The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Olaf Åsteson, The Watchers of the Earth Spirit

[ 1 ] The period from Christmas to roughly the present day is indeed an important and significant time of year, even from an occult perspective. It is called the time of the thirteen days. And the remarkable thing is that the importance of this time of the thirteen days is felt by those people who, by the very nature of their souls, have retained something of the ancient connection between the human soul and the spiritual world, of which we have often spoken. We know that, compared to the urban dwellers of today, primitive people—those living out in the countryside or in communities less affected by our urban culture—have retained more of the connection to the spiritual world that once existed in ancient times. And there we find many things in folk poetry that deal with experiences of the soul, with experiences of the soul during the period from Christmas to Epiphany, January 6.

[ 2 ] This is the time when, after the annual darkness has descended most heavily upon the earth, immediately following the winter solstice, as the sun begins its triumphant ascent again—with nature’s deepest immersion, liberation, and redemption—the human soul, too, can undergo very special experiences if it still maintains a special connection with the spiritual world. Those people who no longer possess the old clairvoyance but are still connected in their souls to the spiritual world feel a difference in the extraordinary world of dreams at this time of year. What the soul can experience there becomes meaningful; it becomes meaningful because the soul, if it is still receptive, can truly immerse itself most deeply in the spiritual world at that time. For the thoroughly modern person, the course of the year is such that they no longer particularly distinguish between the individual seasons; for while outside the snow is blowing, darkness begins as early as four o’clock in the afternoon, and it does not grow light again until late, the city dweller feels the same as in the summer months, when the sun can unfold its full power. Humanity has been torn away from the old connection with the cosmos in which it lived when it was out in nature. But for those who have preserved a connection with nature, it is not the same whether something occurs during the Christmas season or at another time, for example in midsummer. While in midsummer the soul is most emancipated from what pertains to the spiritual world, during the time when nature is most dormant, it is most closely connected to the spiritual world and used to experience special things during this period.

[ 3 ] There is a beautiful folk poem in Old Norse, a poem that was rediscovered not long ago and has quickly regained popularity thanks to the unique sensibilities of the Norwegian people. It tells the story of a man who still maintained a connection with the spiritual world: Olaf Åsteson. What Olaf Åsteson experiences in the period between Christmas and Epiphany is beautifully depicted in this poem.

[ 4 ] First, for the New Year’s celebration in Hanover in 1912, I attempted to adapt this folk poem by Olaf Åsteson into German verse so that it might also speak to our souls. Let us begin this evening with the song of Olaf Åsteson, which recounts Olaf Åsteson’s experiences over the course of thirteen nights,

This was followed by a recitation by Marie von Sivers.

[ 5 ] Poetry itself is ancient. But, as I said, it has recently revived among the Norwegian people as if of its own accord and is spreading with great rapidity. The fact that something like this is spreading is, among the many realities prevailing today, one that demonstrates how it impels us toward an understanding of those mysteries that can become accessible to us today through anthroposophy. For the fact that something like what is described here takes place in a soul—or at least could have taken place relatively recently—is not merely a “poem” . This narrative is not merely fantasy, but reality, actual fact. And, as Olaf Åsteson points out, there were people in those Nordic regions who, even in the Middle Ages—roughly in the middle of the Middle Ages—had every opportunity, one might say, to experience literally something like what is described here.

[ 6 ] When our Norwegian friends gave me this poem during my penultimate visit to Kristiania and wanted to hear my thoughts on it, it was initially this fact—of general interest to Spiritual Science—that had just been highlighted which came to the forefront of our minds. But what led us to want to include this poem, so to speak, in our program of Spiritual Science in the first place is that one can delve deeper and deeper into the details. Through the anthroposophical understanding, one actually finds oneself delving deeper and deeper into what is revealed in the poem. For example, it was already significant to me that Olaf—which is an old Norwegian name—has the surname Åsteson: Åsteson. The son of what? Of Äste. And I tried to figure out what kind of mother this son actually has. Now, of course, one can put forward manifold interpretations of the meaning of the word “Äst,” including some that are open to debate. Nor is it possible today to analyze everything that comes into play here. But if one takes into account everything that comes into play, then Olaf Åsteson, for example, means: he who is still a son of that soul that passes down from generation to generation, and is connected to the blood that flows from generation to generation. Thus, we have traced this name back to what we have so often discussed in the field of anthroposophy: that in ancient times, the old clairvoyance was connected to the kinship of the blood that flows through the generations. And one could translate Olaf Åsteson as: Olaf, the one born of many generations and who still carries the characters of many generations in his soul.

