The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Old Norse Myths and Legends

[ 1 ] In this and the coming sessions, we will examine what might be called occult or mystical symbols in their relationship to the astral and spiritual worlds. Time and again, you encounter various signs, symbols, and stories; and then there are those with a materialistic mindset who claim that it is all fiction. It is assumed to be borrowed in some way from the popular imagination and regarded merely as empty fantasy. Or the well-meaning come along and speculate all sorts of things about what, for example, the pentagram and other symbols mean. At our congress in Munich, we even used signs and symbols to decorate our hall, thereby already indicating that we attach a certain significance to occult signs. But the true occultist does not speculate about them; rather, he seeks the real facts. Through philosophical speculation, you can never, ever arrive at the meaning of an occult sign, and much of what is said and written about occult signs and their meaning is written in vain, because it is written solely out of speculation, out of more or less ingenious pondering. Yet these occult symbols are important to us, for they are something like instruments through which we can ascend into the higher worlds.

[ 2 ] We have already heard quite a bit about the meaning of important symbols, such as the symbolism associated with the number 666, and we have been able to delve deeply into the religious text of the Apocalypse. Today, we will focus on something entirely different within the realm of symbolism. These are symbols that have often come to mind, and we now wish to explore their origins and their true value. Before we proceed to discuss these symbols, we must first consider the nature of human beings. You will soon see why something seemingly quite unrelated is being introduced to explain certain signs and symbols.

[ 3 ] Let us go back to that point in human evolution that you are all familiar with from previous lectures. You know that our present age was preceded by a period we call the Atlantean era. Where the floor of the Atlantic Ocean now lies, between America and Europe, there was land in ancient times, while our regions were largely covered by vast bodies of water. Our ancestors lived in that land. In truth, the majority of the European population does not originate from the East, but from the West, and is descended from the Atlantean people. From that land, ancient Atlantis, where our ancestors and we ourselves lived in earlier incarnations, they migrated far to the East when the waters that now form the Atlantic Ocean had engulfed that former continent.

[ 4 ] In the final third of the Atlantean era, a small group emerged in the northeast—in the region of present-day Ireland—from the population that was considered the most advanced at the time. The entire Atlantic region was shrouded in heavy, dense fog and is therefore called “Niflheim” in the memory of the Germanic peoples. In those ancient times, when the air was constantly saturated with dense masses of water, spiritual life was also quite different. An ancient form of clairvoyance still existed; people at that time could see into the spiritual world. When they approached a person, they saw certain color phenomena rising before their soul, which told them whether they found that person likable or unlikable. It was the same with animals; when they approached an animal, they could see whether it would harm them or not. A primitive form of clairvoyance was thus present, in a certain sense, during the Atlantean era.

[ 5 ] Humanity has now passed through various stages of development; it could not remain stuck in that old, dim form of clairvoyance; the modern way of perceiving through the senses had to take hold. For a certain time, clairvoyance had to take a back seat, but in the future it will be reclaimed and integrated into today’s clear, conscious awareness. What people today have as the foundation of our external culture—the use of reason, the intellect—was not characteristic of the ancient Atlantean clairvoyants; it first had to be acquired. Humanity had to direct its eyes and ears, its sensory organs, outward; the inner spiritual eye receded for a time. When our ancestors migrated from ancient Atlantis toward the East, this event was simultaneously linked to the loss of the old clairvoyance and to the attainment of external sensory perception, to the attainment of abilities such as counting, calculating, and judging.

[ 6 ] It was among that small group near what is now Ireland that the ability to calculate, count, and so on first developed. These people initially migrated eastward, and as the ocean’s waters began to rise, other peoples followed in their wake; they settled the lands of what is now Europe. Thus, these peoples possessed a dual perspective on things: the external observation of the sensory world, counting, calculating, and combining—which led to the achievement of today’s technological advances, machines, means of transportation, and so on. But in their hearts, these peoples carried something else: the memory of those spiritual worlds into which they had looked, and the longing to reconquer these spiritual worlds by whatever means.

