The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. Richard Wagner and Mysticism

[ 1 ] Certain prejudices are likely to arise from the outset against an approach such as the one taken here, which seeks to establish a connection between Richard Wagner and mysticism; these prejudices may stem from misunderstandings that can generally be directed against such an examination of an artist from a certain humanities perspective. And a second type of prejudice consists of those directed against mysticism as such.

[ 2 ] Everything that will be said today about Richard Wagner’s position in art on the one hand and in mysticism on the other may give rise to the objection: “Yes, a great deal is being attributed to Richard Wagner that he himself never said, about which he never made any statement whatsoever.” — In response to such a prejudice, it must be said that anyone undertaking an examination such as the one we are conducting today would, of course, raise such an objection from the outset. But when we examine a spiritual phenomenon in the world, it is by no means our intention to state only what the person in question has actually said. If this were thought through consistently, it would make it impossible to engage in any truly higher reflections on the phenomena of the world.

[ 3 ] Just imagine: if a botanist—or, we might say, a poet—were to express, regarding a plant or a natural phenomenon, what he, that is, the botanist, is capable of thinking about this natural phenomenon, or when the poet expresses what he is capable of feeling toward a plant or a natural phenomenon—would anyone then demand that the plant or the natural phenomenon itself be capable of saying what flows from the very depths of the botanist’s or the poet’s soul? It cannot be a matter of what we have to say about a spiritual or any other phenomenon of the world being said by that phenomenon itself. You would then also have to demand that the plant itself be able to express to the botanist the laws of its growth; you would then have to regard it as wrong for the poet to speak of feelings toward a natural phenomenon that this natural phenomenon itself is unable to express. Rather, we must say that it is precisely in the human soul that what the external world cannot say about itself must be revealed.

[ 4 ] Please take everything that is to be said to you today about a spiritual phenomenon such as Richard Wagner in this spirit. Just as it is true that a plant does not itself know the laws of its growth, yet grows and shapes itself according to them, so it is true that an artist need not himself articulate what a spiritual scientist must describe as the laws of his becoming and the laws of his entire being. But it is equally true that the artist lives out these laws and creates in accordance with them, just as the plant creates according to the laws that are discovered afterward—just as it lives out the laws that are imprinted upon it. Therefore, it should not be an objection that Richard Wagner did not say these things himself that are being presented today. The other point relates to what is known as mysticism. Scholars and laypeople speak of mysticism as if it were a dark, nebulous contemplation of the world, in contrast to what is called the actual scientific, conceptual contemplation of the world. The Gnostics, the great mystics of the early Christian centuries, thought differently about mysticism. And those who understand anything at all about mysticism have always thought differently about it. The Gnostics called mysticism “mathesis,” mathematics—not because mysticism is mathematics, but because the true mystic, with regard to his ideas and conceptions of the higher spiritual worlds, strives for the same crystal-clear, transparent clarity that mathematical concepts and ideas possess in certain other fields. Mysticism, when truly grasped, is not a dark, emotional perception of the world, but the clearest, most crystal-clear understanding that can possibly exist. Let us proceed from these two perspectives, which have been set forth here through the refutation of two prejudices.

[ 5 ] One can truly view Richard Wagner from the highest perspective of the humanities. For if there was any seeker of truth in the last century who, throughout his entire life, strove in the most honest and sincere manner to discover the sources and foundations of the world’s mysteries, it was he. He calls his home in Bayreuth “Wahnfried,” thereby himself indicating the reason that “his reverie found peace” there. With these words—that his reverie found peace there—much, indeed a great deal, is said.

[ 6 ] The one who honestly and sincerely strives to walk the path of knowledge, and who, whether in this or that form, artistically or otherwise, gives expression to the realms of spiritual life that he believes he has found on the path of knowledge—the one who walks the path of knowledge so earnestly knows what the word “delusion” means, how many delusions stand in his way on the path of knowledge, and he knows that knowledge is not something that takes place in a sober, dry manner. He knows that, in truth, knowledge is something that unfolds amid the upheavals of inner spiritual life, amid the rises and falls of the human inner being; he knows that there are terrible dangers on the one hand and bliss—wonderful bliss—on the other. And he knows that one thing awaits those who walk this path of knowledge: peace—divine peace—that arises from an intimate immersion in the divine mysteries of the world. Something of this mindset, something of this mood, is expressed by Richard Wagner in the words: “Because my delusion found peace here, let this house be called Wahnfried.”

[ 7 ] He was not an artist like so many others who seek to create out of a vacuous imagination. He was an artist who, from the very beginning, viewed his vocation as a great mission in world history, for whom beauty in artistic creation was to be, at the same time, truth and the expression of insight. Religious feeling and sensibility were, for him, the very soul of artistic creation, and art was something sacred to him. For him, the artist had a kind of priestly calling, and what Richard Wagner gave to humanity as an artist was, in his view, meant to have a religious consecration—to fulfill a religious task and mission in the course of human development. Thus, he saw himself as one of those who, drawing from the depth and fullness of truth, sought to give something to their age.

[ 8 ] If the humanities are not to be a detached, abstract theory, nor a drifting in an unworldly fantasy world, then they must find a way to understand and appreciate a spiritual phenomenon as significant as Richard Wagner from their own perspective. It can do so if it is understood in the right way.

