The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we concluded the lecture, so to speak, with a question-oriented outlook, specifically the question of the nature of Dionysus. Now, as you all know, Dionysus is one of the Greek gods, and the question of the nature of these Greek gods in general must therefore naturally arise for you. We have, however, attempted to characterize figures such as Pluto, Poseidon, and Zeus themselves with regard to many details; but in light of what was said yesterday—regarding the role that the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies play in the spiritual guidance of humanity—the question might arise for you, particularly in light of yesterday’s discussion. You might ask yourselves: to which category of beings in the higher hierarchies did the ancient Greeks assign their gods in relation to the guidance of humanity? We already said yesterday that, in a sense, in contrast to the other preceding cultural epochs—the Proto-Persian and the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural epochs—the reins of spiritual guidance were loosened the most from above during the Greco-Roman cultural epoch. That the Greeks were aware of this, one might say, somewhat freer relationship between the divine spirits and human beings is perhaps most clearly evident in the fact that the Greeks depicted their gods in such a way that they truly possess thoroughly human traits—one might even say human flaws, human passions, human sympathies, and antipathies. From this alone we can assume that the Greeks knew that just as human beings here on the physical plane strive to make progress, so too does the hierarchy of gods immediately above them. They will seek to transcend the qualities they possess. The gods of Greece actually needed so much to advance in their own development in relation to the gods of, say, the ancient Egyptians or Persians, that—to put it bluntly—they could not really concern themselves with human beings. Hence this genuinely human self-centeredness of Greek culture. The bond between gods and humans was, at that time, the weakest of all. But precisely because of this, the Greeks were able to portray their gods so humanly, for they were aware of this fact. Precisely in light of such a matter, we may well ask, when considering our hierarchical order: Where, then, are we to place the Greek gods according to the perception of the Greek people themselves? We must be clear that the characteristics of the Greek gods spoke loudly enough that, fundamentally speaking, we must regard them all, without exception, as having a certain relationship to the Luciferic entities. If you consider what lies at the heart of the Greek gods’ striving, what they seek from what can take place through earthly life, then you will have no doubt that the Greeks sensed it: their gods did not complete their development on the old Moon, but are to derive from earthly development precisely the benefit that human beings themselves derive from it. This alone shows how aware the Greeks were that their entire pantheon contained the Luciferic principle, that it had not attained its full development on the ancient Moon.

[ 2 ] In this regard, the Greeks’ conception of their gods stands in stark contrast to that of another people. There is a people in antiquity who, in the most eminent sense, had developed an awareness that they stood beneath a hierarchy of gods which, through its own conditions of development, had attained the ultimate lunar goal. And anyone who heard last year’s lectures that I gave here in the Munich Cycle, with all that was said at the time about the Elohim and, as it were, about the culmination of the Elohim in Yahweh, will have no doubt that within the ancient Hebrew people there was an awareness that the Elohim, that Yahweh belonged to those divine figures who could not be directly touched by the Luciferic principle on Earth, because they had attained their full goal of development on the ancient Moon. That is the great contrast. And we see this peculiarity of the ancient Hebrew consciousness of God wonderfully expressed in that mighty dramatic allegory that shines down to us from time immemorial, and whose profound meaning we will only gradually come to understand once spiritual science can bring deeper insight here as well. What, then, must the ancient Hebrew consciousness have thought regarding humanity, when it was entirely imbued with the conviction that the ancient Hebrew people, in all its members, was subject to the divine guidance of such spirits who had attained the culmination of their development on the ancient Moon? This consciousness must have told itself: Devotion with all human soul forces to this divine world—that leads upward into the spiritual realm of the universe. And a connection with any other forces, a connection with those forces that are in any way still connected to the material, must, as it were, lead the human being out of the spiritual world. This is alluded to in that word that resounds epigrammatically from the allegory of Job, that word communicated to us by the sufferer Job, to whom it is said: “Renounce God and die!” In these words lies something grandiose, something mighty, and a hint as significant as it can be—that for the ancient Hebrew people, the connection with the God Yahweh, as the essence of the Elohim, meant life itself. The connection with this hierarchy of the Elohim meant life, and a connection with any other divine hierarchies would have meant a turning away from this progressive principle of the becoming of the world—death for human development. For the ancient Hebrew people, dying was in fact synonymous with not being permeated by the substantial content of the Elohim or Yahweh being.

