The Rudolf Steiner Archive

14. The Children of Lucifer

[ 1 ] Eight days ago, I had the privilege of speaking to you here about the concept of Lucifer. Today, following up on that lecture, it falls to me to elaborate on this same idea and its significance for human development, and in doing so, I would like to draw on an outstanding work of art: “The Children of Lucifer” by Edouard Schuré.

[ 2 ] Anyone who sees Theosophy merely as a collection of teachings and dogmas, or the Theosophical Society merely as a sect concerned with very specific religious-philosophical or other ideas and aiming to promote a corresponding way of life, may perhaps be somewhat surprised by the topic of today’s lecture. But anyone who sees in Theosophy something that can be regarded as a deepening of our entire spiritual life—and even more, as a deepening of our entire culture—will find it understandable that this “Theosophy” is sought not only within the narrow boundaries just mentioned, but in all fields, in all branches of life, and therefore, above all, in art.

[ 3 ] Quite a few people hold a view that leads them to believe that Theosophy is something out of touch with reality, or even something hostile to life. Those who believe this have apparently not yet made the very foundations of the Theosophical World Movement their own. And it is precisely a work of art such as Edouard Schuré’s *The Children of Lucifer* that shows us that not only is the artist’s creative work and activity in no way impaired by theosophical study, but that true Theosophy and the true theosophical life are capable of giving art, in the most eminent sense, a soaring flight and extraordinarily powerful impulses.

[ 4 ] Although I would now like to pick up on this drama, *The Children of Lucifer*, but if we take a moment to delve into the very process by which this dramatic work came into being in our time—and into the unique structure of the spirit from which this work of art emerged—we will at the same time be able to gain some profound insight into what can be called, in the true sense of the word, theosophical life.

[ 5 ] Edouard Schuré undoubtedly drew the greatest inspiration for his work from the theosophical worldview, and he is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished writers in the field of theosophy. Anyone who wishes to gain an entry into theosophical life from a perspective other than that offered by the well-known compendia and shorter handbooks can do so, above all, through the works of Edouard Schuré, the eminent French writer. Even the unique way in which Schuré arrived at what would inspire his spirit to artistically express what we find in *The Children of Lucifer* is of great theosophical interest. This is recounted to us in the beautiful tribute he has paid to a figure who exerted the deepest conceivable influence on his inner life. Here we come to a highly interesting aspect of modern spiritual life. Edouard Schuré has published a book—and provided it with an introduction—that is the work of a figure who has gazed deeply into the mysteries of existence. It is a book in which the artist’s hand is clearly evident. In this book there breathes a spirit distinct from that which we might otherwise find in similar writings—a spirit that has directly assimilated and made real theosophy its very life. The individual who wrote about Corregio—whose name is Margherita Albana—is described by Schuré as his guide during her lifetime; after her death, he calls her the spirit of his soul. And when one looks into the psychology of Schuré’s work, one cannot express it more aptly than he has done.

[ 6 ] The last third of the 19th century was a time when certain deeply sensitive souls were granted the opportunity to once again gain insight into true spiritual life, after a long period during which “spirit” had been understood as little more than a collection of abstract concepts, and after a long period during which the word “spirit” had not actually been associated with anything real. When we immerse ourselves, on the one hand, in Schuré’s work and, on the other hand, in the spirit of the personality he calls his guide, we are immediately reminded of what was understood by the terms “God” and “divine life” within the Greek view of the mysteries at the dawn of our Western spiritual life. The word “theosophy” did not emerge until later. It was first used by the Apostle Paul. But it has been the common heritage of all those with deep insight, and we need only engage with what existed within spiritualized Christianity as theosophy—as a divine concept, as a concept of divine life—and you will immediately be able to grasp the reality of the spirit in a completely different way than is possible with today’s concepts, as they are still commonly used. The Greeks understood God—the divine being—as nothing other than a being who, while far surpassing the human in terms of attributes and abilities, is nonetheless of the same nature as human beings. And they called human beings “gods-in-the-making,” and they conceived of every god as one who had once passed through the school of humanity. When the Greeks looked up to their god, they said to themselves: The sufferings and joys, the experiences of life that I must now endure—the gods once endured them just as I do. They have previously passed through this school of life that I am now completing, and I, too, will later have risen to those spheres of creation, to those spheres of activity, where the gods stand today. — The Greeks call their gods “elder brothers” throughout the entire course of cosmic evolution, and in human beings themselves they saw a potential that is destined to become one day what the gods are today.