[ 9 ] Richard Wagner had within himself the feeling, the intuition, that led him to the same truths about the origins of human development to which spiritual science also points us. Something deeply connects Richard Wagner to the sensibility and perception of spiritual science, to all true mysticism: what he calls the harmony of the various arts, the unity of the arts, the loving, harmonious interplay of the arts. What he perceived as a shortcoming of our contemporary artistic endeavors was what he called the self-centeredness, the egoism, of the individual arts. He sensed an ideal hovering above him, which presented itself to him in such a way that one art does not go its own way and another goes another’s, but rather that a harmony of the arts takes shape, toward which all can contribute in a selfless manner and with loving devotion. He says that such an art or such an artistic ideal once existed in the course of world history. In particular, he sought such an ideal in ancient Greece, which had preceded the artistic era of Sophocles, Euripides, and others. He says that before the arts had split apart—before dramatic art stood on its own and dance on its own—they worked together, united in selfless striving within the total work of art. He senses this “total work of art” in a kind of clairvoyant vision. History makes no mention of it, but it must agree with him, for it goes back to the primordial state of the various peoples, where not only did the arts work together to form a unified, great harmony, but where the various intellectual and cultural currents worked together as well.

[ 10 ] What we today call art and science, the science of the spirit regards as different branches that have grown from a single root. Whether we go back to ancient Greece, to ancient Egypt, to the Indian and Persian peoples, or even to our own Germanic homeland: everywhere we encounter a primordial culture that our materialistic research cannot reach, but which clairvoyant insight can. We encounter a culture in which there were no separate sciences and arts, where everything was united, where everything was such that one was inclined to call it a mystery. Before there were places of art, before there were places of science, there were places of mystery. What were they? They were a union of wisdom, beauty, and religious devotion.

[ 11 ] We can imagine what took place in those temple sites—which were at once schools and true centers of artistic expression—if we conjure up in our minds the great drama of the world, about which, as I said, materialist history has nothing to report, but which unfolded before those admitted to the ancient sacred sites and the mysteries. Those who were admitted there witnessed, in dramatic presentation, everything that could be brought to bear in terms of dramatic performance and musical artistry—imbued with what was believed to be wisdom and with that which the soul looked up to in true religious devotion. In a few words, we can paint a picture for the soul of what it looked like in that time, about which no records other than those of spiritual science tell us anything. There, those who were admitted gathered to witness a kind of drama of the creation of the world. Such dramas of the creation of the world have existed everywhere. There it was shown how divine primordial beings descended from spiritual heights, how they allowed their essence to flow into the substance of the world, and how that substance took shape as the various natural beings and the various kingdoms of nature—the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and the human kingdom—how, in other words, the Divine flowed into that which shines out toward us and gazes back at us from the various beings of nature, and how this Divine then celebrates a kind of resurrection within human souls.

[ 12 ] What profound personalities have always sensed—that the world has emanated from the Divine, that this Divine comes to consciousness within human souls, as it were, looking out through human eyes and senses and contemplating itself in its own creation—this descent and resurrection of the Divine was celebrated in Egypt in the Osiris drama and in the various sacred sites of Greece. Anyone who was permitted to witness this and saw how all the art and wisdom present served to portray this drama of the creation of the world initially felt a religious mood in the face of this drama, which one might call the primordial drama. With reverence and awe, he beheld the God who descended into matter, slumbered within all beings, and rose again in the human soul. In awe, he savored that mood which Goethe once expressed so beautifully and meaningfully in the words: “When the healthy nature of man functions as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, dignified, and valuable whole, when harmonious contentment grants him a pure, free delight, then the universe, if it could perceive itself, would, having reached its goal, exult and admire the pinnacle of its own being and becoming.” And a wonderful religious mood poured into the hearts of the spectators of this cosmic drama.

[ 13 ] But it was not merely a religious atmosphere that prevailed; there was also wisdom—that which people later came to understand, in the form of scientific concepts, ideas, and notions, about the origin of the world and its entities. One could see this right before one’s eyes: wisdom, perceived in the external image, and science, which was at the same time religion. Since everything one could muster in terms of beauty could be expressed externally in images, and since wisdom harmonized with piety, this cosmic drama was both science and art at the same time.

[ 14 ] The idea that such a primordial harmony had once existed lived on as a vague premonition in Richard Wagner’s soul. At first, of course, he looked to that primordial culture of ancient Greece, which still had a religious character, and he told himself that back then, music, drama, dance, and architecture did not yet function independently, but in the earliest antiquity, they all worked together: religion, art, and wisdom in general. And then, Richard Wagner told himself, the arts stepped out of their selflessness; that is when they became self-serving and egotistical. Now Richard Wagner possessed a profound, prescient intuition. He looked back to the times of the distant past, when people were not yet as individual as they are today, not yet as personal as they would later become—when individuals still felt themselves to be members of their tribe, of their entire people, and when what was called the “spirit of the people” or the “spirit of the tribe” was still regarded as reality. Richard Wagner looked back to those ancient times of natural selflessness, and the idea dawned on him: In order to become individuals, people had to leave those old tribal communities; the personal element had to come to the fore. Only on the basis of the personal element could people gain their freedom. But this freedom cannot be gained without a certain kind of egoism. Thus Richard Wagner looked back on everything that had held people together. People had to leave this selflessness behind; they had to become more and more conscious. This is how the distant past appeared to him. And then he said to himself: After they have attained freedom, they must find their way back to brotherhoods, to loving communities, and out of this consciousness, the selfish person must once again become selfless. Love must permeate everyone once more.