[ 3 ] This is intended, for now, merely as a hint that a polar contrast in spiritual consciousness—one that indeed shines upon us from time immemorial—exists in relation to what later confronts us as Greek consciousness. While the latter seeks to develop humanity on Earth, to incorporate into humanity everything the Earth has to offer, and therefore submits to a hierarchy of gods that claims for itself the right to absorb the elements of earthly life for its own development, and therefore does not tighten the reins on humanity as much as possible, the other consciousness, the ancient Hebrew one, surrenders itself entirely to the principle of the Elohim and merges completely with Yahweh. These are the two great poles of the older human culture.

[ 4 ] If it was stated yesterday that the Luciferic beings—or, more generally, the angelic beings who remained behind on the ancient Moon—can still incarnate on Earth and walk among humans, in contrast to those who have completed their development on the Moon, what then is the situation with the Greek gods, about whom it is not reported that they have incarnated directly on Earth in human form? This seems to be a contradiction. Such contradictions must exist, since spiritual science is something immensely comprehensive and complex, and since the saying contained in our Rosicrucian mystery “The Trial of the Soul” is true: that the paths of higher truth are entangled and that only those who are willing to walk through the labyrinths with patience can tread them. Such things must exist; such contradictions must be resolved only gradually, and whoever seeks the solution to such contradictions with a light heart will not easily penetrate to the truth.

[ 5 ] The Greeks were indeed aware that, as things stood in their time, the beings of their divine hierarchies could not incarnate directly on Earth. But these soul-individualities, which the Greeks imagined as their gods, were nevertheless incarnated in physical bodies, specifically during the ancient Atlantean era. Just as we saw heroes walking the earth in human bodies, carrying within them a knowledge of a Luciferic nature—a knowledge of a superhuman nature—and just as we have in the heroes later incarnated, lingering Moon angels, so too do we have in the Greek gods beings who underwent their physical incarnation in Atlantean bodies. There they walked among the people themselves as Atlantean humans, as Atlantean kings and priests. And there they had attained precisely what they were to attain from Earth’s evolution through incarnation, through embodiment in a human body. So we can say: Greek consciousness imagined that its gods were indeed genuine Luciferic beings, but that they had already undergone their human incarnation in the ancient Atlantean era. We must take this as our starting point if we are to understand this entire Greek pantheon at all.

[ 6 ] But another contradiction might still present itself to your soul. You might say: Yes, on the one hand you tell us that Zeus was the representative, the macrocosmic representative of the forces of the astral body at work in human beings, Poseidon the macrocosmic representative of the forces at work in the etheric body, and Pluto the macrocosmic representative of the forces at work in the physical body. So that one would actually have to imagine that these forces are spread out across the vastness of space—that they act out there without being concentrated within individual human forms. Only someone who has not yet grasped how development actually takes place, what the whole meaning of evolution is, could raise such an objection. It is indeed somewhat difficult for a modern consciousness to come to terms with the true concepts in this regard. For such a modern consciousness will find it hard to imagine that what acts out there in space like natural laws, what is spread out there, is at the same time walking about in a human body on Earth. But that can certainly be the case. For a modern natural scientist, it would of course be the height of madness if someone were to say: Take all the forces that chemists speak of today, all the chemical forces listed in chemistry textbooks, which act out there in the separation and mixing of substances, and imagine that all these laws are now concentrated within a human body, walking on legs, grasping with hands. — A person with a modern consciousness would, of course, consider that the height of madness. Nor could he imagine that the macrocosmic counterpart of the forces acting in our astral body—this counterpart that spreads out there in space—was once, just as it is today, a human soul concentrated in a single being who walked about in the ancient Atlantean era as Zeus. And it was the same with Poseidon and Pluto. In these Atlantean human beings, whom Greek consciousness designates as Pluto, Zeus, and Poseidon, was incarnated that which are otherwise the laws of the wonders of the world. So imagine a real human being of the Atlantean type walking about in ancient Atlantis just like other Atlanteans, and imagine an observer endowed with full consciousness gazing upon the soul of this Atlantean inhabitant, who was Zeus. Such an observer would have to say to himself: Certainly, this soul of Zeus, who is wandering about there as an Atlantean, seems to be concentrated in such a body, but that is Maya, illusion; it only seems that way; in truth, the matter is different; in truth, this soul is the totality of all macrocosmic forces that act outwardly as the counterpart of the soul forces concentrated in our astral body. - Let us suppose that the clairvoyant gaze turned to this Atlantean human being, who is Zeus. Then he would recognize: This soul, as I observe it, becomes ever larger and larger; it expands; it is indeed the macrocosmic counterpart of the human soul forces in the astral body. - This was also the case with the Atlantean beings, who were in fact the other Greek gods. The world as it appears to us on the physical plane is, through and through, Maya. The fact that modern man cannot imagine this also makes it difficult for him to imagine the essence of Christ Jesus himself. For when one contemplates the soul that was in Christ Jesus after the baptism by John in the Jordan, it is the same. You can find this clearly indicated in the little book *The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and of Humanity*. There we learn to recognize how this soul could actually be conceived as concentrated in a human body by the clairvoyant gaze or by the human gaze in general only as long as one remained caught up in Maya. In truth, this soul permeates all spaces and acts out from all spaces. To the human being caught up in the sensory world, it appears as if it were working through the body of Jesus of Nazareth. While we must see the universality of the cosmos through the body of Jesus after the baptism by John, we must see in the Greek gods—while they were Atlantean human beings—those special powers that exist within the cosmos. Thus they did indeed walk about within the physical plane and, according to Maya, were genuine Atlantean human beings.

