The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Earth Winter and the Victory of the Sun Spirit

[ 1 ] on the inauguration of the Vidar branch

[ 2 ] A number of friends from out of town have joined our friends in Bochum to visit the branch of our spiritual endeavor established here, gathered around the Christmas tree. And undoubtedly, all those who have come from afar to join our friends in Bochum today in festively inaugurating the branch established here feel the beauty and spiritual significance of our Bochum friends’ decision to establish this place of spiritual striving and spiritual feeling here in this city, in the midst of a field of material activity, in the midst of a field that, in a sense, belongs primarily to outer life. And in many respects, each and every one of our beloved branches, here in this region more than elsewhere, can serve as a symbol of the significance of our kind of anthroposophical spiritual life in the present time and for the future development of human souls.

[ 3 ] We are certainly not standing in a situation that we can view critically or disparagingly when we find ourselves in the midst of a field of the most modern material activity; rather, we are standing in a realm that shows us precisely how things must increasingly become in later, external earthly life. We would only be showing ourselves to be foolish if we were to say: We wish to see a return to the old days, when one was, so to speak, surrounded more by forests and meadows and the original life of nature than by the smokestacks of the present. — One would only be showing oneself to be unwise. For one would be proving that one has no insight into what the sages of all ages have called “the eternal necessities into which humanity must find its way.” In contrast to the material life that covers the earth—as brought about in particular by the 19th century and which later times will bring to humanity in an even more comprehensive way—in contrast to this life, there is no justified criticism born of sympathy for the old, but there is solely the insight that such is the destiny of our planet Earth. One may, from a certain standpoint, call the old times beautiful; one may regard them as a spring or summer of the Earth; but to rail against the fact that other times are also coming would be just as unwise as it would be unwise to be dissatisfied that autumn and winter follow spring and summer. That is why we must appreciate and cherish it when, out of an innerly courageous resolve, our friends create a place for our spiritual life right in the midst of the most modern life and bustle. And it will be right if all those who have visited our branch today for the sake of the present moment depart with grateful hearts, especially for the beautiful work of our friends in Bochum, carried out in the true spirit of spiritual science.

[ 4 ] What is so endearing and appealing about what we have for years called our “branch initiations” is that on such occasions, friends from outside—often from far away—join the circle that has gathered in a particular place. As a result, these visiting friends are first able to kindle, through direct observation, the inner fire of gratitude that we must cherish for all those who establish such branches, and that, on the other hand, these visiting friends can take with them the vivid impression of the experience, which keeps alive the thoughts we then direct from all sides toward the work of such a branch, so that this work may bear fruit through the creative thoughts coming from every direction. For we know that spiritual life is a reality; we know that thoughts are not merely what materialism believes them to be, but that thoughts are living forces which, when we unite them in love—for example, over some place of our activity—unfold there and become a source of help.

[ 5 ] And I would like to be convinced that those who have come here today will take away from this gathering the impulse to think often and often of the place where we do our work, so that our friends here may feel, when they sit together quietly among themselves, immersing themselves in the spiritual insights granted to us through the grace of the Hierarchies, so that our friends, when they sit together again in quiet solitude, may cherish the feeling that creative thoughts are flowing into their workspace—their spiritual workspace—from all sides.

[ 6 ] To look at things as they are, rather than engaging in unwarranted criticism of existence—this is precisely what we are gradually learning through our anthroposophical worldview. We must undoubtedly admit to ourselves that the Earth is undergoing a process of development. And when we, equipped with our anthroposophical knowledge—indeed, even when we look back with discernment on earlier times in the Earth’s development using what we can know outside of anthroposophical knowledge— then those earlier times appear to us, in contrast to the Earth that is crisscrossed by railroads and interwoven with telegraph wires, that is surging with those electric currents—then these times of the Earth appear to us like spring and summer, and the times into which we are entering like the Earth’s autumn and winter. But it is not for us to lament this; rather, it is for us to call it a necessity. Just as it is not for us to lament this, so it is not for a person to lament when summer comes to an end and autumn and winter arrive.

[ 7 ] But when autumn and winter arrive, the human soul has, for centuries, prepared itself to raise the sign of the living Word’s entry into the development of the Earth in the depths of the winter night. And in this way, the human heart, the human soul, showed that what summer provides from without, without human intervention, must be created through human intervention from within.