[ 15 ] This strikes him as the ideal of a distant art, and so, for him, the present merges with the future, and it is art to which he assigns an important role in terms of development. Art seems to him to run parallel to the development of humanity. Just as humanity has evolved, so too have the arts. Emerging from a unity of the arts, the arts became self-centered. Drama, architecture, and dance became separate entities. This is how things have turned out in the present. Parallel to a world that has become self-centered, we have art that has also become self-centered. He looks forward to a time when art, too, will once again form an artistic community. That is why Richard Wagner is called the “communist” among artists, because he envisioned such a “communism” of the arts. Thus, he sees in the harmony of the arts—to which he wishes to contribute his small part—a powerful lever for pouring, out of the selflessness of art, something into the souls of people: that very selflessness which must lay the foundation for a future brotherhood of humankind. Thus, artistically speaking, he was a missionary of human social selflessness, seeking to instill in every human soul the impulse that leads the soul toward the inner selflessness which unites people in harmony. Truly, a great missionary ideal arose in Richard Wagner’s soul—an ideal that could be fully grasped and internalized only by a personality who possessed within himself something of the true spiritual impulse and a deep faith in the truth of spiritual life. And Richard Wagner did possess this deep faith.

[ 16 ] We can, as a preliminary step, contemplate Richard Wagner’s belief in the spiritual world beyond the sensory one through one of his works: The Flying Dutchman. Even there, Richard Wagner’s genuine and truly sincere belief in the spiritual world beyond the sensory one becomes evident to us. Bear in mind that I am not in the least claiming that the thoughts expressed here were consciously present in Richard Wagner’s mind, any more than the thoughts of botanists or poets consciously live within a plant. But just as the botanist or poet feels in relation to it, so Richard Wagner lived in accordance with this conception and in accordance with these spiritual laws.

[ 17 ] The materialist looks at the people around him and sees them standing side by side in material existence, isolated from one another in a purely sensory sense. The soul is enclosed within sensory bodies, and so the materialist believes that there is no other kind of communion between human beings than that which is mediated externally and sensually. What one individual can say to another, what one individual can do for another, is purely external and materially real; this is what the materialist believes. That there is a hidden communion among human beings, that there is something that works from soul to soul even when there is no external interaction through linguistic or material means—of this is convinced the one who knows something of the spiritual world behind the sensory world. Secret spiritual influences flow and radiate from soul to soul. What one person thinks and feels—even if it remains confined within the soul—is not meaningless or worthless to the other person to whom those thoughts and feelings relate. The materialist is aware only that another person can be touched by the hand, that one can assist them through material means. He does not believe that the feeling that lives within him has any real significance for other people, or that soul and soul are linked by bonds that cannot be seen with the physical eyes. The mystic knows that such a bond winds its way from soul to soul. Richard Wagner was deeply imbued with the conviction that this is the case.

[ 18 ] If we want to understand what is implied here, let us look back at a beautiful medieval legend—one that people today perceive merely as a legend, but which, for the one who wrote it and for those who know how to understand it mystically, is more than just a legend; it is the expression of a spiritual reality. A legend handed down to us through a medieval epic reminds us of Poor Henry, who suffered from a terrible illness. We hear that only one thing can cure Poor Henry of his terrible illness: namely, if a pure female being sacrifices herself for him. The love of the pure female soul is capable of meaning something, of being something real for another human life. The idea that, in the purely spiritual realm, soul and soul can mean something to one another—something of which materialistic thinking has no conception—lies behind such a legend. Is the sacrifice of the pure female being for Poor Henry, after all, anything other than a sensory expression of what a large part of humanity regards as the mystical effect of sacrifice? Is not the sacrifice of this maiden for poor Heinrich the very thing that the Savior offered on the cross for humanity; is it not that mystical spiritual effect from soul to soul? We see here that something can live behind the outward appearance; our consciousness intuitively believes that such spirituality exists. That is why Wagner turned to the legend of the Flying Dutchman, that man who had bound himself to the material world and cannot find redemption from the matter in which he is entangled. It is not without reason that the Flying Dutchman has been called the Ahasver of the sea, the Eternal Jew of the sea. Just as there is something profound in the idea of the Eternal Jew, so too is there something profound in the idea of the Eternal Jew of the Sea, the Flying Dutchman.

[ 19 ] Let us consider Ahasver from this perspective. He is the person who cannot believe in the Savior, in a figure who leads humanity forward to greater heights, to ever more perfect stages of development. Ahasver is entangled in permanent existence; while the human being, in truth, must ascend from stage to stage if he wishes to progress, the one who does not wish to strive can become bound to matter. He can mock the one who is the guide of humanity to higher and higher stages. Then he must become entangled in matter. What does it mean to be entangled in matter? For those who are entangled in matter, external life repeats itself in eternal monotony. For this is how the material differs from the spiritual: the material always repeats itself, while the spirit ascends. The moment the spirit succumbs to matter, it succumbs to the repetition of the same thing over and over. And so it is with the Flying Dutchman. In those ancient times, the various peoples could have used their exposure to foreign lands to elevate their ideas higher and higher. Those who were able to achieve this regarded sailing across the sea and venturing out to foreign shores as merely a means of perfecting humanity. Those who did not sense the idea of perfection—the flow of the spiritual current—became entangled in the monotony of what belongs solely to matter, to the material world. The Flying Dutchman, who is drawn only to the material, is abandoned by the forces of evolution, by love—which is the means to perfection, the means to ascent and development—so that he becomes entangled in matter and the physical world, and for him, the same cycle must then repeat itself in eternal recurrence. Such beings, who cannot be grasped or drawn toward a higher ascent, must be touched by a virginal being. The being capable of redeeming the Flying Dutchman must be virginal and filled with pure love.

