The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] The meaning associated with the power of human longing—which has taken root in human hearts over many centuries through the festival whose symbol in more recent times has become the Christmas tree—this meaning is expressed in the words that have resounded since the beginning of the Christian era, words that spring from the Mystery of Golgotha, and which are to take further root in the evolution of earthly existence. This meaning, which shines through this era, is connected with the words: “Et incarnatus est de spiritn sancto ex Maria virgine.”

[ 2 ] It is fair to say that a large portion of modern humanity attaches just as little significance to the words “Et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine” as it does to the mystery of the Resurrection during the Easter season. One might say, in a sense, that just as it seems improbable to the modern mind—which is no longer turned toward the spiritual world—to see the central mystery of Christianity in the Resurrection from the dead, so too does it seem just as improbable to that same way of thinking and feeling to accept the spiritual reality associated with the mystery of Christmas: the Incarnation, the embodiment resulting from the virgin birth. Indeed, one can safely say that a large portion of modern humanity will agree more with the natural scientist who called the mystery of the virgin birth “a brazen mockery of human reason” than with those who wish to take this mystery seriously in a spiritual sense.

[ 3 ] And yet, in the Christian sense, the Mystery of the Incarnation—the Holy Spirit’s conception in the Virgin Mary—has been valid since the Mystery of Golgotha. In another sense, it was already valid before the Mystery of Golgotha. Those who presented the symbols—or rather, the symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh—to the Child lying in the manger had, for millennia, read the Mystery of the Virgin Birth—that is, the Christmas Mystery—in the stars, in accordance with ancient science. And they—the Magi with their gold, frankincense, and myrrh—came because they had seen the signs of the times. What were these signs of the times? The Magi with their gold, frankincense, and myrrh were, in the sense that ancient wisdom understood it, astrologers. They were familiar with those spiritual processes that unfold in the cosmos when certain signs appear in the sky.

[ 4 ] For them, a sign of this was that on the night of December 24–25—in the year we now call the year of the birth of Jesus Christ—the sun, the great cosmic symbol of the Savior of the world, shone from the vault of heaven, shining from the constellation of Virgo. They said that when this celestial alignment occurred—when the sun stood in the constellation of Virgo on the night of December 24–25—an important transformation would take place on Earth. Then the time will have come when we will offer the gold—that is, the symbol of our recognition of divine guidance of the world, which we have hitherto sought solely in the constellations of the stars—to that impulse which is woven into the earthly development of humanity; when we will offer the frankincense—the spirit of sacrifice, which at the same time symbolizes the highest human virtue—in such a way that, in order to fulfill this highest human virtue, we unite ourselves with the power emanating from the Christ, who is to be incarnated in that human personality to whom we offer the frankincense as a symbolic gift; and thirdly, myrrh as the symbol of that which is eternal in the human being. What we have felt connected to throughout the millennia with the forces that speak down from the constellations, we seek to continue by offering it as a gift to the One who is to become a new impulse for humanity. We seek our immortality by uniting our soul with the impulse of Christ Jesus. When the cosmic symbol of the world force—the solar world force—shines down from the Virgin, a new era on Earth will begin.

[ 5 ] This is what was believed, this is how it was viewed for millennia. And when the Magi felt compelled to lay before the divine Child the wisdom of the divine, the human sense of virtue, and the sense of human immortality—symbolically expressed in gold, frankincense, and myrrh—before the divine Child, they were repeating, as in a historical event, precisely what had been symbolically represented in countless mysteries and countless sacrificial rites throughout the millennia, as if in a prophetic allusion to the event that was to occur when the sun, at midnight on December 24, to the 25th of December, the symbolic divine child—who was enshrined in the ancient temples as the representative of the sun—offered gold, frankincense, and myrrh on this Christmas night. Thus, in a Christian sense, the “Incarnatus est de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine” has spoken for nearly two millennia; thus, the same Incarnatus has spoken on Earth since time immemorial. In the age in which we live, we pose this question: Do people still truly know what they should actually be looking up to when they celebrate Christmas? Is there, in the present, a full awareness that from cosmic heights, under cosmic signs, a world force has appeared through a virgin birth—understood in a spiritual sense— and that the Christmas lights are meant to pour into our hearts an awareness that the human soul is connected—bound by its most intimate ties—to that which can be perceived not merely as an earthly event, but as a cosmic-earthly event?

