the eye of clairvoyance. Why was Wotan obliged to sacrifice it? Every root-race must recapitulate the whole course of evolution. This also applies to the third northern sub-race. Clairvoyance has to be sacrificed once again, in order that something new might arise, which appeared for the first time in Wotan. This new element is the intellectual capacity, the characteristic way in which the Europeans contemplate the world.

Wotan's fourth incarnation is Siegfried, the descendant of gods. Human initiates now take the place of gods.

Siegfried passes through an initiation. He must awaken Brunhilde, the higher consciousness, by passing through the flames, the fire of passion. In this way he experiences a catharsis, a purification. Before his purification he has killed the dragon, the lower passions. He has become invulnerable. There is only one point between the shoulders where he can be wounded. This vulnerable point symbolizes that the fourth sub-race still lacks something which Christianity alone can give. The coming of One was necessary, who was invulnerable where Siegfried was still vulnerable—the coming of the Christ, Who carries the Cross resting between his shoulders at the very point where Siegfried could be wounded to death.

Christianity was called upon to check yet another onset of the Atlanteans. The peoples led by Atli (Attilas) are of Atlantean origin. The attack of these Mongolian races must give way to Christianity, personified in Leo, the pope.

Thus the myths described the course of evolution in symbolical images.

The same thing applies to the myth of Baldur. Also in Baldur we have before us an initiate. In this myth we find that all the conditions of initiation are fulfilled. The riddle of Baldur conceals a truth. The strange position of Loki in this northern saga can only be understood if we bear in mind this fact. You know that Baldur's mother, alarmed by evil dreams, made every living being promise to do no harm to Baldur. An insignificant growth, the mistletoe, is forgotten, and out of this mistletoe, which was not bound by any promise, Loge made the arrow which he gave to the blind god Hodur, when the gods were playfully hurling arrows at Baldur. Baldur is killed by this mistletoe arrow.

You know that another evolution preceded the evolution of the earth; namely, the kingdom of the Moon. At that time matter resembled our present living substance. Some of the Moon-beings remained behind upon the Moon-stage of development, and penetrated into the new world in this form. They cannot grow upon a mineral soil, they can only grow upon a living foundation, upon another living being. The mistletoe is one of these Moon-plants. Loge is the god of the Moon. He comes from the Moon-period and is now the representative of something imperfect, of Evil. This occult connection with the Moon-period also explains Loge's double nature, male and female at the same time. As you know, the division of the sexes coincides with the Moon's exit from the common planet. The Sun-god Baldur is the head of the new creation. The new and the old creation, the kingdoms of the Moon and of the Sun collide, and Baldur, the representative of the civilisation of the Sun, is the victim. Hodur is the blind inevitable force of Nature. Guilt contains a certain progressive element. Thus Baldur had to be called into life again in the Mysteries, after having been killed by Loge through Hodur.

These are the feelings which fill our soul when we penetrate into Richard Wagner's creations.

Man comes down to the earth as a soul-being; his body is formed out of the ether-earth; the human being is not yet man and woman, and he has no idea of possession or power. The soul is referred to as water; possession, implying power, is still guarded by the surging astral forces, by the Daughters of the Rhine. The Ego, or egoism coming out of Atlantis is gradually prepared. But this human being who was originally a soul-being possessed something which he must renounce: it is love, which does not, as yet seek another being outside, but finds its satisfaction within itself. Alberich must renounce this self-contained love; the human being must attain love by becoming united with another individual being. As long as the two sexes were united, the Ring was not needed; when the human being renounced psychical love, or the two sexes in one, then the Ring had to unite externally what had thus become severed. The Ring is the union of individual human beings, the union of the sexes in the physical world. When Alberich conquers the Ring he must renounce love. Now comes the time when the human being is no longer able to work within a united sphere encompassing everything. Once upon a time, soul, spirit and body were one; now the Godhead creates the body from outside. The sexes face one another in a hostile way; the two giants Fafner and Fasolt symbolized this. The human bodies are now endowed with one sex instead of two; they create external life.

The human body is represented in every religion as a temple: the Godhead builds it from outside. The inner temple of the soul must be built by man himself ever since he has become an Ego. The creative Godhead still contains love, it is still creative in the outer temple. The myth explains this in the passage where Wotan wishes to take away the Ring from the giants, and Erda appears advising him to abstain from this. Erda is the clairvoyant collective consciousness of humanity. The god must not keep the Ring encircling what should become free, in order to unite it again upon a higher stage, when the sexes shall have become neutral. Thus the prophetic, clairvoyant power of earth-consciousness prevents Wotan from securing the Ring, which remains the property of the giants. Ever since, every human being has one sex only. (The giant represents the physical bodily structure.) Now the giants begin to build Walhalla. During a quarrel over the Ring, Fasolt is killed by Fafner. This is the contrast between male and female: one sex must first be killed within every human being: the man kills the woman, and the woman kills the man within themselves.

Higher consciousness must first be born out of the all-embracing consciousness of the earth. This takes place through Wotan's union with Erda; Brunhilde is born out of this union. She still possesses something of a wide and deep world-consciousness. To begin with, however, this consciousness withdraws to some extent. Wotan also begets Siegmund and Sieglinde with an earthly woman. They represent the two sexes of the soul, the male soul and the female soul. It is not possible for one to live without the other. The female soul, Sieglinde, is captured by Hunding. The soul must now submit to the physical brain. Siegmund, the soul imprisoned within the body, now begins to go astray. The soul is not strong enough to approach the Divine; the gods renounce Siegmund and his sword is shattered by Wotan's spear.

The guidance must now be left to the human Self which is active entirely in the sphere of the senses: to Hagen, the son of Alberich. The lower earthly forces begin to play the chief role. All the powers conspire against the union of the male and female soul-element: even Wotan must help Fricka against Siegmund on account of Hunding. Fricka represent the male-female soul upon a higher stage. She urges Wotan to sever the connection between male and female soul upon the earthly plane.

Upon a cosmic plane the male and female soul-elements are united, but upon the earth the blood and the senses influence human life. This is deeply indicated in the love between brother and sister, the forbidden element. If the original chasteness is to maintain its rule, Siegmund and Sieglinde, the physical element, must die. Sieglinde is doomed to be killed by Brunhilde, the all-encompassing consciousness, if the whole evolution of the earth is not to be obstructed. Brunhilde, however, helps her and gives her Grane, her horse, which bears the human being through the events of the earth. Brunhilde withdraws into exile. Flaming fire surrounds her rock. Clairvoyant consciousness is now surrounded by the fire through which the human being must first pass in order to become purified, if he wishes to reach once more the all-encompassing consciousness and to experience the catharsis.

Siegfried.

Sieglinde, the female soul-element, gives birth to Siegfried, the human consciousness which must again rise to higher worlds. He grows up secretly, guarded by Mime. He must overcome the lower nature, the dragon, in order to obtain power. He also overcomes Mime. Who is “Mime”? Mime can bestow something which renders invisible, the tarn-cap, the outcome of a power which remains invisible to ordinary human beings. The tarn-cap is the symbol of magicians, both of the white and of the black order. Even a magician of the black path may walk about invisibly in our midst. Mime is one who can bestow the tarn-cap which he has obtained out of the black forces of the earth. He strives to turn Siegfried into a black magician, but Siegfried rebels. He has killed the dragon, has taken up a drop of its blood, the symbol of passions, and is thus able to understand the speech of the birds (of the earthly world of the senses). He is able to tread the path of the higher initiates and is shown the path leading to Brunhilde, the all-embracing consciousness.

We have so far considered three phases of northern evolution. First of all the dwarf, then the giants, and now the human being. The Valkyria belongs to the second phase, and in Siegfried the human being itself is born. Imprisoned within his body he must find his way back again to the pure, white wisdom.

The Twilight of the Gods.

The fourth part of the Twilight of the Gods expresses that in the northern world the human being has not yet reached maturity and has not attained a complete initiation. Siegfried still possesses one vulnerable spot, where Christ bore the Cross. Siegfried cannot as yet take the Cross upon himself. This symbolizes in a profound way what the peoples of the North still lacked, and it also shows that Christianity was still a necessity for them. Siegfried cannot unite himself with Brunhilde. He is the human soul born out of a mortal woman, out of the union of Siegmund and Sieglinde. Brunhilde has remained virgin; she is the higher consciousness.

In the last phase, knowledge must be reached because man is not as yet able to unite himself with virgin wisdom. Consequently his impulse toward higher knowledge takes on the farm of desire. This is the last stage which must be conquered. The fact that Siegfried wishes to become united with Brunhilde in earthly passion leads to an exchange of possessions; she gives him the horse and he gives her the ring. Until the union with the higher Self has been reached, the ring, symbolizing coercion from outside, does not lose its power.

The human being dives down into lower consciousness, he is struck with blindness. Siegfried forgets Brunhilde and weds Gudrun, the lower consciousness. He even agrees to court Brunhilde for another unworthy man. This signifies that during the last phase, before Christianity arises, the human being follows the dark path of d falls prey once more to dark powers. The unrighteous union of Brunhilde with Gunther is the cause of Siegfried's ruin. He must incur death through the lower powers in the nets of which he has become entangled. (Hagen.)

The last phase approaches; the Norns appear once more. It is the phase in which the all-embracing consciousness is lost:

“Zu End ewiges Wissen!
Der Welt melden
Weise nichts mehr.
Hinab zur Mutter, hinab!”

(“Ended is wisdom eternal!

The higher wisdom which was formerly given to the sons of the gods is lost upon the earth, it returns to the Eternal. Humanity must now rely upon itself

Tristan and Isolde.

One who has a deeper vision, like Wagner, will discover that the Tristan theme is able to give a clearer insight into the problem connected with the dual aspect of sex.

The male and female elements are important only upon the physical plane. Tristan has the deep longing to be whole and undivided, to reach perfect harmony and a consciousness which is no longer male or female. This note of longing re-echoing throughout the drama may be expressed as follows: Tristan does not wish any longer to be merely Tristan, merely “I”, but he wishes to take up within him Isolde, so that in him live Isolde and Tristan.

The two have lost every consciousness of a division. This re-echoes in the final verses of the poem expressing redemption from a separate, divided form of existence:

“In des Wonnemeeres
wogendem Schwall,
In der Duftwellen
tönendem Schell,
In des Welt-Atems
wehendem All,
ertrinken,
versinken,
unbewusst
höchste Lust!”

(“In the blissful ocean's
rising and fall,
In the tidal's fragrant
resonant call,
In the world's breath, wherein
stirreth the All,
to drown, and
sink down,
unconscious
highest bliss!”)

These words are born out of a deeper knowledge. The surging ocean of bliss is the astral world, and Devachan is the sphere resounding in fragrant tones. The life-principle is the breath of the world; everything must be contained within it. To be no longer severed and divided in the sphere of consciousness, but to “drown and sink down” unconsciously into an undifferentiated element—this is highest bliss. Within earthly life it is indeed highest bliss to overcome it, to overcome sense-life through spiritual life. Desire seeking to destroy what pertains to the earth still takes on the form of desire. Nevertheless it is a noble form of desire if the element of desire contained in this aspiration is overcome. This is the problem which Wagner tries to solve in his “Tristan and Isolde”. All these thoughts did not live consciously or abstractly in Wagner; they were thoughts contained in the myth itself.

It is not necessary for an artist to have these thoughts in an abstract form. Just as a plant grows in accordance with laws of which it knows nothing, so the cosmic forces within myths have a life of their own; these are forces which are also active within the human being and they penetrate into a work of art.