[ 20 ] The soul that is not yet entangled in matter has a connection to the soul that is entangled in matter. Richard Wagner senses this, and he expresses it in such a meaningful way in his drama. This was a mystical sense of truth; it was the sense of the communion of spirits that lies behind the communion of the material world. Truly, one who felt this way was entitled to claim for himself such a lofty spiritual mission as Richard Wagner claimed for himself; he was entitled to direct his flights of thought into realms where he conceived of music and drama in a way entirely different from how they had been conceived before him. In his own way, he looked back to that primordial Greek era, when there were unified works of art, when music merely expressed what the rest of the drama could not fully convey, and when the eternal laws of the universe were expressed in the rhythm of dance. He saw something in the ancient artwork—where dance, rhythm, and harmony still interacted within the dramatic-musical art form of time immemorial. A unique conception of the essence of music arose before him. Richard Wagner saw the very essence of music in the harmony of tones. But he told himself that only when the sister arts contribute what they have to offer to harmony does something from these sister arts flow into the harmony of music. One of these arts is dance. Not the dance that later captivated humanity, but the one that, in the forms of dance, expresses movements in nature and the movements of the stars. Such was the ancient dance. Ancient dance was born out of a sense of the laws of nature; through its own movement, it was a reflection of what moved in nature. This essence of the dance rhythm radiated into musical harmony and gave rhythm to the harmony of music. Then the other sister art joined in: poetry. It could express only a few things in words. But what words could not express, the sister arts had to convey. Thus, dance, music, and poetry worked in harmony, and music emerged as a triad of harmony, rhythm, and melody. It emerged because the sister arts worked together.

[ 21 ] This stood before the mystic as the spirit of the ancient work of art, in which melody, rhythm, and harmony had not yet attained their later perfection. Richard Wagner knows this, and so does the mystic. Now he said to himself: in later times, the arts—which here worked together in sisterly harmony—went their separate ways. Dance became a thing unto itself, and poetry became a thing unto itself. As a result, the rhythmic experience was set apart as something in its own right, and so was music, which no longer wanted anything to do with its sister; just as poetry separated itself from the musical and could no longer flow into the musical.

[ 22 ] Richard Wagner observed how, as people’s selfishness increased, the arts became more selfish, and he traced this development in the arts right up to the present day. We cannot follow him now as he observes the arts becoming more independent and self-centered. Let us see how he himself seeks to create something harmonious out of the one-sidednesses he encounters. Let us follow him in this; it is here that his true greatness is revealed, as he seeks to penetrate to the essence of things in this realm.

[ 23 ] Two spirits stood before Richard Wagner’s soul, each embodying the one-sidedness of the arts he sought to unite. Beethoven and Shakespeare exemplified the one-sidedness of music and the one-sidedness of drama, respectively. For Richard Wagner, Shakespeare was the one-sided dramatist, because it was clear to Richard Wagner that when he looked into his own depths—the entire spectrum of sensations and feelings that cannot be seen from the outside, that cannot be expressed in gestures or even in words when it comes to the essential nature of things—this spectrum of sensations could not be expressed in verbal drama. Verbal drama depicts the action once it has already emerged from inner impulses into space and time. When the drama unfolds, we must conclude that the character has already experienced those impulses. We see all of this already transformed into what the eye can see and the ear can hear, and no longer as the drama unfolding within the character themselves. Thus, the playwright must remain silent about those deeper feelings and sensations that form the foundation for what is outwardly displayed on stage. On the other hand, the one-sided artists—the symphonists, the pure instrumental musicians—are those who, through their marvelous musical textures, are truly capable of portraying what is taking place within the soul: the inner drama that remains gestural-less, that does not spill out into space and time. Thus, on the one hand, he has musical art—the expression of the human inner world—which, when it seeks to express itself outwardly, feels its own inadequacy; and on the other hand, he has dramatic art, which does not align with musical art and is capable of representation only once the impulses have flowed out into space and time. Shakespeare—Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven—represent two sides of this for him, each distinctly artistic. In Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, he sees something that seeks to break through the confines of a one-sided art form. He sees how, in the Ninth Symphony, the shells burst open, as it were, how it, so to speak, finds its full expression in the word, because it seeks to embrace all of humanity in love, because it pushes outward into the whole world. There he sees something that wants to reach out into space and time; and to carry it even further out into space and time—that is what he regards as his mission. Not merely as it is in the Ninth Symphony—letting the expression of feelings, the inner drama of the soul, flow forth—not merely as it is there does he desire it, but he wishes to let it flow into word and action, so that one has both before one on the stage: the inner spectrum of feelings in the music, and in the drama—because it extends into space and time—that which transforms the inner spectrum of feelings into outward actions. Shakespeare and Beethoven in a higher unity—that is what he wants to be. He wants to portray the whole human being.