[ 6 ] These are serious times, and it is surely appropriate, in such serious times, to seriously address questions such as those just raised during moments of devotion. And so let us first take a brief look at the thoughts of the finest members of humanity in the past 19th century, to see whether the idea of Christ Jesus lived so vividly in modern humanity that we can conclude: the Christmas mystery has its meaning in that humanity wishes to celebrate the Eternal under the glow of the Christmas lights.

[ 7 ] Let us consider the views of some of the most prominent figures of the 19th century. First, let us quote the words of a figure who devoted much of his life to exploring the nature of Jesus and who sought to portray Christ Jesus from the perspective of 19th-century consciousness: Ernest Renan. Ernest Renan turned his gaze—in a truly realistic and materialistic manner, with his own physical eyes—toward the sites of Palestine. From this immediate, material observation, he seeks to evoke within his own soul an image of the figure who, throughout the centuries—indeed, millennia—has been called the Savior of the world. We hear from Ernest Renan in *The Life of Jesus*:

[ 8 ] “A charming natural setting helped to create—if I may say so—that monotheistic spirit which gave all the dreams of Galilee an idyllic and charming character. The saddest stretch of land in the world may well be the area around Jerusalem. Galilee, on the other hand, was a very green, very shady, and very cheerful region—the true home of the Song of Songs and the songs of the Beloved. In March and April, this region is a carpet of flowers of incomparable vividness of color. The animals here are small but very tame. Delicate, lively turtle doves, blue blackbirds so light that they can perch on a blade of grass without crushing it, crested larks that alight almost at the hiker’s feet, small pond turtles with lively, gentle eyes, and storks with dignified, serious expressions—all allow people to come very close to them; indeed, they even seem to be calling out to them.”

[ 9 ] And Ernest Renan never tires of so vividly describing this idyll in Galilee, so completely removed from the grand sweep of world history, so that in this idyll—in this unassuming landscape with its turtledoves and storks—that which humanity has associated with the Savior of the world throughout the centuries could have taken place.

[ 10 ] The meaning of the Earth—that which humanity has sought to contemplate for centuries—is appealing to the 19th-century thinker only if he can depict it as an idyll featuring lovebirds and storks.

[ 11 ] “Thus, the entire history of the origins of Christianity,” Ernest Renan continues, “has become a delightful idyll. A Messiah at a wedding feast, invited to his celebrations by the courtesan and the good Zacchaeus; the founders of the divine kingdom like a procession of groomsmen—that is what Galilee dared to do, what it managed to bring about.”

[ 12 ] This is one of those voices. Let us also hear, from the broader chorus of 19th-century voices, another voice—the voice of John Stuart Mill, who, too, seeks to reconcile the consciousness of the 19th century with that essence in which humanity, for centuries, and the prophetic sense of humanity, for millennia before, had seen the Savior of the world.

[ 13 ] “Whatever else,” says John Stuart Mill, “the critical analysis of reason may destroy in Christianity, Christ remains to us: a figure standing alone, as unlike his predecessors as he is all his successors, even those who enjoyed the benefit of his personal instruction. This assessment is not diminished by the claim that the Christ of the Gospels is not historical, and that we cannot know how much of what is admirable about him was added by his followers... [For] who among his disciples or those converted by them was capable of devising the sayings attributed to Jesus, or of conceiving a life and shaping a personality such as we encounter in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee, nor St. Paul, whose character and inclinations were of an entirely different nature; least of all, however, the early Christian writers. What a disciple might have added and inserted can be seen in the mystical passages of the Gospel of John, which were borrowed from Philo and the Alexandrian Platonists and attributed to the Savior—specifically in long discourses about himself, of which the other Gospels contain not the slightest trace... The Orient was full of such men who could have stolen any amount of such material, as the various sects of Eastern Gnostics later did. But the life and discourses of Jesus bear the stamp of profundity and such personal originality that—if we renounce the futile expectation of to find scientific precision where something entirely different was intended—we must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who do not believe in his inspiration, among the foremost of the most sublime men of whom our race may boast. Since this extraordinary mind was, moreover, endowed with the qualities of what is probably the greatest reformer and martyr who ever lived on earth, one cannot say that “religion has made a poor choice”—a choice! After all, that’s how people make choices in the 19th century! — “that religion made a poor choice by presenting this man as the ideal representative and leader of humanity; even now, it would not be easy, even for a nonbeliever, to find a better way to translate the rules of virtue from the abstract to the concrete than to live in such a way that Christ would approve of our lives. If we finally take into account that even for the skeptic there remains, after all, the possibility that Christ really was what he claimed to be—not God, for he never made the slightest claim to be God; and he would likely have regarded such a claim as just as great a blasphemy as did the men who condemned him—but rather the man expressly entrusted by God with the sole mission of leading humanity to truth and virtue—then we may certainly conclude that the influences of religion on character that will remain, after the critique of reason has done its utmost against the evidence of religion, are well worth preserving, and that whatever they may lack in direct evidential power compared to that of another, better-founded faith is more than offset by the greater truth and correctness of the morality they sanction.”

