The Rudolf Steiner Archive

17. Siegfried and The Twilight of the Gods

[ 1 ] It came as something of a surprise when, in the 18th century, German scholars discovered the ancient legend of the Nibelungs. In fact, this legend—to which we owe the European peoples’ reflections on their heritage and origins—had been all but forgotten for centuries. Hardly anyone knew what the Germans of old told each other about the dawn of their existence; hardly anything was known about it from the 12th through the 18th century, and minds capable of recognizing the full significance of such a discovery for the spiritual life of the German people—such as Goethe—attributed the greatest importance to the Nibelungen epic in particular. Then it became clear that what had been unearthed from 12th- and 13th-century manuscripts were merely later versions of an even much older folk epic. In the Eddaic poems, one found these older figures of German legend from antiquity, who had, as it were, fled northward, but then found their way back—initially through scholarship—and now, in the second half of the 19th century, provided the foundation for the truly great renewal of art by the poet-musician Richard Wagner. Richard Wagner sought to bring about this renewal of art not by drawing on figures from everyday life—figures whom he might have had express the deepest foundations of human destiny, or who might capture our interest through a special destiny transcending the ordinary—but rather by drawing on the superhuman, idealized figures of antiquity. He knew full well that the mysteries harbored by the human heart and soul cannot be expressed through everyday characters or events; he knew that it is precisely myth and legend that can reflect what goes on within the human soul. Everyday life itself shows us how every human being is, in fact, a mystery and holds infinitely more than we can perceive with our ordinary senses and intellect. We know that we have an obligation—if we acknowledge such an ideal obligation—to regard human beings as such a mystery, never to close the door on them with our judgment. When we allow what a person has stirred within us to resonate, their figure does indeed grow into something superhuman. We can depict this only by magnifying their features—and magnifying them in the right way—so that we highlight what is characteristic without distorting it into a caricature. This is the true art of inner human characterization.

[ 2 ] Just as Wagner was aware that humanity may one day—though not yet today—be capable of expressing the highest truths through ordinary language, and just as he was aware that one must turn to the elevated element of expression—to music—in order to bring forth the deepest depths of the soul, so too was he aware that he must rise above everyday life to the realm of the mythical. The power, inner feeling, and reality that live within this myth come to meet us in a surprising way through this innovator of art. It is precisely through Wagner’s art that much has been done to deepen our understanding of this world of legends. Today, too, we will attempt to penetrate the reality of this seemingly unreal world from the perspective of spiritual science, and you will see that theosophy, or spiritual science, has much to say about the deeper core of these legends. For, starting with Nietzsche and extending to the other interpreters of Wagner, many have become stuck in a symbolic understanding of the legend. This stems from the fact that, in our age of materialistic thinking, it is actually quite a significant achievement to recognize in the myth symbolic allusions to great inner human truths. It is, of course, impossible for me to cover the entire question of the Siegfried myth before you today; I will only be able to present a few points of view to show how, from the standpoint of a deeper spiritual understanding, this myth gains life and reality.

[ 3 ] The figure of Siegfried is, of course, primarily known from the German version of the *Nibelungenlied*. As you know, Siegfried was able to make himself invisible. He was in possession of the Nibelung hoard, the gold to which so much is tied: outward, earthly happiness, but at the same time also a certain curse, a fate. You also know that he became betrothed to Brünhilde. This is a plot point that does not appear in the German myth, but without which the German myth becomes almost incomprehensible. You know that by entering into his marriage covenant with Kriemhilde, he actually secures Brünhilde for Gunther through deception—namely, by appearing in the guise of another—which then becomes his doom and leads to his death. You know that Siegfried is avenged by his wife at the Hun court of Etzel or Attila.

[ 4 ] These are the main characteristics of the figure of Siegfried. The traits found in the German legend are significantly expanded upon in the Norse legend, which tells us something quite different. In the German legend, we find Siegfried in possession of the cloak of invisibility, which enabled him to make himself invisible. In the Norse legend, the figure of Siegfried—or Sigurd—leads us into the world of the gods. This myth of the gods is full of mysteries and secrets. There we learn—and I can only hint at the very broadest outlines—that the gods themselves were forced to hand over the gold they had acquired from the Nibelungs to the giants as payment for a debt they had incurred. Now, in the form of a Lindworm, a giant guards this treasure. It is a significant motif that Siegfried, the scion of the ancient gods and, so to speak, related to Wotan himself, is called upon in his youth to overcome the Lindworm, the guardian of the gold. Through this, he gains the strength by which he attains his power. By bringing a few drops of the Lindwurm’s blood to his lips, he is able to understand the language of the birds; he is thus able to gain a deep insight into nature and absorb hidden wisdom. Through this transformation, he is able to approach the Valkyrie Brünhilde—surrounded by fire and flames—and become betrothed to her, he who has conquered the Nibelung treasure himself in battle against the Lindwurm.

