The Rudolf Steiner Archive

15. Germanic and Indian Esoteric Teachings

[ 1 ] I have often pointed out here that it is a misconception to describe the current Theosophical Movement, in the strict sense of the word, as a Buddhist movement—or, as some still say, a “New Buddhist” movement. Theosophy, or spiritual science, is not about transplanting a foreign worldview—one that lies outside our own culture—into Europe, but rather about demonstrating, even within our European culture, how humanity’s quest for truth is grounded in deeper teachings of wisdom that find expression in the most diverse ways. Next time, I will have the opportunity to show how, in a more recent epoch of German intellectual life, theosophical feeling and thinking found expression to an extraordinary degree—I would say, in its intellectual purity—at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. Today, however, I would like—as far as it can be squeezed into a single lecture—to show how there is an element within Germanic-German folk culture that leads back to views we encounter in theosophy. A cautious comparison between what has perhaps for millennia perhaps for millennia, and what has been expressed over in the East in such a distinctive, spiritual way, will show us how unfounded the misunderstanding is that the theosophical spiritual movement seeks to graft something entirely foreign onto European life. If we truly wish to carry out this comparison, we will have to begin by outlining, at least in a few words, the fundamental tenets of the so-called theosophical worldview. Let us briefly bring to mind the fundamental tenets of the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview, which have been discussed here time and again.

[ 2 ] According to this theosophical worldview, human beings are, first and foremost, beings founded on a dual nature: namely, a transitory, so-called “outer shell”—an external aspect of their nature—and an imperishable, eternal core of being. The outer sheath is, as it were, the garment or instrument through which the human being’s immortal core acts and functions in this world. This sheath is clearly divided into four subdivisions. The first subdivision is the so-called physical body—the body that can be seen with the eyes and perceived by the other senses. The second component is the so-called etheric body. This is the body in which life resides. It has roughly the same form as the physical body, but as the bearer of the life principle, it is what underlies the physical body. The third component is the bearer of feelings of pleasure and pain, of instincts and passions. We call it the astral body, precisely because the forces at work within it, to those who are able to look more deeply into the world, reveal themselves to be the forces that live and are essentially present out there in the starry space, in the astral realm. We designate the fourth component as the actual human “I.” We call it this because the other three members—the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—are shared by human beings with the other beings around them. Every mineral has a physical body. Plants have a physical body and an etheric body; animals have a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. Human beings, however, possess a fourth component that enables them to live within this world and to say “I” to themselves. Now, this “I” is the final link, the culmination of the development of the three other bodies just mentioned, toward which they have all striven since time immemorial. This “I” is at the same time the starting point of a new divine development. This “I,” which dwells within the three bodies—which do not surround it like onion skins, but rather interact with one another according to certain laws, powerfully interpenetrate and shape one another—is at the same time the bearer of that which is today contained in the majority of people only as a potential; the bearer of a higher threefold nature, which we in German best describe with the terms: Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Human. The Spirit-Self of the human being is designated by the term “Manas,” borrowed from Eastern mysticism. The second is the Life-Spirit, which is referred to in Eastern terminology as “Buddhi.” The highest, the truly innermost member of the human being, is “Atma.” It is the true spirit of the human being, the innermost core of being, the immortal within human nature. This gives us, like the seven notes or the seven colors of the rainbow, seven aspects of human nature. The three lower aspects are a convergence, an essence of the three kingdoms that surround us: the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the animal kingdom. The three upper aspects—Manas, Buddhi, and Atma—are three aspects that cannot be perceived by the senses; they are three aspects of a divine nature. Human beings share these three aspects with the higher realms of existence just as they share their lower aspects—the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—with the three realms that surround us in our earthly sphere. Just as human beings extend into earthly existence with these three lower bodies, so do they aspire upward with the higher spiritual aspects of their nature into the realms of the Divine, which is just as threefold as the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms are here below. Thus, the human being has its roots sunk into the earthly realm and reaches upward with its branches into the spiritual-divine world. And just as the human being has developed from humble beginnings in the earthly world, so does it develop spiritually upward by becoming ever more like the higher spiritual beings. Therefore, we can also say that the human being is essentially divided into three parts: By connecting the three lower members and the three upper ones, we have the “I” at the center. The “I” is that which shares in both the earthly and the divine. It permeates the etheric body and the astral body. We refer to this “I” as the soul. We refer to the actual immortal inner being of the human being—Atma, Buddhi, Manas—as the spirit. Through these three aspects of his nature, the human being is a citizen of three worlds at once. He is a citizen of the ordinary physical world here. When he has left the physical world here—that is, when his physical body has been shed, along with the etheric body—he enters another world, a kind of intermediate world, an astral world, as we say, the world of the soul. In this world, immediately after death and for a number of years thereafter, he must purify and refine himself of whatever still clings to him from his connection with the earthly-physical world. We call this state Kamaloka, or sojourn in the astral world. This is not a place, but a state. The disembodied human being, as long as certain effects of his physical nature still cling to him, remains in the soul world and then ascends to an even higher world, which we call Devachan, or the world of the spiritual.