[ 14 ] There we have the image that 19th-century philistinism, by stripping the Spirit of its essence, imposed upon the being whom humanity has for centuries called the Savior of the World. Let us now consider another voice of a spirit that was, in a certain sense, international—Heinrich Heine:

[ 15 ] “Christ is the God I love most—not because he is some legitimate God whose father was already God and who has ruled the world since time immemorial: but because, although he was born the Dauphin of Heaven, nevertheless, being democratically minded, does not love courtly ceremonial pomp, because he is not the God of an aristocracy of shaven-headed scribes and braided-uniformed lancers, and because he is a humble God of the people, a citizen God, un bon dieu citoyen. Truly, if Christ were not yet a god, I would elect him to be one, and I would much rather obey him—him, the elected god, the god of my choice—than an imposed, absolute god. ...»

[ 16 ] “Only as long as religions have to compete with others and are persecuted far more than they themselves persecute, are they glorious and honorable; only then are there enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, martyrs, and palm branches. How beautiful, how sacredly lovely, how secretly sweet was Christianity in the first centuries, when it still resembled its divine founder in the heroism of suffering. Back then, there was still the beautiful legend of a secret God who, in the gentle form of a young man, walked among the palm trees of Palestine, preaching love for humanity and revealing that doctrine of freedom and equality which later even the reason of the greatest thinkers recognized as true, and which, as the French Gospel, inspires our time.”

[ 17 ] Now we have this confession by Heine, in which the one whom humanity has called the Savior of the World for centuries is praised because, in a democratic manner, he would be elected today if he were not already in office, and because he had already preached the very same Gospel that was preached at the end of the 18th century. So he was good enough to already be as great as those who can understand this Gospel!

[ 18 ] Let us consider another thinker of the 19th century. You know that I hold Eduard von Hartmann in high regard. I cite only those whom I admire in order to illustrate, through them, the direction in which thought about Jesus Christ developed in the 19th century.

[ 19 ] “One can see,” says Eduard von Hartmann, the philosopher, “that without the magic of an imposing and winning personality, Jesus could hardly have achieved such success through his intellectual abilities alone. This personality manifested itself first and foremost in an extraordinary gift for oratory. But his quiet dignity and devoted gentleness must also have held something extraordinarily captivating for those who followed him—not only for men, but also for women, many of whom joined him: prostitutes (Luke 7:37), married women of high social standing (Luke 8:3), and respectable virgins, without distinction. For the most part, they were highly emotional individuals—epileptics, hysterics, and the mentally ill—some of whom perhaps believed themselves to have been healed by him. As is well known, such women are always most inclined to focus and personalize their religious fervor on an attractive male figure and to surround him with a cult of personality. It stands to reason that it was these very women who, if not awakened, then certainly nurtured the idea of Jesus’ messianism and, through their idolatrous adoration, allowed it to take root. According to our current psychological and psychiatric views, healthy religiosity cannot flourish on such pathological ground, and today we would advise a religious reformer or prophet to remove such elements from his entourage as far as possible, since they can all too easily compromise him and his cause.”

[ 20 ] I would like to cite yet another voice—that of one of the main characters in a novel that, in the last third of the 19th century, exerted a great influence on the judgments of so-called educated people across a wide region. In Paul Heyse’s *Die Kinder der Welt* (*The Children of the World*), we find Lea’s diary. This diary of Lea contains a judgment about Jesus Christ, and anyone who knows the world knows that the judgment Lea passes on Jesus Christ in *The Children of the World* is the very one that countless people have passed over the course of the 19th century. Paul Heyse has Lea write:

