The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. On the Book of the Dead

[Ladies and gentlemen!]

[ 1 ] The exact date of the Book of the Dead’s composition cannot be determined. In any case, it is one of the most important documents because it shows us that, even in such early times in Egypt, a worldview and a profound understanding prevailed that strictly aimed at a unified world and which, on the other hand, already contained within it the remarkable urge to conceive of death as a symbol, to view death not as something terrible in and of itself, but as something that can be regarded as a symbol, as a mere metaphor that stands far above [life]. If death is to be overcome, it is clear that death can only be overcome spiritually. It essentially deals with the transition from physical life to the afterlife—and that means nothing other than life itself. We can describe more precisely what is contained in the Book of the Dead. It contains songs, hymns to the sun god Ra, to Osiris, the son of the sun god—hymns that are primarily attributed to the dead. These deceased, who have set out on the path to the afterlife, are to experience something; they are to gain insight into what they see and what they perceive of those who are no longer bound to the body. That is in the first part. The second part consists of the deceased being held accountable in a kind of judgment for the debts he has incurred. He is weighed, and depending on the outcome, his value within the overall structure of the universe is revealed. Those who have attained a high level will not—as is so often said—come to Osiris, but rather they will become “Osiris.” It is remarkable that the book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the [sun] god Ra, the second part deals with human destiny, and the third part then shows the path to Osiris—the path that leads to deification. This book thus depicts the path to life—the path from individual life to universal life—which is attained through enlightenment and the deification of the human being.

[ 2 ] The details of the Book of the Dead are, in many and varied ways, of great importance to the history of the development of worldviews. For example, in the Book of the Dead we find the myth of Osiris’s struggle with Typhon, Osiris’s enemy—Hatred. Isis had to find Osiris again in the cosmos, and she then gives birth to the younger Osiris, Horus, whom she describes as the deification of the cosmos. We find this in the Book of the Dead.

[ 3 ] But we also find the doctrine of the seven-part human being in it. The Egyptians conceived of the human being as consisting of the body, the spirit-body, and the mummy.

So we have three levels:
1. Heart, feeling, or mind,
2. Genius and creativity,
3. the Holy Spirit and intelligence.

[ 4 ] These are, roughly speaking, the details of this Book of the Dead, which was certainly much better known in antiquity than in later times. In later times, awareness of the teachings as expressed in the Book of the Dead was lost. However, we frequently find the teachings of the Book of the Dead reflected in Greece, and the entire Greek spiritual life of the post-Pythagorean era can only be understood if one assumes that [its] views were based on the teachings of this Book of the Dead—namely, the tripartite division of the human path of knowledge and the ultimate merging into the nature of Osiris. That is, if one assumes that these teachings were transplanted to Greece and that the same views essentially persisted there. It must be noted, however, that the Egyptians lacked an intermediate stage that played a greater role among the Greeks, namely, myth developed with [a certain sense of beauty]. The Greeks loved to embellish everything with beauty. Therefore, we have been compelled to regard the entire Greek religion—the entire Greek worldview that lies between Pythagoreanism and Platonism—as an aesthetic one. We can do so if we view it as having emerged from Greek myth, but in its spiritualized form.

[ 5 ] We are familiar with the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, the myth of the Argonauts, and so on. However, we can always assume—and we must keep this in mind—that the myth exists in a threefold sense:

1. The first meaning is that in its immediate form as the purely naturalistic conception,
2. then as something human, as a symbol, and
3. thirdly, as the divine.

[ 6 ] And the third, the divine, was the concept that was taught only to a select few—only to those who had prepared themselves for it. We can already prove this historically. We are told of Samothrace, an island, that the deities there were nothing more than names for other deities. However, one should not assume that these were the same as the names of the Greek or Egyptian deities. To outsiders, they bore the same names. But to the initiates, they represented deeper understandings of the entire body of myths and stories of the gods.