[ 24 ] When we watch a play on stage, we should not merely see what is happening before our eyes and ears; we also want to hear what the innermost impulses of the human being are. That is why Richard Wagner was not satisfied with traditional opera. For in that form, the poet and the musician worked separately. The poet expressed what he had to express; the musician came along to express the poetry. But music is meant to express what poetry cannot. Human nature consists of the inner self, which cannot be expressed outwardly, and the outer self, which, while it can be expressed in spoken drama, must remain silent regarding the inner impulses. Therefore, music must not merely illustrate the poetry, but rather complete it. Music must express what poetry cannot express.

[ 25 ] This is Richard Wagner’s central idea. This is how he intends to create; this is how he defines his mission: a selfless interplay of music and poetry in a total work of art. And so, fundamentally, we see that this core idea of his traces back to a mystical foundation—to that foundation that seeks to encompass the whole human being, not merely the outer self, but the whole human being, who is permeated by the inner self. Human beings are more than what is expressed outwardly. Richard Wagner knows that a higher self dwells within the human being, that a higher self exists. But the higher self is expressed only partially in what appears in space and time. Yet Richard Wagner seeks to grasp this inner higher reality that transcends the ordinary. Therefore, a single means is not enough for him; rather, he seeks what can encompass the human being in various ways. He must therefore also take refuge in that which goes beyond the immediate personality, that which rises to the superhuman. This occurs in myth. In mythical individuality, it is not the individual human being who confronts us, but, as it were, something superhuman. Myth expresses to us what the superhuman means within the human being. Mythological figures such as Siegfried and Lohengrin express to us that which lives not in one but in many people. Because Wagner wanted to penetrate to the very depths of human beings, he needed the superhuman personalities of the myths.

[ 26 ] We can understand just how deeply he delves into the entire process of becoming and development if we follow him even a little. He rises to address the highest of human mysteries—as expressed so magnificently in the Nibelungen and Parsifal dramas—and seeks to shape them out of his vision, his sensibility, and his feeling for all of humanity.

[ 27 ] We can now shed some light on the realm in which Richard Wagner’s artistic soul lives. Even if we focus on just a few aspects, we will see how deeply he is connected to what is called the mythical context of humanity. Why did Wagner choose the Siegfried drama in particular? What did he want to portray with it? The easiest way to understand this is to build on Richard Wagner’s idea of the entire development of humanity. He looked back to primeval times, when human beings were bound together by close tribal ties in a primal, selfless love. He looked back to those times when people felt that the individual had not yet perceived his independence in his dim consciousness, but rather felt himself to be a member of a tribe to which he belonged—that he felt, as it were, something genuine, something real, in the soul of the tribe. Above all, Richard Wagner sensed how what lived in Europe led back to ancient times, when a primal love still united people into brotherly groups and communities. He also looked back to those times referred to by the spiritual-scientific worldview, which states that everything is in a state of development. The spiritual-scientific worldview tells us that consciousness, too, has developed gradually. Today’s clear consciousness has evolved from states of which faint echoes still remain. In dream consciousness, in the world of imagery, Richard Wagner saw echoes of a pictorial consciousness that was once characteristic of all humanity. Today’s waking consciousness—which lasts from morning until evening, until one falls asleep—has supplanted a much more dulled form of consciousness. In this ancient, dulled state of consciousness, people were connected to one another on a much deeper level. Human individuality had not yet emerged as it would later, and thus neither had human egoism, which represents a necessary stage in human development. Richard Wagner saw that there was a natural love that was already in the blood and that bound individual blood relatives together.

[ 28 ] Now, drawing on rational mysticism, I would like to present a perspective that may seem somewhat grotesque to those who have not heard the other lectures, but which will strike the others as mathematically certain. What lives today in Europe as our clear, everyday consciousness has developed from an ancient humanity—the Atlantean humanity—which preceded our own and lived where the waters of the Atlantic Ocean are today. Those who pay attention to what is happening in the world will know that even the natural sciences already speak of an Atlantean continent. An article on this subject also appeared in the scientific journal Kosmos. There, the ancestors of the people who inhabit Europe today lived under different physical conditions. They still lived in air and water. The ground was largely covered by vast, dense masses of fog. Back then, people did not see the sun as we see it today. It was surrounded by magnificent halos of color, because everything was shrouded in thick fog. Germanic mythology has preserved the memory of those ancient lands in the terms Niflheim and Nibelungenheim. These are memories of that ancient land of mist, and there is a subtle, intimate nuance in what has been preserved from that primeval time as legend: that as the flood gradually engulfed the Atlantic lands, that same flood also formed the rivers of the German Lowlands, so that the essence of the Rhine is regarded as a remnant of that entity which, as the Atlantic mist-being, once covered the lands far and wide. It is as if the waters of the Rhine had flowed out of the mists of ancient Atlantis, of Nebelheim, of Nibelungenheim. This is how the legend portrays it in a dim, intuitive consciousness. And as the peoples migrated eastward—because physical conditions had become such that they had to leave those regions—that dim consciousness faded. It grew brighter and brighter, but egoism also grew stronger.

