The Rudolf Steiner Archive

16. Richard Wagner and His Relationship to Mysticism

[ 1 ] Theosophy, or spiritual science, is not meant to be something one-sided that merely satisfies human curiosity or the thirst for knowledge; rather, it is meant to represent a spiritual movement that is called upon to have a deeper impact on everything we call the culture of the present and the near future. We will gain a sense of how theosophy can be called upon to do this when we see how what pulsates through it is, in essence, not confined to it alone, but is already manifesting itself in our time as a more or less distinct intuition in a wide variety of fields.

[ 2 ] Today we shall consider the way in which one of the greatest artists of modern times embodied an element similar to what we call theosophy, or spiritual science. No one should believe that everything I have to say about this significant artist of modern times—Richard Wagner—was actually present in his clear, intellectual consciousness. It would be an easy objection to raise: “You say all sorts of things in connection with Richard Wagner, but we can prove that he never thought of himself in those terms.” - Anyone who views Richard Wagner as we do today can easily raise this objection themselves. It is by no means intended to be claimed that what is to be said ever existed as explicitly articulated ideas within Richard Wagner. Whether one has the right to express this is another matter. It would take too long to derive this right here in a detailed exposition. But a comparison, an analogy, can lead us to demonstrate the validity of these reflections. Does not the botanist reflect on the plant? Does he not seek the laws by which it grows and lives? Does he not thereby understand the essence of the plant, or seek to understand it? And can anyone, simply because the plant itself is not conscious of these laws, deny the botanist the right to speak of it in this way? Whoever explores this image more deeply will see how what is to be said today relates in the same way to the artist. Not that the common cliché—that the artist creates unconsciously—is to be repeated here. But the laws through which, from a certain perspective on the world, one understands the artist need no more be expressed by the artist’s consciousness than a plant’s law needs to be expressed by the plant itself. Let this be taken for granted, because otherwise the objection just characterized could be raised.

[ 3 ] Another objection that can very easily arise today relates to the word “mysticism.” Recently, in a small gathering, someone mentioned the word “mysticism,” and a somewhat learned gentleman said: “Goethe was actually a mystic too; he himself admitted that much in the world of human knowledge remains dark and nebulous.”—With this, the man showed that, when people engage in mysticism, he understands it to mean all those ideas that have something nebulous, unclear, or dark about them. Never has a true mystic understood mysticism to be that which is unclear and can only be grasped and intuited through general feelings. We can see this firsthand today in scholarly circles, where it is said: “Our clear understanding extends only up to this point; from there on, however, general feeling begins to immerse itself in the mysteries of nature—that is where mysticism begins.” - On the contrary: the true mystic sees in it the very clearest thing—that which is meant to shine into the depths of existence with the sunniest of concepts. And when someone speaks of the darkness of mysticism, of all manner of intuitions, it means nothing other than that people have never taken the trouble to bring to clarity for themselves what mysticism clearly provides. In the early centuries of Christianity, this was called “mathesis”—not because it was supposed to be mathematics, but because the ideas and concepts that mysticism builds up are meant to be as clear and transparent to human beings as the concepts of mathematics. One need only have the patience to truly immerse oneself in what true mysticism is. It is only in this sense that the word “mysticism” should be associated with the name Richard Wagner.

[ 4 ] Let us now describe what is, first and foremost, the fundamental conviction of every scholar of the humanities. It is that there is an invisible world beyond our physical, sensory world, and that human beings are capable of penetrating this invisible world. This premise inherently includes a mystical disposition.

[ 5 ] Did Wagner express such a conviction himself? Yes, he stated it clearly! And most importantly, he expressed it from his perspective as a musician, thereby implying that music and art were worth more to him than a mere accompaniment to existence—that they were the most important element of his life. When he speaks about symphonic music, he says wonderful things about art. He says that all symphonic music appears like a revelation from another world, one that enlightens us about the connections of existence in a way entirely different from how logic can enlighten us, and that the most wonderful thing is when we take in the convictions that reach us through these symphonic elements of language; then they give us a sense of certainty that the intellect’s judgment of the world cannot rival.