[ 3 ] Now you know that the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview does not merely assume a single sojourn of the human being in this physical world, but that it is clearly aware that the human being must undergo repeated earthly lives, that only through this can his immortal core of being become increasingly deified, ascend into spiritual realms, and that he undergoes repeated experiences and lessons in earthly life. And so, after passing through the soul and spiritual realms, a human being returns to the physical world, then back to the spiritual realm, and so on. These repeated incarnations are governed by the so-called law of karma, the law of cause and effect. When a human being reappears after having undergone repeated earthly lives, they are born with dispositions and abilities they have acquired through experience in previous lives, as well as with the guilt they have incurred in those previous lives. Thus, one person appears happy, while another appears unhappy and miserable, because they have brought this upon themselves through their own actions. What we humans have brought about here will reappear in future earthly lives. As a result, human beings are in a cycle of ascent and descent, moving back and forth between the three worlds: the physical world, the astral world, and the Devachan world.

[ 4 ] Human beings are not only beings who belong to these three worlds themselves, but they also have companions in these three worlds. Anyone who, in accordance with the spiritual-scientific worldview, gains insight into the other worlds—not just the physical world that human beings can perceive with their senses and grasp with their hands—knows that there are not only beings who possess the three aspects of human nature: body, soul, and spirit, but that there are also beings who stand lower than human beings and beings who stand higher than human beings. How are we to conceive of the beings that are lower than human beings? We must conceive of them in such a way that, unlike human beings, their highest element is not a spiritual core but only a soul. Just as human beings have spirit, soul, and body, so these lower beings would have only soul, body, and something that is lower than the body. If, for the sake of argument, we were to call this world—the unknown entity that constitutes the third element—the underworld, we could say: Such beings also have a threefold nature, whose lowest member is the underworld, whose middle member is the physical world, and whose highest member is the soul world. But there are also beings who have two members in the spiritual realm and whose third member extends beyond the sphere of Devachan, beyond the sphere of the spiritual. So you see that you can construct a whole series of beings. And such beings truly exist, as experience shows. Human beings belong to three worlds. Such beings would also belong to three worlds, and just as human beings are in the process of evolution—having developed themselves from a stage in which their soul was their highest being, into which the spiritual core has been lowered—so, too, are these other beings in a state of continuous evolution. You can see that those who have experience with such matters must conclude that when a human being has shed this physical body and ascends into the soul-spiritual world, he will indeed be a companion of other entities—entities whose lowest level is the soul nature.

[ 5 ] This, in essence, is the outline of the worldview, which is not merely widespread in some part of human civilization, but underlies all deeper religions and is intended to be renewed through the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview. At the same time, however, this is a worldview that is in a state of constant evolution—not one that should be regarded as having been fixed once and for all in the abstract, but rather one that takes shape in a wide variety of ways as it passes through the various stages of human development. Just as human beings become increasingly mature on the ladder of evolution, so too does this worldview manifest itself in diverse forms. Now, however, human beings do not merely participate in this development; rather, the fundamental teachings of all world culture show that certain individuals can undergo a more rapid development, that they can ascend more quickly to higher stages of perfection, that they can, so to speak, outpace their fellow beings. Then, while still in their physical bodies, they already gain insight into those worlds that human beings enter only after they have otherwise crossed the threshold of death. All cultures, all religious traditions, keep this as a secret: that it is possible for a human being to glimpse the worlds that remain closed to them while they dwell in their physical body. But a human being can already cross the threshold of death in this very life and gain a glimpse of those worlds that he will later enter as part of his upward development. Just as humans go ahead of animals, so do such individuals go ahead of the rest of humanity. All the deeper teachings of world culture have recognized such individuals, who have gone before the rest of humanity, and designate them as initiates. You see, here we truly have the ladder of stages that I was able to speak about last time in my lecture on Lucifer. We have an entire ladder of beings that places human beings, in a marvelous yet comprehensible way, into the entirely natural spiritual world. Thus, underlying every religion and every major worldview is the principle that there are divine beings alongside and above human beings, but that these divine beings themselves, in times long past, went through the same stages that human beings go through today—they went through them under different conditions and in a different way; for nothing in the universe is repeated.

