The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday, as an introduction, attention was first drawn to the fact that we can only truly understand certain older historical events in human history if we do not merely look at the powers and abilities of the personalities themselves, but if we assume that, through these personalities—as through instruments—beings are at work who, so to speak, allow their deeds to flow down from higher worlds into our world. We must imagine that these beings cannot directly intervene here in our world in our physical things, in our physical realities, because, due to their current stage of development, they cannot incarnate in a physical body that draws its elements from our physical world. If they therefore wish to act within our physical world, they must make use of the physical human being—his hand, but also his intellect and his powers of perception. We find the influence and impact of such beings from the higher worlds to be all the more pronounced the further back we go in the history of human development. One must not, however, believe that this downflow of forces and modes of action from the higher worlds into the physical world through human beings has ever ceased, even down to our own time.

[ 2 ] For the spiritual scientist who, as we have been able to demonstrate over the years, has internalized what our feelings and imagination lead us to regard as the prerequisite for the higher worlds, a fact such as the one just described will certainly be understandable from the outset, for he is accustomed, so to speak, to always drawing the connecting threads that link our knowledge, our thinking, and our will with the beings of the higher hierarchies. But the spiritual scientist sometimes finds himself in the position of having to defend himself against the materialistic ideas that are now prevalent in our time, against the ideas that make it impossible for people who are far removed from spiritual development to even begin to engage with what must be said about the influence of higher worlds on our physical world.

[ 3 ] In our time, it is essentially already considered an outdated view to speak solely of the influence of abstract ideas within human events, within history. Even that is considered by some people today to be completely unacceptable to true scientific rigor: the notion that certain ideas—abstract ideas, which can really only exist in our minds—play out their course in the successive epochs of history. Even Ranke’s historiography in the 19th century retained, so to speak, a final semblance of belief in such abstract ideas—though one cannot, of course, comprehend how they are supposed to work, since they are, after all, abstract ideas—at least a certain final semblance of belief in such abstract ideas. But even this belief in the active ideas of history is gradually being cast overboard by our advancing materialistic development, and today, in a certain sense, it is also regarded as a sign of an enlightened mind when it comes to history if one believes merely that everything that characterizes the epochs, everything that has occurred in the epochs, arises fundamentally only through the convergence of physically tangible external deeds, external needs, external interests, and indeed the ideas of physical human beings. The time has already passed when minds such as Herder, as it were through inspiration, portrayed the development of human history in such a way that one could see everywhere: at least the premise of living forces, of living supersensible forces, underlies it, forces that express themselves through human actions, through human life. And anyone who wants to be considered a truly intelligent person today will say: Well, a man like Lessing certainly had some quite sensible ideas, but then, toward the end of his life, he came up with such confused nonsense as he wrote in his *Education of the Human Race*, where he could find no other way out than to link the strict lawfulness in the flow of historical becoming to the idea of reincarnation. In the final sentences of his *Education of the Human Race*, Lessing did indeed express what spiritual science describes based on occult facts: that souls who lived in ancient epochs, having absorbed the living, active forces, carry these forces over into their new incarnations, so that there is not merely an abstract, not merely an ideal flow, but a genuine, a real flow of the spirit behind material events. As I said, a clever mind will say: In his old age he came up with such confused ideas as reincarnation; one must overlook them. — This always reminds one again of the so bitterly ironic and yet so clever note that Hebbel once wrote in his diary, where he says, it would be a lovely motif for a high school teacher to go through Plato in his school, for the reincarnated Plato to be among his students, and for the reincarnated Plato to understand the Plato the teacher is going through so poorly that the teacher must impose severe punishments on him.