Wagner's Siegfried is still entangled in the earthly element; he must perish in it. Brunhilde realizes the relationship of facts and understands what is at stake. So she yields the ring to the Daughters of the Rhine, to an element which has not penetrated into the working influences of this world.

The whole evolution of the world goes back to the originally virgin substance. The older northern world conception is replaced by another one which does not appeal any longer to what pertains to the external world of the senses, but to what has remained virgin—to the soul.

Brunhilde, who has become involved in the external world of the senses through her union with Siegfried rides into the fire, and love is born out of it. The whole tragedy of this thought is deeply felt by the peoples of the north, because they realise that what they were once able to understand begins to perish.

Love is born out of the Spirit, out of the sea of fire, the originally virgin substance.

“Incarnatus est per Sanctum Spiritum ex Maria Virgine!”

The same element which gave birth to egoism, to a love which is selfish, now gives birth to a new feeling, high above everything that is entangled in the physical sphere. Wisdom withdraws in order to give birth to love out of that part of the elements which is still chaste and virgin. This love is the Christ, the Christian principle. Unselfish love opposed to selfish love, this is the great process of evolution which must take place through the mysterious involution-process of death, the destruction of physical matter. The contrasts of life and death are drawn by Wagner in sharp outlines.

The wood of the Cross symbolizes life which has withered away, and upon this Cross hangs the new everlasting Life which will give rise to a new epoch.

A new spiritual life proceeds out of the Twilight of the Gods. Richard Wagner's longing, to set forth the Christ principle in all its depth, after his description of the four phases of northern life, appears in his Parsifal. This is the fifth phase. Because Wagner felt so deeply the tragic note contained in the northern world conception of evolution he also felt it incumbent upon him to set forth the glorification of Christianity.

Parsifal.

The deeper we penetrate into Richard Wagner's work, the more we shall find in it cosmic-mystical problems, and riddles of life.

It is very significant that after having described the whole primordial age of the Germanic peoples in the four phases of the Ring of the Nibelungs, Richard Wagner created an eminently Christian drama, the work with which he closed his life: Parsifal. We must penetrate into Richard Wagner's personality if we wish to understand what lives in Parsifal.

For Richard Wagner, the character of Jesus of Nazareth was beginning to take on a definite shape ever since his fortieth year. At first he intended to create an entirely different work of art, by setting forth the infinite love for the whole of mankind which lived in Jesus of Nazareth. He conceived the fundamental idea of this drama when he was fifty, and it was to be entitled, “The Victor”. This work shows us the deep world-conception which was the source of the poet's intuitions. The contents of the drama is briefly as follows

Arnanda, a youth of the noble Brahmin caste, is loved passionately by Prakriti, a Chandala maiden, that is, of a lower, despised caste. He renounces this love and becomes a disciple of Buddha. According to Wagner's idea, the Chandala maiden was the reincarnation of a woman belonging to the highest Brahmin caste, who had haughtily spurned the love of a Chandala youth, and whose karmic punishment it is to be born again within the Chandala caste. When she has reached a point in her development enabling her to renounce her love, she also becomes a disciple of Buddha.

You see, therefore, that Wagner grasped the problem of karma in all its depth, out of the true spirit of Buddhism; when he was about fifty years old he had developed to the extent of being able to create a drama of such deep moral force and earnestness as “The Victor”. All these thoughts then flow together in his Parsifal, but at the same time the Christ-problem stands in the centre of the drama. Out of Parsifal streams the whole profundity of this medieval problem.

Wolfram von Eschenbach was the first one to give a poetical shape to the mystery of Parsifal. In him we find the same theme, created out of the deepest substance of the Middle Ages. In the highest minds of the Middle Ages who were imbued with spiritual life lived something which the initiated named the exaltation of love. Before and after, there were Minnesingers, minstrels of love. But there was a great difference between what was formerly understood as love in the Germanic countries, and what arose later on in Christianity as purified love.

This is illustrated and handed down to us in “Armer Heinrich” (“Poor Henry”). Hartmann von der Aue's “Poor Henry” is filled with the spiritual life which the crusaders brought back from the Orient. Let us place before us briefly the, contents of “Poor Henry”: A Swabian knight who has always been fortunate in life is suddenly struck by an incurable disease, which can only be healed through the sacrifice and death of a pure virgin. A virgin is found who is willing to sacrifice herself. They go to Salerno to a celebrated physician. At the last moment, however, Henry regrets the sacrifice and does not wish to accept it. The virgin remains alive. Henry regains his health after all, and they get married.

Here we have, therefore, a pure virgin and her sacrifice on behalf of a man who has only lived a life of pleasure and who is saved through her sacrifice. A mystery lies, concealed in this. From the standpoint of the Middle Ages, Minnesinging was looked upon as something which had been handed down from the four phases of ancient Germanic life, as contained in the sagas which Wagner placed before us in his Tetralogy. Love based on the life of the senses was considered at that time as something which had been overcome; love was to rise again spiritually, linked up with the feeling of renunciation.

In order to realise what took place, we must collect all the factors which reconstruct for us the expression, the physiognomy of that past period. And then we shall be able to understand what induced Wagner to set forth this legend.

The earliest Germanic races had a legend which we can trace throughout history, one of the root-legends which can also be found in a somewhat different form in Italy and in other countries. Let us place before you, the outline of this legend: A man has learnt to know the pleasures and joys of this world, and penetrates into a kind of subterranean cavern. There he meets a woman of exceeding great charm and attraction. He experiences the joys of paradise, nevertheless he longs to return to the earth. Finally he comes out of the mountain and returns to life.—This is a legend which we can find everywhere in Europe, and it appears to us very clearly in Tannhäuser. If we study this legend we shall find that it is, to begin with, the personification of love in the Germanic countries before the great turning point of the times. Life in the world outside is renounced for a retirement in the cavern to the joys brought by the old kind of love, by the goddess Venus.

In this form the legend has no real point of issue, no possibility of looking up to something higher. It arose before love underwent the already mentioned transformation. Later on, in the early times of Christianity when love began to take on a spiritual form, people sought to throw a glaring light on these earlier periods and on this paradise in the cave of Venus, as a contrast to the other paradise which they had found.

At this point we must consider our fifth root-race. When the floods had buried Atlantis, the sub-races of the fifth root-race gradually emerged: the Indian, the Median-Persian, the Assyrian-Babylonian-Semitic, the Graeco-Latin races. When the Roman culture began to flow off, our fifth sub-race emerged, the Germanic races in which we now live and which have a special significance for Christian Europe.

Not that Wagner was aware of all these things, but he possessed an unerring feeling for the world-situation and felt what tasks were incumbent upon the races; he felt it just as clearly as if he had known spiritual science.

You know that every one of these races was inspired by great initiates. The fifth root-race arose out of the ancient Semitic races. A trace of this origin still lives in all the sub-races which have so far constituted the fifth root-race. You know that after the destruction of Atlantis by the great flood the peoples who had emigrated and had thus been preserved from destruction were led by Manu, a divine guide, into Asia, into the desert of Gobi. Cultural influences went out from there to India, Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and even to our own countries.

History can no longer trace the first semitic streams of influence upon human civilisation when contemplating the ancient Aryan civilisation. This influence appears more clearly only in the third sub-race, in the Egyptian-Semitic-Babylonian peoples. The people of Israel even derive their name from it. Christianity itself may be led back, as a fourth influence, to a semitic impulse. If we continue studying the development of these influences we shall find the semitic impulse in the Moorish culture which penetrated into Spain, and spread over the whole of Europe influencing even Christian monks.

Thus the primal semitic impulse reaches as far as the fifth sub-race.

We see the impulses of one great stream penetrate five times into the earliest civilisations. We have one great spiritual stream coming from the South, which is met by another stream arising in the North, which penetrates into four phases of the early northern civilisation and develops until it meets the first stream, thus flowing together with it. A childlike, unworldly nation dwelt in northern Europe and these early inhabitants underwent the influence of the stream of culture coming from the South at the turning point of the 12th and 13th century. This new culture penetrated into these regions like a spiritual current of air. Wolfram von Eschenbach was entirely under the influence of this spiritual current.

The northern civilisation is symbolized in the legend of Tannhäuser, which also contains an impulse from the South. Everywhere we come across something which may be designated as a semitic impulse.

There was one thing, however, which was, felt very strongly: namely, that the Germanic races were a last link in this chain of development and that something entirely new would arise, preparing something completely different within the sixth sub-race: the higher mission of Christianity. The Germanic peoples longed for this new form of Christianity: a Christianity was to be called into life which had nothing to do with what had been taken over from the South. A contrast arose between Rome and Jerusalem; “Rome on the one side and Jerusalem on the other” was the battle-cry under which the crusaders fought. The idea that Jerusalem must be the centre was never lost.

A spiritual Jerusalem, rather then a physical one, was borne in mind: Jerusalem as a spiritual centre, and at the same time as an outpost of the future.

It was felt that the fifth sub-race had to serve still another purpose, that it had to fulfil a special task. The old impulses had ceased, something entirely new was to come, a new spiral curve in the civilisation of the world began. What had come from the South was only an attempt; the kernel was now to be peeled out of its skins. At the turn of the Middle Ages it was felt that something old, which had been experienced as a boon, was setting and had come to an end, and that the longing for something new contained a new impulse which was gradually coming into life. These were the feelings which lived particularly in the strong personality of Wolfram von Eschenbach.

Consider now the new period. Imagine this feeling rising up anew in a period of decadence, and then you will find in it something of what lived in Wagner. Many things had in the meantime taken place which were formerly experienced as decay of the race. Richard Wagner felt this particularly strongly ever since his conscious life began. The chaos which surrounds us to such a great extent to-day, the chaos in which the masses waste away through sickness, contain both the symptoms of decay and of a new life.

The misery of the great masses of European people, whose spiritual life remains hidden in darkness, who are cut away from education and culture, has never been experienced more deeply than by Richard Wagner, and for this reason he became a revolutionary in the year 1848, for the following thought weighed heavily on his heart: It lies within our power to help in accelerating the downward course of the wheel, or in guiding it up again.

This is the idea of Bayreuth. The events of 1848 were only an insignificant symptom of the coming spiritual movement. If we grasp this, we shall be able to understand how Richard Wagner came to his race-problem, dealt with in his prose-writings. He expresses himself more or less as follows: In Asia, in the Hindoo race, we may find something of the primordial force of the Aryan race. Some of the strong spiritual forces of the Aryan race exist for a chosen few, for the Brahmin caste. The lower castes are excluded, but a high spiritual standpoint is reached by the Brahmins. Then we may find in the North a more childlike race (thus Wagner continues), which has passed through the four stages of evolution within the race itself. These people delight in hunting; killing is a joy to them, but this pleasure in taking away life is a symptom of decadence. It is a deep, occult fact that life is strangely connected with knowledge, with the development of man in the direction of higher spiritual knowledge. Everything man doer, in the way of cruelty or of destruction of life takes away from him the pure spiritual forces. For this reason, those who increase the forces of egoism, who tread the black path, must destroy life. (In Mabel Collin's “Flita”, the story of a woman dealing in black magic, Flita destroys unborn existences, because she needs life in order to maintain her power.)

There is a deep connection between the taking away of life and the life of man. In the eternal course of evolution this is a lesson which must be learnt and experienced. But it is another matter if during a certain period of evolution people take away life in a naïve way. Once upon a time the act of killing made man feel his own strength. This may be said of the ancient Germanic races, the hunting peoples. Ever since Christianity has appeared, it is a mortal sin to kill, and killing is now a symptom of decadence in a race.