[ 7 ] This creates a different relationship to the divine than one that merely looks up to something divine or merely senses something in the afterlife. Just as the world of the outer natural realms—the sensory natural realms—unfolds here in the physical world for the Greeks, from the mineral through the plant and animal realms up to the human realm, so too did the hierarchy, the order of the gods, stand above the human realm. For the Greeks, the worlds constituted by the gods were actual realms lying above the human realm. And what the Greeks were to experience in those schools—which were at the same time places of worship known as the Mysteries—they did not regard as an abstract, merely scientific understanding of some higher principles or natural forces. The Greeks understood what was at stake not in a symbolic sense, but in a real sense: that in these schools, human beings truly interacted with the gods. The initiate in the Mysteries felt no differently toward the gods than a child must feel today when, still small and undeveloped, it looks up to the adult who has already attained what the child itself will achieve in a future phase of life. These experiences were something entirely real and genuine for the Greeks. Therefore, for those who first coined the term, theosophy was not knowledge about the gods, but knowledge gained in this unique way through communion with higher spiritual beings. Those who were initiated into the mysteries did not merely gain knowledge; rather, they were enabled to interact with the gods—or, let us say, with the spirits—just as they interact with human beings here on Earth. And the knowledge that human beings acquire through the senses was called natural knowledge. But the knowledge received directly from the gods themselves was called divine knowledge: theosophy.

[ 8 ] I am well aware that most people who think from today’s perspective can see nothing more in a turn of phrase such as the one I have just used than a mere poetic image, a symbol, or something highly fantastical and superstitious. It is neither one nor the other; it is something that a person can truly and genuinely experience. A person can truly and genuinely bring about a state in which, just as he directs his gaze toward the physical world, he can likewise direct his gaze upward toward the spiritual beings above him, who are hidden from the physical eye—as well as from all the senses—for the reason that they have passed through the stages of spirituality and no longer exist for the senses, This was what was sought in the Greek mysteries: a development of the human being toward communion with the higher beings.

[ 9 ] In the last third of the 19th century, as I said, a few individuals of deeper character were once again granted the ability to understand something of what such a matter actually entails. Above all, a figure like Margherita Albana was among them. I would like to point out, however, that such a personality was not initiated through that great spiritual art which had to be undergone by anyone who wished to cultivate a relationship with the gods within the Greek mysteries. Such a person was naturally initiated, just as there are poets of nature. I cannot go into further detail here, but a soul that is naturally initiated into earlier stages of existence has already had experiences, so that what it now experiences are merely memories of those earlier stages. But what underlies a spiritual personality such as Margherita Albana above all else is the ability to glimpse into the higher world through the transformation of very specific lower forces of our existence. What does that mean?

[ 10 ] All of humanity’s higher means of cognition are, in essence, transformations of subordinate forces. What the undeveloped human being possessed in distant prehistory as undeveloped, dull senses can be transformed into the eye that reveals to us the splendor of sunlight. Or just imagine how imperfect the organ of hearing is at the lower stages of development! All higher organs, everything that human beings possess so that the magnificent nature surrounding them may be revealed to them in the most magnificent way—all of these are transformations, metamorphoses of lower forces. In the same way, the forces that human beings possess today can also be transformed into higher sensory organs.

[ 11 ] Some people were indeed endowed with higher sensory faculties, particularly in the last third of the 19th century. This opened their eyes to the spiritual world. What others can only grasp in abstract concepts or intuitions—the reality of divine existence—was for them just as certain as sensory phenomena are for other people. Such individuals were able to convey knowledge and messages from higher worlds. And it was precisely through such people that Edouard Schur’s receptive nature could be stimulated and inspired to create the most beautiful and greatest works. In this very drama—which you can read here in a translation by Marie von Sivers—Edouard Schur’ united soul and spirit, profound esoteric knowledge, and true spiritual insight with a truly Schillerian diction and power of language. And this is what makes the drama *The Children of Lucifer* one that was created not merely from the spirit of the present—as embodied in a few today—but rather directly from the spirit of humanity’s immediate future; a work in which those who possess the aptitude and talent can develop themselves toward the highest and most significant theosophical ideas. This is precisely what struck Edouard Schuré—what took place in the Greek mysteries and in those initiation rites,

[ 12 ] You all know that even within German intellectual life in the last third of the 19th century, there was a certain atmosphere that stemmed from a kind of understanding of what lies at the heart of the Greek mysteries. Everything associated with the name Richard Wagner was, in a certain sense, inspired by the spirit of the Greek mystery traditions. We will have much more to say about this topic in the coming lectures. You also know that one of the thinkers closely associated with Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote his first work on Greek tragedy and that in it he sought to show how this Greek tragedy arose from an ancient spiritual life. Not as far as Edouard Schur⁶—not into the mysteries themselves, but certainly as far as their gates, to the very threshold of the mysteries—did Friedrich Nietzsche venture at the time he wrote *The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Greek Life*.