[ 7 ] The best-known Greek myth is that of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, followed by the myth of Dionysus, which has already been mentioned several times. Demeter, one of the supreme female Greek deities, was initially conceived in a naturalistic sense. She had a daughter, Persephone, with Zeus. Persephone was abducted by Hades, the god of the underworld. Hades had requested permission to take this daughter as his wife in the underworld. She was to remain in the upper world only temporarily. She was to spend two-thirds of her time in the upper world and one-third in the underworld. This myth, which is alive everywhere in Greece in its naturalistic sense, was also the one found in certain mysteries—namely, the Eleusinian Mysteries—and formed the basis for them. This myth also had a threefold meaning. The naturalistic meaning simply lies in taking the factual as such—that is, in having a mythological account of the gods. The second interpretation would then be something that took place in [Greek] life, namely the marriage of the Ionic spirit with the Doric spirit.

[ 8 ] The Greek people were, after all, divided into tribes. Among the most important were the Dorians and the Ionians. The legend of Demeter originated among the Dorians, and the Ionians had adopted it and blended it with the myth of Dionysus. The myth of Dionysus interests us because it leads to an esoteric interpretation. Dionysus is also a son of Zeus and Demeter. He was torn apart, and only his heart could be saved. From it, Zeus formed the younger Dionysus. But he could no longer retrieve the limbs. It is thus the case that the world represents the scattered limbs. This, therefore, represents the marriage of the Doric Persephone to the Ionian Dionysus. The fusion of these two worldviews has thus taken place within this myth.

[ 9 ] But what remains to be noted now is the third, the divine perspective. We can understand this historically only if we rely on the scant information we have. We are first directed to that temple in which the cult of Demeter takes place. This cult of Demeter is a service in which the three deities mentioned above appear before us. Demeter herself is depicted there as one of the greatest deities of Greece, symbolically represented, with the inscription: “I am the origin of the soul; I am the origin of the spirit.” Beside her, Persephone is presented to us with the inscription: “I am death, and I carry within me the mystery of life.” Her brother Dionysus is presented to us with an even more remarkable inscription: “I am death, I am life, I am rebirth, and I am adorned with wings.”—When we understand this, we arrive at the interpretation of one of the most important Greek myths. Demeter loses her daughter. She must surrender her Persephone to Hades. She could return to her mother if she had not already tasted the pomegranate fruit while in Hades, which prevents her from returning fully. This Persephone is meant to save her brother. This is only possible—now in a deeper sense—if Persephone returns, if Dionysus sacrifices himself. We must again consider these two in context. We must recognize that sacrifice is what matters here. This is shown by the fact that Orpheus—who is traditionally credited with having communicated the deeper meaning of this to the Greek people—was also sacrificed, for it is also reported that he was torn apart and lives on as a spirit by having flowed into the material world. The child of eternal life must be sacrificed to Hades, to Pluto. We can understand this only if we see the material world in Pluto. Thus, according to the esoteric view, we must see in Demeter the universal spirituality, the primordial mother of intelligence, and in Hades the material world. Throughout the entire Persephone myth, we must recognize the necessity of Persephone’s separation from her mother. The daughter must enter into matter. She must partake of the pomegranate of the underworld. Now she can no longer save herself from the material world, and therefore a second sacrifice is necessary. Persephone’s brother, Dionysus, must in turn sacrifice himself once more. He must allow his [own] spiritual nature to flow out into the greater nature, so that Persephone may now enter into a spiritual marriage with her brother, yet still be able to flow back to the original spirit of the primordial mother, Demeter. This mystery of the necessary separation of the spiritual from itself, this immersion of spirits into the material, and this longing of the spirit to return to the spiritual is expressed in the myth of Demeter.

[ 10 ] This was the vivid experience that was to be imparted to those who were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. They were to feel the urge to find their way back from matter to the spiritual Mother. This is what lived in Greece in the spirit of a select few and what underpin the entire worldview spanning from Pythagoras to Plato. What lived as the deeper spirit within these figures—from Empedocles through Anaxagoras to Socrates and Plato—sometimes appears merely as a logical chain of thought in what the philosophers present to us. But it is an exposition of the Greek myth—an exposition that was cultivated wherever people sought a deeper foundation. This is what appears to them as a mere logical chain of thought.