This was the foundation of the view which induced Wagner to become a strict vegetarian. In his opinion, the only way in which a race may grow in strength is through a nourishment which does not imply killing.

The feeling that a new impulse had to come produced in Wagner also his ideas concerning the influence of the Jews upon our present civilisation.

He was not anti-semitic in the present, odious way, but he felt that Judaism as such had finished to play its role, and that the semitic impulses must die out. This gave rise to his call for emancipation from these impulses. A powerful spiritual direction made him feel that something new must replace earlier influences. This is connected with his ideas about the Germanic races. He made a clear distinction between the development of the soul and of the race. This distinction must be made by saying: We were all incarnated in the Atlantean race. Whereas the souls have risen higher, the races have degenerated. Every step we ascend is connected with a descent. For every man who grows more noble-minded there is one who sinks down lower. There is a difference between the soul dwelling within the race-body and the race-body itself. The more a human being resembles the race to which he belongs, the more he loves what is transient and is connected with the qualities of his race, the more he will degenerate with the race. The more he emancipates himself, lifting himself out of the peculiarities of his race, the more his soul will have the possibility to incarnate more highly. Richard Wagner knows that in fighting against the Semitic element we should not fight against the souls who are incarnated within the race, but only against the race as such, which has finished to play its role. Wagner thus makes a distinction between the descending evolution of the race and the ascending evolution of souls. He felt the necessity of this ascending evolution just as keenly as a medieval soul, just as keenly as Wolfram von Eschenbach, or Hartmann von der Aue.

We must consider once more what is contained in the fact that in “Armer Heinrich” (Poor Henry) Henry is healed by a pure virgin. Henry has lived, to begin with, a life of the senses, his Ego is born out of his race. This “Ego” begins to all as soon as it begins to hear the higher call, the call meant for humanity in general. The soul grows ill because it connects itself with something which is only rooted in the race: with a form of love which is rooted in the race. Now this lower kind of love living within the race must develop into a higher form of love. What lives within the race must be redeemed by something higher, by the higher, purer soul that is ready to sacrifice herself for the striving soul of man.

You know that the soul consists of a male and a female part, and that the impressions of the senses which enter the soul push this soul-element into the background.

“The eternal Feminine draws us along!” (“Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan!” Goethe, Faust II). Salvation means that sense-life must be overcome. We find this redemption also in “Tristan and Isolde”.

The historical expression for the overcoming of sense-life is “Parsifal”. He is the representative of a new Christianity. He becomes the King of the Holy Grail because he redeems what has once been held in the bondage of the senses and thus brings into the world a new principle of love. What lies at the foundation of Parsifal? What is the meaning of the Holy Grail? The earliest legend which appears at the turning-point of the Middle Ages tells us that the Holy Grail is the cup which was used by Jesus Christ at the Lord's Supper, the cup in which he offered the bread and the. wine and in which Joseph of Arimataea caught up the blood streaming out of Christ's wound. The spear which caused this wound and the chalice were born up by angels, who held it suspended in the air until Titurel found them and built upon Montsalvat (which means: the Mountain of Salvation) a castle in which he could guard these treasures. Twelve knights gathered together to serve the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail had the power to avert the danger of death from these knights and to supply them with everything they needed for their life. Whenever they looked upon it they acquired new spiritual strength.

On the one side, we have the temple of the Holy Grail with its knights, and on the other, the Magic Castle of Klingsor with his knights, who are, in reality, the enemies of the knighthood of the Holy Grail. We are confronted with two forms of Christianity. One kind is represented by the knights of the Holy Grail and the other by Klingsor. Klingsor is the man who has mutilated himself in order not to fall a prey to the senses. But he has not overcome his desires, he has only taken away the possibility to satisfy them. Thus he lives in a sensual sphere. The maidens of the magic castle serve him, and everything belonging to the sphere of desires is at his disposal. Kundry is the real temptress in this kingdom: she attracts everyone who approaches Klingsor into the sphere of sensual love. Klingsor has not destroyed desire, but only the organ of desire. He personifies the form of Christianity which comes from the South and introduced an ascetic life; it eliminated a sensual life, but it could not destroy desire; it could protect against the tempting powers of Kundry. A higher element was perceived in the power of a spirituality which rises above sensual life into the sphere of purified love, not through compulsion, but through a higher, spiritual knowledge.

Amfortas and the knights of the Holy Grail strive after this, but they do not succeed in establishing this kingdom So long as the true spiritual force is lacking, Amfortas yields to the temptations of Kundry. The higher spirituality personified in Amfortas falls a prey to the lower memory.

Thus we are confronted with two phenomena. On the one hand, Christianity which has become ascetic and is unable to reach a higher spiritual knowledge; and on the other hand, the spiritual knighthood which falls a prey to Klingsor's temptation until the redeemer appears who vanquishes Klingsor. Amfortas is wounded and loses the sacred spear; he must guard the Holy Grail as a sorrow-laden king. This higher Christianity is therefore diseased and suffering; it must guard the mysteries of Christianity in sorrow until a new saviour appears. And this saviour appears in Parsifal.

Parsifal must first learn his lesson, he passes through tests; he then becomes purified and finally attains spiritual power, the feeling of the great oneness of all existence. Richard Wagner thus unconsciously comes to great occult truths. First of all to compassion. Parsifal at first passes through a scale of experiences which fill him with compassion for our older brothers, the animals. In his violent desire to embrace knighthood he has abandoned his mother Herzeleide, who has died of a broken heart. He has battled and killed. The dying glance of an animal then taught him what it means: “to kill”.

The second stage consists in rising above desire, without killing desire from outside.

So he reaches the sanctuary of the Grail, but he does not as yet understand his task. He learns his lesson through life, He falls into temptation through Kundry, but he stands the test. Just when he is about to fall, he rises above desire; a new pure love shines forth within him like a rising sun.

Something flares up which we already discovered in the Twilight of the Gods: “Incarnatus est de spiritum sanctum ex Maria Virgine”, born of the Spirit through the Virgin, (the higher love, which is not filled with sensual feelings).

The human being must awaken within him a soul which purifies everything transmitted by the senses. because virgin substance, virgin matter, will give birth to the Ego of the Christ. The lower female element in the human soul dies and will be replaced by a higher female element which lifts him up to the Spirit.

A higher virgin power faces the seducing Kundry. Kundry, the other female element pertaining to sex which draws man down, which seeks to draw him down, must be overcome.

Kundry has already lived once as Herodias who asked for the head of John the Baptist, Herodias, the mother of Ahasver. The force which cannot find peace and seeks everywhere a sensual love, this force takes on the form of a love which must first be purified, undergo a transformation, like Kundry. Emancipation from a love dependent on the senses—this is the mystery which Richard Wagner has woven into his Parsifal.

This thought permeates all the works of Richard Wagner. Even in his “Flying Dutchman” the intuitive force of his nature leads him to the same problem, for in this work we find that a virgin is willing to sacrifice herself for the Dutchman, thus redeeming him from his long wanderings. And the same problem is contained in “Tannhäuser”. The singer's contest on the Wartburg is set forth as a contest between the singer of the old sensual love, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, who is the representative of the new, spiritual Christianity. He overcomes Heinrich von Ofterdingen, who has called in the aid of Klingsor from Hungary, but Wolfram overcomes both. Now we are able to understand Tristan more deeply, because we know that what lives in him is not the killing of love, but the overcoming of the race, or the purification of love.

Richard Wagner rose from Schopenhauer's “Denial of the Will” to a purification of the will.

Wagner even expressed this purification in his “Meistersingers”, where Hans Sachs' feelings toward Eve undergo a purification when he seeks to win her for himself. This is expressed not so much in the text, as in the music.

All this has streamed together in his Parsifal. Richard Wagner looked back upon the ancient ideal of the Brahmins, and perceived with sorrow the symptoms of decay in the present race. He wished to give rise to a new impulse born out of art. In his Festivals at Bayreuth he had in mind to redeem the race by giving it a new spiritual content.

This was the spirit which prompted Nietzsche, so long as he was connected with Wagner, to write about “Dyonisian Art”. He felt that these Festivals contained something of the spirit of the ancient Mysteries. The Mysteries had contributed to the development of the human race up to the fourth sub-race. In the Mystery-temple of Dyonisos it was possible to experience this uplifting impulse, and in the North, the initiates, the druids, spoke of the twilight of the gods out of which a new race would come forth, would have to come forth.

Our civilisation, with its task of introducing Christianity, stands in the very midst of these ideas. Sorrowfully the Greek disciple of the Mysteries spoke of the man “who would come to fulfil the Mysteries”.

Richard Wagner saw the time approaching when Christianity, developing out of the fifth sub-race, would have to be fulfilled. He brought faith also to those “who could not see”. A time will come when the God of the Mysteries will rise again from the human into the divine sphere. The twilight of the gods of the ancient northern saga shows us this ascent, in the gods' journey to Walhalla along the rainbow-bridge. The time draws near and must be fulfilled when Christianity begins to speak its own characteristic language, when “those who believed will be able to see again”. Bayreuth thus shows us two currents of civilisation: The renewal of the Mysteries of Greece, and a new Christianity—thus uniting what had become severed.

Richard Wagner and all those who surrounded him felt this, and Edouard Schuré had the same feeling about this art. He saw in it the prologue introducing the union of what had become severed in the past.

Religion, art and science were united in the ancient primordial drama: then came the division and three separate currents began to flow out of the one source contained within the Greek Mysteries.

Each current owes its development to the fact that it went its own separate way. In the course of time a “religious” element arose for the soul, an “artistic” one for the senses, and a “scientific” one for the understanding.

This was inevitable, for perfection could be reached only if man unfolded every one of his capacities separately until they attained the highest point of development.

If religion is led toward the highest form of Christianity, it is willing to become reunited with art and science. Art—poetry, painting, sculpture and music—will reach the summit if it becomes permeated with true religion. And science, which has reached its full development in the modern period, has really given the impulse for the reunion of these three currents.

Richard Wagner, one of the first who felt the impulse leading to a reunion of art, science and religion, has offered this to humanity as a new gift.

He felt that Christianity is again called upon to unite everything. And he poured this new Christianity into his Parsifal.

The Good Friday music, expressing Wagner's own Good Friday feelings, re-echoes in our ear as if it were the great current of a new civilisation. The Good Friday experience revealed to him that the individual development of the soul and the development of the race must go separate ways, that the souls must be lifted up and saved, that it is our task to awaken the soul to new life, in spite of the tragic fate connecting the body with the race, with the forces which are doomed to decay.

To fill the world with tones pointing to a new future, this is what Richard Wagner wished to set forth at Bayreuth, this is the newly rising star which he pointed out to us. At least a small part of humanity should listen to the tones of the future age.

Wagner's life-work ends with apocalyptic words, the apocalypse which he wished to proclaim to his period, as a true prophet who knew that a new age would dawn very soon:

“Die Gesichte, die ich sehe,
Will ich Euch künden!”

“The visions I see

let me proclaim to you!”

Today I would like to follow up on the things I discussed a fortnight ago. In the near future, we may also have the opportunity to talk about our experiences in Amsterdam. But today I would like to talk about some specific things that reach into our physical plane – something we already started the other day.