[ 8 ] While we delight in the sprouting, budding forces of spring, which are replaced from the outside by gentle summer forces without any action on our part, winter covers with its blanket of snow that which otherwise, without any action on our part, delights us during the summer and proves time and again that divine-spiritual forces rule the world, so during the cold, dark winter season we preserve within ourselves that which is placed within winter as the summer hope for the future, which tells us that just as spring and summer follow every winter, so too will a new spiritual spring and summer come once the Earth has reached its destination in the cosmos, which our creative powers will help to shape. Thus does the human heart erect the sign of eternal life.

[ 9 ] It is through this very sign of the eternally living spiritual life that we feel united today with our friends in Bochum as we dedicate their branch, which was founded here some time ago. It is wonderful that we are able to dedicate it just before the Christmas season.

[ 10 ] It may seem to some who at first hear only superficially about all that is explored regarding Christ Jesus through our spiritual science—about what is revealed to it concerning Christ Jesus— it may seem to some who look at it superficially as though we were replacing the former simplicity and childlikeness of the Christmas festival—with its recollection of the beautiful scenes from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke—with something enormously complicated. For we must draw the human soul’s attention to the fact that at the beginning of our era, two Jesus-children entered into earthly development, we must speak of how the I of one Jesus-child passed over into the body of the other Jesus-child; we must speak of how, in the thirtieth year of Jesus’ life, the Christ-being descended and lived for three years in the physical form of Jesus of Nazareth. It might easily seem as though all the love, all the devotion that people have been able to muster over the centuries for their salvation—when the infant Jesus in the manger, surrounded by the shepherds, was presented to them; when the wonderfully stirring Christmas carol rang in their ears; when Christmas plays were celebrated here and there; when the lights on the Christmas tree, which delight even the most childlike heart, appeared— it might seem that in the face of all that so immediately kindles the human heart to devotion, piety, and love, the warm feeling, the warm sensation, must fade away when one must first take in the complex ideas of the two Jesus boys, of the passing over of one ego into the bodies of the other, of the descent of a divine spiritual being into the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. Yet we must not indulge in such thoughts, for it would be a grave mistake if we were unwilling to submit to the law of necessity in this realm.

[ 11 ] Yes, my dear friends, in those places that lay on the edge of the forest or in the midst of fields and meadows, where the snow-capped mountains and distant horizons or the vast plains and lakes seemed to speak down to and into them—in those places that were not crisscrossed by railroad tracks and telegraph wires, there could dwell hearts that were immediately kindled when the manger was set up, and when what the Gospels of Matthew and Luke told of the birth of the wondrous little child was recalled. What is contained in these narratives, what happened on earth such that these narratives bear witness to it, that lives and will continue to live. But a time is needed—a time that is entering, we might say, the “earthly winter,” a time of railroads and telegraph wires and meals—that requires stronger forces in the soul to kindle warmth and intimacy in the heart in the face of external mechanism and external materiality. The soul must be strengthened so that it may be inwardly convinced of the truth of what happened in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, so that it lives firmly in the heart, no matter how much the mechanical order of nature may intervene in earthly existence. The news of the Child in Bethlehem had to reach the souls living at the edge of the forest, on mountain slopes, by the lakes, and amidst the fields and meadows in a different way; the news of the same Being must reach those who must rise to the challenge of the newer conditions of existence in a different way.

[ 12 ] For this reason, those we call the Masters of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings impart to us today knowledge of those higher connections that we must bear in mind when speaking of the Child of Bethlehem. We then stand before the Christmas tree no less filled with spiritual joy with our newer insights, because we must know things that were not known in earlier times. On the contrary, we come to understand those earlier times better; we come to understand why the hope for the future and the joy assured for the future shone in the eyes of young and old alike at the Christmas tree and the manger. We learn to understand how there was even more life there than what could be seen so immediately, when we explain to ourselves the reasons why we feel such deep, heartfelt love for the Child of Bethlehem. One of the Jesus children, the one from the Nathanic line of the House of David—we may call him, in the most beautiful sense, in the very most beautiful sense, “the Child of Humanity, the Child of Man.” For what do we feel toward this child, whose essence still shines through the descriptions in the Gospel of Luke?

[ 13 ] Humanity originated with the formation of the Earth. But much has been lost regarding humanity over the course of the Lemurian, Atlantean, and post-Atlantean eras. And we know that this was a descent; that in primeval times humanity possessed a primal knowledge and primal insight, a primal connection with the divine-spiritual forces, an ancient legacy of knowledge regarding the connection with the gods. That which lived in the souls of human beings as a result of divine beings has become increasingly attuned downward. Human beings have come to a point where, over time, they have felt their connection to the divine-spiritual source less and less through their direct knowledge. Increasingly, they were, so to speak, cast out into the realm of mere material perception, of sensory existence. Only in early human life, in childhood, did people know how to revere and love innocence—the innocence of the human being who has not yet absorbed the forces of the Earth’s decline.

