The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Public Lecture

[ 1 ] First and foremost, I must ask your forgiveness for not being able to deliver the lecture I am to give in one of the languages commonly spoken here. The fact that this lecture is being given corresponds to the wish of the friends of our Theosophical Society, for whom I have been called here to give a series of lectures over a period of fourteen days, and who believed that it would be possible to include the two announced public lectures within this time frame. This naturally means that I will have to ask for your forgiveness if some of the names and terms, which are borrowed directly from the Finnish national epic, are perhaps not pronounced quite correctly by me, as I am unfamiliar with the language. It is, however, only next Friday’s lecture that will be able to introduce us to Spiritual Science itself. Rather, this evening’s discussion will concern a kind of adjacent field that can be illuminated from a perspective of Spiritual Science. To be sure, we shall be speaking of a field that, in the deepest sense of the word, belongs to the most interesting areas of human historical observation and human historical reflection.

[ 2 ] Folk epics! We need only think of some of the better-known folk epics: the epics of Homer, which have become Greek folk epics; the Central European Nibelungen saga; and finally the Kalevala, and it will immediately dawn on us that these folk epics lead us deeper into the human soul and human aspirations than any historical research, leading us in such a way that important ancient times are brought vividly before our minds, as if they were present, but in a way that touches us in the immediate present just as the fates and lives of people living around us today do. How uncertain and dimly lit those times of the ancient Greek people, of which the Homeric epics tell us, appear to us historically; and how deeply do we peer into the souls of those people—who are, in fact, completely removed from ordinary historical observation—when we allow the content of the Iliad and the Odyssey to take effect upon us. No wonder that the study of these national epics holds something of a mystery for those who engage with them scientifically or literarily. We need only point to a fact regarding the ancient Greek epics that a perceptive observer of the Iliad has repeatedly expressed in a very beautiful book on Homer’s Iliad, published only a few years ago. I am referring to Herman Grimm, the nephew of the great Germanic mythologist, folklorist, and linguist Jakob Grimm. As Herman Grimm allowed the characters and events of the Iliad to take hold of him, he felt compelled time and again to say: Oh, this Homer—we need not delve today into the question of Homer’s personality—seems, whenever he describes anything borrowed from a craft or an art, as if he were an expert in that craft or art. When he describes a battle or a fight, he seems to be thoroughly familiar with all the strategic and military principles that come into play in warfare. — Herman Grimm rightly points out that a strict judge in such matters was an admirer of Homer’s factual battle descriptions, namely Napoleon, a man who was undoubtedly qualified to judge whether the military aspects are presented to our minds in a directly appropriate and vivid manner through the spirit of Homer or not. From a generally human standpoint, we know how vividly the figures are presented to our minds by Homer, as if we had them right before our physical eyes.

[ 3 ] What about such a national epic; how does it stand the test of time? For truly, anyone who observes the circumstances impartially will not get the impression that artificial human endeavors—such as artificial pedagogical training—have repeatedly sustained the interest of the centuries in the Iliad and the Odyssey right up to the present day. This interest is a natural one, a universally human one. It is only that these epic poems, in a certain sense, present us with a task; they immediately, the moment we wish to consider them, set before us a very specific—one might say interesting—task. For they demand to be taken quite literally in all their details. We immediately sense that something becomes incomprehensible to us in the content of such epic poems if we attempt to read them in the same way we might read any modern work of art, a modern novel, or the like. We sense right from the first lines of the Iliad that Homer speaks precisely. What is he describing to us? He tells us at the beginning. We know various things from other accounts, not contained in the Iliad, about events that follow the facts of the Iliad. Homer wants only to describe to us what he succinctly states in the first line: the wrath of Achilles. And if we now go through the entire Iliad and consider it impartially, we must say: There is truly nothing in it that cannot be described as arising from the wrath of Achilles. — And furthermore, a peculiar fact again right at the beginning of the Iliad. Homer does not simply begin with the facts, nor does he begin with some personal opinion, but rather he begins with something that a modern age might perhaps dismiss as a cliché; he begins by saying: Sing to me, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles! — And the deeper we delve into this folk epic, the clearer it becomes to us that we cannot possibly understand its meaning, spirit, and significance if we do not take this opening line seriously. But then we must ask ourselves: What does it actually mean?