I have often emphasized that the events that take place in our physical world are nothing more than a kind of shadow reflection of what is happening on the higher planes. It is clear to the occultist that he can only understand the events in the physical world if he knows what is happening on the supersensible planes. To the occultist who has insight into the higher planes, it appears as if people are pulled by threads that emanate from the higher planes. This could seem to be an infringement of human freedom. But today I would like to show that this is not the case. Some examples may show us how the higher planes affect us.

First of all, I must refer back to something I have already said earlier: that in principle there is no absolute good and absolute evil. Evil is only a kind of “displaced” good. If something has happened, let us say in the lunar epoch of development that preceded our epoch, and part of it has been transmitted into our development, then it appears as out of place in the present time. It was good during the lunar epoch, but it appears evil to us during the earthly epoch. During the lunar epoch, someone might have had the task of organizing the instinctual urges in a harmonious way; but this activity was completed when the lunar epoch ended. The task of the earthly epoch now consists in controlling these urges again from the level of the manas. If someone today were to live out their urges as the Pitri were forced to live them, they would be an evil person in our epoch, whereas in the lunar epoch he would have been a wise man.

People do not usually think about what events such as the appearance of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim religion, meant in the sixth and beginning of the seventh century.

One must imagine that at first Christianity endeavored to grow into the various other forms of religion. At first we see only a small Jewish community in Palestine; it has remained quite small. The Folk-souls do not easily allow a principle such as that contained in Christian teaching to be imposed on them. The Apostle Paul found the way to the Gentiles by first leaving the thoughts of the Gentiles as he found them and then using the pagan religious forms to infuse the Christian essence into them. In the southern regions of Europe, the Mithras service was cultivated; it was similar to today's Sacrifice of the Mass. The pagans there accepted Christianity because they were allowed to keep the Mithras festival that had become dear to them. It was similar with the Germanic peoples with the festival that became a Christian symbol as Christmas. Their sacred ancestors were accepted as Christian saints. In this way, Christianity grew into ever new areas and among new tribes. It was the adaptability of Christianity that made this possible. The Christian religion expanded more and more; but because of this multiformity, it also needed a powerful central point: that is the Roman papacy. All the damage that was later caused by Christianity is linked to this world-historical mission of the papacy.

The Semitic peoples had to be handled differently. Mohammed did that. He formulated the first great doctrine when he said: All gods but the One are no gods. Only the one I teach you is the only God. This doctrine can only be understood as an opposition to Christianity. From the very beginning, Christianity's task in conquering the physical plane was to work its way into the human personality; it does not build on old forces, but seeks to work through manas.

We see that in Mohammedanism there is no conscious attempt to take up the old spiritual forms of paganism, but that the right way to conquer the physical plane is to be found only through physical science. We see how this physical science takes hold of the art of healing, which originated in Arabia and later spread to other countries. The Arabian doctors only started from the physical plane, unlike the healers of the ancient Egyptians, the Druids and even the ancient Germanic tribes. All of them had come to their healing profession by developing their psychic powers through asceticism and other exercises. Today we still see something similar in the practices and processes of shamanism, only that these have degenerated today. So psychic powers were developed in these early healers. Muhammad introduced the art of healing that takes its remedies only from the physical plane itself. This art of healing was developed where one did not want to know about spiritual beings, but only about a single God. Alchemy and astrology in the old sense were abolished and made into new sciences: astronomy, mathematics and so on. These later became the sciences of the Occident. The Arabs who came to Spain, we see men educated in the physical sciences, especially mathematicians. The true followers of this school said: We respectfully revere what lives in plants, animals, etc., but man should not imitate in an amateurish way what only God is called to create. Therefore, we find only arabesques in Moorish art, forms that are not even plant-like, but are purely the product of the imagination.

The Greek power was superseded by Rome, but Greek education was passed on to the Romans. The Arabs received what they have from Muhammad. Muhammad introduced science, which is only permeated with laws of the physical plane. The Christian monks were inspired by the Moors. Although the Moors were beaten back through political power, monotheism, which brings with it a deepening of physical science, came to Europe through the Moors and led to a purification of Christianity from all paganism.

Through Christianity, the emotional life of man was led up to Kama-Manas. Through Mohammedanism, the intellect, the spirit, was led down from the spiritual life to the abstract comprehension of the purely physical laws. This physical science had to develop through various stages to reach the level it now occupies. It had to go through the science of the Vedic priests and all the following stages to reach the achievements of our present time. Some of this had already been achieved by the Atlanteans, albeit through psychic powers. Since the Atlantean times, this development towards physical laws has been in preparation.

The Chinese are a remnant of the Atlantean Mongol race. When we hear the word Tao in Chinese, it is something difficult for us to understand. The Mongols of that time had developed a form of monotheism that went as far as the psychic tangibility, as far as the feeling of the spiritual. When the old Chinese, the old Mongols, pronounced the word Tao, they felt it when they pronounced it. Tao is not “the way”, as it is usually translated, it is the fundamental power by which the Atlanteans could still transform plants, by which they could set their remarkable airships in motion. This basic power, also called “Vril”, was used everywhere by the Atlanteans, and they called it their god. They felt this power within themselves; it was “the way and the goal” for them. Therefore, every Mongolian considered himself to be an instrument in the hands of the great Vril power.

This monotheism of the Atlanteans remained with those races that survived the great flood. From this form of religion, which was still spiritual, the fifth root race emerged. These old spiritual forms of religion, the worship of a unified God, gradually degenerated into polytheism. Monotheism only remained among the most highly developed priests. At the beginning of Christianity, the monks behaved cunningly: they said that Baldur had become a human being in Palestine. In the early centuries, one would have found Christianity colorfully mixed with paganism, even in Arian Christianity. This development took place at the same time as a particularly vivid glimmering of religious feeling in the old Mongolian races was being induced by highly developed shamans. We see, as a reaction to polytheism, on the one hand, the emergence of a new unified religion in Arabia through Mohammed. On the other hand, we see, somewhat earlier, an initiated shaman rising up in his Tao consciousness, taking revenge on those who had fallen away from the old monotheistic idea of God. Attila was called “The Scourge of God.” We see the princes he deposed living in splendor and pomp all around his kingdom, but he, the shaman, lived in the greatest simplicity. It is said of him that his eyes glowed and the earth trembled when he raised his sword. This great initiate would have been fully justified in the Atlantean era; in our time, he would look like a criminal. The same power that is an expression of the divine fire in its time appears as divine wrath in another period. Why does this happen? It is necessary in order to make further development possible. If development is to be continue, viewed from a higher plane, the individual threads must once again intertwine harmoniously.

We had also spoken of the Druid priests who taught the people through fairy tales and myths. They were healers, priests and astrologers at the same time. They possessed inspired knowledge. When the Celtic element was replaced by the Germanic tribes, the belief in the old form of inspiration also receded. The conquest of the physical plane was entrusted to man; he became a warrior. The intuitive and productive power comes to us in the feminine. The woman became a priestess, who was at the same time a healer, for example the Weleda. All healing arts were in the hands of women at that time; the man was pushed out onto the outer, physical plane. We still encounter this in the time of the Merovingians and Carolingians. It was only through the science learned by the monks from the Moors that the spiritual element was increasingly replaced. And from the 16th to the 19th century, the material way of thinking increased more and more. The psychic healers gave way; they were discredited and despised as magicians or witches. The loss of the ability to work with psychic means of healing is connected with this; healing in this way is no longer as effective. Paracelsus still possessed these abilities completely.

This is connected with the transition of the leadership of humanity from a Dhyan Chohan of a higher kind to another Dhyan Chohan. The Christian esoteric calls the healing Dhyan Chohan “Saint Michael”, which is the Archangel who guides the psychic idealism of man. Man only becomes free by realizing that everything that happens on the physical plane is caused by higher forces. He must enter into a relationship of discipleship with the Archangel Michael.

Two entities played a role in the Old Testament: the leading spirit is harmonious. Beelzebub, also a Dhyan Chohan, is disharmonious. He is the leader of all disharmony on the physical plane. He must be understood in order to know why one form can have a destructive effect on another. Since the 16th century, the hosts of Beelzebub have gained the upper hand over the hosts of Michael. Mammon is the god of obstacles, which holds man back from pursuing his straight path. It would be out of place if this were to continue into the next century.

All physical events are the shadows of supersensible events. The battle between spiritual forces and materialism is a reflection of the battle between the hosts of Beelzebub and Mammon against Michael. This battle first had to be fought on the higher planes; it was decided there thirty years ago in favor of Michael, and the present battle here on the physical plane is a reflection of it. The battle above has been decided, but for the individual human being the battle has not yet been fought. If the people today are not up to it, we must all perish and new people would have to come. With this the path is shown, the point at which the individual human being must step in today.

After I said a few esoteric words last Friday, what I have to say today will not seem so strange to you. I would like to discuss a piece of history from the last few centuries from the Akashic Records. You know that all events that have happened are recorded in a certain way in an eternal chronicle, in the Akasha substance, which is a much finer substance than the substances we know. You know that all events of history and prehistory are recorded in this substance. What is usually called the Akashic Records in theosophical language, however, are not the original records, but reflections of the actual records in the astral realm. In order to be able to read these, certain preconditions are necessary, of which I will at least give you one.

To be able to read the Akashic Records, it is necessary to make one's own thoughts available to the forces and beings that we call the “Masters” in theosophical language. The Masters must give us the necessary instructions to be able to read in the Akashic Records, which is written in symbols and signs, not in words of any existing language or one that existed in the past. As long as you are still using the power that a person uses in ordinary thinking – and every person who has not explicitly learned to consciously switch off their ego uses this power – you cannot read in the Akashic Records. If you ask yourself, “Who is thinking?” you will have to say to yourself, “I am thinking.” You connect subject and predicate when you form a sentence. As long as you yourself connect the individual concepts, you are unable to read in the Akashic Records because you connect your thoughts with your own ego. But you have to switch off your ego; you have to renounce all self-will. You must merely present the ideas and let the connection of the individual ideas be established by forces outside of yourself, through the spirit. It is therefore necessary to renounce - not thinking - but to connect the individual thoughts on your own. Then the master can come and teach you to let the spirit from outside connect your thoughts to what the universal world spirit is able to show about events and facts that have taken place in history. When you no longer judge the facts, then the universal world spirit itself speaks to you, and you provide it with your thought material.

Now I have to talk about something that may perhaps create prejudices. I have to say something that is a good preparation for learning to read in the Akashic Records by eliminating the self-willed ego. You know how today what the monks cultivated in the Middle Ages is despised: they made the sacrifice of the intellect. The monk did not think like today's researchers. The monk had a certain sacred science, the revealed sacred theology, the content of which was given and about which one had no say. The theologian of the Middle Ages used his reason to explain and defend the given revelations. That was - however one may feel about it today - a strict training: the sacrifice of the intellect to a given content. Whether this was something admirable or reprehensible according to modern concepts is not our concern here. The sacrifice of intellect that the monk made, the elimination of judgment based on the personal ego, led him to learn how to put thought at the service of something higher. In a later incarnation, what was brought forth through this sacrifice comes to fruition and enables the person to think selflessly, making him a genius of insight. When higher insight, intuition, is added, then he can apply these abilities to reading the facts in the Akashic Records.

It is particularly interesting to look again at the period in Europe's spiritual development that we considered eight days ago from this point of view, I mean the period from the 9th to the 13th, 14th, 15th century. When one has achieved this selflessness in relation to the content of thoughts and, united with it, the right sense of reverence, of devotion, as the mystic must also have had it, then the time when great spirits appear in world history often appears quite differently than in profane historiography. When we look at this period in the Akashic Records, our gaze is drawn to a great figure who can teach us an enormous amount about that time, a figure who presents himself to the observer as great and who presents himself to the occultist even more powerfully than to the ordinary researcher: Wolfram von Eschenbach.