[ 7 ] But you will no longer be surprised by this fact when you look at the average person today. Essentially, what is described as the average person today is also a maya, and it is one of the most illusory notions to believe that the human soul is confined solely within the space enclosed by the human body. The moment a person develops to the point of recognizing the supersensible worlds, it immediately follows that the person no longer regards their physical body as something in which they are contained with their ego, but rather as something they observe from the outside, to which they are, as it were, subordinate; and with their ego, the person feels themselves poured out into the space of the worlds. The human being is, in fact, outside of themselves, connected to the beings of the environment that they otherwise merely observe, and in a certain sense, every soul is extended across the macrocosm, standing there within the great world. Again, when a person passes through the gate of death and their true soul-self separates from the physical body, what one might call the following immediately occurs: after death has occurred, the person feels as if poured out into the macrocosm, one with the macrocosm, because what then enters human consciousness is reality and not Maya.

[ 8 ] An attempt has been made to vividly describe what a consciousness experiences when it is freed from the body and, so to speak, views the physical body from the outside, while at the same time living in the spiritual world and immersing itself in the macrocosm. An attempt has been made to depict this in the monologue found in *The Trial of the Soul*, after Capesius has plunged into the world-structure, into the historical structure of his previous incarnation, and then emerges again. There we see him reviewing through his soul what he experienced while living through his previous incarnation. It is not merely dryly described that he has seen this or that previous incarnation; rather, if you go through this monologue carefully, word for word, line by line, you will find the truth of what was lived through depicted there, you will find everything described in it quite realistically, and from this monologue you can get an idea of how looking back in the Akashic Records to earlier times in Earth’s development—when one went through past incarnations—actually takes place. Just as with other things, you would be mistaken regarding this monologue in particular if you were to overlook even a single word and fail to consider that it describes very realistic, actual experiences of the soul down to the finest details. But there, too, you will find it mentioned how a person must ask themselves: Is not everything that was out there in space woven from the substance of my soul? Indeed, Capesius feels as if what he encountered out there had been made from the substance of his soul. This is a very strange feeling, when one feels as if divided into other things, as if expanded into a world, in the truest sense of the word completely starved, completely parched of one’s own being, which is shaped into images and which then confronts one as these images, which become visible precisely because they are imbued with our own soul substance.