[ 13 ] Two words stood before his mind: the Apollonian on one side, the Dionysian on the other. What did Nietzsche mean by these two words? He understood them to refer to two currents of thought. The Dionysian, he says, is that which lives entirely within that element of human spiritual life that knows itself to be one with the entire cosmic spirit all around. — For Friedrich Nietzsche, the Dionysian is an ecstasy that a person experiences when he is completely permeated, in his very essence, by that core of the highest spiritual life that floods the entire cosmos. Nietzsche sensed something of what the Pythagoreans called “sphere music,” something of that primordial chorus of which Goethe also speaks when he begins his *Faust* with the words:

The sun resounds in the ancient way
A contest of song in the spheres of the brotherhood,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderous roar.

[ 14 ] Nietzsche had a sense of that mysterious act of listening and attuning oneself to what flows through the cosmos—what makes the planets dance around their sun, what animates the spheres—and he sensed that within this dance of the spheres, something divine expresses itself, and that human beings can become imbued with the breath of the divine, and that human beings can then feel at one with the entire universe. Then, Nietzsche argues, human beings live in a kind of ecstatic state; then they live out what flows through the entire universe; then an echo of that god whom the Greeks call Dionysus lives within them.

[ 15 ] For Nietzsche, this is the God who has poured out into the entire material world around us, who lies buried in the material world, and who then celebrates his resurrection in the human spirit, in the human soul. Thus, the disciple of Dionysus—the one who is seized by Dionysus—under the influence of this god performs his songs and his inspirations, giving free rein to what is called the immediate Dionysian art that springs from the divine. Thus, the Dionysian dancer and singer was the representative of the Dionysian divine principle in the world. For Nietzsche, this Dionysian drama is the primordial drama, and later drama arose only through the creation of an image—a calm, dreamlike image of the original Dionysian ecstasy. What the Dionysian disciple receives—what rises before his senses—he can render in a serene, Apollonian manner. Thus, Apollonian art is something that was created later as a reflection of Dionysian art. It is the image, the approach, the inkling of something that lived in ancient Greece. Nietzsche had already pointed to the primeval age in which the followers of Dionysus did not merely speak of the god, but—as the original artists—enacted the divine in their movements, their voices, and their actions. To Nietzsche, all later art appeared merely as a belated echo of this primal art. All science seemed to him merely a shadowy reflection of that human-evoked representation of the forces themselves.

[ 16 ] In Richard Wagner’s art, Nietzsche saw a renewal of that great art which once again connects humanity with the divine. Therefore, it was clear to Nietzsche that Richard Wagner could not bring human figures to the stage, but rather that he needed superhuman figures who did not merely depict what happens in this world, but also what works behind this world in the spirit. Just as the Greek artist was able to do in the Dionysian drama, so too, in Nietzsche’s view, Richard Wagner’s characters—when brought down to the stage—had to have transcended the ordinary human condition so that they could embody something of which one might say: they are here for what is yet to come. In his book *The Musical Drama*, Schuré likewise created out of this spirit that surrounded Wagner, and he presented the idea of the musical drama in a magnificent way; for he had been introduced to the true spiritual world, to spiritual reality, by Margherita Albana, who died in 1887. For him, intuition became reality, and through this he was able to find the key to the inner essence of the Greek mysteries. Better than anyone else, Edouard Schuré was able to shed light on what took place within the sacred mysteries of Greece. In his work *The Sanctuaries of the Orient*, he demonstrated great genius in reconstructing what is known as the primordial Greek drama. What, then, was the Eleusinian primordial drama? Nothing other than a reenactment of an experience that cannot be experienced at all within the sensory world—an experience that can only be experienced when a human being evolves to a level where higher senses awaken within them, where they become clearly aware that all the laws of nature they come to know are not abstract concepts, but actual thoughts of beings who have been called the Greek gods. Just as human beings today create with their thoughts, and just as they imbue their works with their thoughts, so too have their elder brothers, the gods, imbued the world of existence with their thoughts.