[ 11 ] I would like to point out another myth that was perpetuated even more frequently than the Demeter myth, one that is perhaps easier to understand, and which was perpetuated to gradually guide initiates into a deeper spiritual understanding of the nature of the world. I would like to point out the myth of the Argonauts’ voyage. In every single detail, this myth demonstrates that it can only be understood as a symbolic expression of a deeper wisdom. Phrixus and his sister Helle set out on the ram [...] to visit the barbarian king. On the way, Helle falls into the sea, and Phrixus alone reaches the shore with the ram. When they arrived among the barbarian people, the ram was sacrificed to the king. The ram’s fleece, however, is hung in the sacred grove of the gods and guarded by a great dragon. Jason, together with Orpheus, Heracles, Theseus, Castor and Pollux, Meleager, Peleus, Neleus, Admetus, Pirithous, and many others, sets out to retrieve this ram’s fleece [—the Golden Fleece—]. These are the great heroes of Greece. It is significant that Jason sets out to retrieve the fleece alongside the representatives of the highest Greek spirituality. He does indeed obtain this fleece and brings it back. The dragon guarding the fleece is defeated by Jason. The dragon’s teeth are then sown, and from them spring forth armored men who wage war against one another. Finally, to put it briefly, he obtains the fleece with the help of the sorceress Medea. On the way back, however, Medea decides to dismember [her] younger brother Apsyrtos. Their father, Aeetes, gathers the pieces and is thus unable to catch up with the fleeing party. The fleece is brought back to Greece.

[ 12 ] We must also interpret this in three ways: first, naturally; second, humanly; and third, divinely. [As a human event, it is of no interest, but in its divine significance, this myth perhaps leads us deepest into the Greek spiritual world.] Phrixos is divine vision, that which points us toward the abyss of divine being, toward the premonition of infinite depth. Nothing else is expressed in the personality of Phrixos. [Helle is the personality, the representative of humanity before the Fall, for whom the struggle of the spirit against materiality has not yet taken place]—the undivided humanity, connected to nothing other than the infinite vision of infinity. [Both set out on the path to the holiest thing they possess. And the representatives of the human soul first enter the sacred grove of the gods to sacrifice it and to set out on the path of life with this human soul.] We have only one other character in the Argonaut expedition. Phrixos sets out on the path of life into the realm of the barbarians beyond the sea. This is to be understood as the realm of the passions, as the realm of sensuality. The human soul is to be sacrificed to the realm of materiality. It is to be sacrificed to the turmoil and bustle of the world. Through this, something is lost: the original innocence. It is initially submerged, lost. It is initially something that has flowed out into existence. [It is something that is initially completely lost; therefore, it is submerged in the Hellespont. The soul is led into life, where we have nothing but a dark impulse, where we must find our way back to the higher life.] But [the soul] must now be redeemed, just as Persephone was by Dionysus. It must be redeemed. That which had to be sacrificed to life must be redeemed. It must be redeemed here by Jason, the Greek hero. The ram is sacrificed to the gods. Only the ram’s fleece—that which envelops the human soul as a covering—is first hung in the sacred grove of the gods and carefully guarded by the dragon. At first, this is nothing other than what is given in the Book of the Dead. [The ram’s fleece] represents enlightenment and insight. It must first be rescued from the fury of the terrible forces that lie in wait for it. The prince Jason must, through insight, gain mastery over these forces in conjunction with spiritual and physical powers. He must bring this ram’s fleece back to Greece, aided by Medea—that is, a female figure. I have already pointed out that, in Greek, the female figure signifies a state of consciousness. The soul must be redeemed with the help of Medea’s magical power. From this state of absorption, it can then be led back up to its deification, its divine transformation. This is the deeper meaning of the Argonaut legend.

[ 13 ] The fact that the young son of Aietes—Medea’s brother—must be killed so that Medea’s father cannot catch up with [the fleeing Jason] also has its significance. The one who has achieved this must leave behind many things that have been part of his life. He must let go of certain loves, specifically so that [he cannot be caught up with] on the path to deeper insights. Thus concludes the legend of the Argonauts. Essentially, it is nothing more than a different interpretation—one more tailored to human individuality—of the legend that we also encounter in the myth of Demeter.

