The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Significance of Central Europe’s Position Between East and West. Ahrimanic Inspiration and Spiritual Impulses: The Symbol of the Rose Cross

[ 1 ] When we gather on such an occasion, where a special space is dedicated to our endeavors and we can imbue it with a spiritual character that corresponds to our spiritual-scientific sensibility and feeling, then it is good for us to remember the grand perspective that we, as adherents of Spiritual Science, intend to adopt toward the world and its phenomena, its tasks, and its great mysteries. And how could our time—our time so full of trials, so riven by pain—not otherwise urge our souls to gain a perspective that goes further! Especially in our time, there must be a longing for a perspective that goes beyond what can be perceived through external life and external human striving.

[ 2 ] In keeping with the tasks and aspirations of our worldview based on Spiritual Science, we will erect a sculptural group at a prominent location in our new building in Dornach. This sculptural group is intended to represent what our souls are meant to feel, in the most intimate and deepest sense, as arising from our movement. This group will include a central figure. One can describe this central figure as the Christ; one can also describe it as that which, in the human being, as the divine—the divine living within the human being—attempts to place itself in the world in the right way. One can describe this central figure as “the human being,” the cosmic human being, expressed in an earthly personality, just as Christ was expressed in the earthly personality of Jesus of Nazareth during his earthly, historical life.

[ 3 ] But there will be two other figures on either side of this central figure, one of them, like the one above, standing on a rock, winged, but plunging down from the rock. And through the central figure’s distinctive hand posture—not one of hatred or brute force, but one imbued with inner strength—a force is generated that causes the figure atop the rock, the winged figure, to break its wings and thereby plunge into the depths. This breaking of the wings—which must be well expressed in this sculptural form—is not brought about by the human figure standing in the center, the Christ-figure, breaking the wings, but rather by the fact that, in his spirituality, he extends his hand; the other, the winged being, cannot bear this, and because of what is happening within him—since he finds what lives below to be unbearable for his being—he himself breaks his wings through inner force and plunges down. It must therefore be noted that this being plunges down of his own accord, that he is not, as it were, cast down by any opposition.

[ 4 ] And down inside the rock we see another figure lying bound, lying in chains. This figure strives to churn up the earth from below. But it cannot prevail in this effort against what emanates from the downward-pointing hand of the central figure. It writhes and twists due to the force of the central figure, which in turn lies within its own nature, casting it back and pushing it away.

[ 5 ] You can sense that this group expresses what we call the Christ principle of our cosmos in the central figure, the Luciferic principle in the angel falling from the rock, and the Ahrimanic principle in the figure striving upward from below in the cave. I have attempted to depict these three figures—we may, after all, speak of such things in such an intimate circle—as closely as possible in the manner of portraits, so that one may truly gain an impression of the form Ahriman assumes when he appears to human beings in such a context, and also of the physiognomy of Lucifer that he assumes when he appears to human beings. What has been lacking in the Western religious worldview right up to the present day, and what can only be introduced into it through our worldview based on Spiritual Science, is the realization that Ahriman and Lucifer are at work within the entire context of the world. In public, one can only hint at these things, because people today still shy away from speaking about them explicitly. But let us remember that even in yesterday’s public lecture it was said that through meditation, on the one hand, the human being is led up into a region where, in their innermost being, they feel lonely and powerless; on the other hand, into a realm where they feel their being permeated by fear and powerlessness. What threatens us when we strive one-sidedly only to free ourselves from the material, what threatens us when we strive abstractly for the spiritual, is being seized by the Luciferic principle. What threatens us when we strive only downward toward the material, when we live in the desire for the material, where we appear as if petrified—as I explained yesterday in the public lecture—is the Ahrimanic principle. And within this, the human being stands between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic principle. This must be recognized. But it must also be recognized in the right way that we cannot simply get by with saying: We must cast off the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. — All feelings of hatred or fear that we direct against the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic are actually not conducive to our human nature. We must recognize that Ahriman and Lucifer have their place in the entire cosmos. That is why the sculptural figure suggests that it is not Christ who seeks to overcome Lucifer and Ahriman through inner hatred or an impulse arising from himself, but rather that Lucifer himself, that Ahriman himself, overcome themselves. It is entirely wrong for us to develop feelings within ourselves as if Ahriman and Lucifer must be repelled by us, as if we must fight them directly. Even the normal Deity moving through the world has not decreed in its wise governance of the world that the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic should not be present in the governance of the world. It is there.