[ 4 ] And now the style of presentation, the very way in which the events are brought before our minds! For many—not only expert, scholarly observers, but also artistically perceptive minds such as Herman Grimm—these words posed a question: “O sing to me, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles.”—A question that touched them deeply. How do the deeds of spiritual-divine beings interact in this Iliad—just as in the Nibelungenlied or the Kalevala—in Homer’s poems, first and foremost the deeds, intentions, and passions of the Olympian gods—with the deeds, intentions, and passions of humans who, like Achilles, are in a certain sense removed from ordinary humanity, and, in turn, with the passions, intentions, and deeds of people who are already close to ordinary humanity, such as Odysseus or Agamemnon? When this Achilles steps before our soul, he appears to us as lonely in comparison to the people with whom he lives. We very soon sense, as the Iliad unfolds, that in Achilles we have before us a personality who cannot really speak about his innermost affairs with all the other heroes. Homer also shows us how Achilles must settle the true matters of his heart with divine-spiritual beings who do not belong to the human realm, how he stands alone in relation to the human realm throughout the entire course of the Iliad, and yet is close to supernatural, otherworldly powers. And yet there is something peculiar about this: when we gather all our human feeling into the mode of thinking and feeling that we have acquired through the cultural process, and turn our gaze toward this Achilles, he then appears to us in such a way that we often have to say: How selfish, how self-centered! — A being into whose soul divine-spiritual impulses flow, yet who acts entirely out of the immediate personal. For a long time, a war as important to the Greeks as the legendary Trojan War proceeds solely because of this; the specific episodes described in the Iliad arise from the fact that Achilles defines for himself what he personally has to settle with Agamemnon. And we always see that supernatural powers are at work. We see Zeus, Apollo, and Athena dispensing the impulses, so to speak, placing the people in their proper places. It was always strange, before the task fell to me to approach these things from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, to see how a very spiritual man, with whom I had the good fortune to discuss these matters personally on many occasions—Herman Grimm—came to terms with them. He expressed this not only in his writings but often in personal conversations, and there even more precisely. He said: If we take into account only the historical forces and impulses at play in human development, then we cannot make sense of what lives and creates there, particularly in the great national epics. Thus, for Herman Grimm, the insightful observer of the Iliad and of folk poetry in general, something that transcends the ordinary powers of human consciousness—intellect, reason, sensory perception, and ordinary feeling—became a real power, a power that is just as creative as the other historical impulses. Herman Grimm spoke of a real creative imagination running through the development of humanity, spoke of an imagination in the same way one speaks of an entity, of a reality, of something that reigned over human beings and that, at the dawn of the ages we can observe, in the becoming of individual peoples, could tell them more than what the ordinary powers of the soul tell human beings. Like the dawning of a world that is not exhausted in the ordinary human powers of the soul, Herman Grimm always addressed the creative imagination, which thus took on for him the role of a co-creator in the process of human becoming.

[ 5 ] But now it is curious: when we consider this battlefield of the Iliad, this depiction of Achilles’ wrath with all the interplay of supernatural, divine-spiritual forces, we cannot come to terms with an interpretation such as that offered by Herman Grimm, and it is precisely in his book on the Iliad that we find many words of resignation, which show us how the conventional standpoint one might adopt today, whether literary or scholarly, cannot cope with these matters. What does Herman Grimm conclude regarding the Iliad, and also regarding the Nibelungen saga? He comes to assume that the historical dynasties, the ruling houses, were preceded by others. This is indeed how Herman Grimm thinks—one might say, literally. He conceives of Zeus, for example, with his entire entourage, as representing a kind of ruling house that preceded the ruling house to which Agamemnon belongs. He thus conceives, so to speak, the history of humanity in a certain uniformity, imagining the gods or heroes depicted in the Iliad or the Nibelungen saga as ancient humans whom later generations dared to portray only by clothing their deeds and characters in the garb of the superhuman myth. There is much that one cannot make sense of if one takes such a premise as a basis, above all the particular manner in which the gods intervene, especially in Homer. I ask you, my esteemed audience, to consider just one thing: Thetis, the mother of Achilles, Athena, and other divine figures—how do they intervene in the events of Troy? They intervene by taking on the form of mortal humans, inspiring them, as it were, and leading them to their deeds. They do not appear in person, but rather permeate living humans. Living humans serve not merely as their representatives, but as vessels permeated by invisible powers that cannot appear on the battlefield in their own form or essence. It would be strange, after all, to assume that ancient people of the ordinary kind should be portrayed in such a way that they would have to take mortal humans as their vessels. This is just one of the indications that can prove to us all that we cannot make sense of the ancient folk epics in this way.

[ 6 ] Nor do we fare any better if we take, for example, the characters from the Nibelungenlied, that Siegfried from Xanten on the Lower Rhine, who is sent to Worms to the Burgundian court, woos Kriemhilde, Gunther’s sister, there, and in turn woos Gunther, but due to his particular qualities can only woo Brunhilde. And how strangely such characters as Brunhilde of Isenland and Siegfried are portrayed to us. Siegfried is portrayed as having overcome the so-called Nibelung clan, having acquired and conquered the Nibelung treasure. Through what he has gained by defeating the Nibelungs, he acquires very special qualities, which are expressed in the epic by the statement that he can make himself invisible, that he is invulnerable in a certain sense, and that he also possesses powers that ordinary Gunther does not have, for the latter cannot win Brunhilde, who will not allow herself to be defeated by an ordinary mortal. Through his special powers, which he possesses as the owner of the Nibelung hoard, Siegfried defeats Brunhilde, and again, because he can conceal the powers he unleashes, he is able to bring Brunhilde to Gunther, his brother-in-law. And there we find that Kriemhilde and Brunhilde, whom we then encounter simultaneously at the Burgundian court, are two very different characters—characters in whom factors clearly come into play that cannot be explained by ordinary human spiritual powers. This leads them into conflict, and it is also why Brunhilde is able to persuade the loyal retainer Hagen to kill Siegfried. This, in turn, points to a trait that appears so strikingly in Central European legend. Siegfried possesses higher, superhuman powers. He derives these superhuman powers from his possession of the Nibelung hoard. Ultimately, they do not make him an unquestionably victorious figure, but rather a figure who stands before us as a tragic figure. At the same time, the powers that Siegfried possesses through the Nibelung hoard are a curse for humanity. Things become even stranger when we add the related Norse legend of Sigurd, the dragon-slayer, but this serves to clarify matters. Here Sigurd, who is none other than Siegfried, immediately appears to us as the slayer of the dragon, who thereby acquires the Nibelung hoard from an ancient race of dwarves. And Brunhilde appears to us as a figure of superhuman nature, as a Valkyrie figure.

[ 7 ] We see, then, that there are two ways of portraying these things in Europe. One way, which directly links everything to the divine and supernatural, which still shows us how Brunhilde represents something that belongs directly to the supernatural world, and the other way, which has humanized the legend. But we can nevertheless recognize how, even in this version, the resonance of the divine can be found everywhere.