[ 5 ] This Siegfried is a legendary archetype that appears frequently in the works of world literature. He is the slayer of a dragon, who is dipped in the dragon’s blood and thereby attains special powers, who gains the ability to render himself invisible and to approach a female figure whom one can reach only through fire and flames. Hidden within the various stages of descent from the gods are highly significant, ancient concepts, some of which are even beyond public discussion because they lead into realms that belong to the very depths of the occult.

[ 6 ] Scholars have often seen Siegfried as a symbol of a solar hero, in the very way that scholars typically interpret such symbols: the sun as the conqueror of clouds, and so on. I pointed out fourteen days ago just how inadequate such external symbolism can be in this context, as Ludwig Laistner’s research on the riddle of the Sphinx has made clear: the people do not symbolize things in this way. We can understand the Germanic pantheon and the Siegfried saga only if we assume here as well that experiences of the gods are expressed in all these contexts,

[ 7 ] Fourteen days ago, we saw that in ancient Germany there was an experience of higher soul and spiritual worlds, and how human development consisted precisely in the fact that human beings evolved from the astral vision of antiquity—from looking into the spiritual world—to our ordinary everyday perceptions, which view things through the external senses. For our ancestors in Central Europe, it was like a memory that people once looked into the spiritual world, which has now, however, been plunged into darkness and gloom as external physical vision has become increasingly perfected in humanity. What still lives on today as legend and myth is the remnant of such a higher spiritual perception. The gods are higher experiences; they are real beings of that world into which a person enters when they have attained higher senses. A straight line runs from the dream to the soul’s highest astral-spiritual experiences. So that this is not too unclear to us, let us take a look at the difference between so-called night consciousness and day consciousness. The daytime consciousness of the normal human being—through which civilization has been created—is acquired. It arises when the soul perceives the external world through the senses and processes it with the intellect and the imagination. But when the soul frees itself from the body at night—when the gates of the senses are closed and the soul is within itself—it does indeed live in a different spiritual environment, yet it cannot perceive anything because it lacks the senses to do so, just as a person who has lost their eyes, ears, and indeed all their senses could still live but would perceive nothing of their surroundings. Once upon a time, the soul had the ability to look into the world into which a person drifts when they surrender to sleep. It saw into the spiritual world, and the images of the spiritual world found in mythology are based on real experiences. That is why it seemed to the people of Central Europe as though they had once perceived a light that has now sunk into the darkness of the night. There is a light that can illuminate the night, a light that enables one to see spiritual and soul beings—that is, those things recorded in mythological legends. This descent of astral consciousness is beautifully and powerfully depicted in the figure of Baldur. It is merely a fantasy of German scholarship to claim that Baldur is the sun. Baldur is the ancient astral light that gazes into the spiritual and soul world, but which died out in the course of evolution when a race arose for whom the light of the spirit was shrouded in darkness. This race—of whom the ancient Germans could truly have said, “The lights do indeed shine in the darkness, but the darkness does not know the lights”—is the race of the Nibelungs, the inhabitants of Nifelheim. What is meant by this race, for whom the spiritual is dark and only the sensory is bright? What has changed within it?