[ 4 ] With regard to the historical view of human development, much has indeed been lost from the earlier spiritual understanding, and spiritual science will truly have to defend itself against the onslaught of materialistic thinking, which is encroaching from all sides and simply considers foolish whatever needs to be communicated on the basis of spiritual facts. We have, after all, come a remarkably long way, for example in the way all those powerful images, those powerful symbolic concepts that sprang from the ancient clairvoyant knowledge of humanity and are expressed in mythologies, in heroic figures, and in the characters of legends and fairy tales, now find the strangest of explanations. The most curious thing in this field is probably that little book *Orpheus* by Salomon Reinach, which has caused quite a stir in many circles in France in our time. There, everything from which the ideas of Demeter, Orpheus, and other mythological figures are said to have sprung is traced back to purely materialistic events, and it is sometimes utterly grotesque how the historical existence of this or that figure—who, let us say, lies behind Hermes or Moses—is deduced, and in what trivial manner these figures are sought to be explained, so to speak, as products of humanity’s free imagination, born of fantasy. Using Salomon Reinach’s method, it would be easy, after sixty or seventy years—that is, once the external memory of him had faded somewhat—to prove that no such Reinach ever existed, but that it is merely folk poetry that has transferred the old idea of Reineke Fuchs to Salomon Reinach. That would be entirely possible according to his method. So absurd is the whole thing that, as explained in the preface, this little book “Orpheus” was written “for the broadest circles of our present-day educated public, indeed even for the youngest circles”! “For the youngest circles,” for he emphasizes that he has avoided everything—though he has not avoided attributing the idea of Demeter to a pig—that might cause offense to younger female readers. He promises, however, that if his book gains the influence he hopes for, he will then write a special edition of his little book for the mothers, which is to contain everything that must still be withheld from the daughters. So far, then, is the state of affairs.

[ 5 ] One would like to point out to the followers of spiritual science in particular that it is possible to prove, on the basis of purely external rational arguments, the influence of spiritual powers and forces through human beings right up to our own century—quite apart from the purely occult-esoteric research that will be our main concern here. But so that we may agree on how spiritual science can gain a certain ability to defend, on purely external grounds, the influence of supersensible powers in history, let me point out the following.

[ 6 ] Anyone who gains a little insight into the development of modern humanity, as it unfolded roughly from the 14th and 15th centuries into the 16th, will know that it was of infinitely profound significance how a certain historical figure intervened in this modern, external development of humanity—a figure of whom one can truly I would say, can prove with the most external of reasons that spiritual-supernatural forces were at work through him. One can, in fact, raise the question to shed a little light on the occult view of history: What would have become of the development of modern Europe if, at the beginning of the 15th century, the Maid of Orleans had not stepped into the course of events? For anyone who even considers the development of that time from a purely external perspective must say to themselves: If one were to remove the deeds of the Maid of Orleans from the historical process, then one must be clear, based on what can be known purely from external historical research: without the working of higher, supersensible forces through the Maid of Orleans, France—indeed, all of Europe—would indeed have taken on a different form in the 15th century. For at that time, everything that was taking place in the impulses of the will, in the minds of physical human beings, was directed toward, so to speak, covering Europe across all its states with a general conception of the state that would obliterate and wipe out the individualities of the peoples. And under its influence, an infinite amount of what has emerged within Europe over the past centuries through the interplay of the individualities of the European peoples would certainly have become impossible.

[ 7 ] Just imagine if the deeds of the Maid of Orleans had been erased from history; imagine France left to its fate without her intervention; ask yourself: What would have become of France without these deeds? — And then consider the role France played in the subsequent centuries for the entire spiritual life of humanity! And add to this the undeniable facts—facts supported by external documents—regarding the mission of the Maid of Orleans! Let us realize that this girl, who—even by the standards of her time—had not received a particularly high level of formal education, suddenly felt, in the fall of 1428 at the age of not yet twenty, that spiritual powers from the supersensible worlds were speaking to her—powers to which she, however, assigned the forms familiar to her, so that she saw them through the lens of her own conceptions; but that is no objection to the reality of these powers. Imagine that she knows: supernatural powers are directing her willpower toward a very specific point. I am not telling you, for the time being, about those facts that can be recounted through the Akashic Records, but only what has been established as a matter of record, purely historically.