[ 6 ] Thus we can say: Those who are gods today were once human beings, and in the future, human beings will evolve to a divine nature. Human beings are gods in the making, and the gods are nothing other than perfected human beings. This is the fundamental principle of all so-called esoteric science. And to understand this statement in its full scope is precisely what it means to be an “initiate.” However, one must not merely understand this abstractly with the intellect, but through experience. This includes the recognition of the ray of the Spirit now accessible to human beings. Only then does one know what great, infinite significance this statement of all esoteric teaching holds—this statement that, to this day, runs like a leitmotif through all worldviews.

[ 7 ] Now let me take a look at how this theme runs through the various conceptions of Germanic and German antiquity—some of which have survived into the present day—and how we are to understand it. I might as well begin by noting that, unfortunately, scholarship pays little attention to how these things really are. It was at the end of the 1880s that a work by my dear friend Ludwig Laistner was published—it is called *The Riddle of the Sphinx*—a beautiful, two-volume work. It does not deal with any extraordinarily lofty teachings, but starts from the very simplest things. It begins with a very simple fact that still manifests itself in numerous forms within our contemporary folklore. For example, among the Wends, the folk legend of the Noon Woman still lives on. It goes something like this: If certain people working out in the fields fail to take a proper lunch break during harvest time—that is, if they remain out in the fields between noon and two—the Noon Woman comes and poses questions to them. For example, she asks the flax farmer about linen weaving or something else. The people must answer these questions. If they falter on a question, they’re doomed. They must come up with the answer by two o’clock. If they cannot give the correct answer, the Noon Woman strangles them or cuts off their heads with her sickle. The farmers now use various methods to counter this. The person in question must be able to recite the Lord’s Prayer backward and forward. If he can do that, the woman lets him go; otherwise, she kills or insults him.

[ 8 ] As you can see, a folklorist named Ludwig Laistner takes simple legends as his starting point. Now he is examining similar legends. They can still be found in our folk culture today. He seeks them out in the most diverse regions and at the same time finds that this is a simple example of what is known as “the torment of questions”—the predicament into which a person is placed when spiritual beings pose questions that he must answer. He then demonstrates how, in other forms of legend, the same theme becomes increasingly complex until it ascends to the riddle posed to humanity by the Cadmean Sphinx and to how Oedipus solved it. Laistner explains this beautifully, showing how it all fits together. Just as the ABCs relate to advanced scholarship, so does the legend of the Noon Woman relate to the complex question of the human riddle, the Sphinx.

[ 9 ] But Laistner goes on to show something else as well. I must share this because it will help you see just how extraordinarily important it is for theosophy. Like most folklorists, he started with the various conceptions of God and came to view them as symbols. You know that some divine figures are understood as symbolic representations of the clouds, the sun, the moon, and so on. This is a widespread view that you can find everywhere. But it has been put forward by those—as Laistner learned firsthand through his own experience at the time—who do not really know how the people’s imagination works, who do not know that it is far from the people’s imagination to invent gods for themselves out of wind and weather, out of lightning, thunder, sunshine, and rain. Laistner had already realized—even when he was still dependent on conventional research—that this could not possibly be the case. In his book on the Sphinx, he asked: What is actually happening when the Noon Lady appears and plunges everyone into the agony of doubt? — What is happening—and Ludwig Laistner has proven this almost exactly—is that these things have emerged from a different state of consciousness: the dream state. He has demonstrated that the “Noon Lady” is nothing other than the product of a dream experience had by those who slept in the fields during the midday hour. It was not waking consciousness that fantasized; rather, the dream has become a symbol. Laistner distinguishes between sleeping indoors and sleeping out in the open fields. Just as a person can dream—with the bedspread in hand—of a frog he is holding, so the outside world is symbolized in the Noon Woman. She has emerged from a dream experience. Laistner attempted to expand on this idea. He was not yet familiar with spiritual science. He therefore had to point out how important elements of our legendary poetry have emerged from actual dream experiences.