[ 29 ] The old, dull consciousness gave rise to a certain self-centeredness. As the air cleared, egoism began to rise. The misty vapor of ancient Atlantis formed an atmosphere of wisdom around human beings, an atmosphere filled with selflessness and love. This flowed into the waters of the Rhine and rested there below as wisdom, as gold. But when this is seized by selfishness, selfish power arises at the same time. Thus, as the representatives of the ancient inhabitants of Nibelungenheim journeyed eastward, they saw the Rhine enclose within itself the treasure consisting of the gold of wisdom that had once worked in a selfless manner. All of this lay—albeit not so explicitly—in the world of legend, which Richard Wagner’s soul took hold of. And this soul was so congenial to the great spiritual being that worked within it and preserved the memory of ancient events that it drew from this world of legend that which was the essence of his entire worldview. Thus, in Richard Wagner’s music, we hear the echoes, and in the drama, we see the emergence and weaving of human egoism unfolding across the stage. The closing of the Ring—we see it in the way Alberich takes the gold from the Rhine and the wave maidens. In Alberich, we see the representative of the Nibelungs who has become egoistic. We see the human being who renounces the love that once placed humanity within a greater whole. Richard Wagner links the power of possession to the idea that weaves through that world of legend. This is how he sees that ancient world. Opposing it is the world that founded Valhalla; the world of Wotan stands in opposition to the world of the old gods. They possessed what all human beings once shared. They represent a kind of group soul—and so does Wotan. But when the individual personality is seized by the Ring, which encircles the human ego, he too is gripped by the greed for gold. Thus we see what lived in Wotan as the national soul—that which the human being experiences within himself in a selfish way through the Rhine Gold—expressed in a subtle way throughout Richard Wagner’s entire art, in his entire body of work. We hear it in the sounds of his music. Who could fail to sense it? No one should say that something is being imposed on his work. I have always objected to that. But who could fail to sense, in the E-flat major passage of Rheingold, the emergence of the “I”? How could the human ear fail to perceive the emergence of the “I” in that long note of the E-flat major passage in Rheingold?

[ 30 ] In this way, we could trace Richard Wagner’s mystical sensibility all the way into the realm of musical art.

[ 31 ] We then see how Wotan must grapple not with the consciousness that has woven itself from soul to soul, but with that which has not yet been woven—where the collective consciousness was still felt to be alive. This consciousness appears where Wotan attempts to snatch the ring from the giants. There, the old consciousness appears before him in the form of Erda. The manner in which she speaks is significant. Or is the character not depicted in such a way that she is the representative of the old consciousness—one who not only knows what the intellect comprehends, but also knows, through clairvoyant consciousness, what is happening in the world around her?

You know,
What the depths hold,
What mountains and valleys,
Air and water are interwoven with.
Where beings are,
Your breath blows;
Where minds ponder,
Your mind dwells:
Everything, they say,
Is known to you.

[ 32 ] One cannot describe the consciousness that existed in Nebelheim any more clearly, nor can one characterize the old consciousness any more clearly than is expressed in these words:

My sleep is dreaming,
My dreaming is contemplation,
My contemplation is the flow of knowledge.

[ 33 ] That is how it was: like a dream, but a dream that was aware of the entire world around it, that had an effect from person to person, that reached into the deepest depths of nature. That was his thinking, that was his will, his action, for human beings acted out of this consciousness. This consciousness stepped forward before Wotan in the Earth. A new consciousness arose as a result.

[ 34 ] In all mystical traditions, the Higher is represented by a feminine figure. This is also what lies hidden in Goethe’s beautiful words in the Chorus mysticus: “The Eternal Feminine draws us upward.” Various peoples have depicted this striving of the soul toward a higher consciousness as a union with some feminine figure, in whom the Higher within the human soul is represented. The soul is that which is permeated by the laws of the world, and it is with these laws of the world that it unites, as in a marriage. Thus you can see how, in ancient Egypt with Isis and everywhere else, a higher state of consciousness of the soul is portrayed as feminine—in a manner that corresponds to the character of a people. What the people perceive as their very essence is represented to them in the connection between the human being and the respective feminine figure, either in death or already during life.

[ 35 ] As the lectures have shown us so far, there are two ways in which a person can transcend the sensory realm. First, a person can shed the sensory realm and unite with the spirit in death, or even here in life, when their spiritual eye is opened. Accordingly, we see how this higher realm, which a person can experience, is also depicted as a female figure in German mythology. For the ancestors of Central Europeans, it is the warrior who fights bravely and falls on the battlefield who, after death, enters the spiritual world to be united with the Higher; hence the Valkyrie comes to meet the warrior, carrying him up into the world of the spiritual. The female figure of the Valkyrie represents the connection with the higher consciousness. Wotan sires Brünnhilde with Erda; Siegfried is destined to unite with her when he is led into the spiritual life. Erda’s daughters represent the higher consciousness of the initiate. Within Siegfried, the new human being is growing, one who, through a special development and perfection of the inner self, can already achieve union with the Valkyrie during his lifetime.