[ 8 ] We know that this girl from Orléans first revealed herself to a relative, with whom she—one might almost say by chance—found understanding; that after various detours and difficulties she was led to the royal camp of King Charles, who, along with the entire French military establishment, had, so to speak, reached the end of his wit; and we know that, after every conceivable obstacle had been placed in her path, she finally, amidst a whole crowd of people into which King Charles had been placed in such a way that he was utterly indistinguishable to the outside eye, correctly identified him by simply rushing straight toward him. It is also known that she confided something to him at that time—he wanted to test her by doing so—of which one can say that only he alone and the supersensible worlds knew the corresponding truth. And you may know from the external history how it was she who, under the constant impulses and under the constant influence of her strong faith—one would better say, through her direct vision—led the armies to victory amid the greatest difficulties and brought the king to his coronation.

[ 9 ] Who intervened in the course of historical development back then? None other than members of the higher hierarchies! The Maid of Orleans was an external instrument of these beings, and they—these beings of the higher hierarchies—guided the events of history. It may well be that some mind tells itself: ‘Had I guided her, I would have guided her more wisely’—because it finds this or that aspect of the Maid of Orleans’s conduct incompatible with its own thinking. But followers of spiritual science should not seek to correct the deeds of the gods with human reason, something that, admittedly, occurs everywhere today within our so-called civilization. You see, there have been—naturally—people who, very much in the spirit of our present age, have sought to, so to speak, exonerate the history of the modern world from the deeds of the Maid of Orleans. And Anatole France wrote a work characteristic of our present age that follows this materialistic line of thought. One really just wants to know how materialistic thinking reconciles itself with accounts that are truly—and I am still speaking of documents of external history—quite well-founded. So, since we are here in this very place and I sometimes like to take local circumstances into account, I would like to cite a document that has already been referred to here before.

[ 10 ] The people of Stuttgart certainly know that a prominent Gospel scholar once lived here. As a scholar of the humanities, one need not agree with the various, often quite clever ideas that Gfrörer—as the Gospel scholar was called—put forward in his research on the Gospels, and one can be quite certain that if Gfrörer heard what is now being proclaimed in the field of the humanities, he would use the very phrase he often applied to his opponents—whom he, with his stubbornness, certainly did not always treat lightly: the phrase that these Theosophists are also the sort of people “whose heads are not quite right.” But back then, the time had not yet come when one could, so to speak, gloss over historical documents in a purely materialistic way, as is done today, when these historical documents concern facts that are inconvenient, that apparently indicate the workings of living higher forces within our physical world. And so today I would like to quote another short document, a letter published in the first half of the 19th century. I would like to read just a few passages to you, as Gfrörer referred to this letter back then to justify his beliefs. I would like to read a passage from a characterization of the Maid of Orleans and then ask you what such a vivid description signifies.

[ 11 ] After the author of this letter, to whom Gfrörer refers, has listed the achievements of the Maid of Orleans, he continues:

[ 12 ] “The Maid (of Orleans) has accomplished this and much more, and with God’s help she will accomplish even greater things. The maiden is of graceful beauty and possesses a manly bearing; she speaks little and displays a wonderful wisdom; when she speaks, she has a pleasant, delicate voice, as is typical of women. She eats in moderation and drinks wine even more sparingly. She takes pleasure in fine horses and weapons. She loves armed and noble men very much. The maiden dislikes gatherings and conversation with many people; she often weeps, loves a cheerful face, endures unimaginable labor, and is so persistent in handling and bearing arms that she remains fully armed day and night without ceasing for six days. She says: The English have no right to France, and therefore, as she says, God has sent her to drive them out and overcome them, but only after a prior warning has been issued. She shows the King the highest reverence; she says he is loved by God and under special protection, which is why he will also be preserved. Regarding the Duke of Orleans, your nephew, she says that he will be miraculously freed, but only after a warning has first been given to the English, who are holding him captive, regarding his release.