[ 6 ] If we ask ourselves where the Luciferic principle still exists in the development of humanity today, we must look toward the East. In the East, in Asia and in European Russia, Lucifer reigns through the culture. And although, as I explained in the lecture series on the mission of the Folk-souls, the Russian element is called upon to develop the Spirit-Self in the course of further evolution, there is nevertheless a danger in Russian culture of being ensnared by Lucifer. It is on the path toward this. The Luciferic principle consists in the fact that good spirits are left behind. In the Greek Orthodox Church, there was a good spirit up until the 6th and 7th centuries, but what is a good spirit at one time transforms into a Luciferic spirit if it is retained beyond that time. Clinging to the Orthodox religion is “being in the clutches of Lucifer.” And this is even more intensely the case with the spiritual forms developing in the East, which had their justification in ancient times. By preserving themselves, they run into the Luciferic element. Everywhere over in the East, we find that very many people incarnated there have something to go through in the world of the Luciferic. And in the West, according to the wise guidance of the world, we find souls everywhere immersed in the Ahrimanic element. We find this most strongly in America. In America, there is a tendency to develop a culture that is completely submerged in the materialistic, the Ahrimanic element, a culture that is entirely permeated—even where spiritualism is sought—by purely materialistic views. Even where people strive for the spiritual, they want to have spirits tangibly present before them in a spiritualist manner. This will grow ever stronger, and the longing for the tangible will become ever greater. It will also gradually take hold in Western Europe. There, the mission to introduce the Ahrimanic element into culture will be fulfilled.

[ 7 ] This is what I mean by the broader perspective: that we recognize how we in Central Europe are caught between the Luciferic principle of the East and the Ahrimanic principle of the West, but that we are called upon to rise up to the forces represented by the Christ principle, which on the one hand causes Lucifer to break his wings by overcoming the feeling of powerlessness, and on the other hand develops the radiating forces against Ahriman that drive back all fear arising from knowledge of the spiritual world. For in truth, the Ahrimanic element pulsing through the world cannot be held back; it is there. Central Europe, too, is gripped by this Ahrimanic element. One must only know how to relate to it, for the path of the Ahrimanic element is the path through materialism. And this path through materialism must be taken, and there is a profound, a wise connection as to why this path through materialism must be taken.

[ 8 ] Consider that what constitutes a one-sided religious movement—and I specifically say “one-sided”—also exists within Christianity, and is most strongly manifested in the element of Jesuitism. Consider that this always turns against genuine scientific progress. After all, the Catholic Church did not officially recognize the Copernican worldview until the 19th century. What constitutes external science is, of course, opposed by one-sided religion; it cannot be otherwise. In this opposition on the part of religion toward external science, there are two impulses. One impulse is that one-sided religion feels: In science, which is pursued solely with regard to the external world, Ahriman manifests himself. This is the justifiable aspect of the Church’s struggle; Ahriman cannot be kept at bay from external science if it does not look up to the spiritual worldview; that is the justifiable aspect. On the other hand, however, there is an unjustified impulse in the one-sided religion’s turning against science. For this one-sided religious worldview is itself animated—one might say permeated—especially by the Luciferic element. For striving for religious deepening while hating scientific penetration into spiritual worlds is precisely what Lucifer wants from human beings. Lucifer could not achieve his goal any better than if all people were merely religious. This religiousness has an immensely strong egoistic slant. Just consider how people who do not strive for spiritual knowledge perceive their religion. Out of selfishness, they want to be saved; out of selfishness, they want to lead a life after death as they imagine it! Out of selfishness, they want to be incarnated in the world just once! In one-sided religion, egoism is driven to the highest extreme: an egoism of the soul, not merely of the body. The best religious aspirations that surround us are rooted in egoism. And truly, the most pious people, who move us with their piety—it is Lucifer who controls their religious feelings. Lucifer much prefers to have pious souls who have a sense for the spiritual, for the good, which they strive for out of selfishness. For he does not want nothing but criminal souls; he wants precisely to draw the pious souls into his realm.