[ 21 ] “I stopped writing the day before yesterday because I was suddenly moved to read the New Testament again. I hadn’t opened it again since so many incomprehensible, threatening, and damning sayings in it had alienated my heart and caused it to withdraw entirely into itself. Now that I have lost that childish fear—as if the voice of an infallible Spirit, an Omniscient One, were resounding within it—and since I see in it the story of one of the noblest and most wondrous human beings, I have now found much in it that has greatly refreshed me. Only the subdued mood of the whole work has made me feel uneasy again of late. What do we humans have that is more liberating, more delightful, more comforting than joy—the joy of beauty, of goodness, of the cheerfulness of the world! And while we read this scripture”—she means, of course, the New Testament—“we always walk in the twilight of expectation and hope; the eternal is never fulfilled, but is to dawn only when we have struggled our way through time; never does the full radiance of joy shine forth, no jest, no laughter—the joy of this world is vain—we are referred to a future that renders the present worthless, and even the highest earthly delight, immersing ourselves in a pure, deep, and loving thought, is to become suspect to us, since the kingdom of heaven is to belong only to those who are poor in spirit. — It is I, but it makes me miserable that I feel this, and at the same time I feel that if I could break through this limitation, I would no longer be who I am, and thus would not attain my salvation and bliss after all. For what transcends me is, after all, no longer mine.

[ 22 ] And then, that this gentle, God-conscious man, in order to belong to all of humanity, turned away from his own with such strange harshness that he became familyless—it must have been necessary—but it chills my heart. Everything great that I have otherwise come to love was intimate, cheerful, and, even in the midst of its majesty, connected to my very being through the threads of human need.”

[ 23 ] Well, there you have it—what the New Testament would have to be like if it were to satisfy such a representative of the 19th century! For she says that everything great that she has otherwise come to love is intimately and cheerfully connected to her own being, even in the midst of majesty, through the threads of human need. — Since the New Testament does, after all, contain a power that cannot exactly be described as something one must gently grow to love, as something that is intimate, cheerful, and connected to one’s own being through the threads of human need even in the midst of majesty, the Gospel is no longer quite suitable for a person of the 19th century.

[ 24 ] “When I read Goethe’s letters—Schiller’s intimate domestic life—about Luther and his family—about parents, even as far back as Socrates’ wicked wife—I always sense a hint of the fertile soil from which the plant of their spirit grew,” — so even the blessed Xanthippe draws good Lea in more than the figures of the New Testament! — “which also nourishes and sustains mine, so much smaller.”

[ 25 ] This is the opinion of thousands upon thousands of people in the 19th century.

[ 26 ] “But this worldlessness frightens and alienates me, and, to be honest, I do not have the good faith to believe that all of this is, as with God, entirely in order.”

[ 27 ] It is indeed fitting, at this solemn hour, to ask: What, then, is the true essence in the soul that humanity brings to the Christmas lights today? For this essence in the souls is composed of voices such as we have just heard—and which we could multiply a hundredfold, a thousandfold. And it is not fitting, at this solemn hour, to lightly overlook what has been said regarding the greatest mystery of earthly existence. Rather, it is fitting to ask today: What could the official representatives of Christianity of all denominations have done to prevent a development that has thus led away from a truly inner, sincere, and honest profession of faith in that which lies behind the Christmas lights? For can humanity celebrate such a festival as anything other than a comprehensive lie if, through its finest representatives, it links the thoughts just expressed to that entity which, through the Christmas mystery, is to be perceived as the impulse that has connected itself from the cosmos to the destiny of the Earth?

[ 28 ] What did the Magi from the East seek when they brought divine wisdom, virtue, and immortality to the manger, following the event they had observed in the sign of the sun’s appearance from the constellation of Virgo on the night of December 24–25, in the first year of our era? What did the Magi from the East intend to do? They intended to provide the great historical proof that they had understood that the forces which had hitherto flowed down from the cosmos to Earth would not be accessible to humankind in the future in the same way—by merely looking up at the cosmos, at the constellations of the stars. They wanted to show that it is necessary for people to now begin to turn their gaze toward that which is taking place within the historical development, of social and moral development taking place within humanity itself—that Christ has descended from the regions from which the Sun rises in Virgo, from which all the constellations come with their forces that cause the microcosm to appear as a reflection of the macrocosm. That this Spirit, that this Being has entered into the immediate development of the Earth, that the development of the Earth itself can henceforth be understood with such inner wisdom as the constellations were once understood—this is what the Magi from the East sought to convey. And we must still bear this in mind today.

[ 29 ] People today view history as if the earlier events were always the cause of the later ones, as if, when we want to examine the events of 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1917, we simply had to go back to 1913, 1912, 1911, and so on, in order to view historical development in the same way one views natural development—where one proceeds from the effect to its origin in order to find the cause in that origin. It is from this mindset that the “fable convenue” has emerged, which is today instilled in our youth—to their detriment—as “history.”