[ 10 ] However, dream experiences are merely rudiments of another state of consciousness. This other state of consciousness can be attained by anyone who undergoes a certain inner development, which we will discuss in the twelfth lecture on April 19. Anyone who has attended these lectures knows that by performing certain exercises and training themselves spiritually, they can transform the otherwise chaotic, disordered world of dreams into a completely orderly world—one that not only shows them fragments of ordinary reality as reminiscences but also introduces them to the higher spiritual world, which they can then bring over into reality. This is the higher state of consciousness; this is astral or imaginative consciousness. It begins with the dream experience becoming regular, and with the person one day realizing that they are experiencing a new spiritual reality. Then they can rise to an even higher, spiritual reality. The fact that a person can outpace their fellow human beings, can already achieve today what will be destined for everyone in the future, and can look into the spiritual-soul world—this was, in a certain sense, already present in times past. For human development consists in advancing from one level of consciousness to the next. This consciousness that humans now possess—in which they perceive through the external senses and process sensory impressions with the intellect—first arose from a consciousness that was not identical to, but similar to, dream consciousness. However, this consciousness—which I have called the “dream-like pictorial consciousness” in *Lucifer-Gnosis*—was somewhat darker. Human beings did not perceive direct impressions, but rather symbols; and even the events of life were expressed to them in images. Humanity has lost this consciousness and, in exchange, has gained clear waking consciousness. Back then, people did not possess the clear consciousness we have today. They could not perceive with their senses, nor could they see the light of day. They had to watch this consciousness sink into darkness in order to attain today’s consciousness of the bright day. In the future, humanity will attain a state of consciousness in which it will possess both: the pictorial consciousness that leads into the spiritual world, and the bright, clear daytime consciousness alongside it. This is the essence of all esoteric teachings, which underlies all cultures.

[ 11 ] Thus, a person can look back on a time when they can say to themselves, “Back then, I saw the world around me as a world of the soul.” It evoked a vivid, pictorial awareness within me. It was inwardly bright and clear. No external sun shone upon the outer eye, but an inner light illuminated the spiritual world all around, and this inner light has descended into darkness, while the external light that human beings perceive with their outer senses has risen. Just as remnants and vestiges remain of all things, so too, among those segments of the population who are more backward—who have not so greatly sharpened their intellect, who have not so greatly repressed what their pictorial consciousness has responded to, who are less analytical and less rational—remnants of that ancient consciousness still exist today. Thus, their dream consciousness is much clearer. There they experience not only chaotic dreams, but also higher truths of which they may not be able to give a proper account. They experience just as the clairvoyant does, and when their inner consciousness has awakened, they experience an entirely different spiritual world. There they encounter beings that do not exist here and that have a certain connection to the inner nature of human beings. To the average person, this is more or less clear, and they experience only the image of the “Noon Lady.” Others, however, possess a more developed visual consciousness. They experience even more. In this way, remnants of an ancient astral consciousness have been preserved even in the primitive legends of today. We look back on a human past—especially here in Central Europe and Western Europe—a past in which, the further back we go, the more of that consciousness is present, a consciousness that has been replaced by the present bright, daytime consciousness. All that has remained in the collective memory of the people, with greater or lesser clarity, is the fading of astral consciousness into a dark past, into deep darkness. I am not, of course, referring to the thoughts of the people, but rather to something that lives within the people and that I can only grasp in thought. — This is what people within the nation tell themselves without fully realizing it: Today I must withdraw my consciousness from the everyday perspective; I must sleep, so that I may once again gain a little access to the world my ancestors experienced, to a world that has vanished for humanity. I do not experience it as a clear image, but as a dimly pieced-together memory. — Something like this lives on among the people, and that is why the people also know that astral experiences were richer and ever richer the further back one goes into the past. And what the people experienced back then—of which only sparse remnants remain today, such as asking the woman serving lunch, “What is that?”— It is the memory of beings that inhabit the astral world; it is the memory of the ancient gods. Here the ancient conceptions of the gods are brought to the fore. Now recall that I have emphasized as particularly noteworthy that one should pray the Lord’s Prayer in reverse order. Those who have heard me speak here frequently will know that in the astral realm, everything must be read in reverse. The number 341 must be read as 143 in the world of pictorial consciousness—that is, in reverse. The same is true of our passions. Passions that emanate from us appear, when the astral world is revealed to us, as beings rushing toward us. This is very painful for those who have not been prepared in advance. Everything that flows out from us seems to be flowing toward us. Consequently, they see animals and all manner of beings rushing toward them. In pathological states—for example, in cases of insanity—they become aware that beings suddenly appear in the form of animals. These are beings that live within the person, that flow out from them, and appear as if mirrored in the form of animals. What moves from back to front in the physical world moves in the opposite direction in the astral world. Therefore, to satisfy the “Noon Lady” in the world in which she exists, one must pray the Lord’s Prayer from back to front. You can see how the legend records this.