[ 7 ] Let us now vividly create a mental image of these ancestors in ancient Europe. They did not all lose the gift of ancient clairvoyance at the same time as they migrated here. Many—indeed, numerous—people who had migrated brought fully intact remnants of ancient clairvoyance with them to Europe. There were many among these ancestors who, when they sat quietly at dusk or at night, would sink into a vivid dreaming that meant more than the dreaming of today; they could still see into the spiritual world.

[ 8 ] Countless people had not only preserved the memory of this, but even retained the ability to glimpse into the spiritual worlds during certain exceptional states of life. And the others, who had lost this ability, possessed a quality that has been lost far more in the course of development than is commonly thought: In ancient times, particularly among the populations of Central and Eastern Europe, there was a quality that was widespread, with an intensity that is unimaginable today, and that was trust, faithful belief. Those who knew something to say about the spiritual worlds found a hearing; they found belief, because love and trust had a great, a significant power precisely in those European countries. That kind of criticism and insistence on one’s own convictions, as we find it today, was something no one even thought of back then. But it is these very things that make it necessary today for each person to be led into the spiritual world for themselves. That was not necessary in those days because of the strong, deep trust. When we look at the old population of Europe, we see in the depths of these people’s souls that they had a full awareness of the spiritual worlds lying behind the sensory world.

[ 9 ] And now let us try to understand how the new way of seeing things developed in humans, who now perceive objects through their senses. I have already indicated that among that small group in the north, near what is now Ireland, an event occurred through which calculation, counting, and combining became human abilities. I have previously indicated that at that time the human etheric head moved into the physical head. Whereas previously the part of the etheric head near the eyebrows was outside the physical brain, it now moved inside, and the two became one. Through this, human beings gained the capacity for self-awareness, for ego-consciousness; they gained the capacity to judge and to look at objects. The etheric head, which today coincides with the form of the physical head, protruded far beyond the forehead in the ancient Atlanteans, hence their ability to look into the spiritual world, their clairvoyance. Now let us put ourselves in the soul of the Atlantean people, let us transport ourselves to those ancient times when people still had their etheric head far outside their physical head, and then let us transport ourselves to those times toward the end of Atlantis when the two had already merged. The Atlantean could see how the etheric head gradually moved inward; he was, after all, still clairvoyant, he saw this. How did he perceive this movement of the etheric head into the physical head? To the Atlantean, this movement of the etheric head seemed like something very special. Let us bring this before our soul; I will describe it to you.

[ 10 ] “Where,” the Atlantean wondered, “do the powers that are now bestowed upon me come from?” — Previously, humans had seen a spiritual world around them. What did this spiritual world reveal to them? Make this very clear to yourself. If you could suddenly become clairvoyant now, to the same degree as the Atlantean was, what would happen in your soul? You would see spiritual beings all around you. The physical world would become populated with beings from the astral and spiritual planes, and you would see them. Where would this come from? Through your own abilities, which now lie dormant in your soul, but which you would then have developed. It would seem to you as if something were radiating out from within yourself. What radiates out from you into the world today was, after all, first radiated into you back in the time of ancient Atlantis. All the concepts that people today can form in mere terms about the spiritual world were, at that time, living beings to them, and the Atlantean saw how something drew into him and stimulated abilities within him. He said to himself: I am beginning to see things with my eyes, to hear sounds and tones with my ears; I am beginning to perceive what is sensually perceptible outside. — Where do these abilities come from? They radiated from the outside into the human being.

[ 11 ] Let us take another close look at ancient Atlantis. The land was covered with vast masses of water vapor; these masses of water vapor varied in density during the early and late Atlantean periods; specifically, they differed in the vicinity of present-day Ireland from those in other regions. The masses of water and mist were at first warm and hot. In the southern part of Atlantis they were still warm, and in some places hot, like warm, hot masses of smoke; toward the north they were colder. Especially toward the end of the Atlantean era, a powerful cooling took place. Now it was precisely this cooling of the mist masses, this northern cold, that conjured up the new outlook, the new soul life, within human beings. Never could intellect and the power of judgment have developed in humanity first amidst the scorching heat of the south. The Atlantean living near Ireland felt abilities flowing into him that permeated him so deeply that he became capable of seeing, hearing, and so on, the things outside with his sense organs. He felt that he owed this to the cooling of the air masses.