[ 9 ] If you take all this into consideration, you will gain a sense of the certainty with which the Greeks conceived their images of the gods and their divine realms. Thus, during the Atlantean era, these gods of Greece were human beings with souls that held a macrocosmic significance, and through this development they had advanced to the point where they could intervene in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—but in such a way that they, so to speak, applied the reins of spiritual guidance over humanity with the least possible tightness. They no longer needed to become gods in the same way as Cecrops, Theseus, and Cadmus, in whom Luciferic souls that had remained behind on the Moon were incarnated, for they had agreed upon, through their Atlantean incarnation, what the embodiment of humanity on Earth should be. Now, if we consider this properly, we must say: Yet these Greek gods, however much they could ultimately still give to humanity, could not give humanity one thing: the ego-consciousness that humanity was to acquire. — Why not? Well, you will be able to gather from the spirit of all my previous lectures that this ego-consciousness had to arise for humanity specifically on Earth. We know, after all, that on the Moon, human beings had first developed their physical body, etheric body, and astral body. There, self-consciousness could not take root. In all that was created on the Moon, in all that the Greek gods had come to know there regarding the creative principle, self-consciousness was not included. They could not give self-consciousness to human beings because it is a product of the Earth. They could give humanity much that pertains to the physical body, etheric body, and astral body, for they were familiar with these and their laws from the Saturn, Sun, and Moon stages of development, which they had experienced on a higher plane. But because they had remained behind, they could not become the creators of ego-consciousness. In this respect, the Greek gods stand in contrast to the Elohim, to Yahweh, who in the most eminent sense is precisely the creator of ego-consciousness. Therefore, the entire modern culture of the soul could only develop through the convergence of these two polar currents in human spiritual development: the ancient Hebrew current, which was intent on awakening, in the most eminent sense, all the forces in the human soul that lead to self-consciousness, and the other current, which poured into the human soul all the forces that the human physical body, the human etheric body, and the astral body needed in order to be able to complete earthly development in the proper way.

[ 10 ] It was only through the convergence of these two currents—the Greek and the ancient Hebrew—that the unifying current came into being, which was then able to receive the Christ impulse, the Christ principle. For within the Christ current, these two currents are contained just as water is contained in a stream formed by the confluence of two rivers. And just as our modern spiritual life is inconceivable within Western culture without the influence of the Greek, so too is it inconceivable without the impulse present in ancient Hebrew culture. But within Hellenism itself, in the world to which Zeus, Poseidon, and Pluto belonged, the possibility was lacking to give human beings their earthly sense of self directly from this hierarchy. The Greek soul, in turn, has a wonderfully clear sense of this, and it has brought this sense to light in the conception of the figure of Dionysus. Indeed, the Greek soul has spoken in such a wonderfully clear way, particularly with regard to the figure of Dionysus, that we can only stand in awe and admiration before the wisdom of this Greek mythology.

[ 11 ] In ancient Greece, we hear of an older Dionysus, Dionysus Zagreus. This older Dionysus was a figure whom the Greek soul conceived in such a way that, in its perception—not through our external thoughts, but entirely in accordance with sensation and feeling—it said: The consciousness that humanity has attained as intellectual consciousness was preceded by an ancient clairvoyant consciousness. This ancient clairvoyant consciousness was not subject to Maya, illusion, and deception to the same degree as the later human consciousness. While people were still clairvoyant, they did not believe that the human soul is enclosed within the physical body, that it is bounded by its skin; rather, the center of the human being was, so to speak, still outside the physical body. And the human being did not believe that he was seeing out of his eyes with his physical body, but he knew: With my consciousness, I stand outside the physical body. - And they regarded this physical body as their property. If one wishes to use a comparison, one might say that modern man is like someone who sits quite firmly and comfortably in a chair in his house and says: Here I am inside, and the walls of my house surround me. - The ancient clairvoyant was not one who sat inside his house, but you can compare him to a person who walks out through the gates of his house, stands outside it, and says: “This is my house; one can walk around it, one can view it from various vantage points, and then one has a much wider space to view the house from the outside than when one is inside.” — That is how it was with the ancient clairvoyant consciousness. One walked around one’s own physical form and regarded it merely as a possession of the ancient clairvoyant consciousness, the consciousness located outside the physical body.