[ 36 ] Richard Wagner gave expression to what German mythology holds and what lives within it. He also expressed the idea that the ancient group soul must die in Götterdämmerung, just as the individual consciousness of the human being must find its fulfillment in Siegfried. All of this was at work, alive, and interwoven within his soul. The highest problems of humanity lived and worked within him, and he portrayed them—insofar as they represent the inner life of the human being—through music, and insofar as they represent human deeds—through drama,

[ 37 ] Thus we see how Richard Wagner, as an artist, draws upon the mystical to depict humanity’s higher destiny. This also led him to make a profoundly significant figure—the figure of Lohengrin—the centerpiece of such a dramatic creation. Who is Lohengrin? We can only understand this Lohengrin if we see how the legend took root among the people during a time when significant social upheavals were taking place throughout Europe. We understand what lived in the soul of the one who portrays the image of Lohengrin in his union with the woman who, in Richard Wagner’s work, is Elsa of Brabant. We see how, throughout Europe, a new era is taking shape—the era in which the struggle of human individuality finds expression. We can express this through something seemingly quite prosaic, yet behind which lies something very profound. In France, Scotland, England, and as far away as Russia, everywhere we see a new social structure emerging: the free city. While out in the countryside people lived in the lingering echoes of old tribal communities, those who wanted to break free from tribal ties streamed out of them and into the city. There, in the city, a sense of individual freedom arose. There lived the people who wanted to break free from the bonds of belonging, who wanted to live their lives there and there alone. It was a powerful upheaval that took place at that time. Until then, it was one’s name that determined where a person belonged and what they were worth. In the city, a name was worth nothing. Who cared which family a person came from? There, a person was worth as much as their abilities. There, the individual human being developed. The development from selflessness to individuality became the development from individuality to a brotherhood. This is what the legend depicted in the middle of the Middle Ages, as the old was replaced by what a person was able to give of themselves from within.

[ 38 ] Let us look back at the ancient ruling priestly lineages, at those who were once leaders, at those who produced the noble families and the sages: they came from family clans. What mattered was that they belonged to such a clan, that they had the right blood. In the future, this will no longer matter. The one who will be a leader of humanity may be unknown because of what connects him to humanity; to give him a name would be to profane him. Hence the ideal of great individualities, the ideal of the nameless sage, which is taking shape more and more. The nameless sage is defined not by his lineage, but by what he is. He is the free individual recognized by others because he is entirely self-contained, because he desires to be nothing other than what he is to others. Thus Lohengrin stands as a representative, as a guide leading humanity toward freedom. We see the medieval sense of community represented in the woman who unites with Lohengrin. The one who stands between humanity and the great beings—who mediates the connection between the great leaders of humanity and the people—was united with one of humanity’s great individualities. Such a being has always had a specific name. In all esoteric and spiritual sciences, this being is referred to by the technical term “swan.” The Swan represents a very specific stage of higher spiritual development. The Swan unites the ordinary human being with the higher guide of humanity. We see a reflection of this in the legend of Lohengrin.

[ 39 ] We do not need to frame such things in terms drawn from a pedantic view of life. Yes, we are wrong to do so. We can only achieve clarity when our concepts become more open-minded, so that the things Richard Wagner makes understandable to us are not pedantic empty phrases, but rather spark ideas that unfold far, far beyond. Allow me not to present you with concepts that have pedantic contours, but rather ones that open up broad perspectives. That is why one must present a figure like Lohengrin in his world-historical significance and show how an understanding of this took shape in Richard Wagner’s soul and how this understanding took on artistic form.

[ 40 ] This is exactly what happened to Richard Wagner with the idea of the Holy Grail. In the last lecture, “Who Are the Rosicrucians?,” this idea of the Holy Grail arose in our souls. It is most remarkable that, at a certain point in time, something dawned upon Richard Wagner’s soul that was like a premonition of that great medieval teaching about the Holy Grail. This teaching only dawned on him after another had preceded it. It was in 1856 that the idea emerged in Richard Wagner’s soul that was to be portrayed in the drama Die Sieger (The Victors). The drama was never staged. However, what he wished to encapsulate in it found expression in Parsifal. But the concept of the drama Die Sieger reveals where that idea was headed:

[ 41 ] Ananda is loved by a Chandala girl. But Ananda is kept far removed from the Chandala girl’s love by caste prejudice. He is not allowed to pursue the Chandala girl’s love. He triumphs over his own nature by becoming a disciple of the Buddha. In the Buddha’s community, he finds victory; there he finds himself again; there he overcomes his human inclinations; and it is revealed to the Chandala girl that in a previous life she was a Brahmin girl who had rejected the love of a Chandala youth. She, too, then becomes victorious and is united in spirit with Ananda, the Brahmin youth.

[ 42 ] Richard Wagner expresses this idea beautifully; it goes all the way back to the anthroposophical-Christian foundations of reincarnation and karma. We are led to the point where, in her previous life, the girl brought upon herself what she is now experiencing. He had already worked this out in 1856.

[ 43 ] It was in 1857, on Good Friday, that he sat in the hermit’s hut, the “Asylum on the Green Hill,” looking out over the field and watching as the plants emerged from the ground. There he had a glimpse of those driving forces that emerge from the earth through the sun’s rays and permeate the entire world—a glimpse of that driving force that lives within every being but cannot remain in its present form. If it is to ascend to higher and higher levels, it must pass through death. Thus, it was precisely in the sprouting and budding plant life that he beheld—as he turned his gaze out over Lake Zurich and the Villa Wesendonck—that he sensed the polar idea, the other idea, the idea of death: that which Goethe so beautifully expressed in the line that concludes the poem “Selige Sehnsucht”:

And as long as you don’t have that,
This: Die and Be Reborn,
You are but a gloomy guest
On this dark earth.

[ 44 ] And what he described in his Hymn to Nature: Nature invented death because she wanted more life, because she can create a higher, spiritual life only through death.