[ 8 ] The ancient forces that radiated throughout space and lived in all things—the forces of love from which everything arose—were, as people recalled, the deeper source of life in that era when one could still glimpse into the spiritual world, when life itself was lived in an entirely different way. With the emergence of the external sensory world, selfishness took the place of love—the love that governed everything, that elevated all interaction between beings, that led beings to one another, and that established all relationships between them. A generation that had still been able to look into the spiritual world now set its heart on purely external physical things—physical possessions, physical property: the desire to possess some part of the sensory world. This is the “gold,” the external, physical possession. Even on a small scale, there was always some remnant of this memory among the German people—a memory of that time when the land still belonged collectively to the entire village community. There were still those who lived on such property, naturally bound together; blood ties still formed the basis of kinship in those days. Now a different era dawned. Common ownership, which at the same time fostered a certain sense of community and a shared love, gave way to private ownership—to the urge and drive for possession. This development, which nearly all peoples underwent, was also experienced by the ancient Germans. Thus they perceived the new conditions as a contrast to the old ones, as if the external had taken the place of the internal, as if people had formerly followed in their actions the impulse that lived within—love—and now followed selfishness. Now even what brought people together had to be regulated by contracts and legal provisions, rather than, as before, by natural degrees of kinship. Thus a new world order emerged, with new gods appropriate to the external, sensory reality. That was our pantheon of the ancient times. But these gods also reappeared in a new form, as it were, as those who had extracted the better part—the essence—from the old, like supersensory powers above the sensory realm.

[ 9 ] People seemed entangled in sensuality. But the one who wished to be a leader, a guide for humanity—in Germanic prehistory as elsewhere—was an initiate who looked more deeply into the sources of existence and was able to penetrate to the divine, creative forces. Such an initiate must have overcome what binds human beings to sensuality; he must be able to direct all his thoughts and aspirations solely toward the enduring, toward that which lies beyond sensory things. He must rise above the struggles of everyday life. Now, every human being is caught up in these everyday struggles, with their desires and mundane notions. He must overcome all of this; until then, a true, deeper insight into things is not possible. Because people today have so little understanding of this, they cannot grasp what true and genuine wisdom is; otherwise, they would also know that, before ascending to knowledge, it is necessary first to make oneself worthy of that knowledge—to feel that what the intellect and reason can grasp, what we can think, are the thoughts of God upon which the world is built. What matters is not what the initiates know, but how they know it, and they become knowledgeable because they have overcome the lower aspects of the human being. Through this knowledge, which is linked to the transformation of the entire soul, knowledge becomes wisdom.

[ 10 ] Each people had initiates who differed according to their respective character. We understand this when we grasp the meaning of initiation. What, in fact, is the initiate’s task? Above all, it was the initiates who gave the peoples the certainty of the immortality of the human soul. To ascend to wisdom means to experience that the soul is a reality. One truly comes to know it by looking into the world illuminated by astral light. There, the immortality of the soul reveals itself as an inherent quality of the soul. Because the initiate can already enter these worlds—where eternal life exists—during this present existence, he is able to bear witness to the destiny of the human being before birth and after death. It has always been the task of the initiates to shed light on how the soul transcends transitory, sensory existence. Wherever there is a faith grounded in deep insight and experience, people express ideas similar to those that have been articulated once again in recent times through the Theosophical or spiritual-scientific movement. The more a person transforms sensory existence by developing a wide variety of virtues and abilities, the more he or she is led into another existence that is imperishable. The Greeks likened the soul to a bee that flies out, gathers honey, and then returns to the hive. This is exactly how it is with the soul. It flies through the physical world, gathers experiences, and brings them back to the spiritual world, where they become its lasting possession. Wherever mystical realities underlie a concept, the soul has been imagined as something feminine; Goethe, for example, referred to it as the “Eternally Feminine”—the soul that ceaselessly absorbs from its surroundings and is fertilized by them. The cosmos, on the other hand, is masculine when viewed in relation to the soul. In its interaction with the external world, every event is a source of enrichment for the soul. Therefore, to the person who can perceive this, the soul’s ascent toward immortality appears as a union, for it unites with its higher nature, which, as it were, comes to meet it once the soul has worked its way up to this higher level. Thus, in Germanic mythology—because bravery was the highest virtue for the Germanic people—the attainment of immortality for the warrior who fell on the battlefield appeared in the form of the Valkyrie’s coming to meet him; the Valkyrie is nothing other than the immortal human soul. If the warrior has practiced the virtue that leads to immortality, then he unites with the Valkyrie; those who did not fall on the battlefield died a natural death and had to descend into the realm of Hel, where no spiritual light shone.