[ 8 ] And now, from these legends, from these folk epics, let us turn our gaze to that region, about which I can truly speak only as one who views things from the outside, only in the way one can perceive them when one does not speak the language in question. Please bear in mind that I can speak of everything that Western Europeans encounter in the Kalevala only in the same way as one who grasps the spiritual content, the great, mighty figures, and who, of course, must miss the undoubtedly present subtleties of the epic, which only emerge when one truly masters the language in which it is written. But even from such a perspective, how peculiar is the triad that confronts us in the three—indeed, one is actually at a loss to use a name; one cannot say “gods,” one cannot say “heroes”—so let us say in the three beings: Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkäinen. These figures speak a strange language when we compare their characters with one another—a language from which we clearly recognize that the things intended to be told to us go beyond what can be accomplished with ordinary human powers of the soul. For, if we consider them merely from the outside, these three figures grow into the monstrous. And yet again, what is peculiar is that as they grow into monstrous proportions, every single feature stands vividly before our eyes, so that nowhere do we have the feeling that the monstrous is grotesque or paradoxical; everywhere we have the feeling that, of course, what is to be said must appear in superhuman grandeur, in superhuman significance. And then: what mystery in the content. Something that spurs our soul to think of the most human of things, yet which in turn transcends all that ordinary powers of the soul can grasp. Ilmarinen, often called the smith, the supremely artistic smith, forges the Sampo for a land inhabited, so to speak, by humanity’s elder brothers or at least by people more primitive than the Finns—for some foreign land, at the instigation of Wäinämöinen. And we first observe this curious thing: that far from the scene where the events in question are unfolding, various things are taking place, that time passes there, and we see how, after a certain time, Wäinämöinen and Ilmarinen are once again compelled to retrieve what has remained with them in the foreign land—the Sampo. Anyone who allows the peculiar spiritual language that speaks from this forging of the Sampo, from this parting with and regaining of it, to take effect upon them, immediately has the impression—as I said, please bear in mind that I am speaking, so to speak, as an outsider and can therefore speak only of the impression of such a thing—that the most essential, the most significant aspect of this magnificent epic is, after all, the forging, the keeping at a distance, and the subsequent regaining of the Sampo.

[ 9 ] What strikes me as particularly strange about the Kalevala is the ending. I have heard that there are people who believe this ending may be a later addition. To my mind, it is precisely this ending involving Mariata and her son, this introduction of a very peculiar form of Christianity—and I emphasize, a very peculiar form of Christianity—that belongs to the whole. The presence of this ending gives the Kalevala a very special nuance, a tone that, so to speak, makes the whole thing all the more understandable to us. I may say that, in my view, such a delicate, wonderfully impersonal portrayal of Christianity is found nowhere else but at the end of the Kalevala. The Christian principle is detached from all local context. Mariata’s arrival at Herod’s court—who appears to us in the Kalevala as Rotus—is rendered so impersonally that one is scarcely reminded of any locality or personality in Palestine. Indeed, one is not even in the slightest reminded of the historical Jesus Christ. As one of humanity’s most intimate matters of the heart, we find at the end of the Kalevala a delicate hint of the penetration of humanity’s noblest cultural pearl into Finnish culture. And linked to this is the tragic trait that can in turn affect our souls so infinitely deeply: that at the very moment Christianity enters, when the son of Mariata is baptized, takes his leave of his people to go to an unknown place, leaving his people only the content and power of what he knew how to recount through his art of song about the ancient events that comprise the history of this people. This withdrawal of Wäinämöinen in the presence of Mariata’s son seems to me so significant that one might wish to see in it the living interplay of all that reigned at the very core of the Finnish people, of the Finnish folk-souls—reigning there from time immemorial—at the very moment when Christianity found its way into Finland. The way this ancient force related to Christianity is such that one can feel everything that was at play in the souls with a wonderful intimacy. I say this as something of which I am conscious of its objectivity, which I do not wish to say to please anyone, nor to flatter anyone. Through this national epic, we Western Europeans have precisely one of the most wonderful examples of how, in the immediate present, the members of a people stand before us in the flesh with their whole soul, so that through the Kalevala one comes to know the Finnish soul in Western Europe in such a way that one can become completely familiar with it.

[ 10 ] All of this—why did I say it? I said it to describe how there is something in the folk epics that cannot be explained by ordinary human mental faculties, even if one speaks of the imagination as a real power. And even if to some what is said sounds merely like a hypothesis, perhaps what Spiritual Science has to say about the nature of these folk epics may be brought into this consideration of the folk epics. Certainly, I am aware that what I have to say still touches upon something today, in our present time, to which very few people can give their assent. Many may regard it as a daydream, as a flight of fancy; but some will at least accept it alongside other hypotheses put forward regarding the evolution of humanity. For those, however, who delve into Spiritual Science in the way I shall describe in the next lecture, we are not speaking of a hypothesis, but of a genuine research result that can stand alongside other scientific findings. The things that must be spoken of sound strange for the very reason that the scientific approach which today believes itself to stand firmly on the ground of the factual, the true—the only attainable—restricts itself solely to what the external senses perceive, to what the intellect, bound to the senses and the brain, can ascertain about things. And that is why it is often considered unscientific today to speak of a research method that draws upon other powers of the soul, which are capable of looking into the supersensible and into the interplay of the supersensible with the sensible. Through this research method, through Spiritual Science, one is not merely led to the abstract imagination to which Herman Grimm was led in regard to folk epics, but one is led to something that goes far beyond imagination, representing a state of soul or consciousness entirely different from that which human beings can possess at the present stage of their development. And so, through Spiritual Science, we are led back to human prehistory in a completely different way than, for example, through ordinary science.