[ 12 ] If we now consider the course of human history as it has unfolded from the ancient Lemurian era through the Atlantean era and into the post-Atlantean cultural epochs, we know that human consciousness on Earth has developed gradually. During the ancient Lemurian era, this human consciousness was in many respects still quite similar to the ancient lunar consciousness; human beings reflected little on their physical bodies and were still completely diffused into space. Gradually, human beings first moved into their bodies with their I, and during the Atlantean era, human consciousness was still largely outside the body. So, little by little, this consciousness first drew into the physical body; this reveals to us the whole meaning of Earth’s evolution. But the Greek soul also sensed this. It was able to point, intuitively, to an earlier consciousness, to a clairvoyant consciousness that had indeed come to the fore within Earth’s evolution, but was still closely linked to the ancient lunar consciousness—the consciousness that had developed when humanity, as the highest link, had formed its astral body. So here we stand before this human evolution and can say: When the Earth was at its present stage of development, humanity arrived having developed its physical body, etheric body, and astral body, carrying within its astral body the forces of Zeus. Then, in the course of Earth’s evolution, everything that became the “I” was added to this. A new element united with the astral Zeus forces; as if grafted onto these Zeus forces was that which in ancient times was still vaguely linked to them, but which increasingly joined these Zeus forces as an independent “I.” This independent ego emerged first clairvoyantly and then intellectually. When we see the Zeus forces in the astral realm, when we see in what emerges there—and is first clairvoyant—what we have cited as Persephone, we can say: Before humanity had lost its clairvoyant consciousness, before the intellectualistic mode of consciousness emerged, there lived within humanity, alongside what was present in its astral body as the powers of Zeus, there lived Persephone, closely connected to the astral powers of Zeus. Humanity had brought this astral body over from the ancient Moon. On Earth, the soul life developed within them, which we find represented in Persephone. And that was the human being, as they lived on Earth in ancient times, who felt thus: I have the Zeus forces in my astral body, and I have Persephone within me. — Just as we speak of our ego today, so the human being of ancient times could not yet speak of an intellectual ego, but of something he could speak of—something that arose within him through the interplay of the Zeus forces anchored in the astral body and the Persephone forces. What emerged within him through the union of these two, Zeus and Persephone, that was himself. It was something given to him from only one side, from Zeus, to which the other had to be added—something over which Zeus as such had no direct influence. What Persephone was, as the daughter of Demeter, was connected with the forces of the Earth itself. Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, a divine being who was related to Zeus only insofar as she was regarded as his sister. A soul that had undergone a different development than Zeus, so that it was related to the Earth and could act upon humanity from the Earth, and thus also upon the formation of human ego-consciousness.

[ 13 ] Thus, from the earliest times, human beings have carried within themselves the astral body from the side of Zeus and Persephone from the side of the Earth. The ancient Greeks were thus aware that they carried within themselves something whose origin they could not perceive when they looked up to the hierarchies of the higher deities. Therefore, they attributed what they carried within themselves to the so-called underworld gods, to those gods associated with the formation of the Earth and in which the higher gods had no part: I carry something within me in my being, and it is precisely to this that I owe my earthly consciousness—something that the higher gods of the world of Zeus, Poseidon, or Pluto cannot give me directly, but in which they can only participate. - Thus, on Earth there is something beyond what the macrocosmic forces of Zeus, Poseidon, and Pluto are—something that Zeus can only look upon, but which he cannot bring forth himself. For all the reasons I have cited, Greek mythology, with good reason, makes Dionysus the Elder, Dionysus Zagreus, a son of Persephone and Zeus. All the forces within earthly life that worked preparatively in ancient times for human ego-consciousness are, when we view them microcosmically within the human being, the ancient clairvoyant consciousness. When we view them macrocosmically, as they surge through the elements of the Earth, they are the elder Dionysus. Back then, when human beings had an “I” that was not yet the modern “I” with its intellectual power, but rather the precursor to the modern “I”—the ancient clairvoyant consciousness that has now become the subconscious—these human beings looked out—as was also the case with the Greeks—toward the macrocosmic forces that allow these “I”-forces to flow into us, and he called them Dionysus Zagreus, the ancient ‘Dionysus.’ But the Greek felt something very peculiar toward all that this ancient Dionysus could give him. The Greeks, after all, were essentially already living in an intellectual culture, even if it was still more richly imbued with imagination, even if it still lived entirely within the realm of imagery. Within that imagery, it was already an intellectual culture. Only the most ancient times still exhibit a clairvoyant culture. Everything that has come down from Greece to later times is intellectual, albeit pictorial, culture steeped in imagination, so that, in essence, the Greek looked up in his consciousness to an ancient time where the old Dionysus was actually at home, the one who instilled into human nature that which was still the clairvoyant self. And the ancient Greek felt it was something tragic when he said to himself: Such an ancient sense of self can no longer be accommodated by our earthly world. — Imagine for a moment, quite vividly, stepping into such a Greek soul. It was something given to him from only one side, from Zeus, to which the other had to be added—something over which Zeus as such had no direct influence. What Persephone was, as the daughter of Demeter, was connected with the forces of the Earth itself. Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, a divine being who was related to Zeus only insofar as she was regarded as his sister. A soul that had undergone a different development than Zeus, so that it was related to the Earth and could act upon humanity from the Earth, and thus also upon the formation of human ego-consciousness.

