The Rudolf Steiner Archive

19. Easter

[ 1 ] Goethe expressed, in a wide variety of ways, a very specific feeling that he had often experienced. He said: “When I look upon the inconsistency of human passions, feelings, and actions, I feel a strong urge to turn toward almighty nature and to find solace in its consistency and logical coherence.” — Underlying what humanity has expressed since the earliest times through the institution of festivals is the aspiration to look up from the chaotic life of human passions, instincts, and actions toward the great, consistent, and unified realities of the vast natural world. It is fitting, in light of these great realities of nature, that major festivals are linked to significant phenomena in nature. One such festival connected to natural phenomena is Easter, which for Christians today is the celebration of their Savior’s resurrection, but which has been observed since ancient times as the awakening of something quite special for humankind. We look to ancient Egypt with its Osiris-Isis-Horus cult, which expresses the unceasing rejuvenation of eternally immortal nature; we look to Greece and find there a festival in honor of Dionysus, a spring festival that is in some way associated with the awakening of nature in spring. In India, there is a festival season dedicated to Vishnu in the spring. In Brahmanism, the Divine is divided into three aspects: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Brahma is rightly called the great architect of the world, who brings about order and harmony in the world. Vishnu is described as a kind of savior, liberator, and awakener of slumbering life, and Shiva is the one who blesses the slumbering life awakened by Vishnu and lifts it up to the heights to which it can possibly be raised. A kind of festival season was dedicated to Vishnu. It was said that he falls asleep at the time of year when we celebrate Christmas and awakens at the time of Easter. Those who call themselves his devotees observe this entire period in a significant way: they abstain from certain foods and drinks, as well as from meat. In this way, they prepare themselves to gain an understanding of what takes place when the Resurrection—the awakening of all nature—is celebrated during the Festival of Vishnu. Christmas, too, is significantly linked to great natural phenomena—namely, that the sun’s power grows weaker and weaker, that the days grow shorter and shorter, and that from Christmas onward the sun once again radiates greater warmth, making Christmas a festival of the reborn sun. The winter solstice was perceived in a similar way by Christians. When Christianity sought to connect with ancient, sacred events in the 6th and 7th centuries, the birth of Jesus Christ was moved to the day on which the sun rose again in the sky. The spiritual significance of the Savior of the world was linked to the physical sun and to life awakening and rising anew.

[ 2 ] In spring, Easter—like all similar festivals—is linked to a specific solar event, which is also reflected in external customs. In the first century of Christianity, the symbol of Christianity was depicted as a cross with a lamb at its foot. A lamb and a ram signify the same thing. In spring, at the time when Christianity was taking shape, the sun appears in the constellation of the Ram or the Lamb. The sun travels through the constellations of the zodiac, advancing a little each year. Approximately six hundred to seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, the sun moved into this constellation. For two thousand five hundred years, the sun has continued to move through this constellation; previously, it was in the constellation of Taurus. At that time, the peoples celebrated what they considered significant in connection with human development through the figure of the bull, because the sun was then in the constellation of Taurus. When the Sun entered the constellation of Aries, or the Lamb, the ram also appeared as a significant symbol in the legends and myths of the peoples. Jason brought the ram’s fleece back from Colchis. Jesus Christ himself referred to himself as the Lamb of God, and in the early days of Christianity he was symbolically depicted as the Lamb at the foot of the cross. Thus, Easter can be linked to the constellation of Aries, or the Ram, and this festival can therefore be regarded as the celebration of the Savior’s resurrection, because the Savior brings everything back to new life after it had died during the winter months.

[ 3 ] On this basis alone, Christmas and Easter do not differ so markedly, for the sun has been regaining its strength since its own festival of resurrection, Christmas. There must be something else expressed in the Easter celebration. In its deepest meaning, Easter will always be perceived as the celebration of the greatest human mystery—not merely as a kind of natural festival linked to the sun, but as something far more significant: it is implied in the Christian meaning of resurrection after death. And the awakening of Vishnu points even more clearly to the awakening after death. The awakening of Vishnu occurs at the time when the sun begins its ascent again in winter, and Easter is a continuation of the rising power of the sun, which has already been on the rise since Christmas. We must look deep into the mysteries of human nature if we are to understand what feelings the initiates had when they sought to express this in the Easter celebration.