[ 11 ] Conventional science today is accustomed to viewing the evolution of humanity retrospectively, in such a way that what we now call human beings is seen as having gradually developed from lower, animal-like creatures. Spiritual Science does not oppose this modern research with hostility, but fully acknowledges the greatness and power of the achievements of 19th-century natural science, the significance of the idea of a transformation of animal forms from the most imperfect to the most perfect, and a connection between the outer human form and the most perfect animal form. But it cannot remain at such a view of human evolution—or of the evolution of organisms in general—as might present itself if one could survey with an external, sensory gaze what has unfolded in the course of Earth’s history within the organic world up to the point of human emergence. For Spiritual Science today, humanity stands alongside the animal world. We see in the world around us the variously shaped animal forms. We see the human race, in a certain sense unified, spread out across the earth. In Spiritual Science, too, we have an unbiased view of how everything in the outer form speaks to the kinship of human beings with the rest of the organisms; but in Spiritual Science, when we trace the development of humanity backward, we cannot go so far back as to have the stream of humanity flow directly into the animal line of development in some distant prehistory. For we find, when we go back from the present into the past, that nowhere can we directly link the present human form, the present human being, to any animal form that we in turn know from the present.

[ 12 ] If we look back at human evolution, we find that—one might say—even in the most primitive forms of humanity, the soul forces—the powers of intellect, feeling, and will—that we possess today were already present. Then we go back to ancient times, about which old documents tell us very little. Even where we can go back as far as to the Egyptians or the peoples of the Near East, we are led everywhere back to an ancient humanity which, while in a certain sense more primitive, also possessed the same powers— emotional, intellectual, and volitional powers, which, however, have only found their present form in the modern era, yet which we regard as the most important human impulses, as the most important historical impulses, insofar as we can trace humanity back—by considering its present soul—as far as we can. Nowhere do we find any possibility of placing even the most ancient human race in any special kinship with today’s animal forms. This, which Spiritual Science must assert for itself, is already recognized today even by thinking natural scientists. But as we go further back and observe how the human soul changes—when we compare how a person today, let us say, thinks scientifically or in other ways, how they apply their intellect and how their emotional faculties function—when we trace this back—oh, we can trace it quite precisely—: at a certain time, it first dawned upon humanity. We might say: It dawned in the 6th and 7th centuries B.C. The entire configuration of present-day feeling and thinking actually does not extend further back than those times of which we are told as the times of early Greek natural philosophy.

[ 13 ] If we go further back and have a sufficiently unbiased perspective, we find—without even touching on the Spiritual Science—that not only does all present-day scientific thinking cease as we go backward, but that the human soul is in a completely different state altogether, in a much more impersonal state, but also in such a state that we must appeal to its powers much more instinctively. Not in the sense that we would say that people in those times acted out of such instincts as today’s animals do, but rather that the guidance through reason and intellect, as it exists today, was not present. Instead, however, there was a certain instinctive, immediate certainty among people. They acted out of immediate, elementary impulses; they did not exercise control through the intellect bound to the brain. There, however, we find that the forces we now have as separate intellectual faculties still reign unadulterated in the human soul, alongside those forces we now carefully distinguish from the intellectual faculties and those leading to science—the powers of imagination. Imagination, intellect, and reason all intermingle in those ancient times. The further back we go, the more we find that we can no longer speak of what reigned in the human soul—what acted there undivided as imagination and intellect—in the same way we designate a soul force today when we call it imagination. We know quite clearly today that when we speak of imagination, we are speaking of a soul force whose expressions we must not, in turn, apply in a literal sense, to which we must not ascribe reality. Modern people are careful in this matter; they are well on guard against mixing what imagination gives them with what the logic of reason tells them. If we look at what the human spirit expressed in those prehistoric times, before imagination and intellect appeared as separate entities, we sense a primal, elemental, instinctive force at work in the souls. We can find in it features of today’s imagination, but what—if we may use the term—imagination gave to the human soul back then had something to do with a reality, with a reality. Imagination was not yet imagination; it was still—I must not shy away from using the term directly—clairvoyant power, a special faculty of the soul, the soul’s gift through which human beings saw things, saw facts that are hidden from them today in this epoch of development, where intellect and reason are to be particularly cultivated. Those powers, which were not imagination but clairvoyant power, penetrated deeper into hidden forces and hidden forms of existence that lie beyond the sensory world. This is what an unbiased observation must lead us to: that when we look back at human development, we must say to ourselves: Truly, we must take the word ‘evolution’ seriously.