[ 12 ] The perception of external objects through the sense organs involves nerves. Nerves extend from the brain to each of our sensory organs. We have optic nerves, olfactory nerves, auditory nerves, and so on. These nerves, which today enable human beings to bring sensory impressions into consciousness, were inactive before the external sensory perception of things existed. They did not mediate external perception; they had an inner function. At that time, the Atlantean human being saw the forces approaching him that transformed these nerves within him into sensory organs. He experienced this entire situation as if currents were flooding into his head from the outside, which then permeated his nerves in the head.

[ 13 ] Now, among the nerves in the head that were active at that time and that we can still identify anatomically today, there are twelve pairs—ten of which branch out from the head to activate the individual sensory organs. For example, when you move your eyes, it is the eye muscle nerves that are involved, not the optic nerve. So there are ten pairs that go to the individual sense organs, and two pairs that go deeper down and mediate the connection between sensory perception and brain activity. The Atlantean felt twelve currents entering him, into his brain and down into his body. He saw this. What you now have within you as nerves was, for his perception, generated by twelve currents flowing into him. If the twelve nerve strands are to be credited with the fact that the air cooled and the whole of Niflheim became a cold land, something else was still necessary to form the human sensory organs. Before the human sense organs were formed, the heart, too, had a completely different function. The blood circulation must have been different in a being who clairvoyantly and spiritually conjured up the colors and sounds of the surroundings before the soul than in the Atlantean human, for whom the external world gradually emerged as perceptible to the external senses. This transformation of the heart could never have come from the cold regions of Atlantis. It had to come about because the human organism was stimulated from elsewhere. The transformation of the heart was brought about by the warmer, southern region of Atlantis.

[ 14 ] You must create a mental image of it this way: both currents influenced the Atlanteans—the cold currents of the north and the warm currents of the south. The warm currents brought fire into the heart; they set it ablaze with enthusiasm, while the other aspect of human nature was stirred by the cold north. The currents coming from the north transformed the human forehead [alternative note: brain] to such an extent that human beings could become thinkers, observers of the sensory world. The head of the Atlantean was formed quite differently from the head of the human being of today. It is precisely what these forces of the twelve currents of the North have brought about that has made the human being a thinker. And the warm current of the South has given him his feeling, his sensibility, and also his present-day sensuality. What the blood thereby received flowed into the heart, which thereby became a completely different organ. Because the blood—the sap that nourishes the human being—and the entire blood circulation had changed, the body’s external nourishment also had to change. Thus we can say: Work was done on the human being from two sides during that time. His physical body was transformed in such a way that, on the one hand, it could become the bearer of the brain, and on the other hand, so that the body was supplied with the blood that this transformed human being needed.

[ 15 ] These processes presented themselves to the Atlantean’s perception as images. In astral perception, everything does indeed present itself as images. The inflow of the spiritual currents that shaped our nerves appeared to him as twelve streams descending from the cold north; and that which transformed the heart appeared to him as the fire rising from the south. That which transformed the physical head into that of today’s perceptive human being appeared to him as the image of the primordial human, and the nourishing aspect in the human being appeared to him as another image, as the image of the feeding animal.

[ 16 ] How, then, did the one who had seen all this present himself before the people? How did he express himself? He expressed himself in images. For what we have just said here, the people of that time would not have understood. But they had preserved an ancient form of clairvoyance; when one spoke to them in images, they could understand the great, significant truths. This method was also practiced in the Druidic schools. The ancient priest-sages spoke to the people in the following manner:

[ 17 ] Before you were able to look into this world, which is filled with plants and animals, with all the objects you can now distinguish outside, there was nothing but a dark, yawning space, like an abyss. You saw the images within that space. But everything that is there now emerged from this abyss, from Ginnungagap—that is the ancient Germanic chaos. Now the story continued: Twelve streams flowed from the north, and sparks of fire came from the south. When the sparks of fire from the south joined with the twelve streams from the north, two beings came into being: the giant Ymir and the cow Audhumbla.