[ 6 ] One must not take these words as mere casual remarks, but must accept them as something that seeks to characterize a reality arising from the deepest seriousness of a great human insight. Can we interpret these words by drawing on the fundamental convictions of mysticism? Yes! If you investigate how mystics often describe the nature of their cognition, you will find, for example, the following term—which is not a word invented at random, but one that you will encounter time and again as a kind of technical expression used by mystics. The mystics say: In ordinary human cognition, a person turns to their intellect to recognize the laws of nature and the spiritual world; but there is a higher form of cognition, in which we do not link concept to concept in an intellectual manner, but rather the ideas weave themselves together like spiritual music; this is a different kind of cognition. - The true mystic knows the greater certainty of this kind of cognition than is found in intellectual judgment in this realm. And how remarkable! Any expert would characterize this kind of cognition by drawing on the image—it is more than an image!—of music. It is not merely an image when the ancient Pythagorean school speaks of the music of the spheres. A superficial, academic philosophy regards this music of the spheres as a metaphor, as a comparison to something else. But the one who knows what it is about also knows that this Pythagorean music of the spheres is a reality and that there is a training of the spirit in which the sounds of this music can be heard.

[ 7 ] It has often been said that we are surrounded by spiritual worlds that we simply cannot see at first, just as a blind person is surrounded by the world of color that he or she cannot see. When his or her eyes are operated on, brilliance, color, and light reach him or her—things that were previously inaccessible. Such an opening of spiritual vision does exist. All that matters is that one opens the higher senses; then the higher world emerges from the darkness. We refer to the next of the worlds surrounding us as the world of light or the astral world, and the one even higher as the true spiritual world of the sounds of the spheres. This is a true reality into which a person can be born through a kind of higher birth, just as someone born blind can regain their sight through surgery.

[ 8 ] Those who are initiated speak openly about this world. We need only recall the words of Goethe. Of course, many will consider what is now being said to be something fanciful. They will even consider it inartistic to say such things, because they want to let the poet remain as vague as possible regarding the understanding of his work. But a great poet like Goethe does not resort to clichés when he wants to characterize something specific by saying: “The sun resounds in the old way...” . This is either an allusion to something deeper, or it is a cliché, since the physical sun does not make a sound. And one cannot expect such a cliché from a poet who works from direct observation, as Goethe does. Goethe, as an initiate, knows that such a resonant world—a spiritually resonant world—exists, and he remains true to the image. When, after the wanderings described in the first part, he has Faust ascended into the spiritual world, it is again stated:

“With a resounding sound, for the ears of the spirit
the new day is already dawning”

[ 9 ] Goethe is fully in the know when he sets out to characterize the spiritual world.

[ 10 ] For Richard Wagner, the notes of external music were an expression, a revelation of an inner music—the world of a spiritual sound, of the harmony pulsating through the world. That is what he sensed, what he felt. He said this himself on more than one occasion. When he characterizes the individual instruments, he writes:

“The instruments represent the primordial organs of creation and nature; what they express can never be clearly defined or determined, for they reflect the primordial feelings themselves, just as they emerged from the chaos of the first creation, when there may not even have been humans yet who could take them into their hearts.”

[ 11 ] One must not analyze such words with the intellect; one must try to absorb them with all their emotional resonance, and then one feels how Richard Wagner’s entire soul was immersed in what has been called true, authentic mysticism.

[ 12 ] This is how Richard Wagner views his entire artistic mission. He is not an artist who merely seeks to reveal whatever happens to dwell in the soul. He wants to sense the necessity of the place where he stands in the course of human development. He looks back into the distant human past, into a human past where what we call “isolated art” did not yet exist. Here we touch upon a profound point that constantly occupied Richard Wagner as he perceived his mission—that very point about which Nietzsche reflected so deeply and which he attempted to characterize in his work The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. However, we do not wish to delve into what Nietzsche wrote; rather, we wish to draw upon mysticism, for it has more to say than what Nietzsche was able to bring to light regarding Richard Wagner. It leads us back to the primordial states of human development.