[ 17 ] Let us put ourselves in the mind of such a Greek mystery initiate who has been initiated. If he could have spoken in our words, he would have said to himself: Look at a work of art, a machine—what are they? They are works created by humans, shaped according to human thoughts. When you stand before the work of art, before the machine, you see through the work the artist and the mechanic, and I understand the work when its laws are revealed to me. And what are these laws? They are what first came to life in the mind, in the spirit of a human being. How crystallized are the thoughts of the mechanic and the artist in the material tool, in the marble work of art. And just as I look from the work of art and the machine toward the artist and the mechanic, so did the Greek artist look from the earth toward the higher beings. When he sought to penetrate the laws by which an animal was constructed, he told himself that thoughts of beings of a divine nature were contained within it. Just as the mechanic’s thought is present in the machine, so too is the thought of a Creator, of a God, present in the animal, in the crystal, and in the starry sky. — To him, this God is a being with whom he feels a kinship; to him, it is a being that stands on a level that humanity itself will one day attain. A being that has emerged from a human stage is, for the Greek, a god, and a being that will one day attain a divine stage is, for him, a human being. Thus he communed with the gods in the Mysteries. He communed with the gods as with older brothers or as a child does with adults, and the feeling expressed in this is something entirely natural. One must first immerse oneself in this kind of thinking. From this perspective, the initiate looks up to those beings who are, as it were, slumbering or embodied in their thoughts throughout the nature that surrounds us. In all of nature, the mystery students beheld the slumbering thoughts of God. Into this has flowed the essence of the deity, and the human being is there only so that these divine thoughts may once again attain a life of their own within him. All the thoughts in the human soul are a reawakening of the divine in the world. Placed within the cosmos in this way, one’s own human life appears as a reflection of the descent, the suffering, and the death of the divine, and of the divine being buried in matter. Humanity is called upon to redeem the gods from matter. This is the Dionysian path, the path that all the gods have taken. Thus do the gods live in their thoughts.

[ 18 ] In Theosophy, the youngest of the gods is called Dionysus. As you know, the legend speaks of him as a son of Zeus and a mortal mother, Semele. It is said that he was snatched from his mother by his divine father after she had been struck by Zeus’s thunderbolt. But then the jealousy of Hera, the mother of the gods, flared up against this child who was not her own. She incited the Titans to attack the child; they tore him apart and scattered his pieces throughout the world. Only his heart was saved by Pallas Athena, who brought it to Zeus, who fashioned Dionysus anew from it.

[ 19 ] It becomes clear to us that this God was already there before, and it also becomes clear to us that this deity has a special relationship to the world. What is it? In the Mysteries, it was portrayed as the creator of that aspect within human beings which humanity has most recently attained. Isn’t it true that when a human being meets us in life, they seem, in part, to have emerged from the very hands of the gods? In the first years of their life, they do indeed appear this way to us, since they have not yet shaped or formed their own existence. Gradually, they mature and become independent. Then they work on and shape their own existence. More and more, the power awakens within him that makes him the creator of his innermost being, the shaper of his soul and spiritual powers. Now, within the mystery teachings, it is said that the final step, as it were, into the life that a human being receives from nature or from God is connected with the god Dionysus. And here we touch upon one of the deepest mysteries of the Greek mystery tradition, namely, what is called human sexual maturity. The moment when a person emerges from undifferentiated sexual life into the differentiated life of man and woman is still the final step that nature accomplishes in the human being, by leading him to this maturity, bringing him to the point where the instinct for the opposite sex awakens within him. What he then makes of this instinct, how he refines it, how he imbues it with soul, and what is made of love in a spiritual sense—that is then the human being’s own work. The final step that the gods accomplish with the human being is to allow him or her to develop into a young man or a young woman in sexual maturity. The power that now manifests itself to the initiate of the Mysteries in all of nature, in all knowledge, in all sensuality, and in all the soul’s powers at the various stages—he now recognizes this same power in the attraction of one sex toward the other.