Wolfram von Eschenbach adapted German, Romance and Spanish legends. He is one of the great inspired poets who were selfless enough to work with great material that had already been given to them, and who did not believe that they had to invent material themselves. Great poets such as Homer, Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus never had to search for material. Wolfram von Eschenbach also belongs to these great poets. In his works he presents us with the inner spiritual history of the period from the 9th to the 15th century, which presents itself externally as the preparatory period of our new time, in which, as we have seen, everything that belongs to the external world of the senses is preferably studied. This begins with Copernicus. People began to take the physical plan seriously, not as a symbol for the higher planes as in the past. The world view of the ancients was not a false one, but a world view that started from a different point of view: it regarded the phenomena of the external world as symbols for devachanic states. Copernicus said, “We no longer want to regard the physical world as a symbol, but we want to look at the physical world itself.” Of course, this changed the entire world view of mankind. During this time, the focus was on the practical, physical and material. The earlier cultures, in which our physical life was dependent on traditions and authorities, changed into one in which personal ability was important. In the past, a farmer's son was respected because he was the son of a farmer; the son of a knight inherited the rights of his fathers. This changed during this period. It is the time of the founding of cities. Everywhere the people flocked together from the countryside and founded cities; the bourgeoisie came up, practical inventions emerged: the pocket watch, the art of printing were invented. But that is only the external aspect of the matter. The souls were directed towards the practical side of science, as can be seen from Copernicus, which was further developed in the Age of Enlightenment and politically in the French Revolution. The commercial class looked after practical interests, personal efficiency was necessary. It was no longer so important whether one descended from this or that man. For those who follow events in the Akashic Records, the situation is such that what happens on the physical plane is directed from the higher planes. The leading spirits are influenced by initiates working on the higher planes. Genius personalities lead up to entities working behind the scenes, right up to the White Lodge. The physical aspect is only the outside. The inside is the work of the highest initiates of the White Lodge and their emissaries who go out into the world.

I would like to briefly characterize this occult hierarchy. We have such beings who never show themselves: the masters. For people on the physical plane, they are not perceptible at first. Below them are chelas, secret disciples who take on the great tasks of the masters on the physical plane. The first to teach there are called “hamsas”, which means “swans”. Those chelas who are called “homeless people” are so called because they do not have their home in this world, but are rooted on higher planes. They give the people the lessons that they themselves have enjoyed from the hamsas. They are the messengers for the geniuses of world history. For example, it can be shown that the leaders of the French Revolution were connected with this spiritual side of world history.

The Great White Lodge had to send its emissaries to prepare and teach people so that they could become the organs on the physical plane to carry out the will of the Masters. So it was with Wolfram von Eschenbach. In the Middle Ages it was known that there was a White Lodge, at that time it was called the “Castle of the Holy Grail”. In it was the White Brotherhood. He who was sent out at that time to spread the founding of the city to the physical world was called Lohengrin; he was directly instructed by a Hamsa, and he taught Henry I, who is referred to as the founder of the city. This means that the time-souls were to receive a new impact from the “homeless people”.

In the occult language, the soul is always symbolized by a female personality. Elsa of Brabant represents the soul of the time. She is to be married to a knight who belongs to the old tradition, to Telramund. But an envoy of the Grail comes and woos the soul of the time, Elsa of Brabant. This period is characterized by Wolfram von Eschenbach in such a way that Henry is led to Rome, where the inner, esoteric Christianity fights the enemies of Christianity, the Saracens. Lohengrin is a “homeless person” whom one dare not ask where he comes from. To ask him would be against his monastic vows. He is afflicted with a kind of Janus face; on the one hand he must look towards the occult brotherhood and on the other hand towards the people he must lead in the physical world. Richard Wagner often found poignant words, for example when he has Lohengrin sing: “Now thanks be given, my dear swan.” That is the moment when the swan leaves him and he becomes dependent on physical conditions. He is transported into a world that is not quite appropriate for him; it is not his true world. His world is the world of the other side, so that he must be regarded as a homeless person. When his mission is fulfilled, the homeless man disappears again to where he came from. When his origin is discovered, he must disappear again. This is difficult for him who has entered into relationship with the physical plane. Therefore Elsa of Brabant must ask three times whence he came.

Thus we see that this time is characterized by the initiate Wolfram von Eschenbach in its connection with the higher planes. Lohengrin is the envoy, the messenger of the Grail knights. The Grail knights are the White Lodge on Montsalvatsch. It was the task of the Grail's emissaries, the Grail knights, to renew the old traditions of genuine, true Christianity again and again. This was also the meaning when they spoke about the Grail Castle and the Holy Grail itself. They imagined the Grail Knights as the guardians of that which had come into the world through true Christianity. This is also hinted at in the Gospel of John: “The Word was made flesh.” What has been transfigured by the Christ is physical existence itself; He has entered into the physical world. The other great personalities were teachers of humanity: Buddha, Zarathustra, Pythagoras, Moses - they were all teachers. They are the “Way and the Truth”; the “Life” in the occult sense is only Christ; hence it is said: No one comes to the Father except through me. - Life could only find its sanctification when the Word moved directly into the human body. This descent of the Divine into the physical plane was to be renewed again and again by the White Lodge. Therefore, the Grail Cup is depicted as the same cup from which Jesus dispensed the Holy Communion and in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood at Golgotha. Thus the principle of Christianity is to be preserved and live on, and new strength is to be given to it by the fact that, in continuation of the apostles, twelve knights of the Grail are sent out as messengers to take on new tasks.

That was the view of the entire Middle Ages, that when an important stage of civilization is to be reached, a chela, a “swan” should teach people. In this way, Wolfram von Eschenbach viewed and presented history. Those who are able to read between the lines in Richard Wagner's Lohengrin will find that Wagner felt, if not intellectually, then intuitively, that something great was at hand. Therefore, he believed in a renewal of art by connecting to the superhuman. In the Middle Ages this was depicted in such a way that when Elsa of Brabant wanted to banish Lohengrin from this world, he withdrew, and as Wolfram von Eschenbach says, to India. Finally, the castle of the Holy Grail is also imagined as being in India. It is also said of the Rosicrucians that when they withdrew at the end of the 18th century, they went to Asia, to the Orient. That is the story of the founding of cities in the Middle Ages, according to the records in the Akashic Records. Details might perhaps be presented somewhat differently by others, but on the whole they will always agree with it.

Is the knowledge of what Theosophy teaches something that is of particular importance and significance for wider circles, or is Theosophy something that can only be intended for a few who are particularly interested in it? This question leads to a topic that is rarely discussed, but which needs to be discussed: this is the so-called sacramentalism and the special task of our present root race. The question is: What is sacramentalism, and how does our purely human task relate to it? One might ask: What does it matter to some workman who works all day in a carpenter's shop that Lohengrin was once an emissary of the Holy Grail, inspiring the major cultural movements of the Middle Ages? What, after all, is the significance for the masses of all this talk of lofty spiritual and idealistic goals? The whole question is answered when one understands the essence of sacramentalism.

Today, building on the ideas of the Greeks, I would like to talk about the emergence of our present, post-Atlantean root race in relation to the previous, Atlantean root race, and tie in a few other things about the significance of sacramentalism. You all know the legend of Daedalus and Icarus and also the legend of Theseus. I would like to touch briefly on the tremendously profound meaning contained in the Daedalus-Icarus saga. It is said that once upon a time there lived a man named Daedalus who was able to create works of art that came to life, statues that could see and hear, and machines that moved themselves. Daedalus understood all of this. He was respected throughout the land, but he was also extremely ambitious. He had a nephew, Talos, whom he taught and who soon surpassed him in certain respects. We are told that Talos was able to operate potter's wheels and that he also mastered certain arts that were foreign to Daedalus. Talos studied a snake's jaws, for example, and had the idea of forming a saw from the snake's teeth. Thus he became the inventor of the saw. If we compare the character traits of Daedalus with those of Talos, we will see that Daedalus is concerned with things that have already become alien to our fifth root race. Talos, on the other hand, invents things that belong to the technical skills of the fifth root race. If we draw a comparison with the fourth root race, the Atlanteans, we see how the Atlanteans were able to use the vril force, just as we use steam to power locomotives, machines and so on. This art was lost in the post-Atlantean period. In contrast, our time has the modern ability to assemble inorganic objects into machines. The saga wants to show us this transition. Daedalus then manages to make a kind of wing with which he can rise above the earth. His son Icarus also wants to do this, but he does not succeed and perishes in the attempt. This juxtaposition is intended to show, from the Greek spirit, that the different epochs of our earth's development have different tasks. If one epoch of the earth's development were to take on a task that is only suitable for another, it would perish in the attempt. Everything in its place, everything in its time.

Now the Greek saga has linked something else to the saga of Daedalus. After Daedalus has killed Talos, he goes to Crete to Minos. There is a monster there, the Minotaur. The Minotaur is in contrast to the Sphinx. The Minotaur has the head of a bull with a human body, the Sphinx has a human head with an animal body. The Minotaur was to be restrained in his devastating effects. Daedalus was to banish him; he could do this by building him a labyrinth. The Minotaur had to be fed with humans. Every nine years, seven youths and seven maidens had to be sacrificed to him. The Theseus saga is connected to the Minotaur saga. Theseus was the son of Aegeus. The latter had decreed that Theseus should retrieve the sword and sandals from under a large piece of rock, which his father had hidden there. After Theseus had accomplished various things in Athens, he went to Crete to overcome the Minotaur and free the city of Athens from the delivery of the seven youths and the seven virgins. In Crete, the Greeks were always looking for something very special. It was also in Crete that Lykurgus is said to have studied and received his constitution for a kind of communist community and brought it to Sparta, because in Crete there is said to have been a constitution that was native to all ancient priestly states; they were remnants of the old Atlantean priestly communism, which renounces all personal property. A kind of communism is connected with every original foundation of religion. Even Plato still sees Crete as the seat of an exemplary constitution. This priesthood is a remnant of the old Atlantean structure. Daedalus was able to avert what was harmful in Crete because he was familiar with Atlantean life. In the Minotaur, we see the representative of black magic in Crete. This should now stop. Now the Athenians no longer want to send the seven youths and the seven virgins to Crete. Theseus' ship set out with black sails. After overcoming the Minotaur, he wanted to hoist a white sail instead of the former black one. The black magic should become white. With the help of Ariadne's thread, Theseus succeeds in the undertaking and returns to Athens, [but he forgot to set the white sails]. However, the Greeks were not yet so far that they were completely worthy of the white path. Love should rule in the Ariadne thread. But in those days, Christianity was already foreshadowed in such a way that the love principle - Ariadne - is stolen by Bacchus, who has not yet developed this principle, which is to be spread by Christianity. Theseus, like Hercules, was considered a hero, a sun-runner, an initiate in the sixth degree.

Such a legendary complex became popular knowledge in Greece. The people as such knew these legends. Why did the priests try to put the secrets of the world into the legends? Every priest would have regarded it as something unholy, indeed as an impossible profanation, to incorporate anything into poetry that did not have a deep meaning. At the same time, the priest was aware that the deep meaning could not easily be understood by the people. The people were told the fable, the fairy tale, the myth; in them lay the deep meaning. This is the basic characteristic of all the poetry of the ancients. The further back we go, the deeper the meaning becomes. There was no poetry in those times that did not have a deep meaning. Only later times departed from this priestly view and produced works that had nothing more of these spiritual secrets. Even at the market, only things that flowed out of the spiritual life were to be presented. If we keep this in mind, we can say that there was no other leadership than that of the priests at that time. It was only later that the priestly king was replaced by the secular king. This marks the transition from the old priestly kingdoms to secular kingdoms - archont means steward-king.