[ 4 ] Human beings appear to us as dual beings, uniting a soul-spiritual essence on the one hand with a physical essence on the other. The physical essence is a convergence of all other natural phenomena found in the human environment: they all appear as a beautiful essence within human nature, into which they seem to have converged. Significantly, Paracelsus presents human beings to us as a convergence of all that is spread out in the world: Nature appears to us like letters, and human beings form the word composed of these letters. — The greatest wisdom lies in their structure; physically, they are a temple of the soul. All the laws that we can observe in the lifeless stone, in the living plant, and in the animal filled with pleasure and suffering—they are all brought together in the human being; there they are wisely fused into a single unity. When we contemplate the marvelous structure of the human brain, with its countless cells working together so that everything—the thoughts and feelings of a human being, everything that in some way permeates his soul—can find expression, we recognize the all-pervading wisdom in the structure of his physical body. Throughout the entire environment, when we look out, we recognize crystallized wisdom. And when we penetrate all the laws of the environment with our understanding and then look back at the human being, we see the whole of nature concentrated within him; we see him as a microcosm within the macrocosm. It was in this sense that Schiller said to Goethe: “You take the whole of nature together to shed light on the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, you seek the basis for explaining the individual. From simple organization, you ascend, step by step, to the more complex ones, in order to finally construct the most complex of all—human beings—genetically from the materials of the entire edifice of nature.”

[ 5 ] Thanks to the marvelous structure of the human body, the human soul is able to turn its gaze toward the world around it. Through the senses, the spiritual human being observes the world and gradually seeks to fathom the wisdom upon which the world is built.

[ 6 ] Let us consider a human being who is still quite undeveloped from this perspective: His body is the most rational thing one can possibly conceive; the entire divine reason has converged in that one human body. Yet within it dwells a truly childlike soul, barely capable of forming the first thoughts needed to understand that mysterious power at work in the heart, the brain, and the blood. Very slowly, the human soul develops upward, gradually coming to understand what has been at work in the human body. But this, in itself, bears the imprint of a long past. Humanity stands there as the crown of the rest of creation. Aeons had to pass before the wisdom of the worlds was synthesized within this human body.

[ 7 ] Yet in the soul of the undeveloped human being, worldly wisdom is only just beginning to grow. There, it has barely begun to dream of the great idea of the Universal Spirit that created humankind. But what still dwells within the human being as if asleep—the soul-spiritual—will be understood by humankind in the future. The idea of the universe has been at work through countless cycles of years; it has been creatively active in nature, ultimately forming the crown of all this creation: the human body. Within this human body, cosmic wisdom now slumbers, seeking to recognize itself in the human soul, to form an eye within the human being, and to grasp itself. Cosmic wisdom outside, cosmic wisdom within—creating in the present as in the past, creating into the future, which we can only intuit in its sublimity. The deepest human feelings are stirred when we contemplate the past and the future in this way.

[ 8 ] When the soul begins to comprehend the wonders built up by the wisdom of the worlds, when it attains through this a sober clarity and a luminous knowledge of the heart, then the sun may appear to it as the most magnificent symbol expressing this inner awakening, which opens the soul’s access to the outer world through the gates of the senses. Human beings receive light because the sun illuminates things. What human beings see in the outer world is reflected sunlight. The sun awakens within the soul the power to behold the outer world. The awakening solar soul within the human being, which begins to recognize the world-idea in the seasons, beholds its liberator in the rising sun.

[ 9 ] When the sun begins its ascent once more, when the days grow longer again, the soul turns toward the sun and says: “It is thanks to you that I am able to see the World-Idea unfolding around me—the World-Idea that slumbers within me and within all others.” - And now the human being looks back on his earlier existence, on what preceded the tentative sensing of the idea of the world. After all, the human being is much, much older than his senses. Spiritual research allows us to reach that point in time when the human being’s senses were only just beginning to take shape in their faintest beginnings. We arrive at the point in time when the senses were not yet the gateways through which the soul could perceive its surroundings. Schopenhauer sensed this and characterized the turning point at which human beings attain sensory perception of the world. This is what he means when he says: “This visible world came into being only when there was an eye to see it.” — The sun created the eye; light created light. Earlier, when such external seeing did not yet exist, human beings possessed an inner vision. In the primeval times of human development, it was not an external object that stimulated human perception; rather, images arose within them from within: this ancient form of seeing was a seeing in astral light. At that time, human beings possessed a dim, twilight-like clairvoyance.

[ 10 ] In the Germanic pantheon, human beings also perceived the gods through a dim, twilight-like, astral vision and derived their conceptions of the gods from it. This dim clairvoyance descended into darkness and gradually vanished entirely. It was extinguished by the powerful light of the physical sun, which appeared in the sky and made the physical world visible to the senses. Thus, human astral vision receded. When humanity looks to the future, it becomes clear that this astral vision must return on a higher level: What has now been extinguished due to physical vision will be revived so that humanity’s full, waking clairvoyance may be brought about. In addition to daytime vision, there will be an even brighter, more radiant life for humanity in the light of the future. Physical vision will be complemented by vision in astral light.

[ 11 ] The guides of humanity are those spirits who, through a life of self-sacrifice on earth, have been able to attain—even before death—the state known as passing through the gate of death. This state encompasses those experiences that will later be granted to all of humanity once it has acquired the astral vision that will make the soul and spirit perceptible to it. The Initiates have always referred to this making the spiritual and soul-realms perceptible around us as the Awakening, the Resurrection, the spiritual rebirth, which endows human beings with the gifts of the spiritual senses in addition to the gifts of the physical senses. One who feels the new astral vision awakening within oneself celebrates an inner Easter.