[ 14 ] We have said: Zeus is the central authority of the macrocosmic forces, which correspond to their counterparts, the soul forces anchored in the astral body. These soul forces come from the ancient Moon. Zeus, too, in a fundamental sense, so that Zeus plays a part in the creation of Dionysus, who, as the elder Dionysus, is initially a son of Zeus and Persephone. Thus, Zeus’s part in the creation of Dionysus consists in representing the unified, the unmixed, the still undivided. The figure that confronts us in the female Hera has undergone a different development. She has undergone a development that was, in a certain spiritual sense, far more advanced than that of Zeus himself, insofar as she tended more toward the earthly, while Zeus had remained behind. While Zeus had remained behind in the old lunar development, having become fixed in it, Hera went further and absorbed certain elements within herself that could be used on Earth. Hera belongs to the category of those Luciferic beings who work to bring about precisely the fragmentation, the individualization of human beings; hence Hera is so often portrayed as the jealous one. Jealousy can, after all, only arise where individualities are demarcated; where they know themselves to be one, no jealousy arises. Hera belongs to those divine figures who certainly already promote differentiation, individualization, and isolation; therefore, Hera is active where Dionysus is to be fragmented, even though he emerged from the union of Zeus with Persephone. When ancient humanity possessed clairvoyant consciousness as a consciousness of unity, Hera appeared as the individualizing deity—a fact symbolically expressed in her jealousy—and called upon the gods concentrated in the forces of the earth, the Titans, to dismember the old consciousness of unity so that it might enter into individual bodies. But with that, this consciousness was initially cut off from the world.

[ 15 ] The old Greek looked back with a sense of tragedy upon the ancient clairvoyant consciousness that existed outside the physical body and knew itself to be one with all things in the world, for one could only look back upon it as something of the past. Had nothing else come to pass, had only Hera’s deed remained, then people on Earth would walk side by side, each enclosed within their narrowest personality. People would never understand one another. Nor would they ever be able to understand their surroundings, the elements of the Earth, or the world. People might regard their own bodies as their property, feel enclosed within their bodies as in a house, perhaps feel the immediate surroundings as belonging to them like a snail’s shell, but beyond that, this human ego would never expand into a world consciousness. That is, in fact, what Hera intended: to separate people entirely from one another in their individuality. What, then, saved humanity from this isolation, so that—although their ego has taken on an intellectual form—this ego has nevertheless become such that this later consciousness, which is no longer clairvoyant but intellectual, can form a worldview through knowledge and intellectual insight, enabling it to reach out and connect things with one another?

[ 16 ] While the clairvoyant gaze encompasses one’s entire worldview, it is the role of the intellectual gaze to move from one aspect of the world to another, to connect the individual elements of our worldview, and to synthesize them into a comprehensive picture of the world through intellectual knowledge and intellectual science. Thus something emerged that can be described as follows: It was not merely the influence of Hera that continued to develop, but the intellectuality of the ego was brought to the fore, and although human beings cannot themselves live within things through their clairvoyance, as Dionysus Zagreus did, they can at least construct a comprehensive worldview through rational images of the world. The Greeks now conceived of the central power behind this world picture—which we construct for ourselves through the thoughts and images of the imagination with which we encompass the world—as represented by the divine being of Pallas Athena.

[ 17 ] In fact, the intellectualist worldview, intellectualist wisdom, saved the dismembered Dionysus; in other words: the ancient consciousness of unity that had been drawn into the bodies. It led human consciousness out of itself once again. Hence this subtle elaboration of the Dionysus myth: that of all the pieces, Pallas Athena saved the heart of Dionysus—after he had been dismembered by the Titans at Hera’s instigation—and brought it to Zeus. This is an immensely subtle, wise touch that fully corresponds to the wonders of the world that spiritual science is once again revealing to us today, and whose depths we can only face with awe and admiration. What is depicted in such a macrocosmic way—that Dionysus is dismembered and that his heart is saved by Pallas Athena and brought to Zeus—is, in turn, merely the macrocosmic counterpart of something that takes place microcosmically within us.