[ 13 ] What were the mysteries? Among all ancient peoples there were mystery sites—which could just as well be called temples as schools—among the Egyptians, the Greeks, and so on. Everywhere, the mystery was the foundation of a later culture, and the mystery encompassed religion, science, and art all at once. Let us briefly sketch the nature of such a mystery. What did the person who, after passing certain trials, was admitted to hear the secrets experience? He experienced something that later, in the course of development, emerged in separate branches, in detail: religion, art, and science, which emerged like three branches, were one at their root within the mystery. Imagine yourself as a spectator and listener to the Mystery Play! Let us consider, for example, how the enigma of the world was presented to human beings in the Mystery Play. It was shown how the spiritual forces descended, how they live in minerals and plants, how they become more perfect in animals, and how they become self-conscious in human beings. The entire course of the World Spirit was presented in such a way that the eyes could see it all. And what the eyes saw and the ears heard—in color, in light, in sound—that was wisdom, science. These people did not grasp the laws of the world through abstract concepts as we do today. It was a representation: they saw it unfold before them. The representation was beautiful at the same time. This is how art came into being. Truth was conveyed in the form of art. And it was so deeply embedded in art that the human spirit was moved to a religious state and sank into adoration.

[ 14 ] This was present in the primordial state of every great culture. External history knows little of it and denies its existence. But that doesn’t matter. In twenty years, it will no longer deny this. And just as these three were united in the primordial mysteries, so too was art—or rather, those arts that later went their separate ways—a single whole. Music and dramatic performance were united as one, and Wagner looked back to a primordial age when the arts were united to form a totality. It was clear to him that, due to the inevitable course of human development, these arts had to go their separate ways. Now, however, he believed that the era had come in his own time when this union must take place once more. He felt called upon, within the realm of his expertise, to bring about a union of the separated currents in what he called a “total work of art.” He felt that the true work of art must possess a certain religious inspiration. Thus, for him, the work of art was at the same time a religious service. We must imagine and empathize with all of this from his perspective. If we trace his thoughts in detail, we will recognize this. Thus, in his mind, he saw the dramatic-musical work coming together from separate currents. For him, Shakespeare and Beethoven were two great artists. In Shakespeare, he saw the playwright who, with marvelous inner coherence, brought human actions to the stage just as they play out in external events. In Beethoven, he saw the artist who, with the same marvelous inner coherence, was able to portray what takes place within the breast—that which does not translate into external action or gesture. And so he said to himself: There is something here that we can follow quite precisely, but which must remain unspoken. For between one action and another there is something that stands as a mediator within the human heart, yet cannot be translated into this kind of dramatic art. And when the inner world of human feeling expresses itself symphonically, it must, as it were, remain confined within itself, since the musician is bound to remain within the realm of sound. We see how, in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, what lives inwardly in the soul pushes its way out and ultimately becomes language, seeking to unite into a whole that which is separate in art but belongs together in human nature.

[ 15 ] This was Wagner’s sense of his mission. From this arose his idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, which is intended to portray the whole human being in art. It should be presented as the person experiences their inner life, and the person should have the opportunity to express what lives within them as action. What cannot be expressed dramatically on the outside is entrusted to music. What music cannot express finds its way into the external drama. Richard Wagner embodies the synthesis between Shakespeare and Beethoven. This is Richard Wagner’s fundamental idea—a fundamental idea drawn deep from the innermost core of human nature. This is how he perceived his mission. But with this, a path was now laid out for art into the very depths of human nature. Richard Wagner could not remain merely a dramatist of everyday life. It had to be possible to portray the deepest experiences a human being can have using the highest artistic means—as was once done in the mystery plays.

