The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. Richard Wagner in the Light of Spiritual Science III

[ 1 ] In the previous lecture, we saw how the great artist Wagner returned to myth in order to depict grand cosmic connections. The entire essence of the Norse worldview up to the advent of Christianity lives on in the Siegfried myth. This Norse worldview has a tragic element; it culminates in the Twilight of the Gods. What does this tragic element signify?

[ 2 ] I have said that there were also mysteries in the North; in them, the disciples were taught what it means that Norse mythology concludes with the twilight of the gods. In these mysteries, something is revealed of what is still hidden and is only to take place in the time to come. The priests of the Norse world were to proclaim that the old world of the gods would perish and that a new one would rise from the fire in which the Norse world perishes, through Christ, to purified love. The old had to die; hence the tragic march toward the end. This is what Wagner brings to light so wonderfully: this atmosphere of preparation in the Norse sagas, which comes to a close in The Twilight of the Gods.

[ 3 ] This Nordic worldview consists of four phases. Humanity passed through four stages, and then Christ came. Today we live in the fifth sub-race of the fifth root race, which was preceded by: the Sanskrit culture, then the Persian-Median and the Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian cultures; the Greco-Latin cultural epoch was the fourth, and now we have the Teutonic-Germanic tribe in the North. This is where Christianity bursts in as a new influence. At this stage, everything will change, and the old will perish. This is beautifully depicted in the tale of Winfried Boniface felling the sacred oak. “Oak” is synonymous with “druid” in the ancient mysteries. Thus, the smashing of the oak signifies the destruction of the old Nordic religion. The Nordic mysteries had foretold this overcoming of the druidic cult.

[ 4 ] While the first four subraces developed in the south, the Nordic peoples prepared the ground for this development on their own. Here, too, we have four phases; here, too, the development proceeds through four stages, the last of which is the Twilight of the Gods itself. It is remarkable that the entire earlier history of humanity is repeated within these four phases. Humanity has gone through various states. The Norse myth is a kind of memory of the entire history of the Earth; it lives within it as a vision, as mythical content. And these four stages of development live on in Wagner’s dramas, because he drew his dramas from the myth. Wagner quite rightly created a tetralogy. The four parts, beginning with the prelude, depict the development of humanity; the fifth stage will be Christianity.

[ 5 ] What is the fundamental motif in The Rhine Gold? And what is the fundamental motif of our present root race? — If we go back to the Polar root race, we find human beings who did not yet possess self-consciousness and were not yet divided into different sexes; the same was true of the Hyperboreans. It was not until the third root race, during the Lemurian epoch, that human beings became unisex. And it was not until the Atlantean era that the “I” was born, in the fifth subrace. It was then that human beings said “I” to themselves for the first time. This sense of “I” is depicted in the myth as a dwarf, as Alberich; it is perceived as rising from Niflheim. Atlantis was Niflheim, and it could rightly be called a “land of mist.” Our Earth’s atmosphere had not yet been cleansed of water vapor, nor was there any precipitation in the form of rain. Out of this Niflheim, with its seething waters and floating mists, the human “I” is born. Wagner expresses this magnificently in the orchestra’s E-flat major chord; the fundamental motif of our present humanity resounds from Niflheim.

[ 6 ] Let us understand what has happened on Earth during this time. Human beings came to Earth as spiritual beings. Their bodies were born from the etheric earth. At this stage, a human is neither man nor woman, nor does he or she know anything of possessions or power. The soul is described as water. Possession—which is also power—is still guarded by the surging forces of the astral world, the Rhine Maidens. But what will emerge in the Atlantean era is slowly taking shape: the “I,” or egoism. Yet within the original soul-being there was something that humanity must now renounce: love, which does not yet seek an external object but rests within itself. Alberich must renounce this love that rests within itself. He can do so through the Ring, which unites all that is human. As long as the duality of the sexes was preserved, human beings had no need of the Ring; only when they gave up spiritual love—and thus the duality of the sexes—did the Ring become necessary to externally unite what is separated. Human beings must now attain love through union with another individual being. The Ring is the symbol of the union of separate human beings, the connection of the two sexes in the physical realm. When Alberich seizes the Ring, he must renounce love. Now comes the time when human beings can no longer create in unity. In the past, body, soul, and spirit were one. Now the deity creates the body from the outside. The sexes stand in opposition to one another; the two giants, Fafner and Fasolt, represent them. The human body has become unisex.