[ 13 ] And so, illustrious prince, that I may bring my account to a close: even more wondrous things are happening and have happened than I can write to you or express in words. As I write this, the aforementioned maiden has already journeyed to the region of the city of Reims in Champagne, whither the King has hastily set out for his anointing and coronation with God’s assistance. Most illustrious and mighty prince and my most revered lord! I commend myself to you most humbly, asking the Most High to protect you and grant your wishes.

[ 14 ] Written by Biteromis on the 21st day of the month of June.

[ 15 ] Your humble servant Percival, Lord of Bonlamiulk, Councilor and Chamberlain to the King of the French and to the Duke of Orleans, Seneschal to the King, a native of Berry.»

[ 16 ] Someone who knows the girl is writing this letter from a location very close to the king. It is indeed astonishing when, based purely on occult reasons and evidence, one must rediscover all these things—for they can be found in the Akashic Records, and one sees how, precisely in such cases, one can also provide external historical documents. In short, it seems almost insane to doubt what was brought about through the Maid of Orleans. And when we further consider that through her “deeds the entire history of modern times has taken on a different face,” this gives us the right to say that we see the supersensible world acting directly here, verifiable externally through documentary evidence. When the spiritual researcher then goes further and looks around in his own way for the actual inspirer who worked through the Virgin of Orleans, he discovers, as he explores the successive eras, something quite remarkable. He finds that the same spirit that once worked through the Maid of Orleans as its instrument has, so to speak, in a completely different form and in a completely different way, also worked inspiringly upon another personality who lived as a philosopher at the court of Charles the Bald: Scotus Erigena, through whose philosophical-theological ideas Europe was so deeply influenced in an early period. And so we see that the same forces work in different eras in different ways through human beings as their instruments; that there is continuity, a continuous unfolding, in what we call history.

[ 17 ] Yesterday I showed you how a significant myth from the Babylonian-Chaldean period points to the influence of the spiritual worlds on human beings, upon whom much depended in the course of history for the third of our post-Atlantean epochs, such as the course of the entire historical development in ancient Chaldea and ancient Babylonia. However, we must now also consider, from the standpoint of occult science, the two personalities hidden behind the legendary names Gilgamesh and Eabani. From an occult-historical perspective, we must see in them personalities who stand at the starting point of what we call Babylonian and Chaldean culture. The impulses that may have come from them are reflected in the development of the true spiritual culture of ancient Babylonia and Chaldea. Now, Gilgamesh was a personality who had undergone many incarnations of this kind, so that one can, in a sense, describe this personality as an old soul within the development of humanity.

[ 18 ] As you know from the account in my *Outline of Esoteric Science*, during the Lemurian period of Earth’s evolution, only very few humans, so to speak, survived the events of Earth’s evolution on Earth itself; that is, only a few remained on Earth during the Lemurian period; that the majority of souls, before the actual danger of the mummification of all that is human began, lifted themselves away from Earth to other planets and continued to live on Mars, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, and so on; that then, from the end of the Lemurian period onward and during the Atlantean period, these souls gradually returned to Earth to incarnate in earthly bodies under the changed earthly conditions and to appear in ever-new incarnations. So we have souls that descended from the planetary world relatively early, and others that descended late, only in the later periods of Atlantean development. The former souls, who thus descended earlier, have undergone more incarnations on Earth than those who descended later, and we can therefore call the latter, in contrast to the former, younger souls—souls who have thus absorbed less within themselves.

