The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Reading the Akashic Records: Wolfram von Eschenbach

[ 1 ] Since I already touched on various esoteric topics last Friday, what I have to say today will no longer seem so unfamiliar to you. I would like to discuss a portion of the history of the past few centuries as recorded in the Akashic Records. You know that all events that have ever occurred are recorded in a certain way in an eternal chronicle—in the Akashic substance, which is a much finer substance than those we are familiar with. You know that all events of history and prehistory are recorded in this substance. However, what is commonly referred to in theosophical terminology as the Akashic Records are not the original records themselves, but rather reflections of the actual records in astral space. In order to read these, certain prerequisites are necessary, at least one of which I would like to mention to you.

[ 2 ] In order to read the Akashic Records, it is necessary to place one’s own thoughts at the disposal of the forces and entities that we, in theosophical terminology, call the “Masters.” The Masters must give us the necessary instructions to be able to read the Akashic Records, which are written in symbols and signs, not in the words of any existing language or one that once existed. As long as one still uses the power that humans employ in ordinary thinking—and every person who has not explicitly learned to consciously set aside their ego uses this power—one cannot read the Akashic Records. If you ask yourself, “Who is thinking?”—you will have to answer, “I am thinking.” - You connect the subject and predicate when you form a sentence. As long as you yourself connect the individual concepts, you are unable to read the Akashic Records because you link your thoughts to your own “I.” But you must set aside your “I”; you must renounce all self-will. You need only present the ideas and allow forces outside yourself—through the Spirit—to establish the connection between the individual ideas. It is therefore necessary to let go—not of thinking itself—but of the act of connecting the individual thoughts on your own. Then the Master can come and teach you to allow the Spirit from outside to assemble your thoughts into what the universal World Spirit is able to reveal about events and facts that have taken place in history. When you no longer pass judgment on the facts, then the universal World Spirit itself speaks to you, and you make your mental material available to it.

[ 3 ] Now I must speak about something that may give rise to prejudice. I must say something that serves as good preparation for overcoming the self-willed ego and thereby learning to read the Akashic Records. You know how what the monks cultivated in the Middle Ages is despised today: they made the sacrifice of the intellect. The monk did not think like today’s researcher. The monk possessed a specific sacred science—revealed sacred theology—whose content was fixed and not open to interpretation. The medieval theologian used his intellect to explain and defend these given revelations. This was—whatever one’s view of it may be today—a rigorous discipline: the sacrifice of the intellect to a given body of knowledge. Whether this is, by modern standards, something admirable or something reprehensible, we will leave aside for now. This sacrifice of the intellect that the monk made—the suppression of judgment arising from the personal “I”—led him to learn how to place thought in the service of a Higher Power. In a later reincarnation, what was brought about by this sacrifice at that time comes to fruition, enabling the individual to think selflessly and transforming him into a genius of perception. When higher insight—intuition—is added to this, he can apply these abilities to read the facts in the Akashic Records.

[ 4 ] It is particularly interesting to revisit, from this perspective, that period in Europe’s spiritual development that we examined eight days ago—namely, the period from the 9th through the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. Once one has attained this selflessness with regard to the content of thought—and combined it with the proper sense of reverence and devotion that the mystic, too, must have possessed—then the era in which great spirits appear in world history often takes on a very different appearance than it does in secular historiography. When one examines this period in the Akashic Records, our gaze is drawn to a great figure who can teach us an immense amount about that time—a figure who appears grand to the observer and even more formidable to the occultist than to the ordinary researcher: Wolfram von Eschenbach.

[ 5 ] Wolfram von Eschenbach adapted German, Romance, and Spanish legends. He ranks among the great, inspired poets who were selfless enough to adapt major existing works and who did not feel the need to invent their own material. The great poets—such as Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus—never had to search for material. Wolfram von Eschenbach also belongs to this group of great poets. In his works, he presents to us the inner spiritual history of the period from the 9th to the 15th century, which outwardly appears as the preparatory period for our modern era—an era in which, as we have seen, the focus is primarily on studying everything that belongs to the external sensory world. This begins with Copernicus. People began to take the physical plane seriously, not—as their predecessors had—as a symbol for the higher planes. The worldview of the ancients was not a false one, but rather a worldview that proceeded from a different perspective: it regarded the phenomena of the outer world as symbols of devachanic states. Copernicus said, “Let us no longer regard the physical world as a symbol, but let us regard the physical world itself.” - Naturally, this transformed people’s entire worldview. The shift toward the practical, physical, and material was set in motion during this period. Earlier cultures, in which our physical lives depended on traditions and authorities, gave way to one in which personal competence matters. In the past, a farmer’s son was respected simply because he was a farmer’s son; a knight’s son inherited his fathers’ rights. That changed during this period. This was the era of city-building. Everywhere, people flocked in from the countryside and founded cities; the middle class rose to prominence, and practical inventions emerged: the pocket watch and the art of printing were invented. But that is only the outward aspect of the matter. People’s attention was directed toward the practical aspects of the sciences, as exemplified by Copernicus, a trend that was further developed during the Enlightenment and, politically, in the French Revolution. The merchant class pursued practical interests; personal competence was essential. It was no longer so important whether one was descended from this or that man. For those who follow these events in the Akashic Records, the situation presents itself in such a way that what happens on the physical plane is guided from the higher planes. The leading spirits are influenced by Initiates who work on the higher planes. Brilliant personalities lead up to beings who work behind the scenes, all the way up to the White Lodge. The physical aspect is merely the outer side. The inner side is the work of the highest Initiates of the White Lodge and their emissaries, who go out into the world.