[ 18 ] We know, of course, that the physical manifestation of the earthly human being is the blood that moves the heart. What would have happened if—theoretically speaking—the intellectual expansion of the self into an intellectual worldview had not preserved the self’s confinement within the human body? Figuratively speaking, what would have happened if Pallas Athena had not saved the heart of the dismembered Dionysus and brought it to Zeus? Then people would walk about, each one enclosed within their own physical form, within those microcosmic forces of their physical form that represent merely the lower, egoistic drives through which man seeks to enclose himself as an individual entity confined within his own skin. Human beings have these forces within them, the very forces that led to the dismemberment of Dionysus. They are the lower instincts of human nature, which operate within human nature in an animalistic, instinctive manner and which form the foundations of true human egoism. From these drives arise sympathy and antipathy—the drives, the instinctual, ranging from the drive for food and other drives up to the reproductive drive, which certainly belongs as such in the series of lower drives. If it had depended solely on Hera, if Pallas Athena had not intervened to save the day, humanity would have developed only enthusiasms arising from these lower instincts: enthusiasms for food, for procreation—in short, for all the lower instincts alone.

[ 19 ] What, then, has happened that has enabled human beings to overcome this base human nature, which is directed purely toward selfishness? This is also a sense of self, which relates to all these instincts, but there is something in our human nature that leads us beyond all the base instincts mentioned. What leads us beyond the lower instincts is the fact that, with our hearts, we can develop a different kind of enthusiasm than those egoistic enthusiasms that are directed toward the preservation of the body in the instinct of nutrition and toward the preservation of the species in the sexual instinct. Yet despite all this, human nature remains mired in egoism. Only because these instincts mix with something else can the character of selfishness—of being confined within the body—be taken away from them in a certain sense. But there is something higher, bound to the heart, specifically to our blood circulation, that develops higher enthusiasms. When our heart beats for the spiritual world and for the great ideals of the spiritual world, when our heart is inflamed for the spiritual, when we feel as warmly toward the spiritual world as a person with their base instincts feels in erotic life, then human nature is transfigured and spiritualized by that which Pallas Athena added to Hera’s deed. Humanity will only acquire a full understanding of this tremendous fact in the course of time, for there is still much in human nature today that seeks to contradict these things. How often do you hear people say: “Oh, there are such twisted minds who rave about all sorts of things that don’t actually exist at all!” They feel just as warmly toward abstractions, toward what one must merely imagine, as people otherwise feel toward what is called “real life”—which means nothing other than toward the instincts of nourishment and other base drives. — But those who can feel a fervent enthusiasm for the supersensible, for that which does not aim at the lower instincts, so that they perceive the supersensible world as a reality—they have devoted themselves to what Pallas Athena brought to Hera. This is the microcosmic counterpart to the forces reigning outside, which are magnificently symbolized in Greek mythology by Pallas Athena saving the heart of the dismembered Dionysus and bringing it to Zeus, who conceals it in his thigh. After the ancient clairvoyant consciousness entered into human beings, it mingled with their physical nature—with that which is so wonderfully expressed in the fact that the Dionysian nature is hidden in Zeus’s loins. Everything that would have come from the dismembered Dionysus would have had its microcosmic counterpart in human beings in that which comes from their lower physical nature. Thus, we see a wonderful harmony with spiritual science in what is depicted in the magnificent images of the ancient Dionysus legend.

[ 20 ] We are now told how the ancient clairvoyant consciousness, represented by the older Dionysus, evolved into the younger Dionysus, into the later consciousness, into our present-day ego-consciousness, the later Dionysian force. For today’s ego-consciousness, with its intellectual culture, with everything that follows from our intellect—indeed, from our ego—has its macrocosmic counterpart in the second Dionysus, who comes into being when the love potion for Semele is formed from the saved heart of the dismembered Dionysus, through which the union of Semele, that is, a mortal woman, with Zeus, with the forces of the astral body. Thus a being who is truly already another human being unites with what comes over from the old Moon, and from this arises the human being of our present time, who has his macrocosmic counterpart in the younger Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Semele. And of this Dionysus, what is told of him? Indeed, if he is the macrocosmic counterpart of our intellectual ego-powers, then he must, as it were, be the intelligence that sweeps across the earth, spreading out into the vastness of space. If the Greeks had sensed correctly, they would have conceived of the younger Dionysus—the macrocosmic counterpart of our intellectual ego—as the intelligence striding across the earth. They would have imagined that out there in space there strides a being that is like the intelligence moving across the lands. Wonderful, my dear friends! Ancient Greek consciousness tells us in the magnificent legend of the second Dionysus that he journeyed from Europe far to India, taught people everywhere science, agriculture, viticulture, and so on, then crossed over to Arabia, and returned again via Egypt. Everything that constitutes intellectual culture is linked to the journey of the younger Dionysus. It is truly so in Greek mythology: what we otherwise, when we speak dryly, soberly, and abstractly, call the spread of intellectual culture, ancient Greek mythology called the journey of the younger Dionysus, who taught people agriculture, viticulture, science, but also writing and the like: the journey across the earth. The ideas of the older and younger Dionysus come together wonderfully. They are images for humanity’s progress—with its older, clairvoyant consciousness, which has its macrocosmic counterpart in the older Dionysus, and its younger, intellectual ego-consciousness, which has its macrocosmic counterpart in the younger Dionysus.