[ 20 ] “Through what means,” the Greek mystery school student asks himself, “does a human being perceive at all?” How does any being perceive at all? When we imagine an animal instinctively eating the plants that are necessary and useful for its well-being, that is a kind of perception. But a higher level of perception occurs when our eye turns toward the light and, as it were, absorbs it. One form of perception is sensuality, is seeing; and it is also a form of perception when one sex is drawn to the other. Then comes the transformation of the lower forces into higher and ever higher ones. The final step that nature—or God, in the broader sense—has taken with human beings can likewise be transformed. Sensuality is transformed into love. It becomes spiritualized; it becomes animated. And the god who, for the Greeks of the Mysteries, was closely associated with this force of sexual maturity was Dionysus. Dionysus did not have only this one function, for sexual maturity is connected to something entirely different. It is only in this context that Dionysus is understood as the last-born of the gods.

[ 21 ] When we look at human beings as they stand before us today, we see a being in whom the person with deeper insight—and the one who embraces the theosophical worldview is gradually led to this deeper insight—sees something that has gradually become man and woman. To understand the Greek way of thinking, you need only read Plato and take him seriously, and you will find that he refers to a time when there were not yet men and women, for humanity was still both man and woman at the same time. The biblical narrative also points to such an undifferentiated human race, and the Fall is, in essence, nothing other than the symbolic representation of sexual differentiation. When we realize that human beings, as they stand before us, arose from a being of dual gender, we will say to ourselves: In the course of evolution, human beings have acquired their one-sided gender. They have evolved from dual-gendered to single-gendered. They have lost half of their productive power. And this half has awakened on the other side as the power of our soul, as the power of our spirit. By becoming unisex—as a deeper look into nature reveals to us—human beings have become spiritually and soulfully productive, because they have surrendered half of their physical productive power. This has made possible for human beings what we call, in the modern sense, self-consciousness—the ability to say “I” to oneself, to recognize oneself as an independent being, and, if we may speak figuratively, to have been released from the hand of the gods and to have become one’s own creator. Thus, in the course of development, there is a connection: human beings feel the very force that, while forming the basis of their egoism, also makes them free, self-conscious beings. Thus, at every stage where sexuality finds its further development in any way, this process of human beings becoming more independent and more free repeats itself.

[ 22 ] The god Dionysus is the youngest of the gods; that is to say, he is the one whom the Greeks imagined had raised humanity to its present state of independence. Zeus, Cronus, and the older gods created humankind up to the point where it was a hermaphroditic being living in a dull state of consciousness, unable to say “I” to itself, without self-awareness and without freedom. The creator of autonomy is Dionysus. Thus, the divine principle, as a unified whole, had flowed out into all of nature to the point where humanity became autonomous. Then it appears to us as humanity in countless individuals.

[ 23 ] Let me illustrate this quite clearly. Let’s go back to the time when human beings were not yet independent, when they were still hermaphroditic beings with a dim consciousness. One could say that, just as my hand is a limb of my own organism, so too was the human being at that time a limb of the entire Divinity. His consciousness still rested in the bosom of divine consciousness. One could still see right through human beings to their divine soul. Now that human beings have become independent, separated from divine consciousness, this soul is fragmented into as many individuals as there are human beings. This was magnificently symbolized by the dismembered god Dionysus, who had been torn to pieces by the Titans. Human wisdom was symbolized by Pallas Athena. She was like a saving sense of unity for all humanity, felt through our higher spirit and our hearts. By feeling one again and developing a shared spirit throughout all humanity, the heart of the god Dionysus is saved and carried back up to the abode of the gods themselves. This is how the Greeks imagined that the god Dionysus had led humanity up to the separation of the sexes and finally to sexual maturity. And in the attraction of one sex toward the other, they saw one of the many forces originating from the god Dionysus. Thus, two spiritual currents act upon human beings—who stand in the world as creatures of the god Dionysus—and these are the starting point of our own culture.

[ 24 ] One current is that in which the spirit acts through the outward, serene form and through wisdom to unfold, within the sensual drive, the beauty of outward form and order. The impulse through which Dionysus has brought humanity to its present stage should not act in a wild, stormy, unregulated, and disorderly manner, but should conform to harmony and order. This principle of Dionysus’s external, formal shaping is best seen in Hellenic and Roman art, in Greek beauty, and in Roman statecraft. Through them, order and beauty were introduced into the communal life of human beings—who were created by the god Dionysus as independent beings. And the soul that animates this impulse, that permeates this impulse—this soul has been elevated, deified through Christianity; all that which draws human beings toward their humanity, all that which regulates human community in such a way that not blind desire but ennobled, spiritualized, and deified desire prevails—all this is brought about by Christianity, properly understood. Spirit and love are the two currents in human development.