[ 14 ] This interpretation of the Greek myth then emerges, in a philosophically one-sided form, in a figure who represents a kind of “fall from grace” for the Greek worldview: Parmenides, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. He was the first to point out, in a rational manner, that sensory knowledge cannot satisfy human beings. He pointed out that human beings cannot get to the bottom of things and that the ebb and flow of the world cannot be the Truth, but rather that the Truth must be something much deeper—that it can only be something purely spiritual. He initially expressed this as follows: True being can only be attained through pure thought, through the deepest knowledge, while the senses merely present us with a dream. — Thus, for Parmenides, all being is divided into two parts: on the one hand, the sensory illusion, and on the other, the intellectual, the mental being. Yet there is still something he was unable to find, and that is the self. He was unable to find, alongside the figure of Persephone, the figure of Dionysus; alongside the urge to escape the sensory realm, the spirit. Parmenides did not take that [step]. He saw only what is enchanted in the sensory world and, on the other side, Demeter [and Hades], materiality. But he could not find the path that unites the two.

[ 15 ] We encounter the same idea in a slightly different form in Empedocles, who stated that the Primordial Being had dissolved into a series of elements: fire, water, earth, and air. In these four elements, he saw nothing other than individual, eternal manifestations of primordial Being, the eternal world spirit. And in every single thing, he saw specific mixtures of the four elements—including in human beings. The fact that human beings also consist of a mixture of the same elements as the world means that human beings can comprehend the world. Like can be recognized by like. This is the same thing that Goethe says:

If the eye were not like the sun,
it could never behold the sun.
If God’s own power did not dwell within us,
how could the divine delight us?

[ 16 ] Empedocles, then, had already held this view. He even believed that essence reigns in all being, [so that] he had already [foreshadowed] the line from Goethe’s Faust: “Sublime Spirit, you gave me, gave me everything ...” [anticipated] it. Empedocles had already recognized this totality of being. He believed that, before rising to the higher realm, one must pass through the lower stages. The spirit must pass through the stages of inorganic, elemental being, the stages from plant to animal existence, up to the human form, and must always follow them. Therefore, he sees in love and hatred that which brings the elements together. Thus, Empedocles describes life as a constant struggle between love and hatred. In this way, the sage also recounts the struggle between [Osiris-Isis and Typhon] and the struggle between Persephone and [Hades].

[ 17 ] Thus, we see in Empedocles’ teachings nothing other than the elaboration of what [Empedocles] was able to learn in the Greek mystery schools. We shall see later that he does not consider anything described to philosophers as incomprehensible to be incomprehensible himself.

[ 18 ] It has been handed down to us that human existence is not confined to the individual self, but that this human existence was already present before it entered the individual personality, and that, after it leaves that personality, it will once again be present in other forms and guises. In short, [Empedocles] holds the view of the transmigration of souls, or metempsychosis. He was initiated into the teachings of the Pythagoreans. The philosophers could not understand how Empedocles had arrived at this doctrine, since he assumes that the soul is merely a mixture of the four elements, yet attributes to it a distinct existence in that it can assume various forms. We will come to understand that Empedocles sees in these four elements nothing other than the one eternal Primordial Being, which has poured itself out into existence; thus, we must regard them merely as a particular manifestation of existence that flows back again to the Primordial Being. Thus, in Empedocles’ spiritual conception, we find something higher than the merely sensory. Empedocles’ philosophy is nothing more than a philosophical interpretation of the myth of the Argonauts, the myth of Demeter and Persephone, and so on.

[ 19 ] These teachings were then adopted by Socrates and Plato, and when we encounter the figure of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues, we should not understand him as the historical Socrates. For Plato, Socrates appears as the master of the school, and he portrays the school in his dialogues. Socrates was regarded by Plato as such a guide. In the Platonic dialogues, the focus is not on the historical Socrates, but on the spiritual guide—the one who leads from the lowest levels of knowledge up to the highest. We cannot comprehend the meaning of the Platonic dialogues unless we view them as a conceptual representation of a mystical instruction—as an instruction and an ascent from the lowest to the highest levels of knowledge.