[ 30 ] True Christianity—and in particular, an honest and sincere understanding of the mysteries of Christmas and Easter—is the strongest protest against this caricature of world history reduced to a purely scientific framework. Christianity has linked the mysteries of the world to the cycle of the year. It designates the time—which is meant to forever recall the primordial constellation of Year 1, from December 24 to 25, when the sun emerges from the constellation of Virgo—as the time to celebrate Christmas each year. The Christian view has established Christmas from this perspective. It then celebrates Easter by taking a certain celestial constellation as its basis; we know that the Sunday after the first full moon following the beginning of spring is the designated day—a day already contested by materialistic thinking—for the celebration of Easter.

[ 31 ] During the period from Christmas to Easter—which, as part of the annual cycle, is viewed as a single whole by those who wish to connect their minds in an honest and sincere way with the Mystery of Golgotha—one beholds a picture of the thirty-three years of Christ’s life. Before the Mystery of Golgotha—which I also count as part of the Christmas Mystery—the Magi pointed to the heavens whenever they wished to discuss any mysteries, including those concerning human evolution. They referred to the constellations. In the way one star relates to another, they perceived what was taking place here on Earth. But at the very moment when they observed what was taking place on Earth—as indicated by the position of the Sun in Virgo from December 24 to 25—they said: “Now the constellation of stars must also be directly observed in human actions on Earth itself.”

[ 32 ] Is there a constellation of stars in human actions? My dear friends, the requirement is to be able to read—to read what is meant by the wonderful guidance on reading found in the annual mysteries of Christianity, which in turn are built upon all the other annual mysteries of all peoples of earthly life. Thirty-three years are meant to represent the period from Christmas to Easter. This must be understood; this must be taken to heart. Thirty-three years, so the view goes, are to elapse between Christmas and Easter.

[ 33 ] What follows from this? It follows that the Christmas we are celebrating this year belongs to the Easter that will come in thirty-three years, and that the Easter we celebrated this year [1917] belongs to the Christmas of the year 1884. In 1884, humanity celebrated a Christmas that belongs to this year’s Easter. And the Christmas we are celebrating this year does not belong to next year’s Easter; it belongs to the Easter that will follow thirty-three years from now. A complete human generation is a period of thirty-three years—that is how it is calculated. A human generation must elapse between the corresponding Christmas and Easter celebrations. This is the guide to interpreting the new astrology—the astrology that directs our attention to the stars that shine within the historical development of humanity itself.

[ 34 ] How can this be fulfilled? It can be fulfilled by people using the Christmas season to become aware of the following: What happens—roughly speaking, for of course one can only speak in general terms about these matters—during this time points back, in a historical context, to the fact that it began thirty-three years ago, and that it itself is, in turn, the starting point for what will unfold over the course of the next thirty-three years.

[ 35 ] Our karma governs our individual personal lives and our individual existence. Each person is responsible for themselves; but each must also accept whatever is part of their karma. They must expect that there is an unconditional connection, in the karmic sense, between what has gone before and what follows.

[ 36 ] What about the historical context? The historical context is such that, for our present human cycle, we cannot understand, grasp, or truly feel an event taking place today, in 1917—which is its “Easter year”—unless we look back to the time of its “Christmas year,” unless we look back to the year 1884. For the year 1914, then, we must look back to the year 1881. The impulses that the previous generation, which had previously participated in history, threw into the stream of historical development have a lifespan of thirty-three years; then comes its Easter beginning, then its resurrection. When was the seed sown for those Easters that humanity has now been experiencing year after year since 1914? Thirty-three years ago.

[ 37 ] Patterns that recur at intervals of thirty-three to thirty-three years—that is what brings understanding to the continuous flow of historical development. And a time must come when, during the season of Christmas—which begins with Christmas Eve, from December 24 to 25—a person reflects on this: “What you,” he may say to himself, “what you are doing now will continue to have an effect and will only come to life and become an outward deed—not in a personal sense, but in a historical sense—after thirty-three years.” I understand what is happening now when I look back—even in external events, I understand what is happening now—to the time that must now be fulfilled according to the rule of thirty-three years.