[ 45 ] This is how Richard Wagner felt on Good Friday, when the symbol of death stands before humanity and the collective memory of humankind. There he sensed the connection between death, life, and immortality. He directs his feelings from the life that springs forth from the earth to death on the cross—a death that is, at the same time, the primal source of the Christian faith that life will triumph over death, that it will attain eternal life. The life of eternity springs from this death. The profound kinship between the idea of Good Friday—the idea of redemption—and the sprouting, budding nature lived within Richard Wagner, and this idea is identical to what we have described as the Grail idea, in which the chaste plant, with its blossom, strives toward the sun in contrast to the lustful human being. He saw how human beings are permeated by desire, and contemplated the ideal of the future, in which humanity, by overcoming desire, will have attained the higher consciousness—that higher, life-giving force—which the Spirit will bring forth. And he gazed upon the cross, where the blood of the Redeemer flowed and was caught in the Grail cup, which formed the symbol for this idea of redemption, and to him it became linked with the unfolding of nature. This idea stirred within Richard Wagner’s soul in 1857, and at that time he jotted down in a few strokes what he later expressed in his Good Friday Magic. He wrote: “From death, the emerging plant world; and in death, immortal life for the Christian.” There he sensed the Spirit behind all things and the Spirit as the victor over death.

[ 46 ] Although this idea of Parsifal initially had to take a back seat to the other artistic ideas in his soul, it nevertheless emerged toward the end of his life, when it became increasingly clear to him as a symbol of humanity’s path to knowledge. This led him to depict the path to the Holy Grail in order to show how humanity’s nature of desire can be purified. This ideal is represented by the holy, pure chalice, which symbolizes the calyx of a plant fertilized by the sunbeam—the holy lance of love—into pure and chaste new creation. The sunbeam pierces into the material world just as Amfortas’s lance pierces the sinful blood. But there it causes suffering and death. If this sinful blood is purified so that it is as pure as the calyx of a plant flower on a higher plane—free from desire, chaste as the plant’s calyx in the presence of the sunbeam—then this appears as the path to the Holy Grail. The path to it can be found only by one who, with a pure heart—untouched by what the world offers, devoid of worldly knowledge—proceeds as a pure fool, and within whom the quest for the mystery of the world lives.

[ 47 ] Thus we see how, in Richard Wagner, the idea of Parsifal is born from the idea of the Holy Grail on a mystical foundation. He once sought to portray this by intending to present the entire medieval history in a kind of historical reflection in his work Die Wibelungen. The medieval imperial ideal was to be spiritualized by having Barbarossa set out for the East, and he intended to let everything Indian—where the hero sought the original spiritual essence of Christianity—flow into the outer empire. Thus, for him, the idea of the medieval imperial sagas finds its expression in the Parsifal saga, and thus he was able to artistically express the Good Friday tradition of Christianity in the Parsifal concept in such a marvelous way that I may say: Richard Wagner accomplished what he had envisioned as his ideal—to make art religious. In this artistic reimagining of the Good Friday tradition, Richard Wagner gave expression to that beautiful, ingenious idea of the interplay between the motifs of faith and the Grail—the idea that humanity will be redeemed, that, as it perfects itself, will strive toward redemption, and that what flows through humanity as spirit—of which every soul possesses a drop as its higher self—shines forth in Christ Jesus as the redemption of humanity.

[ 48 ] This was already present in Richard Wagner’s soul on that Good Friday in 1857 and inspired him to connect the idea of Parsifal with redemption through Christ Jesus, who permeates the spiritual atmosphere in which humanity lives, and whom we can sense when we empathetically experience the story of the Holy Grail. This can be reawakened to a concrete spiritual and soul life when, within the idea of Good Friday, one senses once more the transition from the midnight of Maundy Thursday—from the receding world of Maundy Thursday—to Good Friday, the symbol of the victory of resurgent nature.

[ 49 ] The revival of festivals was also something that lived within Richard Wagner when he gave birth to his work of art from a direct festive idea. Festivals are born out of a living understanding of nature. Easter was established at a time when people knew that the constellations of the sun and moon exert an influence from nature upon the human mind. This is concretely expressed in the Easter festival. People today want to define it abstractly, so that it is no longer experienced in the same way as when one is intimately familiar with nature. When one perceives spiritually, one perceives everything around us spiritually. If we still sense what tradition has handed down to us in terms of festivals, then we will also sense there something of what Good Friday is meant to give us. Richard Wagner sensed this, and he also felt what the Savior’s words, “I am with you until the end of the world,” are meant to signify: Follow the paths that can lead you to the lofty ideal of the Holy Grail. Then those who live in the truth will themselves become saviors. A Savior has redeemed humanity. But Richard Wagner adds another thought: When is the Savior redeemed? He is redeemed when he dwells in every human heart. Just as he has descended into every human heart, so must every human heart ascend. And Richard Wagner also sensed something of this when, drawing on a motif of faith, he allowed humanity’s mystical feeling to find its culmination in the beautiful words of Parsifal:

“The greatest miracle of salvation:
Salvation to the Savior!”,

[ 50 ] this word, which so truly reveals his kinship and union with the highest ideal a human being can set for himself: to draw near to that power that lives in the world and seeks to descend to us. If we wish to become worthy of it, then let us echo what resounds at the end of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal: “Salvation to the Savior.”