An example of this view is the legend of the founding of the Roman state. In ancient times, history was not thought of in terms of narrating external events. Only since Herodotus has history been told as a chronicle. This did not exist before. Everything was presented symbolically. What eyes saw and ears heard was supposed to mean something higher, it was supposed to be the expression of the spiritual. When the priest tried to explain where the Romans had come from, he told us the following: Whenever something like this is realized, the seven sacred principles come into effect in the world. Everything happens in the sequence of the seven principles. First, the divine founder rises from heaven. Then the priest takes out that which is alive in the matter; this then lives as Kama. Then the manas, the mind, is born in the kama. The body, which is itself a holy thing, lives in heaven. It is only unholy when it is misused. These are the four lower principles. Then the three upper ones must come in. Something more perfect, more complete, must enter.

So it was with the founding of the city of Rome. First came Romulus; he came from heavenly spheres, he was the founder. Rome was a founding city of ancient Troy. King Numitor of Alba Longa was the descendant of Aeneas, who had landed in Latium with Trojan refugees. We only need to understand the words: “alba longa” is the white, long dress of the Catholic priests. Amulius means: the unproclaimed, the priest. So Rome was a city of priests as a daughter city of Troy. Numitor is the man of will. He is initially banished to the forest, but becomes the progenitor of the founders of the city of Rome. Romulus is the founder of Roman civilization, the first king. He is also placed among the gods under the name Quirinus. The second king is Numa Pompilius. The third king is Tullus Hostilius; he is the representative of Kama; war reigns there; what in Theosophy is called Kama-Rupa develops. The fourth king is Ancus Martius; he is the representative of Kama-Manas. Technical things are done there. When the fourth principle was ripe, the Etruscan culture was summoned. Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king, brings in Manas. He built the large buildings and water pipes. That which is called Manas is represented in Tarquinius Priscus. The sixth principle is Budhi. It brings about the blessings of human coexistence through love and justice. Servius Tullius is the sixth king of the Romans. He was the one who created order, who gave laws that corresponded to those of the Etruscans. The seventh king is Tarquinius Superbus, the exalted one, but he fell down.

This is how the priest saw the emergence of the city of Rome. This was not an interpretation, but a reality. The cities were governed in such a way that the seven principles were the guidelines for ruling. If something is to flourish on earth, then it must be created in the order of the seven principles. Never would a priest have done something that only his successor should have done. This was all recorded in the books of the temples, which were called the Sibylline Books. That was the plan of history, so to speak. The priests had to follow the Sibylline Books.

Here we are dealing with the realization of spiritual powers that lived in this priestly culture. We see that the world was guided and directed by spirituality. It was only later that the understanding of spiritual governance was lost. We are told about the Etruscan main god Tages, who is said to have risen from the earth while ploughing the fields. Technical buildings and arts and crafts were the characteristics of the Etruscan culture. Every stone of the Etruscan architecture shows that there is something special about it. The aim was to be able to carry the greatest loads with the least material. This is the principle on which Etruscan architecture, vaulted and arched structures, is based. This spiritually guided culture has descended to the physical plane. Personal efficiency now takes precedence. All consciousness of the connection between the lowest activity and the spiritual has ceased. For the occultist it is clear whether a person in a particular position has heard something of the divine intentions and purposes and has absorbed something of what has flowed from the spiritual, because such a person also does the most mundane thing in a completely different way than another person who has not. The consecration that flows from the higher spheres onto earthly life does not flow in the same way for those who are only attached to the physical plane. It is the essence of sacramentalism that man imbues everyday life with spiritual consecration. The purpose of the old legends was to put people's souls into the right vibrations so that they were filled with spiritual power. The simplest action of a naive mind can be sanctified by this. This is something that is effective and will always be effective. Anyone who knows this also knows that a reversal is necessary in our culture. No matter how hard we try to bring harmony and order to this physical plane, it will fail as long as we work only on the physical plane; if harmony is created on one side, disharmony will arise on the other. But if you allow the spiritual to take effect, you will see that everyday life is approached in a completely different way. This is sacramentalism.

This thought also underlies Christian sacramentalism: healing from a spiritual point of view. A sacrament is a physical act performed in such a way that it symbolically expresses a spiritual process. It is a symbolism that has its justification on higher planes. Nothing in the sacrament is arbitrary. Every detail is a reflection of a higher occult process. Anyone who wants to understand a sacrament in which the ceremony is a reflection of a spiritual process must familiarize themselves with the underlying occult process, which is hidden from the outer eye. In every sacrament, something intellectual is not the only thing that takes place, but something that has a real, occult meaning. Take, for example, the occult significance of fire. There was no fire in the earliest developmental epochs. It could only arise when the earth was compacted to such an extent that this fire could be struck out of earthly matter. Therefore, the invention of fire is described to us as a process of our fifth root race.

Prometheus brought fire from heaven to earth. The creation of fire has given our culture its character. Imagine what it would be like if we had no fire. In the first epochs, people had no fire. Our development owes everything intellectual, everything technical to fire. Fire is what leads down to the physical plane. We owe material culture to fire. The priests therefore had to see something special in fire. Thus, in the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the Persian magicians saw in fire above all that which must work in the sacrament. What did the Persian priest ceremonially realize on his altar? Occultism knows that there were seven Zoroasters. The Zoroaster of history is the seventh. The Persian magician had a special way of producing fire. This process was the image of the great cosmic origin of fire. There stood the Persian magician with his thyrsus and performed his ceremonies, which every occultist knows well, but only the occultist. This process was a reflection of the great cosmic origin of fire. When the priest schools no longer understood how to create fire with the thyrsus, they at least sought to find a natural fire. At first, they created fire through lightning, and then they propagated it through the so-called eternal fire, which could only be ignited when two logs were laid together. The fire obtained from nature was considered more potent than the artificially produced one. When there was an outbreak of animal disease in England in 1826 and in Hannover in 1828, people took wood and rubbed it to make a fire, because they believed that the herbs cooked in it would be more potent.

Man must infuse spiritual life into every action and every step; and to reintroduce this is the task and aspiration of the spiritual movement. The sacramentalism of earlier times must return. One must know that it is different to act out of the spirit than to act out of the material. To let spiritual life flow out again is our goal.

You know that if we go back in the development of our race, we come to the Atlantean root race, whose realm is the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. And if we go back even further, we come to the Lemurian root race; this is a race that you have to imagine as being quite different in its organization than our present-day root race and even different from the Atlantean one. These people lived on a continent that extended south of the Far East and the Indian subcontinent and which has now also become the bottom of the sea. Some descendants of this population are still present in Australia. But where do we find the second human race? It should be noted that the third human race, the Lemurians, looked quite different from us and also quite different from the fourth human race, the Atlanteans. The Lemurians did not have what we call memory, imagination, intellect; the Lemurians had only developed these in the germ. On the other hand, the second human race was endowed with a high spirituality, which, however, was not located in the heads of men, but which is to be imagined as a continuous revelation from outside. The second human race was called the Hyperboreans. They lived around the North Pole, in Siberia, Northern Europe, including the areas that have become seas. And if you imagine this country with a kind of tropical temperature, you get a rough idea of what the country was like back then. It was originally populated by people who, as individuals, wandered around like dream beings. If they had been left to their own devices, they would not have been able to do anything. There was, so to speak, wisdom in the air, in the atmosphere. It was only in the Lemurian period that the marriage of wisdom with the soul took place, so that before that we have to imagine the whole spirituality of man as nebulous. These were the seeds of the nebulous spirit and the seeds of the spirit of light. The spirituality that arose as a germ in the sons of the fire nebula, which still seems familiar to us, can be found in the southern regions, in Lemuria. In the regions that are located north of us, there lived people, nations, who were endowed with a dream consciousness that was more distinct than the Pitri consciousness. On the whole, we must not imagine that the people who lived up there also remained up there. They made migratory journeys that went south. And these migratory journeys extended far into the times when the Lemurian race had sprouted in the south. There was, so to speak, a northern Lemurian race and a southern Lemurian race. There were twelve great migrations. These twelve great migrations gradually brought the inhabitants of the different areas into contact with each other. They also brought these people to areas that are not far from ours, to areas that can be identified as central Germany, France, central Russia, and so on.

Now you have to imagine that we are talking about a time when what we call higher animals already existed. The Lemurians were depicted as a kind of giant, and they came into contact with the people coming from the north. This resulted in two sexes. One sex that emerged in the prehistory of humanity became the basis of the Atlanteans; all these people intermingled in what is now Europe at that time. We must not imagine it as simply as it is put into words here. Now, from this mixing of the Hyperboreans, the Lemurians and later also the Atlanteans, there emerged initiates who were different from the initiates whom we have to regard as our teachers today; these latter originated essentially from the South, the Lemurian continent. In the north, I would say, a kind of foggy world developed, and the three main initiates that we have to look for here on this island of humanity were called in the time that itself extended into the emergence of our Christianity: Wotan, Wili and We. These are the three great Nordic initiates. They derived their origin in a very proper way, in a popular way one could say, from the earthly realm, in which everything that is now distributed among people was still contained unmixed. In a popular way, one could say that a race emerged from this earthly realm that was very unlike present-day humanity. This race was ruled by an omniscience. This All-Wisdom was called by the teaching priests “All-Father”. Then there is mention of the two realms, of the Misty Home and the Muspelheim. The Misty Home is the Nifelheim of the North, the dawning misty state of the Hyperborean root race, in contrast to Muspelheim. It describes twelve rivers that dammed up and then turned to ice. From this arose a human race, represented by the giant Ymir, and then the animal race, the cow Audhumbla. From Ymir came the sons of the frost giants. The intellectually gifted humans emerged later, also in the sense of the “Secret Doctrine”. And so the German saga also tells that [the descendants of Ymir and Audhumbla], Wotan, Wili and We, walked on the beach and formed humans. This refers to those humans of the “Secret Doctrine” who only emerged later and who were endowed with intellect.

There is an ancient truth in this ancient Germanic saga. We are also told what the two great migrations were like that went from the Far East to the West [and from the West to the East]. We have to imagine that the Celtic population was there first, and then formed a colony. This original Celtic population was completely under the influence of their initiates. These have propagated the original doctrine of Wotan, Wili and We and their priesthood. The Celts had priests, whom we call Druid priests. These were centered in a great lodge, in the Nordic Lodge. This has been preserved in the saga of King Arthur and the Round Table. In fact, this lodge of Nordic initiates did exist, the sacred lodge of Ceridwen - the White Lodge of the North. Later it was called the Order of Bards. This lodge existed for a long time until later periods. It was only dissolved in the age of Queen Elizabeth. Then the order withdrew completely from the physical plane. All the old Germanic legends are based on this. All Germanic poetry goes back to the original lodge of Ceridwen, which was also called the Cauldron of Ceridwen. The one who was most influential until the first centuries after the birth of Christ was the great initiate Meredin, who is known to us as the magician Merlin. He was called “the magician of the Nordic lodge”.