[ 14 ] The fact that humanity has, in the present day, over the last few centuries and millennia, so to speak, developed the powers of reason and intellect that have elevated it to its current level is the result of evolution. These soul powers have evolved from others. And while our present soul powers are limited to what presents itself in the outer sensory world, a primal humanity—which, admittedly, had to do without science in the modern sense and the use of intellect in the modern sense—saw, at the root of all individual peoples, into the depths of existence, into a realm that lies beyond the sensory as a supersensory realm. Clairvoyant powers were once inherent in the human souls of all peoples, and it was out of these clairvoyant powers that the present-day human powers of intellect and reason, and the present-day way of thinking and feeling, first took shape. Those soul powers, which we may in a certain sense refer to as clairvoyant powers, were such that the human being simultaneously felt: It is not I myself who thinks and feels within me. — The human being felt as if surrendered, with his entire physicality and also with his soul being, to higher, supersensible powers that worked and lived within him. Thus, human beings felt like vessels through which supersensible forces spoke. When one considers this, one also understands the meaning of humanity’s further development. Human beings would have remained dependent beings who could have felt themselves only as vessels, as shells of powers and beings, had they not progressed to the actual use of intellect and reason. Human beings have become more independent through the use of intellect and reason, but at the same time have been cut off for a time from the spiritual world in a certain sense, cut off from the supersensible foundations of existence. In the future, this will change again. The further back we go, the deeper the human soul sees into the foundations of existence through clairvoyant powers, seeing how from these foundations of existence also emerged those forces that worked within human beings themselves in prehistoric times, right up to a point in time when all conditions on Earth were still quite different from today, when they were such that the forms of living beings were much more mobile, much more subject to a kind of metamorphosis than they are today. Thus we must go far back from what is called the present age of human culture, and must trace the development of humanity alongside that of the animal. And the separation of the animal form from the human form lies much further back than is commonly believed today. The animal forms then became rigid, became less mobile at a time when the human form was still quite soft and pliable and could be shaped and molded by what was experienced inwardly in the soul. Here, however, we return in the process of human becoming to a time beyond the reach of present-day consciousness, but for which another consciousness still existed in the soul—one connected to the clairvoyant powers just described. Such a consciousness, which could look back to the past and already saw human development emerging from the past in complete separation from all animal life, also saw how human powers were at work, yet still in a living connection with the supersensible forces that were at play there. It saw that which, in the times when, for example, the Homeric epics arose, was present only as an old echo, and which had been present to a much greater degree in even earlier times. If we were to go back beyond Homer, we would find that people possessed a clairvoyant consciousness that, as it were, remembered prehistoric human events and was able to recount the course of human evolution from memory. By Homer’s time, the situation was such that people sensed the old clairvoyant consciousness was fading, yet they still felt its presence. This was an era in which it was not the human being who spoke as an independent, egoistic entity of his own accord, but rather gods and supersensory spiritual forces spoke through him. So we must take it seriously when Homer does not speak of himself, but when he says: Sing to me, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles! Sing within me, higher being, being that speaks through me, that takes possession of me as I sing and speak. — This first line in Homer is a reality. We are thus not being referred to ancient ruling dynasties that resemble our present-day humanity in the ordinary sense, but rather, through Homer himself, we are being pointed to the fact that in primeval times there were other human beings, human beings in whom the supersensible lived. And Achilles is certainly still a figure from the transitional period between ancient clairvoyance and the modern way of seeing, which we already find in Agamemnon, which we find in Nestor and Odysseus, but which is then carried forward to a higher way of seeing. Only in this way can we understand Achilles, when we know that Homer intends to portray him as a member of the ancient humanity who lived in a time lying between the era when humans still reached directly up to the ancient gods and the present age of humanity, which begins roughly with Agamemnon.

[ 15 ] Similarly, the Central European Nibelungen saga points to a prehistoric human era. This is evident throughout the entire narrative of this epic. We are, of course, dealing here with people of our own time in a certain sense, but with people of our time who have preserved something from the era of ancient clairvoyance. All the qualities attributed to Siegfried—that he can make himself invisible, that he possesses powers through which he overcomes Brunhilde, which an ordinary mortal cannot overcome— all of this, along with the other things told to us about him, shows us that in him we have a human being who, as if from an inner human memory, has carried over into present-day humanity the achievements of the ancient soul powers that were linked to clairvoyance and a connection with nature. At what transition point does Siegfried stand? This is shown to us by Brunhilde’s relationship to Kriemhilde, Siegfried’s wife. It cannot be elaborated upon here in detail what the two figures signify. But we can make sense of all these legends if we see in the figures presented to us pictorial representations of inner clairvoyant or remembered clairvoyant conditions. Thus we may see in Siegfried’s relationship to Kriemhilde his relationship to his own soul forces, which are at work within him. His soul is, so to speak, a transitional soul, in that Siegfried, through the Nibelung treasure—that is, through the clairvoyant mysteries of ancient times—brings something over into the new age, which at the same time renders him unsuited to his present time. Thus were the people of ancient times able to live with this Nibelung hoard, that is, with the ancient clairvoyant powers. The earth has changed its conditions. Consequently, Siegfried, who still carries an echo of the ancient times in his soul, no longer fits into the present; this makes him a tragic figure. How can the present relate to what is still alive for Siegfried? For him, something of the old clairvoyant powers is still alive, for when he is overcome, Kriemhilde remains. The Nibelung treasure is brought to her; she can make use of it. We learn that later, Hagen takes the Nibelung treasure from her. We can see that Brunhilde, too, is in a certain sense capable of working with the old clairvoyant powers. In this way, she stands in opposition to those people who fit into the present of that time: Gunther and his brothers, Gunther above all, for whom Brunhilde has no regard. Why is that? Well, we know from the saga that Brunhilde is a kind of Valkyrie figure: that is, something within the human soul—specifically, that aspect with which, in ancient times, human beings could still unite through clairvoyant powers, but which has since withdrawn from humanity, become unconscious, and with which human beings, as they currently live in the age of the intellect, can only unite after death. Hence the union with the Valkyrie at the moment of death. The Valkyrie is the personification of the living soul forces that are within modern human beings—those soul forces that the ancient clairvoyant consciousness was able to reach, but which modern human beings experience only when they pass through the gate of death. Only then is he united with this soul, which is represented in Brunhilde. Because Kriemhilde still knows something of the old clairvoyant age and the powers that the soul receives through ancient clairvoyance, she becomes a figure whose wrath is depicted, as in the Iliad the wrath of Achilles. This sufficiently indicates to us that the people who in ancient times were still endowed with clairvoyant powers did not control themselves with the intellect, did not let the intellect prevail, but acted directly out of their most elemental, most intense impulses. Hence the personal, the immediately egoistic, in both Kriemhilde and Achilles.