[ 14 ] But how could one, now that we know that with the infant Jesus a being came to Earth who had not previously existed on Earth as such—a soul who had not participated in the rest of humanity’s earthly evolution—which I have, after all, described in my *Outline of Esoteric Science* —which was, as it were, held back in the innocent state prior to the Luciferic temptation—that such a soul, a human soul that is childlike in a much, much higher sense than is usually thought, has come to Earth, how could one not recognize this human soul as “the child of humanity”? What we humans, even in the earliest childhood, are no longer permitted to possess within ourselves—for we do, after all, carry within us the results of our previous incarnations—what none of us can yet recognize, not even at the very moment when we first open our eyes upon the earth, is manifested in the child who entered the earth as the boy Jesus of Luke. For in this child was a soul that had not previously been born on Earth from a human body, a soul that had been left behind by the human souls when the development of humanity on Earth began anew, a soul that appeared at that time, at the beginning of our calendar, in the very stage of human childhood on Earth. Hence that wondrous event revealed to us by the Akashic Records: that this child, the Nathanic Jesus-child, immediately after his birth uttered sounds comprehensible only to his mother, sounds that were unlike any of the spoken languages of that time or of any other time, but from which something sounded to the mother like a message from worlds that are not the earthly worlds, a message from higher worlds. That this child Jesus could speak, could speak immediately upon his birth—that is the miracle!

[ 15 ] Then it grew up as if it were meant to contain, concentrated within its own being, all the love and capacity for love that all human souls combined could muster, so to speak. And the great genius of love—that was what lived within the child. He could not learn much of what human culture had achieved in earthly life. What had been achieved by humanity over the course of millennia, the Nathanic Jesus-child experienced little of until his twelfth year. Because he could not, the other Self then entered into him in his twelfth year. But everything he touched from his earliest, most tender childhood was touched by perfected love. All the qualities of the mind, all the qualities of feeling, they worked as if Heaven had sent love to Earth so that a light might be carried into the Earth’s wintertime—a light that shines into the darkness of the human soul when the sun does not unfold its full outer power during this wintertime. When Christ later entered this human vessel, we must bear in mind that this Christ-being could make itself understood on Earth only by working through these vessels.

[ 16 ] The Christ Being is not a human being. The Christ Being is a being of the higher hierarchies. On Earth, it had to live for three years as a human among humans. To this end, a human being had to be born to it in the manner I have often described regarding the Nathanic Jesus child. And because this human child could not have absorbed—since it had not previously set foot on Earth, nor had the preparation of earlier incarnations—because it could not have absorbed what external culture has developed on Earth, a soul entered into this child that had, in the highest sense, developed what external culture can bring: the Zarathustra soul.

[ 17 ] And so we see the most wondrous connection when Christ Jesus stands before us. We see the interplay between this Son of Man—who had preserved for humanity its greatest earthly asset, love, from the times when humanity had not yet succumbed to the Luciferic temptation—up to the beginning of our era, when he first appeared incarnated on Earth, with the most highly developed prophet of humanity, with Zarathustra, and with that spiritual being who, until the Mystery of Golgotha, had her true home within the realms of the higher hierarchies, and who then had to take her place on Earth by entering her earthly existence through the gateway of the body of Jesus of Nazareth. That which is the highest on Earth, and which we can only glimpse in its purity in the still innocent gaze of the human being, in the eye of the child—that is what the human child brought with it in the highest degree. That which can be attained on Earth as the highest, that is what Zarathustra contributed to this human child. And that which the heavens could give to the Earth, so that the Earth might receive spiritually what it receives anew each summer through the intensified power of the sun—that the Earth received through the Christ Being.

[ 18 ] We will simply have to learn to understand everything that has happened to the Earth. And in the times to come, the soul will be able to swell with intimacy; the soul will be able to draw strength from a power that will be stronger than all the forces that have hitherto been connected to the Mystery of Golgotha, in a time that, outwardly, can offer little support to the strengthening of those forces that incline toward humanity’s true source of power, toward humanity’s innermost essence, toward an understanding of how this essence flows from the spiritual-cosmic. But in order to fully understand this, we must first understand ourselves anew, just as one once understood the Christ Child on Christmas Day; we must first rise to the knowledge of the Spirit. Times will come when one will, so to speak, look upon earthly events with the eye of the soul. Then people will say to themselves many things that cannot yet be said in the broadest circles today, things that only spiritual science enables us to do today, so that we can already say to ourselves many things that cannot yet be said in the broadest circles today.