[ 16 ] When we see how Wagner perceives symphonic music as the revelation of an unknown world, how he sees the primordial organs of creation in the instruments, we soon come to understand how he feels the need to reveal more in his music dramas than what exists here in the physical world. That is only a part of human nature. Transcending this part is the higher human being who lives within every person, who is far more than what can be expressed outwardly. This higher human being, who hovers around the ordinary person as if in all-encompassing glory, is connected to the sources of life in ways deeper than can be made clear outwardly. Because Richard Wagner seeks to connect with the higher nature of the human being, he cannot make use of everyday people; he must turn to those who exist within myth. There, human beings are portrayed as rising above themselves, aspiring to become—and indeed being—far greater than the human being of the physical plane can be or wishes to be. Thus, it is again connected to Richard Wagner’s mission that he transcends the everyday human being and brings myth to the stage. In myth, Richard Wagner must simultaneously—albeit not in an intellectual sense—allow the deeper laws of the world, the laws and beings of the unknown world, to be illuminated through the dramatic action and the musical element. And that is what he does.

[ 17 ] Of course, we cannot cover every detail; we can only highlight a few examples. Everywhere, it will become clear how this is deeply connected, in its very essence, to what spiritual science has to say about the world. What, for example, does mysticism have to say about human coexistence? From an external perspective, people stand side by side; we see people influencing one another in the physical world when they speak to one another and become dependent on one another. But there are deeper connections within human nature. What lives as a soul in one person’s heart has a deeply hidden kinship with what lives as a soul in another’s heart. And the laws revealed on the surface are only the most insignificant. What is regarded as a deep network of laws underlying the soul extends from person to person. This is what spiritual science reveals. This is what the artist intuits. That is why he turns to subjects through which he can show how a deeper law operates from person to person than what the outer eye can see.

[ 18 ] Right from one of his earliest works, Richard Wagner reveals to us this urge to depict mysterious connections. Or do we not sense something that reigns invisibly between one person and another when the Dutchman confronts us alongside Senta? Are we not reminded of wondrous connections in Armen Heinrich, where the sacrifice of a pure maiden has a healing effect? We must regard such images as expressions of a deeper truth. There is something there that is truer than the superficial truth of conventional scholarship. There is something real in the sacrifice one person can make for another. This is expressed, for example, in this mystical bond—which is beyond the grasp of the superficial mind—when one speaks of the Universal Soul with conviction. It contains what is expressed in the image of the deepest truth when one person does something for another.

[ 19 ] I will now share something that spiritual science can show you, to guide you to the threshold where this may become apparent. We know that the world evolves and that, in the course of this evolution, beings are constantly being cast down. It is a law that spiritual science teaches us: every higher evolution is connected with a descent. Later, a balance is restored. For every saint, a sinner must arise. This is required to maintain the necessary balance. It is true, however strange it may sound. It is like when two liquids are mixed together. If one wants to make one of them pure, the other must become cloudier. So it is with ascension. Every ascent is linked to a descent. This necessitates that the being who has ascended use its power to redeem the other, lower being. If this interaction between beings did not exist, there would be no development in the world. This is what sets development in motion. And when we see how one person sacrifices himself for another, we are reminded of such a mysterious bond that arose because one being evolved upward while the other evolved downward. One can only hint delicately at such a thing. Thus, Richard Wagner is already right in the midst of that mysterious bond that stretches from soul to soul.

[ 20 ] When we examine his various works, we find that Richard Wagner always drew his fundamental themes from mystical life. Let us turn at once to his central work, the Siegfried cycle and the Nibelungen cycle. If we wish to see how deeply they are drawn from the wisdom of the worlds, we must build upon something that theosophy brings into complete clarity, however much it may contradict modern science. Our distant ancestors inhabited a landmass that lay to the west of Europe, between Africa and America. Even natural science is gradually coming to the conclusion that there was once land there—a land we call Atlantis. That is where our ancient ancestors lived, though they were, of course, quite differently constituted. As I said, natural science is already beginning to speak of this ancient Atlantis. An essay on the subject was published in the journal Kosmos, edited under Haeckel’s auspices. Of course, it only discusses what kinds of animals and plants lived there. There is still no mention of the fact that humans also lived there.