[ 11 ] An initiate is one who has already encountered the soul during his lifetime. Thus, Siegfried is the initiate of Germanic antiquity who overcomes lower nature—the dragon—ascends, and earns the right, like every initiate, to look into the world that people will enter when they pass through the gate of death. Such initiates have always been invisible to the physical eye of human beings; they have always worn a cloak of invisibility. It is readily apparent to everyone that if an initiate—such as Jesus Christ, for example—were to appear today in any modern city, he would remain quite hidden as such. For even if he were not imprisoned, what can be perceived only with the spiritual eye would at the very least be regarded as something utterly unheard of. So it is with all initiates, including Siegfried. Whoever ascends to a higher knowledge of wisdom must not only overcome the dragon but also pass through various dangers to reach a higher consciousness. The flames and fires surrounding the Valkyrie are very real indeed. Before a person is able to gaze into the higher world, the higher nature is always mingled with the lower; it keeps the lower nature in check and guards against what seeks to emerge from the lower, stormy passions. But when the higher nature asserts itself, the lower nature is initially left to its own devices. Therefore, those who have not thoroughly strengthened their character beforehand but wish to attain clairvoyant abilities and ascend into the spiritual world are often exposed to a transformation for the worse. That is when the fire of the passions easily begins to burn. The formation of flames arises through higher consciousness, and the initiate must first pass through this formation of flames. Here you have the initiation ceremonies of Siegfried. Such initiates existed in those days; they were ancient priest-kings who united courage and wisdom within themselves, being kings and priests at the same time. That was the ideal of humanity that lived in the memory of the ancient German and stood before his soul at the very moment when this epic arose as a remembrance. That had now changed. Valor is no longer subject to initiation, and wisdom is assigned to a secular class; in place of a warrior class that was at the same time a priestly knighthood, there is now a priesthood that knows nothing of initiations.

[ 12 ] The attainment of this higher consciousness by the initiated priestly sages is illustrated by the fact that Siegfried, who was already bound to and betrothed to the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, drinks the potion of forgetfulness—that is, he is himself placed into a world that knows nothing more of the old times, and that he wins Brünhilde for one who is no longer a priest-sage, who has cast aside one aspect—bravery—that is, the very quality through which the higher soul is attained. Brünhilde was to be won for one who was no longer a descendant of the gods—that is, an initiate.

[ 13 ] Thus, the development of spiritual culture has found marvelous expression in the Siegfried legend. The times are past when bravery and the deepest wisdom were united in the initiates. Union with the Valkyrie is no longer bound to an initiation; in a certain sense, these are those who have fallen away from ancient times, who now attain immortality through bravery. Thus, the connection with the old world of the gods was lost; only the sensual life, bound to gold, remained. For such a time—and this much, at least, was clear to mystical thinking in that era—the higher consciousness represents a danger. For the initiate who has vanquished the dragon, there is the possibility of uniting with the higher consciousness and allowing himself to be filled by it. The lower nature cannot lead him astray, since he has cast it off. But for the one who still has to go through this and has not overcome the lower nature, the same thing can become dangerous. This was to be brought home to the ancient Germans. For union with the Valkyrie has a destructive effect if it is not linked to inner dignity. It becomes a corrupting power when it acts on its own. Thus, Brünnhilde acts on her own by having to belong to the man who had not undergone the initiation, to whom she was unlawfully assigned. Therefore, the higher consciousness must have a corrupting effect. This also explains what ultimately brings about Brünnhilde’s downfall. Brünhilde, the higher consciousness originating from the ancient gods, must drag the ancient gods themselves down into ruin with her. The offspring of the gods was her equal. In ancient times, it was right that the Valkyries descended upon the warriors because there were initiates among them who, through a victorious life, had earned the right to union with Brünhilde. This consciousness, the gift of the old gods, which they had originally bestowed upon the initiates, had subsequently, however, also come to those who were not initiates, where it could have a destructive, dissolving effect, and then necessarily had to drag down the old world of the gods itself: the twilight of the gods.

[ 14 ] It is no coincidence, but rather a manifestation of profound wisdom, that the new Christianity also emerges in the German version of the *Nibelungenlied*—specifically, at the point where the people march down to King Etzel’s court to meet their doom. Christianity seems to have entered the old world; the world has departed from love. People symbolically recalled an old love that had been replaced by statutes founded on gold. The Age of Gold led to a situation in which Brünnhilde’s higher consciousness had a destructive effect. And the moment when the old gods sank into the underworld is cosmically represented by the time when astral vision gave way to physical vision, which thereby became a reflection of the cosmic process.