[ 7 ] When we now turn to the experiences described, it is incredibly interesting to see what the sleeping Olaf Åsteson goes through from Christmas Eve through thirteen days during which he does not wake up—that is, during which he remains in a kind of psychological state. If one allows the individual stanzas to sink in, as they present the various experiences to the soul with a folksy, broad sense of comfort, one is reminded of certain descriptions of the first stages of initiation, where it is said that so-and-so has been led to the very gates of death. Throughout the poem, it is shown that Olaf Åsteson comes to the very gates of death. And this becomes particularly vivid through the fact that he feels himself to be like a corpse—except for the earth he feels between his teeth. If we recall that in the initiate the etheric body grows beyond the limits of the skin and the human being becomes ever larger and larger, so that the human being thus lives into vast cosmic spaces, then we are clearly shown in this poem how the human being descends deeply, empathizes with the depths of the earth, and ascends to the heights of the clouds. What the human being must go through after death, for example in the sphere of the moon, is also what Olaf Åsteson must go through. It is poetically depicted how the moon shines brightly and how the paths stretch far and wide. Then the gulf is depicted that must be crossed in the world lying between the human realm and that which leads out into the cosmic expanses. And the celestial bridge connects what is human with what is cosmic. Then our attention is drawn to how the beings that find their expression in the constellations—Taurus, Serpent—come into play. But for those who can look into the world spiritually, the constellations are merely the expression of what exists spiritually in the vastness of space. And then the Kamaloka world is depicted in the description of “Brooksvalin.” It is shown how a kind of retribution takes place, how people there undergo—but in a thoroughly balancing way—what they have not acquired here on Earth. Yet one need not interpret every detail of this poem; one should not do so at all with such poems. One should, however, sense that they arose from a mood closely connected to what existed among such a people for much longer than among peoples who lived more in the interior of the continents or who came into contact with urban culture. Among this Norwegian people, whose vernacular still contains much that comes close to the threshold of occult mysteries, the possibility long existed of keeping the souls in connection with what lives and weaves behind the outer material phenomena.

[ 8 ] Do you recall how I explained that the course of the year has its spiritual parallel sequence of events? Just as in spring, when plants sprout from the earth, when everything seems to come alive, when the days grow brighter, we must recognize what we might call a kind of falling asleep of the elemental and higher spirits connected to the earth. In spring, when the earth awakens outwardly, we are dealing in spiritual observation with a kind of falling asleep of the earth. When outer nature dies down again, we are dealing with an awakening of the spiritual nature of the earth. And when outer nature is, as it were, asleep around the Christmas season, that is the time when the spiritual aspect of the earth—which is connected to earthly existence through both elemental, lesser beings and great, powerful beings—is at its most active. Viewed only from the outside, it appears as though we must compare the Earth’s awakening to spring and its falling asleep to winter. For occult observation, however, the opposite is true. The spirit of the Earth—which consists of many spirits—awakens in winter and sleeps in summer. Just as within the human organism the organic and vegetative aspects are most active during sleep, just as the forces there rise up into the brain, and just as purely organic activity is suppressed during waking, so it is with the Earth. When the Earth is most active, when everything has sprouted forth, when the sun reaches its highest point around St. John’s Day, then the spirit of the Earth sleeps. And it is not without connection to these occult truths that the Christmas festival, the festival of the awakening of the spirit, has been placed precisely in the winter season. The customs that have come down to us from ancient times correspond in many ways to these occult insights.

[ 9 ] Those who know how to live in harmony with the spirits of the earth do not merely celebrate the Feast of St. John in the summer. For the summer celebration of the Feast of St. John is already a kind of materialistic celebration. One celebrates what external materialistic revelation reveals. But whoever is connected to the spirit of the Earth, to what lives spiritually within the Earth, awakens to their inner self—that is, they sleep through their outer self, as Olaf Åsteson does, preferably during the thirteen days of Christmas. This is also an occult fact, which means exactly the same thing for occultism as, for example, the fact of the sun’s external position does for external materialistic science. Certainly, materialistic science will take it for granted that, within astronomy, it describes the sun’s activity in summer and winter in a certain way purely from an external perspective; it will regard as folly what is a fact for the occultist: that the spiritual position of the sun is most intense during the winter season and that therefore the conditions are then most favorable for those who wish to approach a deepening of the soul connected with the spirit of the earth and with all that is spiritual. Therefore, for those seeking a deepening of their soul, it may turn out that they can have the best experiences during the thirteen days of the Christmas season, that then, without our noticing it, the experiences rise up from the soul, even though modern man is already in a state where he is emancipated from external events, so that occult experiences can come at any time. But insofar as the external world can still exert an influence, the time between Christmas and New Year’s is the most important.

[ 10 ] Thus, this poem serves as a natural reminder of how much of what we have discussed regarding the period between death and the next birth was, until relatively recently, quite familiar in certain parts of the world—a reality that many still knew from firsthand experience.