[ 12 ] Now, if we were to examine the entire pantheon of Germanic gods, we would find that it reflects what I described at the beginning of this lecture as the secret science of all cultures. What I described at the beginning of this lecture—in broad strokes and outlines—as worlds that appear to be piled one upon another—though in truth they are intertwined—is all reflected in the Germanic pantheon in a folk-like manner. When human beings once lived in a world in which they still possessed an imagery-based consciousness—a world in which they had not yet advanced to the present-day capacity for abstract thought—their “I” was not yet as powerful as it is today. Although they did not think or act like animals, the three lower bodies—the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—were predominant within them. The “I” was not yet endowed with the faculties of the senses. It still lived an inner life; through this, it still had power over the outer world. They were a completely different kind of human being—people who could not yet think with the kind of consciousness we possess today. These people were far more imperfect than those of today, but they were more perfect with regard to the lower members. They had developed these more powerfully and in a more varied way. Therefore, they did not yet belong to the spiritual world. In a certain sense, they were soul beings whose highest member belonged to a soul world, whose middle member was also soul-like, and whose third member lay even deeper. The pictorial consciousness encounters such beings on the astral plane, where it discovers their highest essential core. These beings, in a certain sense the ancestors of humankind, are reflected in the Germanic folk consciousness as the giants. They are nothing other than the predecessors of humankind. Then the world continued to evolve. Human beings developed upward into higher spheres. They acquired the faculty of thought and thereby became companions of spiritual beings who, in a certain sense, are more finely organized than the giants, because they participated in the higher spiritual worlds. These beings are reflected in the Germanic folk consciousness as the Aesir. The original Germanic mythology saw nothing miraculous in all this, but rather recognized in it an expression of the statement I have cited: Man is a god-in-the-making, and the gods are what one might call perfected human beings—human beings who have become gods. Gods are beings who have passed through the human stage in a long-gone past. Thus you see that the sequence of stages of these beings is also expressed in Germanic mythology through the distinction between the giants and the Aesir.