[ 19 ] The individuality behind the name Gilgamesh was an ancient soul, while the one embodied in Eabani was a younger soul at the dawn of Babylonian culture. Indeed, with regard to this younger or older aspect of the human soul, something very curious becomes apparent—one might almost say to the surprise of the occultist himself. If, for example, someone today has come so far as to acknowledge the truths of spiritual science to some extent, but otherwise still clings to the prejudices and value judgments of the outer world, then it will seem plausible to them that, for example, the souls of philosophers or scholars of our time must be counted among the older souls. Occult research reveals the exact opposite, strange as it may sound, and it is surprising even to the occultist himself that, for example, a young soul lived in Kart. Yes, the facts speak for themselves; there is nothing to be done about it. And one might now point out that younger souls do indeed incarnate in the majority of the colored races, that the colored races—namely the Negro race—therefore preferentially bring younger souls into incarnation. But it is precisely the peculiar nature of that human way of thinking, which finds its outlet in scholarship and in today’s materialistic science, that conditions younger souls. And it is even demonstrable that in the case of some personalities, in whom one would not at all expect it, the previous incarnation lies quite clearly among the savages. Yes, the facts speak for themselves! All of this must certainly be noted; it is so. This, of course, takes nothing away from the significance or value of the judgments we make about our surroundings; nevertheless, it must be grasped for a comprehensive understanding of what is at stake. In this sense, with Eabani in ancient Babylonia we are dealing with a young soul, and with Gilgamesh with an old soul. Such an old soul, by its very nature, will grasp early on not only what is, so to speak, a cultural element or factor of the present, but also what enters the present as a cultural impact and allows one to look far into the perspective of the future.

[ 20 ] Some people might, however, object if it were made clear to them that the Theosophists—whom they so often regard as inferior—are for the most part older souls than those who give academic lectures. But research shows this to be true, and while spiritual research should not be misused to overturn value judgments or to mock what was once the defining feature of our culture, one must nevertheless look the truth squarely in the face. Thus Gilgamesh was a personality who, by virtue of his soul constitution, aligned himself with what belonged to the most advanced spiritual elements and factors of his time—elements that, for that era, shone far into the future—and which could only be attained at that time through such a personality undergoing a kind of initiation. Through a certain initiation, through a communication of that which can only be received through initiation, Gilgamesh was to be given what enabled him to provide the catalysts for Babylonian culture. Thus, he was to undergo an initiation to a certain degree.

[ 21 ] Let us consider this Gilgamesh and how he had to position himself within the course of human evolution prior to this initiation. He was a human being of the third post-Atlantean epoch. But in this epoch, the twilight had already fallen on natural human clairvoyance—on what human beings could and were able to do through their natural powers. It was no longer present to the extent that large numbers of people could look back into their earlier incarnations. If we go further back into the second, into the first post-Atlantean epoch, we would find that the majority of people on our Earth could still look back into their past incarnations, into the flow of their soul life prior to their present birth. But that had gradually been lost. In the case of Gilgamesh, the situation was such that from the very beginning, the being who was to reveal himself through him—and who could only reveal himself through him by gradually leading him toward a kind of initiation—kept, so to speak, a constant watch over him. This being placed him in the position through which he learned to assess his own place in world history. Through events of a supersensory nature, which confront us in images in the myth I cited yesterday, he was, so to speak, given a friend at his side, a friend whose barbarism, whose uncivilized nature, is indicated to us by the fact that his outward form is half-animal. It is said that this friend wore animal skins on his body, that is, that he was, so to speak, still hairy like the people of the primal state, that his soul was so young that it built itself a body that still shows humanity in a feral form. Thus Gilgamesh, the more advanced one, had in Eabani a man at his side who, through his young soul and the physical constitution resulting from it, still possessed an ancient clairvoyance. This friend had been placed at his side to help him find his bearings. With the help of this friend, he then succeeded in accomplishing certain things, such as, let us say, the restoration of that spiritual power which is in turn depicted in the myth through the image of the city goddess of Erech, Ishtar. I have told you that the city goddess had been stolen by the neighboring city and that therefore the two, Gilgamesh and Eabani, waged war against the neighboring city, defeated the king of that neighboring city, and brought the city goddess back.