[ 9 ] On the one hand, then, there is the legitimate, scientific element, which would be moving toward the Ahrimanic realm if it did not look up to the spiritual world; on the other hand, there is the Luciferic element, which would degenerate into egoistic religiosity even in Central Europe if the spiritual worldview did not introduce spiritual knowledge into it. That will be the progress of Christianity. Thus it becomes an infinitely significant treasure of our soul when we imbue ourselves with the realization that we stand in full awareness between what must be there—the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic—which cannot be escaped, but which loses its power when we recognize it. This is the peculiarity of the spiritual world: when one recognizes it, it loses the power through which it possesses human beings. Lucifer and Ahriman are invisible. If we form a mental image of them in space and time, they lose their power over us.

[ 10 ] You must not believe that if an evil spirit is sensed by a person through clairvoyant power but not actually seen, the person is doing something wrong by depicting or sculpting that spirit. It is true: through sensory perception, the spirit loses its power. People will no longer be unsettled by the spiritual representation of a figure; rather, the spirit, as an invisible power, loses its significance through this, and we consciously step into it. Just as the Deity herself uses Lucifer and Ahriman to guide the world from East and West onto the right path, so that the world does not undergo an irregular development but progresses as through a pendulum movement, so the world government allows the Luciferic to work from the East and the Ahrimanic from the West. But it also sets us in Central Europe the difficult, great task of viewing this pendulum movement in the right way. This pendulum is actually a boat, as if a boat were attached to a pendulum clock. And in this boat sit the souls in Central Europe who are striving in the right way. They must truly immerse themselves in it, and these souls must know that they must grasp the correct point of balance. They must recognize what lies beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness; they must take it into their consciousness. And these difficult days of ours are a warning above all to those who already sense something of what lies ahead for the world in the future. It is not that an external victory will be won on one side or the other within the war; that alone is not what matters, but what matters is how life will be lived after this victory. Consider: if it were to come to pass that the Central European peoples were to triumph, but that on the field of this victory the purely materialistic-Ahrimanic worldview were to spread and be upheld by the Luciferic element — then, if the East on one side and the West on the other were to break into Central European spirituality, then even an external victory would be of no salvation for this Central Europe. And for centuries, without people noticing, the Ahrimanic-Luciferic element has been breaking in very strongly. Just consider how necessary it was to reject the Oriental-Luciferic element in our Central European theosophical movement. For what we received from the East as theosophy was permeated by Lucifer and, in its extreme form, led to the recognition of an external human idol, a physically reincarnated Christ. That was the struggle we had to wage against the unjustified interpretation of the theosophical worldview.

[ 11 ] But we must also be clear about this: in Central Europe, we must recognize in the right way how we are to put ourselves in the shoes of what lies ahead for humanity in the future. It is precisely through what Spiritual Science can offer us that we will learn to see that materialism, the materialistic worldview, must not be allowed to spread beyond the region that is being prepared for Central Europe. Those who sense that a spiritual worldview, flowing over Central Europe and radiating from there across the entire Earth, is truly spreading will have to strive to prevent this. And it would indeed be conceivable—externally conceivable as a hypothesis—that this Central Europe would serve a materialistic culture after its victory. Then Ahriman would reap the fruits of this victory. And this must be prevented.