[ 16 ] The whole matter becomes particularly interesting when considering folk epics, especially if we add the Kalevala to the list of folk epics mentioned. We will be able to show—though today, due to time constraints, we can only hint at this—that Spiritual Science in our present age can point to humanity’s ancient clairvoyant states only because it is now possible once again—albeit in a higher form, permeated by the intellect, not dreamlike—to evoke these clairvoyant states through spiritual training. Modern humanity is gradually growing back into an age in which hidden powers from the depths of the human soul—which in turn point toward the supersensible, though now guided by reason rather than unchecked by it— where these people will point upward into the supersensible realm, so that we will come to know once more the realms of which the ancient folk epics speak to us from the dim consciousness of bygone times. Therefore, we can say: One comes to recognize that it is possible to gain a revelation of the world, not merely through the external senses, but through something supersensory that underlies the external physical human body.

[ 17 ] There are methods—which will be discussed in the next lecture—by which a person can make the spiritual, supersensory inner being, which is so often denied today, independent of the physical, outer body, so that the person does not live in an unconscious state, as in sleep, when they become independent of their body, but rather perceives the spiritual around them. In this way, modern clairvoyance shows human beings the possibility of living consciously in a higher, supersensible body that fills the ordinary physical body like a vessel. In Spiritual Science, this is called the etheric body. This etheric body rests within our physical body. Through it, when we detach it inwardly from the physical body, we enter even today into that state of perception through which we become aware of supersensible realities. We become aware of two kinds of supersensible facts. First, we become aware of this at the beginning of this clairvoyant state, when we begin to realize that we no longer see through our physical body, we no longer hear through our physical body, nor do we think through the brain bound to the physical body. At that point, we know nothing yet of the external world. — I am telling you facts whose more precise explanation will only be possible in the next lecture. — But the first stage of clairvoyance leads us all the more to a perception of our own etheric body. We see a supersensible physical aspect of human nature that underlies it and that we can only describe as something that acts and creates like a kind of inner architect, an inner master builder, that permeates our physical body with life. And then we become aware of the following.

[ 18 ] We become aware that what we perceive in ourselves—what we perceive as the actual living essence of our etheric body—is, on the one hand, limited and modified by our physical body; that it is, as it were, clothed in the physical aspect. In that the etheric body lines the eyes and ears, lines the physical brain, we belong, so to speak, to the earthly element. Through this we perceive how our etheric body becomes the specific, individual, egoistic human being who is incorporated into the shell of his physical body. On the other hand, however, we perceive how our etheric body leads us precisely back into those regions where we stand, impersonally, before a Higher, supersensible reality—something that is not us, yet is fully present within us, working through us as a spiritual, supersensible power and force. Thus, in the perspective of Spiritual Science, our inner soul life breaks down into three parts, which are as it were enclosed within three outer bodily shells, filling them out. We live with our soul in such a way that we experience within it what our eyes see, our ears hear, what our senses can grasp in general, and what our intellect can comprehend. We live with our soul in our physical body. Insofar as our soul lives in the physical body, we call it the consciousness soul in Spiritual Science, because it is only through the complete settling into the physical body in the course of human development that it has become possible for the human being to ascend to ego-consciousness. Then, in particular, the modern clairvoyant also comes to know the life of the soul in what we have called the etheric body. There the soul lives in the etheric body in such a way that, while it possesses its own powers, these soul forces operate in a manner such that we cannot say they are our personal powers. They are general human powers, forces through which we are much closer to the entire hidden reality of nature. Insofar as the soul perceives these forces within an outer shell—namely, the etheric body—we speak of the intellectual or emotional soul as a second soul member. So that, just as we find the conscious soul enclosed within the shell of the physical body, we have the intellectual or emotional soul enclosed within the etheric body. And then we have an even finer body through which we reach up into the supersensible world. All that which we experience inwardly as our most intimate secrets, at the same time as that which is hidden from consciousness today and which, in the era of ancient clairvoyance, was perceived as the forces of becoming in the human process of development—what was perceived as if one could look back into the events of ancient times— all of this we attribute to the feeling soul, attributing it to it in such a way that it is enclosed within the finest human body, within what we—please do not take offense at the expression, but take it as a technical term—call the astral body. It is the part of the human being that, as it were, connects the human being to the outer earthly realm—that which works inspiringly into his inner being, which he cannot perceive through the outer senses, nor can perceive even when looking into the etheric body through his own inner being, but which he perceives when he becomes independent of himself, of the etheric body, and is connected with the forces of his origin.