[ 22 ] If one wishes to understand the things depicted in these ancient myths correctly from a historical perspective, one must delve into the occult background of the matter. For behind this abduction of the city goddess lies something similar to what lies behind the abduction of Helen, who is carried off to Troy by Paris. We must be clear that what is set forth in my short treatise “Blood Is a Very Special Juice” is based on sound grounds. There you are reminded that among the peoples of ancient times there existed a certain collective consciousness, such that human beings did not merely perceive their personal “I” within their own skin, but rather saw themselves as a member of the tribe or the city community. Just as the individual human soul is perceived as the central factor for our fingers, toes, hands, and legs—which belong together—and for our entire organism, so too did people in ancient times feel themselves to be a member of the group soul to which they belonged. Such a thing still existed in earlier times within the ancient city-states, even in Greece. A communal spirit, a national selfhood, a tribal selfhood, lived and wove its way through the individual national personalities. But that which could come to human consciousness from such a shared selfhood had to be, so to speak, administered in mysteries, in secret temple sites. There were the ancient mystery priests, who administered the collective spiritual affairs of a city or a tribe. And one speaks not merely figuratively, but in a certain sense truly and correctly, when one says that such a temple site was truly like a dwelling for the city-self, for the group soul. There it had its central abode, and the temple priests were its servants. They were the ones who received the commands of this group soul through inspiration—what was called an oracle—and carried them out into the world so that this or that might happen; for the oracles of that time are indeed to be understood in the sense I have just described to you.

[ 23 ] The administration of such temple sites was shrouded in certain mysteries, and many conflicts in ancient times unfolded in such a way that the temple priests of one city were taken captive by the neighboring city; in other words, the most important secrets of a city were, so to speak, carried off to the neighboring city along with the temple priests. There you have the real fact that corresponds to the image of the city goddess Ishtar, the soul of the people of Erech, being abducted by the neighboring city. The temple priests, the custodians of the temple secrets, had been taken captive because the neighboring city hoped in this way to gain possession of the sacred secrets and thus the power of the city in question. That is the real background.

[ 24 ] And Gilgamesh, in the state of mind he was initially in, could not perceive such things himself, because he did not see into these connections. But a younger soul could serve him, so to speak, like a clairvoyant sense, which helped him to reclaim the ‘temple treasure’ for his hometown. Then it was truly brought to his awareness—to Gilgamesh’s—that in human life, especially during times of transition, there is such a thing as is depicted in the legend of the blind man and the lame man, each of whom is helpless on his own, but who together make progress by the blind man carrying the lame man on his shoulders and the lame man lending his sight to the blind man. In Gilgamesh and Eabani, we see such a collaboration between people of very different gifts, translated into the spiritual realm. We encounter this at every turn, particularly in the historical facts of earlier times. And it is important to understand such things, for only then can one understand why myths and legends so often present us with friends who have something to accomplish together: friends who are usually as dissimilar in their spiritual disposition as Gilgamesh and Eabani were. But what Gilgamesh was also able to gain for his soul through Eabani, his friend, was that he was, as it were, infected by Eabani with a clairvoyant power of his own, so that he could, in a certain sense, look back into his own past incarnations. Thus Gilgamesh truly learned from Eabani the ability to look back into past incarnations. This was something that lay beyond Gilgamesh’s normal capabilities. And now let us vividly imagine how Gilgamesh might have been influenced by this looking back into his past incarnations.

[ 25 ] What could he possibly say to himself from the day that the possibility arose in his soul to look back on what his soul had experienced in a previous incarnation? At first, this bewildered him. He could not quite find his way into his own being as it had been in earlier incarnations; he did not, so to speak, quite recognize himself. This is how it would be for people in general if they began to look back on their earlier incarnations. It would usually look quite different from the notions that arise time and again when it is said that some person is a reincarnation of this or that personality. It can indeed happen that one finds a personality who lists a whole series of great historical names as those of their previous incarnations. There are even said to be entire groups of people who are convinced that in their past lives there is nothing below the rank of a queen or a princess! — In these matters, which are supposed to be so serious, one must not let the imagination run wild; one must not engage in such nonsense.