[ 6 ] I would like to briefly describe this occult hierarchy. There are entities there who never reveal themselves: the Masters. To people on the physical plane, they are initially imperceptible. Below them are chelas, secret disciples, who take on the task of carrying out the Masters’ great missions on the physical plane. The first ones to teach there are called “Hamsas,” which means “swans.” Those chelas who are called “homeless people” are so named because they do not have their home in this world, but are rooted in higher planes. They impart to humanity the teachings they themselves received from the Hamsas. They are the emissaries of the brilliant figures of world history. For example, it can also be demonstrated that the leaders of the French Revolution were connected to this spiritual aspect of world history.

[ 7 ] The Great White Lodge had to send out its emissaries to prepare and instruct people so that they could become, on the physical plane, the instruments that carry out the will of the Masters. This was also the case with Wolfram von Eschenbach. In the Middle Ages, people knew that there was a White Lodge; at that time, it was called the “Grail Castle.” Within it resided the White Brotherhood. The one who was sent out at that time to carry the founding of the city into the physical world was named Lohengrin; he was directly instructed by a Hamsa, and he instructed Henry I, who is designated as the city’s founder. This means that the souls of that era were to receive a new impetus from the “homeless people.”

[ 8 ] In occult terminology, the soul is always symbolized by a female figure. Elsa of Brabant represents the soul of the age. She is to be married to a knight who belongs to the old tradition—Telramund. But an envoy of the Grail arrives and woos the soul of the age, Elsa of Brabant. Wolfram von Eschenbach characterizes this era in such a way that Henry is led to Rome, where inner, esoteric Christianity battles the world’s enemies of Christianity—the Saracens. Lohengrin is a “man without a homeland” whom one must not ask where he comes from. To ask him is to violate his monastic vows. He is endowed with a sort of Janus-like duality; on the one hand, he must look toward the occult brotherhood, and on the other, toward the people he must guide in the physical world. Richard Wagner often found moving words, such as when he has Lohengrin sing: “Now farewell, my dear swan.” - That is the moment when the swan leaves him and he becomes dependent on physical circumstances. He is transported into a world that is not entirely suited to him; it is not his true world. His world is the world of the other side, so that he must be regarded as a homeless soul. Once his mission is fulfilled, the homeless man disappears back to where he came from. Once his origins are discovered, he must disappear again. This is difficult for someone who has become entangled in the physical plane. That is why Elsa von Brabant has to ask three times where he comes from.

[ 9 ] Thus we see that this era is characterized, through the initiate Wolfram von Eschenbach, in its connection to the higher planes. Lohengrin is the envoy, the messenger of the Knights of the Grail. The Knights of the Grail are the White Lodge on Montsalvatsch. It was the task of the messengers of the Grail—the Knights of the Grail—to continually renew the ancient traditions of genuine, true Christianity. This was also the intention when people spoke of the Grail Castle and of the Holy Grail itself. The Knights of the Grail were envisioned as the guardians of that which had come into the world through true Christianity. This is also alluded to in the Gospel of John: “The Word became flesh.”—What has been transfigured through Christ is physical existence itself; he has entered the physical world. The other great figures were teachers of humanity: Buddha, Zarathustra, Pythagoras, Moses—they were all teachers. They are the “Way and the Truth”; “Life” in the occult sense is Christ alone; hence it is said: No one comes to the Father except through me. — Life could only find its sanctification when the Word entered directly into the human body. This descent of the Divine onto the physical plane was to be renewed again and again by the White Lodge. That is why the Grail is depicted as the very same cup from which Jesus administered the Last Supper and in which Joseph of Arimathea collected the blood on Golgotha. Thus, the principle of Christianity is to be preserved and carried forward, and new strength is to be bestowed upon it through the sending out of twelve Knights of the Grail—as messengers continuing the work of the Apostles—to undertake new tasks.

[ 10 ] It was the prevailing view throughout the Middle Ages that, in order to reach an important stage of civilization, a chela, a “swan,” should instruct humanity. This is how Wolfram von Eschenbach viewed and portrayed the story. Anyone who knows how to read between the lines in Richard Wagner’s *Lohengrin* will find that Wagner—if not intellectually, then at least emotionally and intuitively—sensed that something great was at stake. That is why he believed in a renewal of art through a connection to the superhuman. In the Middle Ages, this was depicted as follows: when Elsa of Brabant sought to banish Lohengrin from this world, he withdrew—specifically, as Wolfram von Eschenbach states, to India. Ultimately, the Grail Castle is also depicted as being located in India. It is also said of the Rosicrucians that when they withdrew at the end of the 18th century, they went to Asia, to the Orient. This is the history of the founding of cities in the Middle Ages, according to the entries in the Akashic Records. Details might be presented somewhat differently by others, but on the whole they will always agree with this account.