[ 19 ] Thus, we have the sensory soul in the astral body, the intellectual or emotional soul in the etheric body, and the conscious soul in the physical body. In the days of ancient clairvoyance, people were more or less instinctively aware of these things, for they looked within themselves and saw this threefold soul being. Not that they had intellectually dissected the soul, but because they possessed a clairvoyant consciousness, the threefold human soul stood before them: the soul of feeling in the astral body, the soul of intellect or emotion in the etheric body, and the soul of consciousness in the physical body. As they looked back, they saw how the outer aspect of the human being, the outer form—which had long since hardened into the animal nature—developed out of what today confronts us in its result as the threefold soul forces. Thereupon they sensed that this threefold structure is born out of supersensible creative powers. They sensed that the feeling soul is born out of supersensible creative powers that gave human beings the astral body—that body which they not only possess, like their etheric and physical bodies, between birth and death, but which they take with them when they pass through the gate of death, and which they already possessed before they entered existence through birth. Thus the ancient clairvoyants saw the feeling soul as connected to the astral body, and that which, so to speak, works inspiringly upon the human being from the spiritual worlds and creates his astral body, as the one creative force that forms the human being out of the whole of the world. And as a second creative force, they saw that which we have today as the result of the intellectual or emotional soul, and which creates the etheric body in such a way that this etheric body transforms all external substances, all external matter, so that they can permeate the physical human form in the human, not the animal, sense. The ancient clairvoyants saw the creative spirit for the etheric body—which manifests in its results within our intellectual soul—as a superhuman cosmic power working its way in, much as magnetism works its way into physical matter, so too into the human being. They looked up into the spiritual worlds and saw a divine-spiritual power that shapes and forges the human etheric body, so that this etheric body becomes the master craftsman, the architect, who transforms external matter, shuffles it about, pulverizes it, and grinds it, so that what otherwise exists as matter is organized within the human being, and the human being acquires human faculties. The ancient clairvoyants saw how this creative power artfully transforms all matter so that it could become human matter. Then again they looked to the third, to the soul of consciousness, which actually makes the egoic human being, which is the transformation of the physical body, and they attributed those forces that reign in this physical body solely to the hereditary line, to what descends from father and mother, from grandfather and great-grandfather, in short, what is the result of human powers of love, of human powers of procreation. In this they saw the third creative power. The power of love works from generation to generation.

[ 20 ] The ancient clairvoyants looked up to three powers, to a creative being that our sentient soul ultimately evokes by forming within the human being the astral body, which can be inspired by the supersensible powers because it is the body that the human being had before becoming a physical being through conception, the body that the human being will have once they have passed through the gate of death. This structure of forces—or rather, this quasi-celestial structure within the human being—endures while the etheric body and the physical body pass away; for the ancient clairvoyants, this was precisely what—as their direct experience revealed—could bring all culture into human life. That is why they saw in the bearer of the astral body that power which brings in the divine, which itself consists only of the enduring, through which the eternal sings and resounds into the world. And the ancient clairvoyants, from whom—I say this without hesitation—the figures of the Kalevala sprang, have set forth in Väinämöinen the living, plastic embodiment of that creative power which, as the result of the feeling soul, reaches out to us, inspiring the divine into the human. Wäinämöinen is the creator of that human limb that endures beyond birth and death and brings the heavenly into the earthly. And we see the second figure in the Kalevala: Ilmarinen. If we go back to the ancient clairvoyant consciousness, we find that Ilmarinen brings forth everything that is an image in its living form from the etheric body, from the forces of the earth, and from that which belongs not to the sensory earth but to the deeper forces of the earth. In Ilmarinen we see the bringer of that which transforms and reshapes all matter. In him we see the smith of the human form. And we see in the Sampo the human etheric body, forged by Ilmarinen from the supersensible world, so that the physical matter may be pulverized and then passed on from generation to generation, so that through the forces bestowed by the third divine supersensible being, the human consciousness-soul continues to work in the physical human body from generation to generation through the forces of love. We see this third divine-supernatural power in Lemminkäinen. Thus we see deep mysteries of the origin of humanity in the forging of the Sampo, we see deep mysteries from the ancient clairvoyant consciousness at the heart of the Kalevala, and we thus look back into human prehistory, of which we may say: That was not an age when one could have analyzed natural phenomena with the intellect. Everything was primitive, but within that primitiveness lived the perception of what lies beyond the sensory. Now it was the case that when these human bodies were forged—specifically when the human etheric body, the Sampo, was forged—this first had to be processed for a while, for the human being did not immediately possess the powers that had been prepared for him by the supersensible forces. Once the etheric body had been forged, it first had to settle in internally, just as when we prepare a machine that must first be completed, and must then, as it were, fully mature before it can be put into use. In the process of becoming human, there always had to be—as is evident throughout all evolution—intervals between the creation of the corresponding members and their use. Thus, in distant primeval times, the human being had forged his etheric body. Then came an episode in which this etheric body was sent down into human nature. Only later did it shine forth as the intellectual soul. Humanity learned to use its powers as external natural forces; it brought forth from its own nature the Sampo that had remained hidden. We see this mystery of becoming human depicted in a wondrous way in the forging of the Sampo, in its hiddenness, in its ineffectiveness, and in the episode that lies between its forging and its rediscovery. We see the Sampo first immersed in human nature, then brought forth into the external forces of culture, which first appear as primitive forces, as described in the second part of the Kalevala.

[ 21 ] Everything in this great national epic thus takes on a profound meaning when we see in it descriptions—gained through clairvoyance—of ancient processes of human becoming, of the emergence of human nature from its various components. It was I, who truly—I can assure you — only became acquainted with the Kalevala long, long after these facts regarding the becoming of human nature had become clear to my soul, a wonderful, surprising fact to find in this very epic what I had been able to present more or less theoretically in my Theosophy, which was written at a time when I did not yet know a single line of the Kalevala. Thus we see how the mysteries of humanity unfold precisely in what Wäinämöinen offers, he, the creator of the supersensible inspirations: the story of the forging of the etheric body. But there is another mystery hidden there. I understand, mind you, nothing of Finnish; I can speak only from the perspective of Spiritual Science. I could express the word Sampo solely by attempting to form a word that might arise in the following way: In animals, we see the etheric body at work to such an extent that it becomes the architect of the most diverse forms, from the most imperfect to the most perfect. In the human etheric body, something was forged that unites all these animal forms as if in a single entity, with the sole exception that above the earth, the etheric body, that is, the Sampo, is forged according to climatic and other conditions, so that this etheric body possesses within its powers the particular national characters and national peculiarities, shaping one people in one way and another in another. The Sampo is, for every people, that which constitutes the particular form of the etheric body, which brings precisely this particular national character to life, so that the members of this national character have the same appearance in regard to what shines through their living being and their physical form. To the extent that the same appearance in the human form is fashioned from the etheric, to that extent the forces of the etheric body lie in the Sampo. In the Sampo, then, we have the symbol of the cohesion of the Finnish people, that which, in the depths of humanity, causes Finnish national character to have expressed itself precisely in a certain form.