[ 18 ] So who is the giant Ymir? Ymir is the thinking human being who came into being, who emerged from chaos—from Ginnungagap; and the cow Audhumbla is the new source of sustenance and the new heart. The giant Ymir and the cow Audhumbla are united in human form.

[ 19 ] What mental image should we have of the old druid speaking to people in a priestly manner? He possessed wisdom; he knew what had happened. He spoke to people who had either retained an ancient clairvoyance in exceptional moments, or to those who had faith. He knew he would be understood if he recounted the process of becoming human as it presents itself to astral vision. The twelve streams coming from the north, which form the twelve pairs of nerves, unite with the sparks of fire bursting forth from the south, which form the heart and the digestive system. These are the two forces that present themselves as the giant Ymir and the cow Audhumbla—how beautifully this is told in the Germanic Genesis! Two worlds came into being—so we hear—: the cold Niflheim and the hot, flame-spewing Muspelheim. Niflheim sends forth the twelve streams, Muspelheim sends forth the sparks of fire.

[ 20 ] And now let us go a step further. We know that at that time, at the very moment when the etheric body of the head united with the physical head, the “I” emerged as a clear, self-aware “I.” Before that, human beings could not say “I” to themselves. Although the human being already felt himself to be an “I”-being, the consciousness of the “I” had not yet dawned upon him. Along with this becoming an “I,” the human being had to recognize what had been transformed and formed there. He had become an “I” in the higher sense.

[ 21 ] Now let us consider what had come into being within the human being. What had come into being was that which originated from the twelve streams; this is what permeated the head through the cranial nerves. But what had also developed was that which, by its very nature, is not connected to the head—that which, by its very nature, descends from the cow Audhumbla. These two natures joined together back then; you can literally see that. Try to realize how everything that came from the twelve streams of the north is enclosed within the skull and the spinal cord. Everything else is attached; the ribs and the organs beneath them are what came from the south from the sparks of fire, the cow Audhumbla; it developed from a completely different state of humanity and was attached to the earlier one. What was formed there? The one thing that formed from a completely different state of humanity is the sexual principle. True, the sexual principle had already been formed in ancient Lemuria, but it was only with the emergence of ego-consciousness that it also came to human consciousness. Before this point, human beings were more or less unconscious; the sexual act took place as if in a dreamlike state, a twilight state. The second thing given to human beings was the form of the heart itself. And a third thing that was given to them, which gradually took shape during this time, was language. Language is also a creation of Atlantis. Without language, you cannot form a mental image of the development of thought or higher spirituality. Nor can you form a mental image of this without the transformed heart and without the altered, conscious sexual principle. Thus, the human being appears to be strangely structured. His thinking and his external perception have been integrated into his head. Added to this is a threefold element: the conscious sexual principle, the conscious heart principle, and conscious language, which is the expression of his inner being.

[ 22 ] Let us now consider how this appears to astral perception. The astral seer, in turn, sees this as an image; it appears to him as a tree, a tree with three roots. One root is sexuality, the second is the heart, and the third is language. These three roots correspond to the spiritual, to the head. Nervous currents constantly flow back and forth. The clairvoyant can see this as if a being were constantly running from below to above and from above to below. It appears as if the upper, the spiritual, were constantly being fought against by what comes from below. These two currents are in conflict with one another. Human beings would never be able to live in their lower limbs without being nourished by the twelve nerve currents coming from the head. In the blood, the spiritual nourishing juices flow from top to bottom. Thus the clairvoyant sees in this image the becoming of the new human being, as it was prepared in the final period of the Atlantean epoch for the post-Atlantean era.