[ 26 ] Well, anyone who, like Gilgamesh back then, first looks back on the sequence of their incarnations may indeed be surprised at times. He was looking back on incarnations because he was still entangled in all sorts of connections dictated by the nature of the group soul. However, he had, in a certain sense, carved out his own individual identity from these connections; it was only through Eabani that he had been able to fully appreciate the value of what is symbolized by the city goddess in the myth. But as he looked back, there were things in his earlier incarnations that he did not like, and he could say to himself: “That is not to my taste.” He found, for example, that in his incarnations his soul had had very special friendships, very special human relationships, of which he might now have been ashamed. This is what is depicted to us in the myth: that in contrast to what the city goddess had revealed to him indirectly through Eabani, he began, in a certain sense, to reproach her, to make accusations against his soul. The myth suggests that he reproached the goddess for her acquaintances, for he became jealous of such acquaintances. There he gazed, so to speak, upon the horizon of his soul, and the visions stood before him as vividly as people stand around another in the outer physical world, toward whom one feels this or that sympathy or antipathy. And in all the reproaches Gilgamesh now makes to the city goddess, we recognize that he is actually speaking to what is taking place at the bottom of his soul. So when we are told, for example, that he reproached the city goddess for having previously been acquainted with a certain man named Ischulanu in the myth, this means nothing other than that he did not like his own acquaintance with a certain man who had been his master’s gardener in a previous incarnation. So what was taking place in Gilgamesh’s soul, and through which he actually first attained that inner intensity, that inner fulfillment of his soul, which he needed when he was to become the inaugurator of Babylonian culture—all of this is presented to us in the return to a certain clairvoyance, in the ascent into supersensible worlds, which, because he was an old soul, had in a certain sense already been lost to him. This is presented to us in the myth.

[ 27 ] And then he was to undergo a kind of initiation by being led back to the kind of perception that his own soul had possessed during the Atlantean incarnations. What the myth now presents to us as Gilgamesh’s sea voyages and wanderings to the West is nothing other than the inner journey of initiation of his soul, through which it ascends to spiritual heights where it can perceive what surrounded it in the ancient Atlantean era, when the soul still looked into the spiritual world with clairvoyance. Hence the myth relates that on this spiritual journey of his, Gilgamesh was brought together with the great Atlantean ruler Xisuthros. This was a being who belonged to certain higher hierarchies and lived among humanity during the Atlantean era, but who had since been removed from humanity and dwelt in higher realms of existence. Gilgamesh was to get to know this being in order to gain, from the insight into its nature, what was necessary to understand how souls are when they can look into the spiritual worlds. Thus he was to be led up into the spiritual spheres by being guided back in his soul all the way to the Atlantean era. And when he is instructed not to sleep for seven nights and six days, this means nothing other than an exercise through which the soul was to be shaped so as to fully penetrate the corresponding spiritual regions just described. If we are now told that he could not endure this, then this in turn signifies something very important: it means that Gilgamesh is to be presented to us as a personality who is brought to the very edge of initiation, who was to look, as it were, through the gate of initiation into the spiritual mysteries, but who, due to the very nature of the circumstances of the time, could not penetrate into all the depths. In short, it is to be said that the inaugurator, the founder of Babylonian culture, remained, so to speak, at the threshold of initiation; that he could not look quite clearly into the higher spiritual worlds; and that he therefore gave Babylonian culture the very character that is an imprint of a mere glimpse into the mysteries of initiation.

[ 28 ] We will now see how this external Babylonian culture is, in fact, such that it justifies what has just been said. While, for example, everything points to the fact that in Hermes we have before us a personality who looked deeply, deeply into the most sacred mysteries of initiation and was therefore able to become the great initiator of Egyptian culture, we must say that external Babylonian culture was prepared in the manner we have just characterized: namely through a leading figure who possessed in his soul all those qualities that develop when one does not penetrate fully into the innermost core of the sacred mysteries. Therefore, in ancient Babylonia, we indeed have a historical development such that we clearly have an outer cultural trajectory and an esoteric-inner one running side by side. While in Egyptian life these two are more intertwined, in ancient Babylonian culture they diverge quite distinctly, so to speak. And within what we must regard as Babylonian culture, as inaugurated by Gilgamesh, lived that which lies in the most sacred, most hidden mysteries of the Chaldeans.