[ 22 ] But this is true of every national epic. National epics can only arise where culture is still imbued with the forces of the Sampo, the forces of the etheric body. As long as culture depends on the forces of the Sampo, the people bear the stamp of this Sampo. This etheric body therefore imparts a folk-like, national character to the entire culture. When, in the course of the cultural process, could a rupture have occurred in this folk-like, national character? It could have occurred when something entered the human cultural process that is not intended for a single person, a tribe, or a people, but for all of humanity—something drawn from such depths of human nature, from such subtleties and intimacies, and incorporated into the cultural process, that it applies to all people without distinction of nationality, race, and so on. But this was given when those powers spoke to humanity—not to a single people, but to all of humanity—those powers that, however impersonally they may be suggested in the sense of folk tradition, are hinted at so subtly and delicately at the end of the Kalevala, in that Christ was born of Mariata. When He is baptized, Wäinämöinen leaves the land; something has occurred that brings together the particular national character with the universal human condition. And here at this point, where one of the most significant, concise, and magnificent national epics flows into the depiction—into the entirely impersonal, if you will pardon the paradoxical expression, “un-Palestinian” depiction—of the Christ impulse, the Kalevala becomes particularly significant. There it leads us quite specifically into what can be felt where the blessings, the happiness of the Sampo are vividly experienced as continuing to work through all human becoming and, at the same time, in interaction with the Christian idea, with the Christian impulse. That is the infinitely tender quality at the end of the Kalevala. That is also what so clearly explains to us that what lies before this conclusion in the Kalevala belongs to the pre-Christian era. But just as everything universally human will endure only by preserving the individual, so too will the individual folk cultures, which derive their essence from the peoples’ ancient clairvoyant states, live on within the universally human. Just as surely, everything that the Kalevala suggests as Christian at the end will forever remain connected, retaining its special significance through the endlessly continuing influence implied in the inspirations of Väinämöinen. For Wäinämöinen represents something that belongs to that part of the human being which is transcendent of birth and death, which walks with humanity through the entire process of human becoming. Thus, epics such as the Kalevala present to us something that is imperishable, something that can be permeated by the Christian idea, yet which will assert itself as the individual, always providing proof that the universal human, just as white sunlight is split into many colors, will live on in the many folk cultures. And because this universal human element permeates the individual in the essence of folk epics—which, however, shines into every human being and speaks to every human being—the individualities of the peoples live so vividly in the essence of their folk epics. That is why the people of ancient times stand so vividly before our eyes—those who, in their clairvoyance, beheld the essence of their own folk culture, as it is depicted to us in all folk epics, yet which we can come to know in a most wondrous way where humanity is embraced in its innermost depths by circumstances such as those found in Finnish folk culture, where this essence, lying in the depths of the soul, is portrayed in such a way that it can, as it were, be directly brought into connection with what the most modern Spiritual Science can in turn reveal to us about the mysteries of the human soul.

[ 23 ] Yet, my esteemed audience, such national epics are, in their very essence, a living protest against all materialism, against any attempt to derive human existence solely from external material forces, material conditions, and material entities. Such folk epics, particularly the Kalevala, tell us that human beings have their origin and true nature in the spiritual-soul realm. That is why a renewal, a revitalization of old folk epics in the most living sense of spiritual culture, can render immeasurably great service. For just as Spiritual Science today aims to be a renewal of human consciousness in the sense that humanity is rooted not in matter but in the spirit, so a close examination of an epic such as the Kalevala shows us that the best that humanity possesses, and indeed the best that humanity is, originates from the spiritual-soul realm. In this sense, I found it interesting that one of the runes, the kantele itself, I might say, raises a protest against a materialistic interpretation of what appears in the Kalevala. That instrument, that harp-like one with which the ancient singers of olden times sang, is depicted in the illustration as if it were formed from materials of the physical world. The ancient runes, however, protested against this—one might say, in a sense of Spiritual Science—protesting that the stringed instrument for Väinämöinen was assembled from natural products that the senses can perceive. In truth, says the ancient rune, the instrument on which man plays the melodies that come to him directly from the spiritual world originates from the spiritual-soul realm. In this sense, the ancient rune is to be interpreted entirely in the sense of Spiritual Science, a living protest against the interpretation of what human beings are capable of in a materialistic sense, an indication that what human beings possess, what their essence is, and what is expressed only symbolically in an instrument such as that attributed to Wäinämöinen—that such an instrument originates from the spirit, and thus the entire being of the human being originates from the spirit. The old Finnish folk rune, which has been translated into German as follows, can serve as a motto for the spirit of Spiritual Science, and in which I can summarize the fundamental tone, the fundamental nuance of what this lecture sought to elucidate regarding the nature of folk epics:

They are certainly mistaken
And are in error,
Those who believe that Wäinämöinen
Built the kantele,
Our beautiful stringed instrument,
From the pike’s jaws,
And that he spun the strings
From the tail of Hiisi’s horse.
It was crafted out of necessity,
Grief then bound its parts,
Bitter tears of longing stretched
And suffering its strings.

[ 24 ] Thus, all being is born not of the material, but of the spiritual and soul-life—so says this ancient folk rune, and so too says Spiritual Science, which seeks to engage with the living cultural process of our time.