All this is directly contained in the old Celtic secret teachings. There you will find an indication of what the initiates of the East had to give. And what the Celts gave them was the saga of Baldur, the saga of the god of light and the god of darkness. Thus the initiates of the West slowly introduced this saga to the initiates of the East, with the well-considered intention of imparting something important to them. And in the belief that something more must follow, they added to this saga something that was still in the future, namely, the downfall of the gods in the future. Baldur could not resist this downfall. Therefore, a second procession was prepared after the twilight of the gods. It was said that a new Baldur would arise, and this “new Baldur”, which was announced to the people, is none other than the Christ. Here in the North these things could not develop in the same way as in the South, for example in Greece. In the North there were more male gods, in the South there was more devotion to the cult of beauty. The whole Nordic element had something peculiar to it that had existed for a long time, but which was at the same time the germ of destruction, the fighting nature. So in the North we have Wotan, Wili and We and next to them Loki. Loki is the covetous one, the desire, and that makes the Nordic world a fighting nature, which has the element of the Valkyries in it. These inspire to fight. They are something that the Nordic element has always had. Loki was the son of desire; Hagen is the later form for the original Loki.

And now a few words about what an initiate was like in those days. When he was initiated and thus introduced to spiritual powers, it was expressed by saying that he had undertaken the journey into the realm of the good dead, into the realm of the elves, to Alfgard, to get the gold of Nifelheim there – gold being the symbol of wisdom. Siegfried was the initiate of the old Germanic element at the time when Christianity was spreading. He was actually invulnerable, but still had a vulnerable spot because Loki, the god of desire in the guise of Hagen, was still present in this Nordic initiation. Hagen is the one who kills the initiate at the weak point. Brünhilde is a similar figure in the Nibelungen saga, a similar female deity to the Pallas-Athena of the Greeks. In the North she is the personification of the wild, killing element of battle. In Siegfried you have given us the old Teutonic initiate. The fighting element is expressed through the old Teutonic knighthood. Since it was primarily a worldly element, worldly knighthood had to trace its origin back to Siegfried as an initiate until the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th century. The origin of this knighthood was the Round Table of King Arthur. From there came the great knights, or rather, those who wanted to become leading secular knights had to go to the Round Table of King Arthur. There one learned worldly wisdom, but it was mixed with the will to fight, the Loki-Hagen element.

In particular, something was prepared in the Germanic element that could emerge particularly strongly in the Nordic element. Here something could be prepared that was connected with the development of the human being on the physical plane. We know that the descent of the Highest to the physical plane took place there; the personal is the form of the Highest on the physical plane. So the personal element developed, the personal fighting ability, which was perhaps most highly developed in Hagen.

Let us go back to the Lemurians. Among the Lemurians, there was not yet what man of today calls love. There was no love between man and woman. Sexuality did arise, but love was to sanctify sexuality only later. Love in the modern sense was also not present in the Atlanteans. Only when the personal element had acquired that importance, only then could love develop. At the end of the Lemurian period, there was a peculiar system in certain areas. It was systematic that a human race living in certain areas was divided into four groups. This was interpreted in such a way that a person from the first group – let us say group A – was never allowed to marry a person from group B. People from group A had to marry people from group C and people from group B had to marry people from group D. This avoided personal arbitrariness, that is, the personal was excluded. This division was made in the service of all humanity. At that time there was nothing in it of personal love. Only slowly did personal arbitrariness develop in love; that was namely the love that came down completely to the physical plane, and this was only being prepared at that time. The further back you go in time, the more you will find that eroticism plays a minor role. Even in the early days of Greek poetry it plays almost no role. But it plays a special role in German poetry of the Middle Ages. There you see love represented in two forms, you see love represented as courtly love and as desire. The fate that Siegfried had to suffer was the result of the personal being drawn into it. Go back to Rome and you will find that marriages there were contracted according to quite different principles. In Greece, too, personal love was not known at the beginning; it only arose later.

Then Christianity came to Central Europe. We have seen that in Central Europe in the early days, Christianity was introduced with the maintenance of the old. Slowly, the idea of the figure of Baldur transformed into the idea of the figure of Christ. This went through several generations; Boniface therefore found a prepared ground.

The legend of King Arthur and his Round Table gradually combined with the legend of the Holy Grail. This combination was brought about by a true initiate of the 13th century, Wolfram von Eschenbach. The Siegfried initiation was still the old initiation. In this, the worldly knighthood still played a role, as did the danger of being betrayed by the element of desire and self-love. Only when one had overcome this element, only when one had completely cast it off and when one had risen from the principle of worldly knighthood to the principle of spiritual knighthood, could one achieve spiritual initiation. This is what Wolfram von Eschenbach presents in Parzival. At first Parzival belongs to the worldly knighthood. His father died because of a betrayal during a campaign in the Orient. The reason for this is that the father was already seeking higher initiation; but because he still held the element of the old initiation, he was betrayed. Through his mother Herzeleide, Parzival was to be alienated from the physical plane; she put a fool's cap on him. Nevertheless, Parzival is caught up in the current of worldly knighthood and thus comes to the court of King Arthur. That Parzival is destined for the Christian current is indicated to us by the fact that he comes to the castle of the Holy Grail. He has been given an important teaching: not to ask many questions. This means nothing other than to find the resting point within himself, to have found inner peace and quiet and no longer to walk curiously through the outer world. Parzival also does not ask when he wants to enter the castle. He is therefore rejected at first. But then he does come to the sick Amfortas. He is led higher through Christian initiation.

Wherever you look up Wolfram von Eschenbach, you will find that he was an initiate. He combined these two cycles of legends because he knew that what we call the union of the Artus Lodge with the Grail Lodge had already happened. The Artus Lodge has been completely absorbed into the Grail Lodge.

Today I would like to speak to you about something that is more distantly related to what I have told you before. Although the Theosophical Society has existed for 29 years, it is still the case that the basic teachings are often misunderstood. For example, the doctrine of reincarnation is often understood by those who have perhaps never heard anything other than the name or a few terms, as if we were teaching the transmigration of souls through the most diverse bodies, including animal bodies. In a sense, we are reproached for this.

Reincarnation in animal bodies was taught in Egypt and Greece, and we cannot help but see that it is also found again and again in India as an external teaching. It is true, and it cannot be denied: In the esoteric teachings everywhere it is said that what we today call the human soul has gone through stages of development that are said to have taken place in animal bodies. This seems to be particularly confirmed by a circumstance that is highly interesting on the other hand, namely that by far the greatest number of all fairy tales, legends and fables can actually be traced back to India. If you go through the animal fables and other fairy tales of the most diverse countries in Europe, you will find minor or major changes, but you will see that the basis of many European fairy tales can be found in the old Indian books. This does not surprise us, since the cultures together belong to the fifth root race, which spread from the Gobi Desert across Egypt and Greece to Europe. That the initiates of different nations presented their teachings in the form of fables is not surprising to us. However, we must be clear about the significance of those fables that take place in the animal world. From this point of view, the problem of reincarnation will appear in a new light, which is not yet generally known.

Indian culture has spread throughout the world, even if it is perceived as something foreign today. You may recognize this from the fact that Buddha was accepted among the ranks of Catholic saints early on, under the name Josaphat. This happened many centuries ago. Through John of Damascus, who describes the whole process of Buddha's development in the Legend of the Holy, the inner teaching of Buddha could be incorporated into Catholic Christianity. Only the outer expression of Buddhism was rejected. This should shed light on the tremendous significance of Indian culture for the whole fifth root race.

There is a large collection of many hundreds of fables, the Jataka collection. As these fables have been spread in India over the centuries, Buddha always played a role in them. We are told that Buddha was embodied as this or that animal, how he lived as this or that animal here and there, how he behaved within the animal world and how he remembered it. And then there is usually a moral lesson about how to behave in similar cases. The fable was considered an excellent educational tool for the sons of kings. This pedagogical method may also have been used in Europe.

You all know the story that when you look at the moon, you can see an animal figure in it. In any case, some people do see an animal figure in it; the most common is a hare. The way the hare came to be in the moon is told in different ways. This also goes back to the Indian collection of fables, Jatakam. Once in his many lives, Buddha was a rabbit, he lived in the forest and had three friends. His first friend was a jackal, his second friend a monkey and his third friend an otter. He lived with these three animals and was already a very advanced being at that time, so that he could teach the animals in a variety of ways. He taught them lessons and, above all, he taught them that the holidays should be kept holy and that sacrifices should be made on holidays. He said to them: Above all, you must strive to spare something of what you have for food, and you must give it to those who come to you as supplicants, so that they too may offer the sacrificial offerings in a dignified manner on the holiday. Now a festival day was approaching. One of the animals went to a neighboring area and found that people were gathering fish to eat. After the people had left, the animal thought, “I can take some of that.” But then it thought, “I want to protect myself,” and said, “Does anyone own this food?” Since no one answered, it took some of the food. The second animal did the same, and then the third animal. Now the predicted days of the festivals arrived. Then the god Indra disguised himself as a Brahmin and went to visit the various animals. Indra came to the first animal and asked: “Can't you give me some food for the sacrifice?” The animal told how it had found the food. Indra said: “I will come back and take some of it then.” He then went to the second and third animals in the same way. The hare, however, had eaten some grass and said to himself: “If someone comes to me now to ask me for something, I cannot give him grass; I will offer myself as food.” When Indra came to him and asked him for a gift, the hare said: “I have nothing to give you, but I offer myself to you as food. Make a fire, you will be able to roast me and then eat me. I only ask that none of the insects that may be found with me perish in the process.” Indra saw from this how advanced the hare was in moral terms and caused the fire to do it no harm, so that the hare remained completely unharmed. When the hare saw Indra standing before him, he said: “O wise Indra, stay here, and we will proclaim the teaching together.” And the god Indra replied: “Yes, we will proclaim it so that it can never be extinguished again for the duration of the world.” And he took a pen and drew a hare on the moon, which is now visible for the duration of the world.

So this is the fable of Buddha, who is transported to the animal world as a hare and who completely sacrifices himself. This fable is entirely designed to dig itself deeply into the minds of those to whom it is told, in order to prepare them for a later incarnation, so that the souls become mature to seek the truth themselves. That was the whole purpose of the fables. Originally, fables were not told as they are today, where it is not even known why an animal acts in a certain way. Rather, it was counted on the fact that during the telling, people experienced certain images in their minds, which had an effect on the causal body and in the next life were absorbed as a sense of truth. Fables were not told to give people aesthetic pleasure, but to prepare the souls so that when they are reborn after many years, they are prepared to receive the truth more easily. If such a fable is to have this meaning, if it is to create the spiritual form, as it were, so that the pure truth can be absorbed later, then it must have pure truth in itself, otherwise the vibrations in the astral and causal bodies of people are not aroused in such a way that they are able to absorb the real truth later. But there is such an extraordinarily deep meaning in this fable, and it is so finely poetically shaped that we would have to be very surprised at the ancient Rishis if we did not know that they were men taught by Devas. And we would also be amazed if we did not know that this fable is connected with a fundamental fact, namely with the relationship of the human soul to all other beings in nature. Now consider how the whole process of our life on earth has unfolded. We are now in the fourth round, preceded by the third, second and first rounds. In the first round, we humans were all already present, but not in the form in which we are present now. We had a significantly different form. We came over from an earlier planet as Pitris and began our earthly journey in the first round. We Pitris were able to collaborate in the creation of the forms of the mineral kingdom that were created at that time. The mineral kingdom looked very different then than it does now; there were no crystalline forms; all physical substances were in a mineral-elemental state, including what became the bodies of human, animal and plant beings. In this first round, plants, animals and humans did not yet live – if we consider the external form – everything lived there spiritually, but not yet in form. The Pitris prepared the forms that were created in the first round and that then became the bone system as a mineral substructure.