[ 21 ] Let us return to the idea we put forward at the outset of today’s lecture, namely that the ancient Greek gods were Atlantean people. The older Dionysus—you will sense that, as the son of Persephone and Zeus, he is actually still quite closely related—even though he has already absorbed earthly elements, which he has, however, taken in from the outside—to what the gods of the Zeus hierarchy themselves are. He is the son of Zeus and Persephone, a supersensible being. Because this older Dionysus is still the son of Zeus and Persephone—that is, a supersensible figure for the post-Atlantean era—he is related in his entire being to the Zeus hierarchy. That is why the ancient Greek consciousness perceives this clearly and reveals it in the legend: this older Dionysus, this Dionysus Zagreus, lived as a human being, but like the other Greek gods, he lived as an Atlantean among the people of the Atlantean era and walked among them. But if you examine the entire spirit of the legend of the younger Dionysus, you can perceive the consciousness within it that the younger Dionysus, who is already quite akin to humanity—for he is descended from a human mother—is in fact closer to humanity than to the gods. Thus the legend reveals—and this is indeed true—that the younger Dionysus was in fact born in Greece itself in ancient times and lived there, incarnated in a post-Atlantean physical body. That which is human intellectual culture, spreading out in space—this spiritual macrocosmic counterpart of our intellectual ego—once existed—just as the forces of Zeus existed in an Atlantean Zeus—in the post-Atlantean era, roughly during prehistoric Greek times themselves, as a single human being in the real, living Dionysus, that is, in the younger Dionysus. This Dionysus, the younger one, lived and was one of the ancient Greek heroes; he lived and grew up in Greece and traveled—for this journey actually took place—through Asia all the way down to India. And a large part of Indian culture—not the part that has remained from the ancient holy Rishis, but another part—derives from this younger Dionysus. Then he journeyed with his multitudes of earthlings to Arabia, Libya, and back again to Thrace. This journey truly took place as a mighty prehistoric migration. So a Dionysus figure, who actually lived as a human being, accompanied by a strange retinue—which the myth depicts as Silenes, fauns, and the like—marched like a great military leader through Arabia, Libya, and Thrace, and then returned in a circuit back to Greece. A real human being of the post-Atlantean era, the Greek, gray prehistoric era, was the younger Dionysus. And when the younger Dionysus met his earthly death, his soul poured itself into the intellectual culture of humanity. And one can quite rightly and truthfully ask the question: Does the younger Dionysus live today?

[ 22 ] Yes, my dear friends, go out into the world, see everything that lives as intellectual culture in the world, contemplate the spiritual aspect of what our modern historians and cultural historians call the “ideas of history” in such a bleakly sober and abstract form—or whatever such fantasies may be called—contemplate it in its concrete reality! Contemplate this concrete, macro-telluric reality that surrounds the earth like a spiritual layer, that lives on from epoch to epoch, that lives in every mind, but that also envelops all of us in our daily lives like an atmosphere of intellectual culture—contemplate that! In this lives the younger Dionysus, whether you look at what is taught in our universities, at what is poured out as intellectual culture over the machinery of our industries, whether you look at those thoughts that have flowed into the world and that live on over our earth as an atmosphere of intellect in the banking and stock market systems. In all of this, the younger Dionysus lives on in his soul. This soul of the younger Dionysus has gradually spread throughout our entire intellectual earthly culture, after the individual personality of the younger Dionysus, who had undertaken the great journey, died as an individual personality.