[ 13 ] But there is even more to it than that. It shows that the development of such beings takes place in exactly the same way as human development. Modern humans—as Germanic mythology understands it—learned what they know from Wotan. But who, then, was Wotan originally? We hear that our ancestors learned from Wotan the art of runic writing, the art of poetry, and other things as well. Yet this has always been attributed to the great Initiates. Thus, Wotan embodied an individuality that, in the context of the Esoteric Doctrine, we had to describe earlier as a great initiate—a being who had gone before humanity and had already passed through the stages that humanity is only now undergoing. And how did Wotan become the great teacher of antiquity? In no other way than other initiates in the other esoteric teachings. In all secret teachings there are initiates. Today they experience exactly the same thing as in those days, in that they grow beyond their lower ego, develop the spiritual core of their being within themselves, and already in this life become citizens of a higher world. At the same time, however, it is made clear to us that at a certain hour the entire lower nature stands before them. Within every human being there is a sum of passions, desires, and longings attached to their lower nature. The human being must first break free from all of this. Then it appears before them as a separate entity. When the human being ascends into their higher nature, their lower nature is like something outside of them, whereas otherwise they are entangled within their instincts, desires, and passions. Just as no one can place their brain on a plate and look at it, so too can one not see one’s inner life, one’s inner lower nature. This detached entity is called the Keeper of the Threshold. One’s lower nature stands beside the person as an entity, and the person must eventually say to themselves: “This is you! You must cast this off!” — In all initiations, this is called the descent into hell. One must become a companion of the hellish powers, descending into the depths of the world, because human beings are simply trapped within it and their higher nature lives only partially within them. This being is called the Keeper of the Threshold because those who do not acquire courage and presence of mind cannot get beyond it. Those who have crossed this threshold are called initiates. Human beings go through this development step by step. First, a stage is overcome in which a person becomes aware of their lower nature. Whereas he is otherwise trapped within it and identifies with it, it now stands before him as something separate, just as the table now stands before me. In all initiations, this stage is called the crucifixion or hanging on the wood. Man is crucified in his own body, because it is as indifferent to him as an external cross to which he is nailed. Once a person has overcome this stage, he ascends higher. He has then become wise. He is symbolically called a “serpent,” for the same reason that the serpent is the symbol of wisdom in general. There he drinks from the springs of wisdom in the world.

[ 14 ] Then he goes through a third stage. This stage will have to be traversed in a wide variety of ways in the different religions. Let us consider Wotan. What is presented to us about him? These three stages of initiation are presented to us. We are first told that Wotan once had to hang from the sacred tree. For nine days he suffered there, taking upon himself the sufferings of the world. Then the giant Mimir came to him and offered him a drink from the cup of wisdom. Then he was freed from the sacred tree. That was Wotan’s first initiation. After he had undergone this, he was seized by a longing to find for himself the cup from which the drink could flow—the one his uncle Mimir had offered him at the gallows tree. But the story goes on to say that this cup of wisdom is guarded in the crevices of the mountains, and that Wotan, in the form of a serpent, crept through the crevices to Gunnlod in order to seize the cup of wisdom. That was the second initiation. And the third is the one in which we are told—and this is something very significant—that Wotan went to the source of that wisdom which is the wisdom of the present and which is to be found at the source that lies at the root of the world-ash Yggdrasil. There dwelt the giant Mimir himself. Here Wotan attained the initiation that enabled him to be the teacher of antiquity, namely, the wisdom of the present. Previously, he had attained wisdom from the crevices of the mountains, from the higher worlds. But he is to become the one who can be a teacher in our wisdom—the wisdom that is attained through the senses and gained through the intellect. He acquires the power to do so here. This is expressed in a beautiful symbol. It is told that he had to leave one eye behind here. What is the eye that he must leave behind, must leave behind, in order to find the wisdom of the present? It is the astral eye. Now that he is to absorb the wisdom of the runes, the wisdom of the present, he must now leave behind the astral eye so that he can be a guide on the sensory plane toward which humanity has evolved. These are things that clearly and distinctly show you, as in the three successive images, how the Esoteric Doctrine underlying all religions is also expressed in Germanic mythology.

[ 15 ] Profound truths are expressed in other ways as well; for example, when we consider the legend of Baldur, who is slain—at the instigation of his adversary Loki—by the blind Hödur with a mistletoe branch. When we examine this legend, we notice that many say Baldur represents the sun, the setting sun. They say this without having the slightest idea that no people compose poetry in this way. In primeval times, the people experienced on the astral plane, in images, what we learned about as the foundation of the Esoteric Doctrine at the beginning of this lecture. What did the people experience in this regard? I have already pointed out the images that spring up like dark memories—though not in clear consciousness—and I have pointed out the sinking of the astral light into darkness so that the present life of the senses can emerge. Out of what is now darkness—spiritual darkness—and out of the present sensory perception, which is symbolized by Hödur, the former astral consciousness, Baldur, is slain—at the instigation of Loki. And who is Loki?