[ 12 ] Thus we can understand that the spring festival always carries with it symbols that recall death and resurrection. The astral light within the human being is dead; it sleeps. But this light will rise again within the human being. A festival that points to the awakening of the astral light in the future is Easter,

[ 13 ] Vishnu’s slumber begins around Christmas, when the astral light sank into slumber and the physical light awoke. When a person comes to renounce the personal, the astral light awakens within them once more; then they can celebrate Easter, and Vishnu may awaken again in their soul.

[ 14 ] In cosmic, spiritual understanding, the Easter festival is linked not only to the awakening of the sun, but also to the blossoming of the plant world in spring. Just as the seed is buried in the earth and must decay in order to awaken anew, so too must the astral light slumber within the human body in order to be reawakened. The symbol of Easter is the seed that sacrifices itself to bring forth a new plant. It is the sacrifice of one phase of nature to give rise to a new one. Sacrifice and becoming—these are intertwined in the Easter celebration. Richard Wagner perceived this idea as beautiful and profound. In 1857, he was at Villa Wesendonk on Lake Zurich, where he looked out upon nature awakening. As he contemplated this, the thought came to him of the world’s Savior who had died and been resurrected—Christ Jesus—and of Parzival, who seeks the most sacred within the soul.

[ 15 ] All the leaders of humanity who have understood how people’s higher spiritual life awakens from their lower nature have grasped the essence of Easter. That is why Dante, too, depicted his awakening on Good Friday in his *Divina Comedia*. This becomes clear to us right at the beginning of the poem. At the age of thirty-five, Dante had this great vision, which he describes. He allows it to unfold in the middle of his life. A normal human life spans seventy years; thirty-five years is the midpoint. He counts thirty-five years as the period for the development of physical experience, during which a person continually absorbs new physical experiences. Then a person is ready for the spiritual to join the physical experience. He is then ready to perceive the spiritual world. When all the growing, developing forces of the physical are united, that is when the spiritual is brought to life. That is why Dante has this vision arise on Easter.

[ 16 ] The initial growth of the sun’s power is celebrated during the Christmas festival. Easter is linked to the midpoint of the sun’s growing power. At the midpoint of spring, at the Easter point, we stand where Dante believed he stood at the midpoint of human life, when he felt the spiritual life dawning within him. Easter is rightly placed at the midpoint of the sun’s ascent, corresponding to the moment when the slumbering astral light is reawakened within the human being. The power of the sun awakens the slumbering seed, the seed resting in the earth. The seed has become a symbol of what takes place within human nature when that which the occultist calls the astral light awakens within the human being. It is born within the human being. Easter is the festival of the Resurrection within the human being. The idea of the redeeming Christ has been linked to the cosmic idea.

[ 17 ] A certain contradiction has been perceived between what Christians see in the Easter celebration and the spiritual-scientific concept of karma. There appears to be a contradiction between this concept of karma and that of salvation through the Son of Man. Those who do not fully understand the fundamental perspective of spiritual science perceive such a contradiction between salvation through Christ Jesus and the concept of karma. They say: The idea of a redeeming God contradicts self-redemption through karma. — They understand neither the Easter concept of salvation nor the concept of the justice of karma in the proper sense. It would be wrong for someone to see another person suffering and say to them, “You yourself have caused this suffering”—and therefore refuse to help them because karma must run its course. That is a misunderstanding of karma. On the contrary, karma says: Help the one who is suffering, for you are here to help. You improve the balance of the karma of necessity by helping your fellow human beings. In doing so, you give them the opportunity to bear their own karma. You then appear as the deliverer from suffering. — In this way, one can also help an entire group of people instead of just one individual. By helping them, you become part of these people’s karma. When a powerful individual such as Christ Jesus comes to the aid of all humanity, it is his sacrificial death that influences the karma of all humanity. He was able to help bear the karma of all humanity, and we can be certain that the redemption through Christ Jesus has been incorporated into the karma of humanity.

[ 18 ] It is precisely the idea of resurrection and redemption that will be truly understood through spiritual science. A Christianity of the future will unite karma and redemption. Because cause and effect are interconnected in spiritual life, this great act of sacrifice must also have its effect in human life. Spiritual science also deepens our understanding of this festive idea. The idea that seems to be written in the world of the stars—which we believe we can read in the world of the stars—this idea of the Easter festival is deepened by spiritual insight. But we also glimpse the depth of the Easter idea in the future rise of the spirit, which will take place within the human being. At present, human beings live in the midst of their lives in disharmonious, confusing states. But they also know: just as the world emerged from chaos, so too will harmony one day emerge from their inner being, which is still chaotic. Just as the planets move in their regular orbits around the sun, so will the inner Savior of humanity arise, who will represent unity and harmony in the face of all disharmony. Through the Easter celebration, everyone should be reminded of the resurrection of the spirit from the current darkened nature of humankind.