[ 21 ] What natural science has already begun to suspect, spiritual science describes clearly. In this ancient Atlantis, the atmosphere was entirely different, and conditions were entirely different. What we know today as the distribution of water and sunlight in the air did not yet exist at that time. Over there in the distant West, the air was constantly filled with water vapor and masses of mist. The sun and moon were visible only with rainbow-shaped halos. The life of the soul was quite different. People lived in such a way that they were in a much more intimate union with nature—with stones, plants, and animals. They were embedded in the masses of mist. True is the saying: “The Spirit of God hovered, brooding over the waters.”—For what has been preserved in echoes among the peoples who are the descendants of the Atlanteans was very much the case with the Atlanteans themselves: they understood everything around them. The trickling of the spring was not inarticulate; it was the expression of nature’s wisdom. Man heard wisdom in all things around him, for this environment caused this ancient ancestor to be a dim clairvoyant. He did not perceive what extended in space, but rather phenomena of color. He possessed clairvoyant powers. Wisdom wove itself into the mists, and he perceived this wisdom with his dim powers. One can only hint at this. Evolution consisted in the mists condensing into water, and the air becoming ever purer. Through this, humankind evolved to its present state of consciousness. It became separated from external nature; it became a self-contained being within itself. When humanity is still in communion with nature, wisdom is unified; then people live as if in a sphere of wisdom; and this establishes a certain brotherhood, for everyone perceives the same wisdom, and everyone lives within the soul of the other. With the descent of the mists, humanity entered into egoistic consciousness, into “I”-consciousness, where each person felt their own center within themselves, where one person confronted another and claimed their own sphere for themselves. Brotherhood gives way to the struggle for existence.

[ 22 ] Legends and myths are not what some people, sitting around a table, interpret as fanciful theories. What are legends and myths? They are the remnants of our ancestors’ ancient clairvoyant experiences. That is a fact. It is nonsense to claim today that any myth signifies a struggle between one people and another. Scholars speak of the poetic imagination of the people; they should simply get to know the people to see whether they transform clouds into divine figures. That is what is presented to the people; that is fantasy, daydreaming. They can still see for themselves today how myths arise. Even today, there are living legends. For example, in various regions there is the legend of the Noon Woman. It tells us: If any farmers remain in the fields at noon instead of taking a break from their work and going home, then the Noon Woman comes and poses questions to them. If they cannot answer them by a certain hour, she strangles them. - Who wouldn’t see in this the image of a dream that overtakes a person out in the open when they remain lying in the heat of the sun? The dream is the last remnant of their consciousness at that moment. Here we see how, even today, the legend arises from the dream.

[ 23 ] This is how all the Germanic legends and myths that have been preserved for us came into being. For the most part, these are still legends and myths that originated among the last stragglers of the Atlanteans. Thus, the ancient Germanic man recalled the time when his ancestors dwelt over in the West—they did not come from the East—how they migrated eastward during the time when the mists of the Atlantean Land of Mists thickened and formed those floods known as the Great Flood, how the air cleared, and how today’s clear daytime consciousness took shape. The old German looked back toward the Land of Mist, toward Niflheim, and he said: “We have progressed from the old Niflheim to the present world.” - But there are certain spiritual beings who have remained at the spiritual level that was appropriate at that time; these are the ones who, with their entire understanding, have preserved the character and nature of the old Niflheim, the home of the Nibelungs, who extend into our time, who have become “spirits” because they no longer have physical bodies. We have marvelous interweavings before us here. Nowhere here must we proceed pedantically. We must take into account how imagination and clairvoyant ability, legend and fact, are interwoven. We must not strip away the dew that they must possess. One recalls how the mists sank down, and then came the idea that these mists had sunk down and formed the rivers in the north of Central Europe. In the waters of the Rhine, one saw something like remnants from the mists of ancient Atlantis flowing downstream. How did things proceed? Humanity perceived wisdom from the trickling of the springs. This was a wisdom that was shared—the communal element that excluded selfishness. Gold is now an ancient symbol of this wisdom. This gold was brought over from the ancient Niflheim. What became of this gold? It became the property of the human “I.” What had formerly been communal wisdom, whispered by nature, was now wisdom flowing from human judgment, from the “I,” which humanity confronted as an independent being. Now humanity formed a “ring” around itself. Through this ring, the ancient brotherhood of humankind became entangled in a struggle among human beings. Wisdom as a communal element lived on in the great sagas of earlier times in the waters; its last remnant in the Rhine. Into it, this wisdom was submerged.