[ 25 ] This is how the poet of *The Children of Lucifer* views human development—both present-day and that of the past millennia. He sees in what the Hellenic spirit and Roman statecraft have created, on the one hand, the living and uplifting principle of the Dionysian human being, and on the other hand, in Christianity, the deepening of the principle of love. Now we will also understand how Edouard Schur came to incorporate these ideas into a work of art that he called “The Children of Lucifer.”

[ 26 ] All of this takes place in a city in Asia Minor. Dionysia had a cult dedicated to the god Dionysus. These Dionysian mysteries were celebrated in Dionysia, where they had a sacred site. Then this Dionysian movement became intertwined with a second movement. It was in the 4th century of the Christian era. On the one hand, there was Roman world domination, which made those who were worshippers of Dionysus—who knew that a spark of a divine soul lived within them—members of the Roman state. And now the Greek spirit and the Roman state spirit came into conflict. The original spirit must revolt. And why must it revolt? It must revolt because the external form seeks to incorporate what is independent. This can easily become an external order. What is meant to create order, harmony, and unity can easily turn into something that once again suppresses and subjugates human freedom and independence. This is also how it was with the Roman spirit—which itself was born out of the Dionysian spirit—in the 4th century. And so, in the Dionysia, we are confronted with the two currents of the human spirit: on the one hand, the spirit; on the other, the now-rigid formalism of the state. These are the two currents that extend from the Dionysian Mysteries into Christianity, which was meant to spiritualize the human impulse toward fellow human beings, to ennoble the deeds of Dionysus and elevate them into a higher light by transforming the mere instinct into purity. But by that time, in the 4th century, it had degenerated into an external formalism that subjugated and suppressed precisely what it should have ennobled and what it should have allowed to unfold. Thus, on the one hand stands the enslaving Caesar, and on the other, the enslaving Christian priest, who does not bring love to the fore in order to ennoble it, but rather to kill it. Thus we see how, in Edouard Schuré’s drama, two individualities are presented to us as representatives of the Hellenic-Roman spirit: on the one hand, the young man who is first called Theokles and then Phosphorus, and on the other, the maiden who has been consecrated in the service of Christianity as a pure sacrificial virgin. We see how Phosphorus rebels—seeking to call the Dionysian human beings into existence in the highest form of ennoblement in opposition to the rigid, Caesar-like principle—and, on the other hand, the Christian maiden, who is not so spiritualized as to be removed from the world, but rather so spiritualized that she herself is called upon to act and create in this immediate world. These two individualities deepen one another. How beautiful, grand, and powerful is the depiction of how these two individualities develop. Phosphorus is led, after seeing how his hometown is subjugated on the one hand by the Caesarian and on the other by the Christian—on the one hand he sees the divine Caesar, on the other the Good Shepherd, detached from the whole world, and those who are to worship him— he is led before another Elder, before that Elder whom the Greek language calls the Elder of the unknown God, the God who reveals Himself in an indefinite manner.

[ 27 ] Our Phosphorus is undergoing a great transformation. In a remote mountain gorge, he searches for a point of reference, and there he comes upon one of the temples that were once considered temples of initiation. There he also meets an old priest, one of the sages of the unknown God. Which god’s? Perhaps the one whom one does not profess, whom one does not worship in this or that form? The one from whom, when one asks, one receives no answer, because each person must answer for themselves what cannot be put into words, but which lives as a spark within every human being? Just as it is true that a person can become aware of the divine spark, so too can he become aware that his entire life is a journey toward the great God who underlies what lives in the stars, what is in the human heart, and what will yet underlie all that man himself will accomplish at his higher level—for He is not a God of the past, but a God of the future; not a God of thoughts of the past or the present, but a God of the thoughts that man will one day be able to conceive as the highest at the present stage of development. That is why he is called the unknown God—not because humanity cannot serve a God who holds its existence as a finished whole in his hand, but because humanity wishes to serve a God who can only appear in perfect form in the future. That is why the free human being clings to the divine spark in his breast; that is why he clings to that which, like the dismembered Dionysus, is initially scattered throughout the outside world. Then he can find the power for upward development from nothing other than this severed divine spark; but he also knows that this upward development is linked to the passage through knowledge and suffering, through evil, because man is separated—in terms of his inner spirituality—from the Divine. That is why free forces must spring forth within him to lead this spark back to divinity. Had we remained in the bosom of the gods, without being fragmented in the sense of the Dionysus myth, then the divinity itself would lead us to godliness. But as it is, we appear to be like fallen sons of God. And this power within us—which, as sons of Dionysus, is meant to lead us to this godlikeness—this power within us is the Luciferic power, the Luciferic principle, that light which human beings kindle within themselves in freedom in order to one day find the whole God as a part of the divine essence.