[ 23 ] The old Druid sage had to speak in such a way that he told the people: This is how one sees the matter. — People still possessed astral clairvoyance, and so he was able to describe to them what he saw on the astral plane. Therefore, he taught: What has arisen within the human being and lives within them today—the ego-personality—springs from three sources. The ego, which was already there in the past but has only now come into consciousness, originates from Niflheim. But there is a serpent there that constantly gnaws at the root that springs from this source; its name is Niddhögr. Through clairvoyance, one can actually see this serpent gnawing. The excesses of the sexual principle, which is not kept in check, gnaw at this root of the human being.

[ 23 ] The old Druid sage had to speak in such a way that he told the people: This is how one sees the matter. — People still possessed astral clairvoyance, and so he was able to describe to them what he saw on the astral plane. Therefore, he taught: What has arisen within the human being and lives within them today—the ego-personality—springs from three sources. The ego, which was already there in the past but has only now come into consciousness, originates from Niflheim. But there is a serpent there that constantly gnaws at the root that springs from this source; its name is Niddhögr. Through clairvoyance, one can actually see this serpent gnawing. The excesses of the sexual principle, which is not kept in check, gnaw at this root of the human being.

[ 25 ] At the third root lies Mimir's spring, Mimir, who drinks the potion of wisdom. This is that which expresses itself as language. And above, the treetops of the tree reach into the spirit realm, and from the spiritual realm come down drops of the fertilizing nerve fluid. The priest-sages expressed this by saying: Up there in the treetops of the World Ash, a goat grazes, from whose antlers it drips down continuously. — Thus the lower is continually fertilized by the upper. And a squirrel runs from top to bottom and from bottom to top, carrying words of strife back and forth: the struggle of the lower against the higher nature.

[ 26 ] This is how the Germanic legend depicts it. It says: The new man in the new world is like a tree, an ash tree with three roots. The first root extends to Niflheim, the icy, gloomy primordial land. In the midst of Niflheim was the inexhaustible well Hwergelmir; twelve streams sprang from it, flowing throughout the entire world. The second root led to the well of the Norns, Urd, Verdhandi, and Skuld; they sat on its banks and spun the threads of fate. The third root led to Mimir’s well. Yggdrasil was the name given to the World Ash, in which the forces of the world had converged. A human is depicted at the moment when they are to become conscious of their self, when the word “I” is to resound from within them. “Yggdrasil” means “bearer of the self.” This tree is the bearer of the self. “Ygg” is “I” and “drasil” shares the same root as “to bear.”

[ 27 ] Now try to imagine all the learned and uneducated, witty and uninspired explanations that have been offered for this Germanic myth. None of these explanations have any value for occultism. For the occultist, the principle holds that everything that is a sign—and a narrative is also a sign—has a real existence in the spiritual world; and only when we know what corresponds to such a sign in the spiritual world do we recognize the true meaning of the signs and myths. No one can draw upon and apply the forces for human development that lie within the ancient Norse myths unless they approach the deeper meaning of these myths in this way. It is precisely through occultism that we gain the insights into the world and humanity that the ancient Druids embedded in the images of Germanic myth—not because they sought to invent images out of a vivid imagination, but because they beheld these images. No symbol has validity in occultism that cannot be beheld in the higher worlds. The ancient legends and myths are symbols in the physical world for a higher reality. They are a scripture that wonderfully records times past. If we can read this scripture, then we gaze deeply into antiquity, and at the same time the myth itself enriches us.

[ 28 ] If we perceive the myths in this way, we gain a much deeper understanding than abstract science can provide. Science can show us the twelve pairs of nerve tracts; the occultist reveals their origin and the entire context of the world. What is the human being? A symbol of the spirit, for he is born out of the spiritual world. He is a composite of spiritual forces. If the human being truly knows himself, he recognizes himself as a symbol of the eternal that lies within him. Let us take this with us and continue our reflections in eight days’ time. Let us reflect on this in the spirit of Goethe’s words: “All that is transitory is but a parable.” Man himself is a parable for the imperishable spiritual within the transitory. When man recognizes this, the realization dawns upon him of his own spiritual, imperishable, eternal core of being.