[ 29 ] These initiates of the mysteries were indeed initiated into the innermost mysteries, but this flowed through the outer culture only like a small stream. This outer culture was a result of Gilgamesh’s impulses. Now, it has become clear to us from all these considerations that Gilgamesh, as a personality, was not, in essence, advanced enough to have been able to experience a complete initiation. Precisely because he did not, so to speak, live out his own personal impulses during the time in which he was active—that is, because he did not communicate to the world what was his strength—he was particularly capable of allowing one of the spiritual beings, whom we count among the class of fire spirits, that is, the Archangeloi, the Archangels, to work through him. Such a being worked through Gilgamesh, and the order of Babylonian conditions, the driving forces behind them, for which Gilgamesh was the instrument, are to be found in such a fire spirit. Thus we are to imagine this Gilgamesh most rightly in an image that the symbol of the ancient centaur could provide. Such ancient symbols correspond more closely to reality than is usually thought. A centaur, half-animal, half-human, was always meant to represent how, in the more powerful human beings of ancient times, the highest spiritual humanity and that which connected the individual personalities to the animal organization were, in a certain sense, truly divided. Like a centaur, this Gilgamesh worked upon those who could judge him, and so he still works today upon those who can judge him.

[ 30 ] It is very curious that this particular image of the centaur has resurfaced today in the realm of modern scientific thought. A book has recently been published that claims to be based entirely on scientific facts, yet treats these facts in a certain sense without prejudice and therefore does not mix everything up so amateurishly and senselessly as those who call themselves monists do. The author truly seeks to understand the human being as an independent soul-spiritual entity standing in relation to the physical body. And so a person grounded in scientific evidence arrives at a peculiar image. He certainly did not have centaurs in mind when he envisioned this image, but he says of what emerges from scientific concepts regarding the relationship of the soul to the body: This can be compared to the rider on the horse. One cannot help but conclude, based on what the truly understood scientific facts compel us to acknowledge, that the soul is independent, using the body as a tool just as the rider uses his horse. — The centaur is back; things will indeed move quickly, and before people realize it, spiritual scientific ideas will have to take root in our contemporaries under the very compulsion of scientific facts. For it was not long ago that I spoke with a philosopher who held materialistic ideas in high regard and, based on his materialistic views, told me: “The image of the centaur arose naturally in this way: The ancient inhabitants of Greece saw certain peoples coming from the north on their horses, and since it was usually foggy, they had the idea that rider and horse were a single figure. In their superstition, they could easily imagine this.”

[ 31 ] Indeed, a rather simple concept—perhaps not very philosophical, but certainly quite simple! This concept of the centaur—which did not arise because the Greeks could not distinguish the rider from his horse, but rather because the ancient peoples truly had to conceive of the spiritual essence of the human being as independent of physical nature—this concept is reappearing in our time, emerging entirely independently from scientific ideas. Thus we must say that today, despite all materialistic ideas, we are already on the path where even materialism, if it wishes to base itself solely on facts, gradually leads to what spiritual science has to say from its occult sources. But if we wish to place a figure such as Gilgamesh—who has, after all, already come close to external research, just as we must do for our own considerations—at the forefront of occult contemplation, then we must be clear that we are dealing here with the inner working of a being from the higher spiritual hierarchies. So that, while we must actually view every human being in terms of their spiritual nature through the image of the centaur, in the case of a figure like Gilgamesh, we must further assume that the spiritual aspect of the centaur is directed by higher powers that send their forces into the progress of humanity. And we shall see, as we go further back in history, that this will become even clearer to us. We shall further see how this then modifies itself right into our present and how spiritual forces always take on different forms when they work through human beings, the closer we come to our immediate present.