[ 28 ] This power at work within him is the light. And that which carries this light within him—and that which carries this light within all of humanity—the teacher and guide—is Lucifer, the bearer of light. All those who develop a mindset like that of Phosphorus are the children of Lucifer. They are therefore not anti-Christian. They are of such a mindset that they say: In Christ, God incarnate appeared, having descended and lived out His life in the human body. But human beings must develop upward so that they may unfold the God within themselves in such a way that the human being who has become divine encounters the God who has become human, so that the human being ascending from below finds a being of the same nature. If Christ is the one who has descended the farthest from above as the revealing God, then the God whom the God-become-human will encounter is Lucifer. Christ and Lucifer, understood in the proper sense, belong together. Thus we find Phosphorus, who, undeterred by any Caesarism or any worldly suppression of the free Dionysian principle, rushes into the temple of the unknown God to receive there the light that carries him upward, thereby becoming himself a son of Lucifer.

[ 29 ] Just as Phosphorus follows this path, thereby elevating his spirit to that vision which recognizes Lucifer as the principle of evolution, so Kleonis evolves from a Christian virgin into a universal principle. Her love is to be directed solely and exclusively toward God incarnate. She evolves toward the point where the intuition arises within her that love in human beings can be so ennobled that the divine love in God incarnate unites with human love within human nature itself. Thus, the Christian virgin ascends to the point where she can meet the unknown God. Christ has come to life within the Christian Virgin not only because she unites herself with the Divine in contemplation and veneration, but also because she reaches the point where she elevates herself to Christian love. Phosphorus has ascended to the point where the Spirit shines forth to meet him in the light. Thus, the Spirit in the man and the soul in the woman are on one and the same level. And now they work together on the same level, in such a way that, instead of Dionysus, the free human couple always stands first, embodying the vision of a future that is yet to come into being. Christianity and Caesarism have developed into what unfolded in the Dionysia: the latter subjugated and enslaved humanity. But the two stand there upright and free. They are driven out. They cannot save the old Dionysia. The old Dionysus, who first perishes in Romanism and in outward Christian formalism, cannot harbor even these two who have liberated themselves; they are driven out. By representing the life of a future in the present, they must live in the present. They find their way back to the unknown temple. There where Phosphorus was consecrated, there where the star of Lucifer appeared to him, there—in the hour of death, uniting both paths—the luminous star of Lucifer appears to them, leading humanity in freedom upward to the highest evolution, and the cross of Christ, the symbol of redemption, which we attain when the God who became man touches the man who became God.

[ 30 ] Thus, the two who have liberated themselves must, through death, preserve what they have achieved. They cannot save the Dionysia. Such is the course of human development. This was, in essence, something that had already been experienced in the Greek mysteries within a higher form of life: that life always triumphs over death, that death is only an illusion in the individual human being and also an illusion in human culture as a whole. Thus, at the end of Schuré’s drama, we are given a glimpse of the fact that what the two have achieved and unfolded within themselves as they pass away has an eternal significance that transcends death. The entire drama resounds in a magnificent way, in the firm certainty that the spirit must triumph over matter.

[ 31 ] Just as death is portrayed here as triumphant over life, so one can only view it this way if one knows something of the true and real life of the spirit and knows that all death is merely an illusion. Anyone who does not know that all that is dead is merely an illusion, who refuses to acknowledge that the spirit is something real, must say to himself: If death were something real for the noble couple—who won their freedom by ultimately being cast out and driven away from enslaved Dionysia—then what the two of them took with them would perish. For all those who remained in Dionysia are succumbing to a dying epoch of humanity. Apparently, then, nothing remains. If this illusion were reality, we could never in any way believe that it has any meaning when someone has purchased a higher life through death. For then this drama would end in nothingness. Solely the belief and the realization that the spiritual is a reality sustain this drama—and that from the death of the liberated couple a true spiritual blossom springs forth, which later works and lives within the humanity that has remained, having been incorporated into the entire spiritual development of humanity. From the death of Kleonis and Phosphorus springs a spiritual flower of humanity, which then comes into being.