[ 15 ] Love, rather than statutes, is to rise as a new element. Even the myth symbolically alludes to this, and in this fact it reveals itself even more intimately: When Siegfried was to be betrayed, his wife marked the spot where he could be wounded with a cross. Every initiate is spiritually invulnerable to earthly sensuality, even if his body is torn to pieces. The soul has immersed itself in the higher life. But there is one thing the initiate has not yet been able to achieve. Siegfried remained vulnerable at the very point where moral law, purified into the divine, is to blaze forth in love. This blazing forth of deified morality in love is the essence of Christianity. This was not yet part of Siegfried’s initiation. After the twilight of the gods has passed, another hero steps among the old warriors—one who stands higher than Siegfried, who is invulnerable precisely where Siegfried was still vulnerable. The cross, which Kriemhilde can only sketch, was borne on the back of the Great One. — You see what deep foundation, what spiritual portrait of life is present in this ancient legend. The riddle of humanity resounds to us from every corner of it.

[ 16 ] You all know that Richard Wagner did not content himself with the figure of Siegfried from the *Nibelungenlied*, but that he drew upon Norse mythology, even if he did alter the individual motifs and characters somewhat. He portrays Siegfried as the soul who, through the slaying of the Lindwurm, has undergone initiation—as a being who understands the language of the birds, and who thus sees and hears not only through the gates of the sensory world. And in *Götterdämmerung*, he allows us to perceive the connection symbolized by Brünnhilde as the old world of the gods, which plunges into the depths, from which Christian love then rises, having taken the place of the old world of the gods.

[ 17 ] I do not wish to claim that Richard Wagner held these thoughts in an abstract sense; but that need not necessarily be the case with an artist. People speak so casually of the artist’s “unconscious” creation. That is not a good term. While human beings think in abstract concepts and shadowy ideas, the artist works through form. It is more a form of high-minded arrogance on the part of scholarly vanity and the intellect to describe this life and weaving within the imagination and in form as “unconscious.” Rather, something else underlies this. What is art, with its creative shaping, with its bringing to light a higher world? It is deeply significant that it is precisely through the renewal of myth that a renewal of art has also been brought about. While for the ordinary person myth is merely a symbol, for the initiate it is spiritual reality—the expression of the experience of a higher spiritual world. It is such a profound consciousness that ordinary, clear-day consciousness is unable to grasp it. A shadowy reflection of this has remained in myth, and we have something similar when we imagine how an initiate introduced his students to the ancient mysteries—be they Greek, Persian, Egyptian, or those recounted in German prehistory. There we have the initiate who has the power to open his students’ eyes to this higher world. There they gaze into this spiritual world; scenes of a higher experience unfold before them—not between human beings, but between gods. A later era captured the form of this unfolding of scenes, as in a shadow play, in art. Art is like a dream or a shadow play—a remembrance of an earlier clairvoyance and a prophecy of a later clairvoyance for all of humanity.

[ 18 ] It was a great era when Richard Wagner brought back the last echoes of that ancient time in German mythology, in order to restore the union between art and vision. Thus, Richard Wagner’s artistic works have a prophetic significance. They are a great and eminent educational tool of our time; through the sound of music and the superhuman events unfolding before the eyes of the audience, they will help renew the myth and awaken the powers of the soul. And the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview, which works toward that future of humanity, may regard this art—reborn from the myth—as a true sister. Thus, in a certain sense, it is possible to gain a deeper understanding of Richard Wagner’s art through spiritual science. The vitality of spiritual insight, which spiritual science strives for, must take the place of the mere abstract scholarship that has taken possession of the old legends and myths. Myth is a representation of profound truths, of lofty spiritual experiences, and as spiritual research—which is a different kind of research than the ordinary kind—awakens awareness of these spiritual experiences, it will also make the myth comprehensible once more in its depths. Then the legends of humanity’s dawn will be able to come alive again in their very essence. People have expressed the truth in the most diverse forms. But those who have a sense for the core and the living source of truth are the ones who understand the form of truth. Seeking the core of this truth is the task of the spiritual-scientific worldview, and through this attitude—which constitutes the essence of the spiritual-scientific field—the very best of humanity’s past spiritual treasures will be able to rise to the surface of today’s educational life.