[ 19 ] We see spring approaching. As spring draws near, we see plants sprouting and budding from the earth. We feel our joy ignite at the sight of what is emerging from the earth. We feel the power of the sun growing stronger and stronger until it reaches the point where it makes our bodies rejoice, until the Midsummer Sun, which was celebrated in the Nordic mysteries. The initiates of these mysteries knew that the Midsummer Sun pours its warmth and light over the earth to reveal the workings of the cosmos in the sphere of the earth. We see, we feel all of this.

[ 20 ] Of course, we see and feel other things as well during this time. Lightning and thunder sometimes crash into the rays of the spring sun when clouds cover those rays. Downpours pour irregularly over the surface of the earth. And we then sense the infinite, harmonious regularity of the sun’s course, which nothing can influence, and the—well, let us use the word—the capricious activity of the entities that act upon the earth as rain and sunshine, as thunderstorms, as other phenomena dependent on all manner of irregular activity, in contrast to the regular, harmonious course of the sun’s path—which nothing can influence—and its consequences for the development of plants and all that lives on earth. The infinitely regular harmony of the sun’s activity and the capricious and whimsical nature of what takes place directly in our atmosphere—we experience this as a duality.

[ 21 ] But then, as autumn approaches, we sense the withering of life, the fading of that which brings us joy. And if we feel compassion for nature, our souls may grow sad at the sight of nature’s decline. The awakening, loving power of the sun—that which regularly and harmoniously surges through the universe—becomes, as it were, invisible, and that which we called the capriciousness of the weather then prevails. It is true what earlier times knew, what has faded from our consciousness due to our materialism: that in winter, the egoism of the Earth triumphs over the forces that, permeating our atmosphere, stream down upon our Earth from the vast cosmos and awaken life on our Earth.

[ 22 ] And just as a duality appears to us, so does the whole of external nature. The workings of spring and summer are quite different from those of autumn and winter. As if the earth were becoming selfless and surrendering itself to the embrace of the universe, from which the sun sends it light and warmth and awakens its life—the earth of spring and summer appears to us as a manifestation of this selflessness. As if demonstrating its selfishness, conjuring forth from within itself all that it can contain and produce within its own atmosphere—so the earth of autumn and winter stands before us. Overcoming the workings of the sun and the universe through the egoism of earthly activity, the earth in winter appears to us.

[ 23 ] And when we look away from the Earth and toward ourselves with the eye that spiritual research can open to us—when we look beyond the material realm toward the spiritual—we perceive something else as well. We know this: Yes, in what takes place around us in the spring and summer seasons, and which appears as though only the forces of the Earth’s atmosphere, which bring about changes in the weather, were working into the unfolding of the sun’s forces—in this live the elemental spirits; in this live countless spiritual beings that play around the Earth in the elemental realm—lower spirits, higher spirits. Lower spirits, who are earthbound in the elemental realm, who must endure during the spring and summer seasons that the higher spirits, streaming down from the cosmos, exercise greater dominion, making them servants of the spirit streaming down from the sun, making them servants of the demonic forces that reign within the earth’s own egoism. During the spring and summer of the Earth, we see how the spirits of the Earth, the air, the water, and the fire become servants of the cosmic spirits who send their powers down to the Earth. And when we understand the entire spiritual connection between the Earth and the cosmos, then these relationships become clear to our souls during spring and summer, and we say to ourselves: “You, Earth, reveal yourself to us by making the spirits who are servants of selfishness into servants of the universe, of the cosmic spirits, who conjure up life from your bosom—life that you yourself could not conjure up!”