[ 12 ] Just think of such a tragic figure as Ernst Haeckel! Goethe wrote a theory of evolution. Since 1884, I have been striving to make people understand that it is a theory of evolution that is spiritual in the highest sense. But people cannot understand it in Goethe in the profound way in which it is presented there. When it was then presented in a trivial way by Darwin, people understood it; the teachings could flow into the hearts and souls of people: the theory had taken on a materialistic hue! And take such a tragic figure as Ernst Haeckel: every thought, every fiber of his scientific life was drawn from England. Huxley, Locke, and Darwin were his teachers. And today Ernst Haeckel is one of those who turn most strongly against England; he is one of the most furious fighters—as far as an old man can be; he stood at the head of those who sent back to England all their orders, diplomas, and awards. But it is of no consequence to send back orders and honors unless the English-tinged Darwinism is sent back as well. And there is much more to it. Souls are best prepared for materialism when they are still, so to speak, half-asleep in their outer lives, when they are still childlike souls. One does not realize that this is the best time to instill in souls mental images that will later mentally prepare them to accept materialism as a matter of course. Ahriman accomplished this by creating a very potent spirit within the British people, through which the urge toward materialism is implanted into childlike souls unnoticed, without people having the slightest inkling of it. That is the extraordinarily ingenious author of *Robinson Crusoe*. When the mental images that permeate Robinson are instilled into childlike souls, they develop a tendency toward materialism. In the book, even religion arises of its own accord, just as cabbages grow. There is nothing there that reflects on anything that should flow in from the spiritual world. And just look at how Robinson travels through the world! There was a period of literary development in Central Europe when imitations of Robinson appeared in every language. And the many translations of Robinson! One cannot even count the Robinsons introduced into every nation! That is how deeply it lies within. But the spiritual path must once again be shown through the truly great and significant aspects of Central European culture that are oriented toward the spiritual. And truly through higher guidance, the Griz brothers were there and collected the German fairy tales once again. And if we bring our youth the German fairy tales instead of the Ahrimanic Robinson, then we bring them a disposition toward spiritualism.

[ 13 ] One feels a deep sense of melancholy when—and this is all symptomatic—one encounters the following: A very prominent Austrian philosopher, Professor Dr. Ernst Mach, wrote a book that had a profound impact on many who wish to think philosophically today, *Analysis of Sensations*. On the third page, you will find the following. He speaks of self-knowledge. We know that self-knowledge is so extraordinarily important; I have discussed this on numerous occasions. Ernst Mach now provides proof that self-knowledge is quite difficult even for the external world. He recounts: I passed a shop window with a mirror, where I saw my own image, my own figure, coming toward me. I thought: what an unsympathetic, repulsive person is coming toward me! It was myself. — So he said. It was he himself, then, who knew himself so little that he said to his reflection: what an unsympathetic, repulsive person! And to make this point perfectly clear, he adds: When he was already a professor, he once returned from a trip at night and got on a bus. As he stepped inside, he saw a man getting on in the mirror, and he said to himself again: “What kind of run-down schoolteacher is getting on there?” And he adds: “So I knew my generic habitus better than my specific habitus.” Well, if it is already so difficult for a person who does not often look in the mirror—the fact that this happened speaks to Ernst Mach’s character—to recognize one’s outward form, then one begins to get an idea of how difficult it is to acquire self-knowledge in the soul. But that is precisely what is necessary: to acquire self-knowledge in the soul. And now I would like to say, it is almost tragic when one reads further in the same book and Ernst Mach speaks of his son’s upbringing and says from a truly earnest soul: Thank God—no, he doesn’t say that, but something to that effect—my children have never read any fairy tales. — So they have not, as a result of reading fairy tales, been led into a spiritual world by fantastical mental images. — Here we see how that which Central European culture seeks to attribute to Ahriman is taking root in the souls of the present. And so one must say: it is not that victory is achieved, but that, on the basis of victory, what is right must prevail; that is what matters.