[ 32 ] What a person experiences through the light and what a person comes to know lives on. Schur owed this certainty to the fact that, through Margherita Albana, the ancient Greek world had been reborn within him. And he owes it to Christianity that he was not merely an outward artist, but was also able to cast a deep gaze into the spiritual course of humanity’s development. He demonstrated this insight in his book *The Great Initiates*, which will soon be available in German translation. There he has unfolded the entire historical panorama of humanity, from Rama, Krishna, Hermes, and Plato, through the other Initiates, all the way to Christ Jesus. He has depicted this panorama of humanity, this spiritual evolutionary process. In doing so, he has provided a historical perspective that is theosophical in the most eminent sense and that has guided countless people in Europe toward the theosophical worldview. From the spirit of his reflection came *The Children of Lucifer*, this magnificent little dramatic work in which the theosophical spirit lives in every line and every scene. Thus the theosophical worldview comes to life, and art becomes an expression of the theosophical spirit when the truth of the spirit shines forth through beauty.

[ 33 ] According to Edouard Schuré, there are three things that human beings are initially capable of creating. First, we are concerned with ontology. This leads us to the great laws of the world, but when we are deeply immersed in theosophy, we no longer view them as lifeless, but rather as abstract concepts of God. Then we are concerned with mysticism, which leads us to the gods and higher beings whom we recognize as our elder brothers. And then we are also concerned with symbolism, which reveals the divinity to us in its external, sensory image and as a shadowy reflection in art. Thus, Edouard Schuré is a true theosophist and a true artist, and therefore demonstrates—more than any theosophical dogma—what theosophy’s mission in the world is.

[ 34 ] It is significant that the first Theosophical Journal was published under the title “Luzifer,” which we have revived in our German journal “Lucifer-Gnosis,” where the entire way of thinking and the future mission of the Theosophical worldview are clearly expressed, just as they are artistically embodied in the drama titled “The Children of Lucifer.” Only those who see art as something merely external will fail to recognize that within this work of art there lives something of the highest vitality, which has by no means been neglected in terms of the depth of its creative power. If the artist is thus fully satisfied by this drama, then something of that ascent toward the unknown God—who works within us all and whose increasingly widespread recognition gives theosophy its very name—also flows from this drama. Thus, this drama is the expression of that theosophical spirit that takes true contemplation and human freedom seriously.

[ 35 ] No human being can be free in the highest sense of the word unless they find the divine within themselves, unless they are an ally, a brother, of the divine essence. When a human being becomes this, they themselves become a part of that force which is a bearer of light, which is a Lucifer. Then they become a child of Lucifer. Those who understand something of the mysterious force at work in the universe—a force that cannot be seen merely with the eyes or perceived with instruments—of the forces that permeate moral, ethical, and religious life and are at work throughout our entire cosmos—those who know something of this speak of the forces known as astral light. Those in the know describe it as flowing through space—much like other forces, such as gravity—and acting upon beings. Astral light flows through all beings; it lives in higher animals and in human beings in general. When a human being does something and says, “I am acting,” or “I am driven by instinct”—in truth, it is the astral light that is at work and alive within him. He can surrender to this astral light—unconsciously, with a drowsy consciousness—and this always happens when a human being allows himself to be overwhelmed by passions and instincts. But this does not happen when a person makes himself the bearer of his own light, when he connects with the Luciferic force. Then he transforms this astral light—this creative force in the world—into a conscious, creative force within himself. Then he becomes a citizen of higher spiritual worlds. If they surrender to the astral light with a subdued consciousness, they can say: “Certainly the gods live, and they flow through and permeate me, but I am called to step out of unconsciousness, to let the light appear as something free, to illuminate my own deeds with divine power.” — Everything that arises from the twilight of consciousness, everything that is not brought about by the bearer of the light, is that which hinders our development. What leads to the goal and to the true human ideal is that which springs from the light, from true knowledge. Therefore, a person may only truly throw themselves into the stream of life once they have grasped the God within themselves, once the God within them is their guide. To awaken the consciousness of God within oneself and then to become a citizen of the earth through the powers that spring forth from one’s own heart—that is the theosophical attitude. Margherita Albana, whom Edouard Schuré calls his guide, expresses this attitude in a brief saying that could serve as a motto for the theosophical way of life and which is also to conclude our reflections today:

[ 36 ] Trust in the God within your heart, and then surrender everything within you to the flow of life.