[ 7 ] In the ancient religions, the human body was depicted as a temple; the deity works on it from the outside. The inner temple—our soul—is to be created by human beings themselves, ever since they became a “self.” In the creative deity, love is still preserved; it continues to work on the “outer temple.” This is contained in the myth at the point where Wotan wants to take the ring from the giants and where Erda appears to him and advises him against it. Erda is the clairvoyant collective consciousness of humanity. The god must not keep the ring, which binds together what must dissolve so that it may reunite only at a higher level, once the genders have neutralized one another again. Thus, through the prophetic, clairvoyant power of Earth-consciousness, Wotan is prevented from gaining possession of the ring; the ring remains with the giants. From then on, each human being contains only one gender. The giant symbolizes physicality. Only now do the giants build Valhalla. In the struggle over the ring, Fasolt is killed by Fafner—this represents the opposition between the masculine and the feminine. Within every human being, one gender is first slain; the man kills the woman, the woman kills the man within herself.

[ 8 ] But first, the higher consciousness must be born out of the all-encompassing Earth consciousness. This occurs through the union of Wotan and Erda, and Brünnhilde comes into being. Within her, there still remains something of the divine omniscience of world consciousness. However, this consciousness initially recedes into the background. In contrast, Wotan sires Siegmund and Sieglinde with an earthly woman. This represents the spiritual duality of the sexes: the male and the female soul. Neither can possibly continue to live on its own. The female soul, Sieglinde, falls prey to Hunding’s abduction; the soul must surrender to the physical brain. Now begin the wanderings of Siegmund, the soul imprisoned within the body; it is not powerful enough to approach the divine that was lost. The gods cannot protect Siegmund; the sword shatters against Wotan’s spear.

[ 9 ] Wotan must then relinquish control to the human self—which operates entirely on the sensory level—to Hagen, Alberich’s son, to the principle of the lower self. All powers conspire against the union of the masculine and feminine aspects of the soul. Wotan himself must stand by Fricka. Fricka represents the male-female soul on a higher plane; she urges Wotan to sever the connection between the male and female souls on the earthly plane. In life, the male and female aspects of the soul remain united; on earth, however, blood and sensuality come into play. This is profoundly symbolized in the motif of sibling love. This is the forbidden element that comes into play, and if it remains dominant, Siegmund and Sieglinde—indeed, the physical realm itself—must perish. Sieglinde is to be destroyed by the all-encompassing consciousness, Brünnhilde; all earthly development would be hindered. But Brünnhilde stands by her and gives her the horse Grane, which carries humanity through earthly events. Brünhilde withdraws into exile; Waberlohe surrounds her rock. Now the clairvoyant consciousness is surrounded by the fire through which humanity must first pass in order to be purified if it wishes to return to the all-encompassing consciousness.

[ 10 ] Sieglinde, however—the spiritual-feminine—gives birth to Siegfried, the human consciousness that is meant to ascend once more to the higher realm. He grows up in seclusion with Mime. He must overcome lower nature—the Lindworm—to gain power. He also overcomes Mime. Who is Mime? Mime can bestow something that renders one invisible—the cloak of invisibility—a manifestation of a power invisible to ordinary people. The cloak of invisibility is the symbol of the magician—both the white and the black magician—who walks visibly among us but is invisible as such. Mime is the magician who, drawing on earthly, dark forces, can bestow the cloak of invisibility. He wants to turn Siegfried into a black magician, but Siegfried refuses. He has slain the Lindworm, absorbed a drop of its blood—the symbol of the passions—and is thereby enabled to understand the language of the birds, of the sensual and earthly. He can walk the path of the higher initiate; the path to Brünnhilde, to universal consciousness, is shown to him.

[ 11 ] So far, we have seen three phases of Norse development: first the dwarf, then the giant, and now the human being. The Valkyrie marked the second phase. And it is not until Siegfried that we witness the birth of the human being itself. Trapped within physicality, he must first find his way back to pure wisdom. In Götterdämmerung, the fourth part, it is expressed that in the Nordic world, humanity was not yet mature, that it had not yet attained full initiation. Siegfried is still vulnerable in a single place—the very spot where Christ bore the cross. Siegfried was not yet able to take up the cross. This is a profound expression of what the Nordic people still lacked: that Christianity was still a necessity for them. Siegfried cannot unite with Brünnhilde; he is the human soul, begotten of an earthly woman, born of the union of Siegmund and Sieglinde. Brünnhilde is the one who has remained a virgin, the higher consciousness.