[ 24 ] Then we move toward the autumn and winter seasons. And then we sense the earth’s selfishness, feel how powerful those spirits of the earth become who are bound to this earth itself, who have detached themselves from the universe since the times of Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon; we feel how they close themselves off from the forces flowing in from the cosmos. We feel ourselves within the Earth as it experiences itself in an egoistic way. And then we may look inward. There we examine our soul with its thinking, feeling, and willing, examine it earnestly and ask ourselves: How do thoughts emerge from the depths of our soul? How do our feelings, emotions, and sensations first arise? Do they possess that regularity with which the Sun traverses the cosmos and lends the Earth the life forces that spring forth from its bosom? — They do not. The forces that manifest in our thinking, feeling, and willing in everyday life are, even in their outward appearance, similar to the capricious activity in our atmosphere. Just as lightning and thunder break in, so do human passions break into the soul. Just as no law governs rain and sunshine, so do human thoughts burst forth from the depths of the soul. We must compare our inner life externally to the way wind and weather change, not to the regularity with which the sun governs our Earth. Out there, it is the spirits of air and water, the spirits of fire and earth, that are at work in the elemental realm, and that actually represent the egoism of the Earth. Within ourselves, it is the elemental forces. But these changing forces within us, which govern our daily life, are embryos, are germ-like beings that, though only as a germ, yet as a germ, resemble the elemental beings contained in all the changing weather outside. We carry within us the forces of the same world—forces that live as demonic beings in the elemental realm in the wind and weather outside—as we think, feel, and will.

[ 25 ] As the time approached when people standing at the turning point between the old and new eras sensed: A time is coming that recalls the winter season of the Earth—indeed, among these people there were teachers and sages who understood how to interpret the signs of the times, who drew attention to the fact that: Even if our inner soul life resembles the capricious activity of the outer world, and just as there the human being knows: Behind this activity of the outer world, especially in autumn and winter, the sun still shines, the sun lives and weaves in the universe, it will come again—so too may human beings hold fast to the thought that, in contrast to their own capriciousness, which lives in their soul, a sun exists, deep, deep in those depths where the spring of our soul bubbles forth from the spring of the world itself. The sages at the turn of the ages drew attention to this: just as the sun must reappear and regain its power in the face of the earth’s selfishness, so too must understanding develop from those depths of our soul for what can reach this soul from the sources where this soul, in its own life, is connected to the spiritual sun of the world, just as earthly life is connected to the physical sun of the world.

[ 26 ] At first, this was expressed as a hope, pointing to the great symbol that nature itself provided. It was expressed in such a way that the winter solstice was set as a time of celebration for those days when the sun would regain its strength—the time of which it was said: And however the egoism of the Earth may unfold, the Sun is victorious over the egoism of the Earth. Just as through the darkness of a Christmas Eve, the spirits of the elemental world—who represent the egoism of the Earth—are penetrated by the spirits coming from the Sun, who show us how they make the egoistic spirits of the Earth their servants.

[ 27 ] At first, it felt like a hope. And when the great turning point in history arrived—a time when despair and desolation should truly have taken hold in the human soul—the Mystery of Golgotha was already taking shape. Then it became evident in the spiritual realm: Yes, within the human being live such forces that can only be compared to the weather-changing forces of the Earth’s atmosphere, to Earth’s egoism. They manifested themselves in ancient times, when people still carried within them the legacy of the old divine forces, like those forces that appear in spring and summer: they were servants of the old divine hierarchies. But in the time leading up to the Mystery of Golgotha, the inner forces of human souls became more and more like the outer demonic elemental spirits of autumn and winter. These forces of ours were to tear themselves away from the old divine currents and influences, just as the weather-changing forces of our Earth withdraw from the sun’s influence in winter. And so, for humanity in its earthly evolution, what had always been symbolically represented in hope as the victory of the sun over the winter forces came to pass; the winter solstice of the world arrived, in which the spiritual sun underwent for the entire development of the Earth what the physical sun always undergoes at the winter solstice. These are the times into which the Mystery of Golgotha fell.

[ 28 ] We must truly distinguish between two periods of Earth’s history. A time before the Mystery of Golgotha, when Earth is moving from summer toward autumn, and the inner forces of human beings are becoming more and more like the changing forces of the Earth’s weather, and the great Christmas festival of the Earth, the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, when that which is indeed the Earth’s winter season descends upon the Earth, but when, out of the darkness, the victorious Spirit of the Sun, the Christ, approaches the Earth, bringing to souls inwardly what the Sun brings outwardly to the Earth in the form of forces of growth.

[ 29 ] This is how we truly feel the full weight of our human destiny on Earth, our innermost human nature, when we stand before the Christmas tree. This is how we feel deeply connected to the Child of Man who brought the message from that time when humanity had not yet succumbed to temptation and thus to the predisposition toward decline; the message proclaimed that an ascent would begin anew, just as the ascent begins at the winter solstice. On this very day, we truly feel the intimate kinship of the spiritual within the soul with the Spirit that weaves through and surges through all things, expressing itself outwardly in wind and weather, but also in the regular, harmonious course of the sun, and inwardly in the course of humanity across the earth, in the great festival of Golgotha.