[ 20 ] I recently mentioned the discussion about the immortality of the soul. This is usually understood as if the immortality were to be proven through logical reasoning. However, the point is not to prove the immortality of the soul, nor is it about what has been written on the subject—whether the proof was successful or not. When someone says that the proof no longer resonates with us today, that person is merely demonstrating that they have not grasped the entire spirit of the Phaedo. The point is not to prove whether the soul is immortal, but something entirely different. We may assume that Plato also passed through the schools of the Sophists. Protagoras was the founder of the “phrase”: He is portrayed [in the Platonic dialogue Protagoras] as one who led knowledge astray. However, we must not forget that Socrates was a profound [ironist]. We must not forget that the Greeks had their own conception of irony, that they understood it to be something essential for illuminating their entire worldview. Socrates combated the Sophists with irony. What are the Sophists? The statements made by Protagoras characterize them:

[ 21 ] [“Man is the measure of all things—of those that are, that they are; of those that are not, that they are not.” And:] We cannot prove anything conclusively. A statement can be made about any thing, but the opposite can also be said about every thing. This seemed to spell the end of all knowledge. Even today, it seems as if the Sophists engaged in a vain game with ideas, as if they had wanted nothing more than to talk about everything. Vanity, it is said, was their purpose; purpose alone was the measure of all things. The Sophists by no means adopted this absurd and downright frivolous standpoint. The Sophists are, if I may put it this way, the figures within Greek intellectual life who sought to reduce [pure] knowledge flowing from the intellect to absurdity, but who also carried out the ancient Apollonian maxim in a different way: “Man is the measure of all things”—which means nothing other than that man must ascend into himself and seek within himself. — Do not content yourself with superficial intellectual knowledge, but immerse yourself in your true self. — They tentatively adopted pure logic, only to lead it all the more surely into error. One can prove one thing, and one can prove the other. But the Sophists merely wanted to demonstrate the worthlessness of logic. To remain stuck at the level of what confronts us externally—at the level of purely intellectual knowledge—is worthless. Man would have to be just as unsatisfied with this knowledge as he would be with a purely sensuous, spiritless life.

[ 22 ] Plato had become acquainted with this form of sophistry, and he apparently opposed it, not because he regarded it as a worthless phenomenon, but as an irony. He adopted Protagoras’s standpoint, and Protagoras always comes up short when compared to Socrates, who seeks to grasp the world not through reason but through immediate experience and the emotions. Yet this is no different from the standpoint the Sophists themselves had asserted. The Sophists had to be challenged because they wanted to expose these propositions in all their absurdity, to show where each one leads. Thus, by leading beyond sophistry, Socrates led to a deeper understanding. He liberates his students from their faith in reason. This liberation is expressed to us in all those dialogues [in which the Sophists, Socrates’ immediate predecessors, are challenged]. The dialogues are composed solely for the purpose of dissuading people from believing in the provability of higher knowledge. That is the meaning of the Platonic dialogue. No one would believe that one can prove the existence of a flower. No one will seek proof that a flower exists. It is enough that we experience its existence. One cannot prove a thing. One can provide proof regarding the relationship between things. One can prove that a certain fact must exist based on a connection one has already perceived. But one can never prove a thing that one has absolutely not perceived. It is therefore not at all a matter of logically proving something, but rather of expanding the realm of experience, of opening up the realm of experience into the metaphysical. Something that lies beyond experience should be revealed. [It] is not, then, a matter of saying: “Here you have experience, and there you should pay attention to something that lies behind it.” It is not to be deduced logically, but experienced spiritually. It is not to be proven, but experienced.