[ 16 ] The very name “Loki” is associated with fire. But what is fire in esoteric science? It is not the same as what fire is in physical life. Physical fire is merely the outward expression of an inner reality—that which esoteric teaching recognizes as the soul of fire. This also lives within the human being in a certain way as his instincts, desires, and passions. However, in the course of further evolution, that which lives within the human being as instincts, desires, and passions has become separated. It is no longer connected to external fire, but the Esoteric Doctrine points this out. You will come to understand this more and more as you delve into the occult side of theosophy or spiritual science. It shows how passions and desires are related to fire in much the same way as the positive and negative poles of a magnet: the passions are one pole and physical fire the other, yet they belong together. In the case of iron, the two poles are inseparable. This seems grotesque to the materialistic worldview; I am well aware of that. But that is how everything appears to those who do not wish to delve into the depths of occult science. When we speak of figures such as Loki, our gaze turns back to those times. This is a being who possessed a primordial existence and a mighty power when passion and fire were not yet separated, when passion still coursed through the seething fire. Loki was such a fire being. And then the world developed further in such a way that the lower nature arose from Loki, the fire, and the higher nature from the Aesir. Both emerged from Loki’s nature. This lies at the heart of Germanic mythology. This is the secret of the Germanic pantheon: that as these beings evolved upward, the world of the gods emerged, which has its origin in the passionate primal depths as well as in the spiritual realm. We are told how these three are the children of Loki. The first child is the Fenris Wolf, the second is the Midgard Serpent, and the third is Hel, the goddess of the dead, who is light on one side and has a black body on the other. What does she represent? She represents the lower human nature, which brings about birth and death. That is why Hel appears black and white. The Midgard Serpent, which is coiled around the continents in the present world, represents the etheric body, which is bound to the present lower human nature. The third element represents that which has emerged from the lower passions. Loki is a remnant of an earlier stage of development. He had to give up his children so that the present world could come into being; as a result, the present world is driven to resistance and falls victim to what was the worldview of the earlier world.

[ 17 ] Baldur must descend to Hel, into the depths. The depths symbolize ordinary, physical human nature. What is Baldur? Baldur exists as the subconscious when, for example, during a trance, ordinary surface consciousness is extinguished and the ancient consciousness is reawakened. For us, Baldur is now slain. But with Hel, he still exists as the force—the passionate force bound to the nature of fire.

[ 18 ] Thus, we could describe every member of the Germanic pantheon as an outward expression of this secret doctrine, and you would see—if we had fifty lectures instead of just one—that everything, down to the finest details, fits together in a marvelous way, and that we are indeed dealing with a secret doctrine that underlies the symbolic imagery of Germanic mythology. Here, too, it was the initiates, the sages, who knew what we placed at the beginning of this lecture. The people, however, had experienced, in the remnants of their collective consciousness, beings from other worlds, and they arranged these folk spirits and folk beings into an order—the world of the ancient gods. Thus, Germanic mythology appears to have been born out of the collective consciousness of the people. The way Siegfried, after being overcome, finds his higher self presents itself to all of us as an expression of profound esoteric teachings. This is not contrived; rather, for anyone capable of delving in this way into the spiritual depths of antiquity, it becomes a complete certainty that this is indeed the case. Thus, as we explore Germanic mythology, we gain a vivid impression.

[ 19 ] If we turn our gaze to the East, we see the same esoteric teaching that was presented at the beginning of this lecture, though we see it developed somewhat differently there. We can summarize it in just a few sentences. We do not wish to delve into Buddhism or Hinduism. We need only know that they revere Brahma as the primordial spiritual being that underlies everything. Brahma’s primary faculty is creative knowledge. Vidya means creative knowledge. Imagine a person standing next to a machine, studying it; that person possesses receptive knowledge. But imagine the inventor who originally created the machine, who assembled it from individual parts—for him, knowledge was initially creative knowledge. Such creative knowledge, extended to the world around us, is Vidya, and receptive knowledge is Avidya. Thus, there are various degrees of Vidya and Avidya. Brahma, however, is the owner of everything encompassed by Vidya and Avidya. Everything was born from thought, and human beings themselves were born from it. But they are meant to evolve back toward Vidya, toward creative knowledge. That is the purpose of human evolution. And once again, human beings are guided through three realms, which Indian teachings call lokas. When a person dies, they must spend some time in Bhurloka, which is the same as Kamaloka. The highest realm is the spiritual world, Svargaloka—that is Devachan. From there, they return to Bhurloka and back to the physical world. Thus we see how, in the physical world, the human being absorbs the most diverse forces and substances. These have emerged from the Vidya of the all-encompassing Brahma. Above, we have the finest material world, the world of Akasha. Akasha is merely a material expression of Indra, who is the soul of this world. Then we come to the world of fire, to Agni. This is the material expression of the god Agni, and in Indian esoteric teaching, he is the same as the god Loki in Germanic mythology, though with a slightly different nuance. Then we descend to air, Vayu, then to water, and finally to the solid realm. This is how Indian teaching conceives of the structure of the external world. And what we call Indian ritual consists of external symbolic expressions of these secret truths. If we now ask ourselves what distinctive feature the Indian esoteric teaching has that causes it to take shape in different images, we can say that it has less of a symbolic character and more of a conceptual one. This is, in general, the difference between the Indian and the Germanic esoteric teachings. Inwardly they are the same, but outwardly there is a difference, because the external religions in Europe have taken on a pictorial character that speaks more of the beings of the astral plane, whereas the Indian people have advanced a step further and given them a character more closely linked to external sensory impressions. We must point out this as the difference between the Germanic and Indian teachings: that the Germanic teaching is closer to the astral, while the Indian teaching is closer to thought. Therefore, it is also clear that the Indian teaching is closer to what people today regard as their innermost essence, and that it is easier to understand than the world of the Germanic gods, which has sunk into the realm of the no longer known.