[ 24 ] But human beings have evolved toward selfish consciousness. Even the Nibelungs had to evolve toward ego-consciousness. They seized for themselves what had belonged to the community and forged the ring that now surrounds them as the ring of selfishness. Here we see—expressed in somewhat sketchy language—how the true facts flow into the world of fantasy, and how the gold, the remnant of ancient wisdom that has surged through the mist, and the wise “I” construct the ring around themselves, thereby giving rise to the struggle for existence. This is the deeper foundation of the myth of the Nibelung hoard.

[ 25 ] This is something Richard Wagner was able to express through the grand dramatic plot and the sounds of his music, which convey an invisible world that lies beyond the visible one. In this way, he reimagined the Nibelungen myth in a modern form and presented this entire narrative to us in his Nibelungen saga. We sense how the new gods who rule humanity have made their transition from the old gods.

[ 26 ] Let us once again imagine ourselves in ancient Atlantis: a land of misty vapors, where wisdom spoke from all things everywhere. There, powers must now govern among the people—powers that are no longer guided by shared wisdom, but by contracts and commandments, which even the gods themselves have established through contracts. This stems from a consciousness imbued with primal wisdom. There, where the new god Wotan holds a position of importance, where Fafner is to return Freya, there, where Wotan himself is afflicted by ego-wisdom, by the Ring—there, the ancient, sacred consciousness of humanity once again stepped before him: the Earth-consciousness that enveloped humanity when Atlantis was still alive. In Erda, this consciousness of that time—in which everything was embedded—is described to us: her sleep is dreaming, her dreaming is sensing, her sensing is ruling knowledge. —A cosmological truth lies within this. This wisdom is in everything; it has created everything. It lives in the spring, rustles in the leaves, blows in the wind. There it finds the human ego within itself. There it was an all-encompassing consciousness from which all individual consciousness arose: governing knowledge. Ancient clairvoyance was a reflection of this governing knowledge. Back then, human beings were not confined to their physical bodies. Consciousness permeated everything. One could not say that ego-consciousness was here or there—it was embedded in everything. This is wonderfully hinted at through Wagner’s intuition:

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

[ 27 ] Erda knows all this through this awareness. And so, step by step, we can see everywhere how what Wagner incorporated into the Nibelung myth from his intuition appears to us as an imprint of primordial wisdom.

[ 28 ] Let us now—and let us repeat once more that Richard Wagner himself did not carry this out consciously—transport ourselves to the moment of transition from the old stage of development to the new. Over in Atlantis, there was a sense of brotherhood. This was followed by the transition to ego-consciousness, the emergence of independence in human nature. And now let us transport ourselves to the beginning of Das Rheingold. Do we not hear the emergence of ego-consciousness in the very first notes, in the long chord in E-flat major? And do we not perceive how this distinct consciousness emerges from the general consciousness? Thus, we might find motif after motif enlivened by Wagner’s own insight that a world lying behind the phenomena of the world can be revealed in musical tones, that he himself, through his practice, uses the instruments as the primordial organs of nature. I do not wish to present Richard Wagner to you as a man who embodied vague mysticism. His artistic work is steeped in the essence of clear mysticism.

[ 29 ] When we move from this work of poetry to another, Lohengrin, how does the interplay of what mysticism has to offer appear to us there? Lohengrin is the messenger of the Holy Grail, coming from the realm of the initiates, where higher wisdom reigns. The Lohengrin legend ties in with the legends we encounter everywhere, which indicate the influence of the initiates upon ordinary human existence. At key points in history, we are constantly reminded of the legend, which is deeper than history itself. We are shown how such forces of the Initiates intervene in the course of history. They do not merely present a succession of external facts.