[ 14 ] We also have a heavy burden in Central Europe, even in the face of victory. For we are even connected to something that is deeply permeated by Luciferic forces. It was once a blessing for Europe that Arab and Moorish culture spread across Southern Europe. What was fully justified at that time has now become Ahrimanic. We are burdened by the weight of the alliance with the Ottomans. We must find the right perspective here and not believe that we can align our feelings with external political considerations. What exists in the outer world is truly not suited to holding back the Ahrimanic. The external press is steering directly toward the Ahrimanic principle and showers with scorn and derision those who seek to see clearly the forces at work in our world. And therefore, what appears to us in our time under the sign of blood and suffering must appear to us as the great warning to attune our souls to receive what the spiritual life seeks to pour into the present. And our souls must turn toward that which has been prepared in Central European culture, particularly in the way that it truly expresses how we are situated between two forces that swing like a pendulum through the world, and how we must find our balance. It must be clear to us that, on the one hand, the world strives toward Ahrimanic hardening, striving to solidify in the fire of the purely material; that, on the other hand, it strives to ascend in a selfish manner to an abstract spiritual realm. To follow one direction or the other would be ruinous for the Central European. To follow only science bound to the external senses would lead us to tear the roses from the cross and look only at what has solidified. We would gradually acquire a worldview that would completely turn people away from any regard for the spiritual; that would make them look only at what has become Ahrimanically rigid. Try to create a mental image of the ideals of Ahrimanic science: it is a world of swirling atoms, a purely material cosmic structure. One would like to cast out of this worldview everything that is spiritual. One forms a mental image—and this is already taught to children in school—that there was once a swirling of gaseous cosmic masses, that the sun formed from this, which in turn repelled the planets. They make this clear to the children in school by putting a drop of oil in water, sliding a small round piece of paper through it at the point of the equator, piercing it with a pin in the middle, and then turning the pin. This causes small droplets to split off, and a small planetary system is created. Of course, what is demonstrated in this way is proven, but the most important thing is forgotten: that the teacher must turn the paper. So, if one wants to honestly put oneself in that situation, one must in truth have in one's mind a great Teacher turning the whole thing in the cosmos. But the thoughts, sensations, and feelings that strive toward Ahriman are those that create a mental image of the formation of the sun and the planets in the manner just described. And therein lay once again what led to the historical conception. Herman Grimm once said: A piece of carrion bone around which a hungry dog circles is a more appetizing sight than this worldview, which is based solely on the Copernican worldview.

[ 15 ] There is a danger of tearing the roses from the cross and being left with only the black, charred cross. The other danger is to tear the cross from the roses and seek only the spirit, to despise what the Deity itself has placed within the development of the world, and to refuse to lovingly immerse oneself in the thought that what exists here in the sensory world is an expression of the Divine. This is the one-sided religious worldview that scorns science, that wants only the roses and unconsciously strives toward the Luciferic element of the East—just as the science that wants to tear the roses from the cross and keep only the charred cross strives toward the West. But we in Central Europe, we are called to have the roses on the cross, to have that which is expressed only through the connection of the roses with the cross, the roses on the cross. And we feel, as we look upon the rigid cross, that that which has come into the world as rigid matter has stepped into the world from the Divine. It is as if spirituality itself has created a circle within the material: Ex deo nascimur.

[ 16 ] We also feel that, if we understand it correctly, we are not only permitted to enter the spiritual world with Lucifer, but that we die by uniting ourselves with that which has descended into the world from the divine higher Self: In Christo morimur.