[ 30 ] Shouldn’t humanity, looking toward the future and drawing from these thoughts—which should not remain mere thoughts but become feelings and sensations—develop a new piety, a deep inner piety, a piety that cannot become numb even in the face of the most extreme mechanization, as that must unfold more and more on Earth? Should not Christmas prayers and Christmas carols be possible once again, even in the abstracted atmosphere of the Earth, filled with telegraph wires and smoke, when humanity learns to feel how it is connected to the divine-spiritual powers in its depths, by sensing in those depths the great Christmas celebration of the Earth with the birth of the boy Jesus of Luke?

[ 31 ] It is true what resounds through all of human history on Earth: that the great Christmas celebration of the Earth, which prepared the way for the Easter celebration of Golgotha, was bound to come. It is true that this unique event had to occur as the victory of the Sun Spirit over the capricious spirits of the Earth. It is true, on the other hand, what Angelus Silesius said: “If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem, and not within you, you will remain lost forever.” It is true that we must find within ourselves, in the depths of our soul, that which enables us to understand Christ Jesus.

[ 32 ] But it is also true that, unlike in the villages on the edge of the forest, on the shores of lakes, surrounded by mountains, people were able to gaze upon the symbol of the Christ Child after a summer spent working the fields and pastures, they felt something different in their souls than we do—we who must also feel the power to perceive the Christmas message in the face of our smoky, dry, abstract, and mechanized times. If these powerful thoughts that spiritual science can give us take root in our hearts, then a solar power will emerge from our hearts that will be able to shine into the bleakest of external surroundings, to shine with a power that will be as if, within our very inner being, light were kindling upon light on the tree of our soul life—a tree which, because its roots are the roots of our own soul, we are to transform more and more into a Christmas tree ourselves during this winter season. We can do this if we take in—not merely as theory, but as immediate life within us—that which the message of the Spirit, that which true anthroposophy, can be for us. Thus I wished to bring the thoughts of the Christmas festival from our spiritual science into the space we wish to consecrate today for the work that our dear friends here have been performing for quite some time now.

[ 33 ] In the name of that deity who, in the North, is regarded as the one who is to restore rejuvenating powers—the spiritual powers of childhood to an aging humanity—toward whom Nordic souls in particular turn when they wish to speak of that which, flowing from the being of Christ Jesus, can bring our humanity a new message of rejuvenation—to this name our friends here wish to dedicate their work and their branch. They wish to call it the “Vidar Branch.” May this name be as promising as is the promise for us who wish to understand the work being done here—that which has already been accomplished here by loving, spirit-loving souls and which is intended to be accomplished. Let us deeply appreciate what our friends from Bochum are attempting here, and let us consecrate their branch and their work—a consecration that is also to be a Christ-consecration today—by unfolding our most beautiful, our most loving thoughts here for the blessing, for the strength, and for the genuine, true, spiritual love for this work. If we can feel this way, then we will celebrate today’s naming ceremony of the “Vidar” branch with our friends from Bochum in the true sense.

[ 34 ] And let us lift our feelings up to those we call the guides and leaders of our spiritual life, to the masters of wisdom and harmony of the senses, and let us implore their blessing for the work that is to unfold here in this city through our friends:

You who guide spiritual life, and pray for people
according to the times, for what people need,
you are contributing when you devotedly serve spiritual life
alongside our friends here in this city.

[ 35 ] We would like to send this up as a prayer to the spiritual guides, the higher hierarchies, at this moment, which is solemn in two respects. And we may hope that what has been promised will prevail over this branch, despite all the resistance that is piling up more and more, despite all the obstacles and opposition—what has been promised to our work: that through it, the Mystery of Christ will once again be incorporated into humanity in the way it must be.

[ 36 ] May this be our Christmas wish today: that this branch, too, may become a living witness to the forces flowing into the development of humanity from higher worlds, and may increasingly awaken in human souls an awareness of the truth of these words:

They speak to the senses
The things in the vastness of space,
They change in the flow of time;
With insight, the human soul penetrates,
Unlimited by the vastness of space
And untouched by the flow of time,
Into the realm of eternity.

[ 37 ] Imbued with this feeling, our dear friends in Bochum will now set to work here. Imbued with this feeling, those who, through their association with them, now have concrete knowledge of their work will think of it time and again. Indeed, these thoughts can unfold their special power all the more because we were able to consecrate the work immediately before this year’s Christmas, before the festival that can always be a symbol to us of all that the spirit has in common with victory over the material, over all the resistance that can and must oppose it in the world in any way.