[ 30 ] That was an important period—the transition from collective consciousness to individual consciousness. The myth of Lohengrin seeks to characterize this turning point. We see it as the time when a new spirit breaks free from the old. Two spirits of the age stand in opposition to one another. They are embodied in the two women who are in conflict. Elsa, the feminine principle, always represents the soul striving for the highest. The banal interpretations of Goethe’s words in the “Chorus mysticus”—“The eternal feminine draws us upward”—do not apply; these words spring from the deepest mysticism. The soul must allow itself to be fertilized by the great events through which new principles enter the course of development. What enters is represented by the initiates who come from significant places. Here, spiritual science speaks of advanced individualities. One is always asked: Why do they not reveal themselves? — If they were to reveal themselves, they would not be recognized. People would ask them about their ordinary, mundane name and social status. But for one who works from the spiritual worlds, this is the least significant thing. For the one who, as an initiate, is to proclaim the mysteries is so far above such things as birth, name, social status, and profession that it is nonsense to ask him about them. When such questions are directed at him, understanding of his profound mission is so far removed that a separation must occur.

You must never ask me,
Nor worry about knowing,
Where I came from on this journey.
Nor what my name or nature is.

[ 31 ] Any of those who do not live solely in the ordinary world could say these words of Lohengrin when asked about their name and status. This is one of the themes explored in Lohengrin, where true, clear mysticism shines into the musical and dramatic life.

[ 32 ] Humanity possesses a profound secret, a mystery that reigns in the world. It is symbolically represented in a myth that must be deeply understood: When the spirit who, at the beginning of our evolution, fell away from the spirits guiding humanity—when Lucifer fell—a stone fell from his crown, and from this a cup was formed: that very cup from which Christ Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples, that very cup in which Joseph of Arimathea collected the blood on Golgotha; who brought it to the West. After many journeys, the chalice came into the hands of Titurel, through whom the Grail Castle was founded. He preserved it, together with the Holy Lance of Love. Legend has it that all who gaze into the chalice take something eternal into themselves.

[ 33 ] Let us once again summarize the entire mystery of this myth: a harmony with the progress of human development, as envisioned by those who know the mystery of the Grail. They say: When human development began on Earth, all love was still bound to blood. It was blood kinship that united people. We find small tribes there and observe that close-knit relationships prevail within them. It was only later that distant marriages emerged. The point in time at which one is permitted to marry outside the tribe marks an important transition in the life of every people.

[ 34 ] This awareness has been preserved in legends and myths. At first, then, love was bound to blood kinship; then the circles within which people married grew wider and wider. That is one current of development: love bound to the equality and communion of flesh and blood. Then another principle becomes dominant, one that instills independence. In that ancient time that preceded Christianity—so said the Knights of the Grail—there were these two currents: the love of blood brotherhood and the principle of freedom, that which reigns within the human being as something independent, as something Luciferic, the power of Yahweh, whose name means: I am who I am. — With Christianity, a love independent of blood brotherhood was to be brought into the world. Thus, Christ’s saying is to be interpreted as follows: “Whoever does not forsake father and mother cannot be my disciple.” - That is to say: Whoever is unable to replace a love bound to blood and flesh with universal love for humanity—a love that flows from soul to soul, from human being to human being in general, and which must gradually develop—cannot be my disciple.

[ 35 ] Thus we see that the bowl is part of Lucifer’s crown. It unites the Christ principle with the Lucifer principle. Through this insight, the Knights of the Grail receive the great power that permeates them with I-Life. We find this meaning in the legend of the Holy Grail. And the following was made clear to those who were disciples of the Holy Grail. I will present in a simple way, in the form of a dialogue, what was gradually made clear to the disciples of the Grail through long exercises. Some will say this is unbelievable. But the truth is like that of the envoys from civilized nations to the courts of barbarians—as Voltaire recounts: they must first endure unworthy treatment before they are recognized.