[ 17 ] And in the union of the cross with the roses, of the material worldview with the spiritual worldview, we sense how the human soul can awaken in the Spirit: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

[ 18 ] That is why the cross entwined with roses has been the symbol of the one who immersed himself deeply in the spirituality of Central European culture: Goethe. That is why it must be our symbol. And that is why we, gathering in this space—as far as we can be present in the future—wish to be mindful of what, arising from the great tasks of Earth’s evolution, must be our ideal: to entwine the cross with roses, neither tearing the roses from the cross and holding only the cross in our hands, nor valuing the roses alone and rushing upward through the roses alone into the spiritual, blossoming, sprouting life in abstraction. This is what is expressed in our symbol, the Rose Cross, and what we wish to take in more and more into our hearts and our feelings whenever we gather in a space thus consecrated to our aspirations. Then we can be certain that the spirits who guide the development of the earth in a good sense will reign invisibly among us; that our words, that all that we think and feel as we devote ourselves to endeavors in Spiritual Science, that all of this truly finds support in such a space from the spiritual forces and powers guiding our endeavors. And we can feel as though, in the pursuit of our views on Spiritual Science, we are constantly inspired by the spirits invisibly presiding in such a space. But these, these spiritual powers, I would like to call upon them to be with the striving souls whenever there is earnest, truthful, and loving striving in this space! Then, if this can be fulfilled, we may be certain that this worldview based on Spiritual Science will be that which finds the path of the gods, as it has always been found.

[ 19 ] We gather today in spaces like these. They are set apart from what is striving out there in the world. What is striving out there in the world sees something sectarian, something superstitious in our spaces. And so we are gathered, as it were, underground in relation to the spiritual culture of the present. Above ground is this present-day spiritual culture, which is deeply permeated in the East by Lucifer and in the West by Ahriman. There we recall again and again, to strengthen our hearts and enliven our souls, how, in another epoch, the Western worldview ascended from the underground to the surface. There was the worldview of the Roman Empire, the worldview that had absorbed the noble philosophy and the artistic worldview of the Greeks. There were, in essence, brilliant minds among those who lived within this ancient Rome and its surroundings with this ancient worldview. And deeply despised were those who, underground in the catacombs, cultivated an entirely new teaching. But those who, in the catacombs, cut off from what was then regarded above ground as the legitimate worldview, cultivated the new teaching—they knew that they had to hold fast solely to the content of their own striving, that they had to hold fast to what had entered the world through the Christ impulse. They strove in the catacombs and knew: up there lived those who sought to take their lives, who persecuted them, who did not understand them. — Let us then, having brought these conditions of the ancient Roman Empire before our eyes, consider human development a few centuries later. What was above has vanished. What lived down in the catacombs has risen up; it is sweeping victoriously through the West. It already lived in the souls of those who, cast out, despised, and mocked down there in the catacombs, strove for that which was then to conquer the world. So we must feel, my dear friends, as if we were still spiritually cast out, mocked, and persecuted by those who today cultivate the so-called legitimate worldview. But just as it was in the first stage of Western Christian development, so it will continue. That which they would most like to destroy—not as in former times, by sewing people into pitch and burning them, but by mocking and ridiculing them—will prevail. That which mocks and scoffs, that which seeks to conquer the face of the earth solely with an Ahrimanic and Luciferic worldview, will vanish, just as the ancient Roman culture, the ancient worldview, has in a certain sense vanished in the form it once took. But that which is cultivated in our catacombs—they are spiritual catacombs, for the world has, after all, moved on—that which is thought, contemplated, and felt in these catacombs of ours, that which permeates the soul: it will rise up and begin its triumphal march in the new culture. Let us bear this in mind at every moment when we cross the threshold into such a space. And while we dwell within it, let us bear in mind that we are still as if in a boat beneath the sea, which, however, will ultimately take the upward course—and will certainly do so if we immerse ourselves in a strong, vigorous way in that with which we have learned to connect our souls. With this vow that we thus wish to be strongly permeated by the spiritual Christ impulse, which seeks to develop a step further, with this attitude, with this vow, let us truly enter this space; enter in the spirit of these feelings, that everything is to be regarded as consecrated to the spiritual powers, to the spiritual individualities who, as we know, weave their power through our movement, who spread their blessing hands protectively over us. Let us bear this in mind when we gather here in the future.