[ 20 ] These teachings have taken on various forms. Just as we see two forms in Europe and India, we see yet another—in the middle, so to speak—in Greece. We can see that the Indian and Germanic characteristics are shaped by two entirely different forces in nature. The Indian character is one that is more oriented toward the present-day “I,” toward the human “I.” The Indian has therefore sought his higher consciousness through immersion in his own inner self. He has sought to ascend from avidya to vidya, from receptive knowledge to creative knowledge. The Indian worldview is a doctrine of knowledge—a higher teaching than an astral imagery-based doctrine—whereas what has found expression in Germanic mythology is precisely such an astral imagery-based doctrine. And why is this so? Germanic mythology itself provides us with a profound and beautiful answer to this question. In all esoteric teachings, the higher consciousness that human beings are meant to attain is always represented as the feminine, as the soul. That which is received from the outside, that which fertilizes the soul, is represented as the masculine. So here we have the feminine soul, which is fertilized by wisdom, by the spirit of the outer world. Thus, as a person develops spiritually, figuratively speaking, they ascend toward the higher feminine within their nature. This is what Goethe means when he says: “The eternal feminine draws us upward.” This must not be interpreted in a petty way, for it is found in the “Chorus mysticus.” If we understand it this way, then we will grasp what the Germanic people mean when they say: When the warrior falls on the battlefield, the Valkyrie comes to meet him; there he attains the higher spiritual realm, — The spiritual essence of a warrior people and what is called “passing through the gate of death” to attain a higher consciousness—this is signified and symbolized by the Valkyrie’s coming to meet him, the soul’s reception into Valhalla, and the union with the higher consciousness, with the Valkyrie. In Proto-Germanic mythology, the supreme god is Ziu, from whom Tuesday takes its name. This is the same god who is called Mars in Roman mythology and Ares in Greek mythology. Tuesday is the day consecrated to Mars, the god of war. This was a religion of war, which differs from the inner religion of the Indian. Those who live in the inner world develop fewer of the passions that dwell in the astral world and find expression there. Thus, the consciousness—the Germanic peoples’ own warlike nature—is reflected in their pantheon. Naturally, the Valkyrie represents the higher consciousness. Because the passion for war was the creator of mythology here, the pantheon was expressed in astral images; because over in Asia, in India, the mind turned toward the inner world was the creator, a more spiritual religion came to expression. These two worldviews found their higher unity and harmony when Christianity gave the Germanic world the inner dimension to complement its outer dimension.

[ 21 ] So you see that there is a deep inner meaning underlying human development, and that one must seek out this deep inner meaning. Then one arrives at the wisdom inherent in the development of the world, and one will not remain stuck at abstract concepts, as if a single form of humanity were the foundation, but will see that this wisdom is multifaceted. The Esoteric Teaching had to be different in India than in Europe, different among contemplative peoples than among warlike ones, and different in Greece, among the artistically gifted people. Thus humanity develops through the most diverse forms of cultural existence, always moving forward in this world development and, at the same time, always moving upward.