[ 12 ] In the final phase, higher knowledge must be attained. Because man has not yet acquired the ability to unite with virgin wisdom, he feels a drive toward higher knowledge as a desire. This must be overcome. And his desire to unite with Brünnhilde in earthly lust leads to an exchange of goods; she gives the horse, he gives the ring.

[ 13 ] Before a person can unite with the higher self, the ring—the external compulsion—has not yet lost its power. Man sinks into the lower consciousness; he is struck blind. Siegfried forgets Brünnhilde; he unites with Gudrun, the lower consciousness. He even wants to woo Brünnhilde on behalf of the unworthy one, the other—Gunther. This means that in the final phase, before the advent of Christianity, a person once again succumbs to the impure path, to the dark forces. Brünnhilde’s illicit union with Gunther is the cause of Siegfried’s downfall. He must meet his death at the hands of the lower forces, in whose power he has become entangled.

[ 14 ] The final phase is approaching. Once again, the three Norns appear. It is the phase in which all-encompassing consciousness is lost:

At last, eternal knowledge!
Reveal nothing more
to the world: —
Down to the Mother, down!

[ 15 ] The higher wisdom that was once bestowed upon the Sons of the Gods is being lost on Earth; it is returning to the Eternal One. Humanity must rely on itself.

[ 16 ] For those who look more deeply, the music drama Tristan and Isolde represents, for Wagner, yet another instance of the problem of gender duality becoming ever clearer. The masculine and the feminine have meaning only on the physical plane. In Tristan lives the longing to no longer be separated, to find balance, to possess a consciousness that is no longer male or female. This longing surges and swells throughout the drama: to no longer be “I-Tristan,” but to have taken Isolde into oneself; to no longer be “I-Isolde,” but to be both Isolde and Tristan. Both have lost awareness of this separation. Thus it resounds in the closing lines of this poem, the liberation from separateness:

In the surging waves
of the Sea of Bliss,
in the fragrant waves
of resonant sound,
in the universe
swept by the world’s breath
drowning
sinking—
unconscious—
supreme bliss! —

[ 17 ] Every word is forged from a deeper knowledge. The astral world is this surging sea of bliss; the world resounding with fragrant tones is Devachan. The life principle is the World-Breath; within it, everything must find balance. No longer separated in consciousness: to drown, to sink into the undifferentiated, unconscious—that is the highest bliss. —It is indeed the highest bliss for the earthly to overcome the sensual through the spiritual. The pleasure that strives toward the annihilation of the earthly ennobles; it is the overcoming of that which it itself contains. This is the problem Wagner sought to solve in Tristan and Isolde.

[ 18 ] All these ideas—they did not exist in Wagner in a conscious or abstract sense, but they do exist in the myths, and Wagner drew them from the myths. The individual artist need not possess these ideas abstractly within himself. Just as a plant grows according to laws without knowing those laws, so the forces of the world live in myth as symbolic images of divine, eternal truth.

[ 19 ] Wagner’s Siegfried is still entangled in the earthly realm; he must perish within it. Brunhilde recognizes the connection, and she understands what is at stake. Thus she surrenders the Ring to the Rhine Maidens, to the element that has not penetrated the play of this world. The entire evolution of humanity traces back to the original, pristine matter.

[ 20 ] A new worldview takes the place of the older, Nordic worldview, which no longer appeals to the external, the sensual, but only to that which has remained virginal—to the soul. Brunhilde, who is still entangled in the external and sensual through her union with Siegfried, rides into the fire. From there, love is born. This is a thought that is, at first, still tragic for the North; for that which one was capable of comprehending perishes. Born from the sea of fire—the primal, virginal matter—love emerges from the Spirit. “Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria virgine.” From the very same element from which selfishness and sensual love were previously born, a new feeling is now born—one that is exalted above all that is entangled in the physical plane. Wisdom returns to bring forth love from that part of the element which has preserved its virginal chastity. This is Christ, the Christian principle. Selfless love, in contrast to selfish love—this is the great evolution that is purchased through the mysterious involution of death, the demise of the physical. We have strictly contrasted the opposites of life and death.

[ 21 ] The wood represents withered life, and from this wood springs the new, eternal life from which the new age is now being born. A new, spiritual life emerges from the twilight of the gods. Just as Richard Wagner longed, after having passed through the four phases of Norse life, to portray this Christian principle in its depth—he demonstrated this to us in his Parsifal—which represents the fifth phase. Because Wagner had lived through what was tragic in Norse development, the glorification of Christianity was a necessity for him.