[ 36 ] The Grail student was thus told: Look at the plant. One cannot compare the flower to the human head; with its male and female reproductive organs, it corresponds to the human sexual side. The root corresponds to the head. - Darwin himself correctly pointed out in a comparison that the root corresponds to the human head. The human being is the plant turned upside down: he has completed the full transformation. Chastely, the plant stretches its calyx toward the light, absorbing the rays—the sacred lance of love—and receiving the pure kiss under which the fruit forms. The transformation is half-completed in the animal. The plant, which burrows its head into the earth; the animal, with its horizontal spine; and the human, with his upright gait, his gaze directed upward (it is drawn on the blackboard). These three, when joined, form the cross. “Look,” the student was told, “at how Plato proclaims the truth when he says that the World Soul lies stretched out, crucified, upon the body of the world.”—The World Soul, the soul that flows through plant, animal, and human, is found in the bodies that represent the cross. That is the original meaning of the cross. Everything else is mere rhetoric.

[ 37 ] What was the result of humanity having undergone this reversal? When we look at a plant, we see that, for the true mystic, the plant possesses the same state of consciousness as a sleeping human being. When asleep, a human being has the value of a plant. Human beings have attained their present state of consciousness by permeating the pure, chaste plant body with desire, with the body of passion. In a certain sense, this has raised them to a higher level of self-consciousness, but they have paid for this by permeating the pure plant substance with desires and instincts. And now a future state of humanity was depicted for the student—a state in which human beings will have retained their clear consciousness but will have returned, purified and cleansed, to the pure substance of the plant. They will then have regained their pure, chaste nature. The reproductive organ will be transformed. In the spirit of the Grail Knight, it was imagined that the human being of the future will have organs that will serve reproduction in such a way that they will not be permeated by desire, but will be pure and chaste like the calyx of a plant, which turns toward the lance of love, the sunbeam. Thus will the ideal of the Grail be realized, where human beings, in pure chastity, just like plants, will bring forth their own kind, where they will once again create their own image in the higher, pure calyx, when human beings will be creators in the spirit. This real ideal was called the Holy Grail: the transformed reproductive organs of human beings, which bring forth human beings as purely and chastely as the larynx today produces the word that sets the air waves in motion.

[ 38 ] And now let us try to show how this great ideal lived on in Richard Wagner’s mind. It was in 1857, on Good Friday, when he stood on the balcony of the garden house at Mrs. Wesendonck’s villa and looked out as the first plants began to sprout. He recorded this memorable moment. In the sprouting of the young plants, he sensed the entire mystery of the Holy Grail—the birth of all that is connected with the concept of the Holy Grail. He sensed this in connection with Good Friday. A wondrous mood came over him. That was when the first thought for his Parsifal sprang to life within him. Much has since been lost in the time that followed. But the feeling has remained. From it he shaped the figure of his Parsifal, that figure in whom feeling is elevated to knowledge, where one becomes knowing through empathy, “knowing through compassion.” And the entire development—how human nature is wounded by the impure lance—is revealed to us in the mystery of Amfortas. We see how the mystical mystery of the Holy Grail shines forth there.

[ 39 ] One must not approach such things with a crude mindset. One must follow the entire feeling and present the concepts in their totality before the soul. Thus, we see everywhere that, while Richard Wagner may not have thought in mystical terms, as an artist and a human being he presented everything he did in a mystical way. That is what matters.

[ 40 ] In spiritual science, we are not to receive a theory, but something that becomes immediate life. In this sense, Richard Wagner clearly perceived his mission—so clearly, so mystically—that he could say to himself: Art such as it lives within me as an ideal must once again be a divine service. - He, in turn, sensed the convergence of the three currents and wanted to be a messenger of their interplay himself. His mystical insight reveals what has, after all, lived as a mystical and clear feeling in all the great masters—and what we sense when we relate the great masters to mysticism. Goethe sensed it. Then the human being becomes whole again, feels something of that through which he overcomes his own self, when he lives through what is written in The Mysteries:

From the violence that binds all beings,
the person who overcomes themselves is set free.

[ 41 ] When this mood of detachment from the ego—of immersing oneself in the mysteries of the world—pulses through all one’s faculties, then a person becomes a mystic in every sphere. Whether outwardly religious, scientific, or artistic—he strives for unity in the sense of a unified human nature. This is what Goethe sought to express as the secret of every whole human being when he summarized the secret of his own soul in the words:

Whoever possesses science and art also possesses religion.
Whoever does not possess those two should have religion.