[ 23 ] The same is true in the Phaedo. One must experience what Socrates means by “soul.” He does not seek to prove the immortality of the soul, but rather to guide his students to experience the spiritual just as they experience the physical. The Phaedo is about the discovery of the soul. It is about experiencing the soul. Once his students have truly “experienced the soul,” its characteristics will soon become clear to them. If one is to be shown a flower, one shows him the flower; one does not make him prove it.

[ 24 ] This is what is meant by the Socratic method. The Socratic method is usually understood in a much more trivial sense. The Socratic method means nothing other than the opening up of an entirely new field of experience, the awakening of new senses, the opening up of a new realm of experience; and Socrates’ teaching is that every person can be guided toward such higher [cognitive] powers. And in the Socratic method, it is dialogue that guides one toward these powers.

[ 25 ] In these dialogues, we will find the most profound method and the truest mysticism, and we will see the form in which [Greek] mysticism has expressed itself in the most profound and experiential way. I am convinced that Plato’s teachings can only be understood superficially—that his theory of ideas can only be seen as a void of ideas—if one does not draw this theory from the depths of Greek spiritual life, if one does not take into account the tragedy of life expressed in the myth of Demeter, which depicts how the dearest thing Demeter possesses must first be lost, only to seek the way back again. And the legend of the Argonauts depicts how a person must lose themselves on the path of life in order to then redeem themselves with the help of their newfound strength. In that legend, then, is expressed that deep tragedy which lies in the fact that [knowledge] must first be lost, sunk into the depths of materiality, and that it can be regained only through the path of complete self-denial—and only by renouncing many things we hold dear. And this expresses the fact that this rediscovery of the highest knowledge is linked to the true redemption of this knowledge, to the discovery of the infinite within the finite, to the overcoming of individuality—that is, that this knowledge can only be attained through one of the most primordial forces at work within human beings; and this, in turn, is meaningfully expressed in the fact that human vision arises—that is, what Phrixos must first sacrifice: the vision that leads us into the indeterminate and into the deepest depths, which leads us to the realization that we can never be satisfied and that we can only be on the perpetual journey back to Demeter. This realization signifies the infinite path to rediscovering the lost insights. This is expressed in the distinction between the lower and higher initiations.

[ 26 ] As Schelling transitioned from his youth into later life, he distinguished the teachings of his youth—which expressed the most spiritual and profound ideas—from his later ones. He later described this philosophy of his youth as a lower consecration in comparison to his later one, because he had come to realize the loftiness of that vision, in which he recognizes that there are abysmal depths that can never be reached [by ordinary powers of thought]. He refers to the realization of certain spiritual powers capable of encompassing this world as [higher] consecration. To lose this belief in the “lower consecration” altogether, and to believe in and experience the omnipotence of the infinite depth that has been lost to us—this is the infinite love into which the divine principle has flowed and through which it can be rediscovered. He refers to this as the “higher consecration.”

FAQ:

Question about the sacrifice of Abraham.

[ 27 ] These teachings of the Old Testament represent a fragmentation. Jewish esoteric teachings then emerge, in which these elements are brought back together. The same essence is present in these as in the myths of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus. In them, the teaching about humanity is presented in a tangible way. The sacrifice of Abraham would correspond to the second stage of human development—the necessity of sacrificing one’s beloved. It was undoubtedly adopted from religious systems in which this spiritual orientation is alive.

[ 28 ] It must be assumed that, with regard to a whole series of Christian myths, there was no awareness whatsoever of the esoteric aspect in the year 1. Paul was the founder of Christianity, which has been practiced within the Church up to the present day.

[ 29 ] If I interpret the “Sistine Madonna” esoterically, and someone tells me that Raphael knew nothing about it, I say: Yes, that need not be the case. If someone attempts to do so, I must be pleased and regard it as a thoroughly justified endeavor. It always pleases me when people make an effort to demonstrate this. The philosophers in the lecture halls do not engage in esotericism. The most prominent among them is Kühnemann.

[ 30 ] With Empedocles, there is something we cannot understand. We can only regard [it] as something incomprehensible; all modern research deals only with the purely natural interpretation of the matter and ultimately focuses solely on the question of its origin—the question: How could something like this have come into being?