In the second round, the Pitris prepared their plant substructure. Everything that was later modeled into the digestive and respiratory systems was not yet designed as it is today, but it was prepared as a foundation. In addition, the mineral kingdom continued to develop as a kind of independent being. An independent mineral kingdom arose from the fact that not everything that had been formed in one round was suitable for being included in the higher level of plants. That was separated. Now I ask you to recognize the process in its full significance. In the old days, human beings formed their plant substructure. If, during the second round, we had only the substances that were formed during the first round, we would never have achieved a higher level of plant cultivation. During the second round, we, as human Pitris, carried out an eminently selfish act. We said to ourselves, so to speak, we want to take out of the porridge what we can use, and leave out what is of no use for our further development. We have thrown the mineral kingdom out of us in the Pitri culture. We have developed ourselves higher at the expense of the mineral kingdom.

In the third round, we then rejected the plant kingdom as a separate entity. Only then did plants emerge. We absorbed everything we needed to build our systems in such a way that we could build up kama and get a blood circulation. In doing so, we rose to the animal kingdom and pushed other beings down into the plant kingdom. In the third round, we fought our way into the animal kingdom. However, the animal kingdom at that time cannot be compared to any form that exists today.

During the fourth round, we developed into human beings by taking what we needed from the animal kingdom in a very selfish way. We sorted out the rest, and that became today's animal kingdom.

So during the first round, we first developed as mineral beings. During the second round we separated the mineral kingdom, during the third round the plant kingdom and during the fourth round the animal kingdom. What are the minerals, the plants and the animals? The minerals, the plants and the animals are the developmental elements of our nature that were once connected to us but have since been separated from us. We have given everything we do not need to the earth so that it can develop independently. If we survey the animal kingdom, we see that it is the same thing that was externalized by us and that was still one with us in the third round. Now the occultist says: What you see today in the animal kingdom is not something separate from you; it is something that was still in you and ruled in you in the third round. In the course of the fourth round you have thrown it out of you. The anger of the jackal, the cunning of the fox are your kamic elements. The fox was created from the cunning that was in you, the anger that you had made the jackal. So the whole animal kingdom is your own kamaworld. You yourself have formed and created the animal world. What has become physical in the animal kingdom today were the processes within your own kamabody during the third round. Look at the animals and you look at your own past. We have reached these levels by leaving others behind us. So now we are also buying a higher level of perfection by repelling others. Every ascetic buys his own perfection by plunging another human being into all the more blind sensual rage. This is an eternal necessity.

The whole development is always moving forward and upward. The mineral kingdom, which was formed during the first round, developed independently during the second and third rounds and took on the forms we know today during the fourth round. It will no longer exist in the fifth round; it will scatter at the end of the fourth round, it will fall away like the withered bark of a tree. In the next round, the fifth, the plant kingdom will be the lowest, in the following round the animal kingdom, and in the seventh round only man will remain.

The minerals have reached the highest level of development as forms. The substance of the minerals is completely indifferent. Through the transformation of the scattered forms, it will take on a different structure and form the archetype for a new world system. At the end of the seventh round, the human kingdom will have dissolved. That is the case when the substance has undergone its normal development. We have bought each kingdom by separating it from the one before. In order for human beings to become like this, they had to let the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom out of themselves through repulsion. We are now a little beyond the middle of a kalpa - a world age. The development in the second half consists in our having to take back into ourselves what we previously expelled and to process it on higher levels. This must be done with the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom and the mineral kingdom. In the animal kingdom, we have spread out our passions like in a large tableau.

We can transfer an astral process that takes place within us to the animal kingdom when we tell fables. We can thus narrate actions in the animal kingdom and we narrate our own passions. And when we narrate the conquest of a passion in the animal, we narrate the conquest of a passion in ourselves. The occultist is clear about the fact that by narrating his own body, he is narrating what he himself has formed, because we only formed our bodies during the fourth round. We now live in Kama, and the struggle of Kama with Manas is now presented to us. If we look up to higher stages, we prepare an ethical higher development. If our ideas are linked to lower Kama stages, then they are intimately related to the animal stages of the third round.

The occultist says: the human world is Maja. I tell the story much more truthfully when I omit the deceptive human bodies and tell the story in figures from the animal world. Man owes the physical body to the macrocosmic development as a whole. But the human being has remained behind in the overall development. If you do something that can no longer be undone, then your body does not correspond to what you are. The macrocosm would demand that the human being be on a higher level. That which overcomes the body to such an extent that it completely corresponds to the macrocosmic image is represented by the hare, which sacrifices the physical body in the outer fire and develops on the other side.

Drotten or Druids were ancient Germanic initiates. In England, [the Druid lodges] existed until the time of Queen Elizabeth. Everything we read in the Edda and can find in the ancient Germanic world of legends goes back to the temples of the drotters or Druids. The poet [of these legends] is always a Druid priest. The legends do not just represent some symbol or allegory – this too, but something else as well.

Let us take an example: we know the saga of Baldur, we know that Baldur is the hope of the gods, that he is killed by the god Loki with the mistletoe; the god of light is killed. This whole story has a deep sense of mystery, which everyone who was initiated not only learned but had to experience.

In the initiation into the mysteries of the Druids and Drotts, the first act was called “seeking out the corpse of Baldur”. It was thought that Baldur is always alive. The quest consisted of a complete enlightenment about the nature of man; Baldur was man as he was lost. Once upon a time, it was not the man of today who lived, but another who was not differentiated, who was not suppressed to the point of experiencing passions, who [still] lived in a finer, more volatile matter - Baldur, the radiant man. When truly understood, the things that appear to us as symbols are to be taken in a higher sense. This human being, who has not submerged into what we today call matter, is Baldur. He dwells in each one of us. The Druid priest had to seek this higher human being within himself. It was made clear to him wherein this differentiation consists, from the high to the low [levels of humanity]. The secret of all initiation is to give birth to the higher man within oneself. What the priest undergoes more quickly, ordinary people will undergo in a long series of developments. In order for these druids to be guides to the rest of humanity, they had to receive this initiation. The man who has risen lower must now overcome matter and reach that higher state again. This birth of the higher man takes place in all mysteries in a certain, same way. The man who had been lost in matter had to be resurrected; one had to go through a series of experiences - real experiences that can be like no sensual experience on this plane. The stages [of initiation]: the first [stage] was that one was led before the so-called Throne of Necessity. One stood before the abyss; one really experienced in one's own body how it is lived in the lower natural kingdoms. Man is mineral and plant, but the present man cannot experience this, he cannot experience what the elementary substances experience, and yet the iron, compelling in the world comes from the fact that we are also minerals, plants.

The next stage led man to see everything that lives in the animal kingdom. All the passions and desires that live in us had to be seen, swirling and tossing. Man had to look at this because the purpose of initiation is to look behind the scenes of the world's existence. Man does not know that his physical shell only covers what swirls through the astral space. The veil of Maya is a real covering, and those who are initiated must see behind it – the veils fall, man becomes clear [in his vision]. This is a special moment: the priest realized that they, [the veils], had contained instincts that would be terrible if released.

The third stage led to the contemplation of the great nature. This is a stage that man without preparation still finds very difficult to comprehend. That there are mighty occult powers resting there and that the world passions express themselves in these natural forces is something that makes man aware that there are forces that he does not even experience in the same way as his own suffering.

The next test is called the “handing over of the snake” by the hierophant. The effects that emanate from it are explained to us by the Tantalus saga. The favor of sitting in the council of the gods [like Tantalus] can be abused. It signifies a reality that certainly elevates man above himself, but binds him to dangers that are not exaggerated in the curse of Tantalus. As a rule, man says he can do nothing against the laws of nature. These are [creative] thoughts. With that thought, which is only a shadowy brain thought, you can't do anything; with the creative thought, which builds and constructs the world, we have, instead of the passive one, the one that is imbued with spiritual, mental power. A caterpillar, blown out, is [merely] the shell of the caterpillar; imbued with the [productive] thought, it is the living caterpillar. In the shell-thoughts, active, creative power is poured in, so that the priest is able not only to look at the world, but to work in it as a magician. The danger is to abuse. At this level, the occultist acquires a certain power by which he is able to deceive even higher beings. He must not only repeat truths, but experience them; decide whether something is true or false. This is the handing over of the serpent by the hierophant.

In the spiritual, there is also a backbone [as in the physical], where it is decided whether one gets a spiritual brain. Man undergoes this process on the [third] level of initiation, [the “path into the labyrinth”]. He is lifted out of Kama and provided with the spiritual backbone to be lifted into the vortices of the spiritual brain. The convolutions of the labyrinth are the same on the spiritual plane as the convolutions of the brain are on the physical plane. Man gains admittance to the labyrinth, to the convolutions within the higher planes.

Then he had to swear to secrecy; a shining sword lay before him, and he had to swear the strongest oath. This meant that from now on man would remain silent about his experiences to anyone who was not initiated like him. These secrets could not possibly be communicated without further ado. But he [the initiate] had the opportunity to shape the legends in such a way that they were the expression of the eternal. If one could express oneself in this way, one naturally had great power over one's fellow human beings. He who forms such a saga imprints something in the human spirit. What is spoken [normally] is forgotten again, and only the very least survives death. Eternal truths survive death longest. Very little of the lower science survives death. The eternal, yes, [that endures], and it reappears in a new incarnation. The Druid priest spoke from a higher plan. If his stories were the expression of higher truths, albeit simple, they penetrated deeply into souls. He had simple people before him, but the truths penetrated into their souls, and they had absorbed something that would be reborn in new incarnations. At that time, people experienced fairy-tale truths. Today, we have a prepared spiritual body, and when we understand higher truths today, it is because we are prepared. Thus, this period, which ended in 61 AD, prepared the spiritual life of Europe, prepared the ground on which Christianity was able to build itself. The teachings [of the Druids] have been preserved, and those who seek can still find access to what was taught in these lodges.

After he, [the Druid priest], had taken his oath on the sword, he had to drink a certain drink, and from a human skull. This had the meaning that man had grown out of the human. The Druid priest must have this feeling towards the lower body. He must feel so objectively and coldly towards what lived in the body that he regarded it only as a vessel. Then he was initiated into the higher secrets and, as he ascended again into the higher worlds, he encountered the living Baldur. He was led into a giant palace covered with sparkling swords. A man approached him, who threw up seven flowers - [the seven planets]. [The initiate beheld three seats; on them were enthroned]: celestial space, cherubim, demiurge. Thus he became a true priest of the sun.

Many read the Edda and do not know that it is a narrative of what really happened in the ancient Druidic mysteries. An immense power lay in the hands of the old Druid priests, a power over life and death. It is a truth that everything is corrupted over time. Druidism was once the highest, most sacred. In the times when Christianity spread, much had degenerated, and there were many black magicians, so that Christianity was like a salvation.

Simply studying these ancient truths illustrates almost all of occultism. No stone was laid on top of the other in the Druid temple as it is today, but precisely according to astronomical measurements; doors were built according to celestial measurements. The Druid priests were builders of humanity. A faint image of this has been preserved in the beliefs of Freemasons. When one learns to see through astral matter, one sees the sun at midnight: 1st initiation.

Handing over the snake: 2nd initiation.

Walking in the labyrinth: 3rd initiation.