[ 38 ] When, in the early 1880s, the uprising led by the Muslim prophet, the Mahdi, , when it culminated in the extension of British rule over Egypt, when, at the same time, the French had to conquer the East Indies—even through a war with China—to secure European dominance, when the Congo Conference was held, when other events of this kind took place—study everything that now, 1917, finds its fulfillment after thirty-three years! — for it was then that the seeds were sown for what is happening now. At that time, people should have asked themselves: What prospects for Easter thirty-three years later does this year’s Christmas promise? — For all things in the course of history rise from the grave in a transformed form after thirty-three years, through a power connected with the most sacred and redemptive gift that humanity has received through the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 39 ] But the Mystery of Golgotha is not meant to be merely sentimentalized. The Mystery of Golgotha is meant to be understood with the highest powers of wisdom accessible to human beings. The Mystery of Golgotha is meant to be felt with the deepest emotions that a human being can stir within his or her soul, when he seeks within the depths of his own soul that which wisdom can kindle within him, when he does not merely speak of love but kindles this love by uniting his soul with that which, as the World Soul, surges and flows through the turning of the ages, when he acquires meaning and understanding for the mysteries of becoming. For just as the starry sky once spoke to the ancient magicians when they consulted it, whenever they wished to accomplish something in the social evolution of humanity, so too must anyone who wishes to accomplish anything in the social evolution of humanity in the present age look to the stars that rise and set in the course of historical development. And just as the orbital period of the stars around the sun has been calculated, so too has the orbital period of historical events been calculated in true historical human wisdom. And this orbital period extends from one Christmas to one Easter that lies thirty-three years later. Thus the spirits of the cycles govern that in which the human soul lives and weaves, inasmuch as it is not merely a personal being, but a being woven into the fabric of historical development.

[ 40 ] When we immerse ourselves in the mystery of Christmas during this season, we do so best by familiarizing ourselves with the mysteries that are to be revealed precisely in our time—mysteries that are meant to enrich the stream of Christian tradition as it connects to the mystery of Golgotha and to that which is expressed through the mystery of Christmas. Christ spoke to humanity: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Those who call themselves his disciples today, however, often speak of how the revelations from the spiritual world were indeed present in the time of Christ Jesus himself, but that they have ceased, and that anyone who claims that spiritual revelations can still occur in a wondrous way from the spiritual world today is committing a wicked act. Thus, in many respects, what is today called official Christianity has become an effort to hinder Christian development.

[ 41 ] But what remains—the sacred symbols—and one of the holiest is the one that speaks of the mystery of Christmas—are themselves a living protest against the suppression of true Christianity, as it is often proclaimed by official Christianity.

[ 42 ] Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks—among many other things—to bear witness to the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha and the significance of the Christmas Mystery. And it is part of its task to bear witness to that which gives meaning to the Earth and significance to human life. And if the Christmas tree has become a symbol of the Christmas celebration in more recent times—it is, after all, barely more than a few centuries old—then let those who stand beneath the Christmas tree today ask themselves: Is what is written above the Christmas tree still a truth for you? It is written, through the testimony of history: “Et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine.” Is this still a truth for you? — To recognize that it is the truth requires spiritual insight. And no natural science can provide an answer to the questions concerning the virgin birth and the Resurrection; rather, every natural science must reject the virgin birth and the Resurrection. They can only be understood from a realm in which birth does not reign as it does in the sensory world, nor does death reign as it does in the sensory world. Just as Christ Jesus passed through death in such a way that this death is an illusion and the Resurrection is the truth—which is what the Easter Mystery contains—so too did Christ Jesus pass through birth in such a way that this birth is an illusion, and the truth is a transformation of being within the spiritual world. For in the spiritual world there is no birth and death, but only transformation, as we know, only metamorphosis.

[ 43 ] Only when humanity is willing to look up toward that world where birth and death lose their meaning in the sensory sense will Christmas and Easter take on their true significance. Then, and only then, will our hearts and souls be filled with that warmth of tone, equipped with which we can once again stand before those to whom we are called to speak—even in their earliest childhood—of the Child who lay in the manger, and of the Magi from the East, and how they offered that Child wisdom, virtue, and immortality. We must be able to speak of this to the children. For what we say to the child today about the mystery of Christmas will, within that child, celebrate Easter and rise again after the child has lived through thirty-three more years.

[ 44 ] In the course of history, humanity is so imbued with responsibility that the preceding generation can only place within the Christmas impulse that which the following generation is to receive as the Easter impulse. One must become aware that one generation must look upon the next in such a way that it must remember: In the Christmas star, I teach you to plant within your soul, as a birth, that which will rise again in the Easter star after thirty-three years. If I understand this connection between this generation and the next, then I have gained—as everyone can tell themselves—an impulse in all my work that extends beyond the day. For the time between Christmas and Easter does not last merely the weeks that elapse between Christmas and Easter; in truth, it lasts thirty-three years—as long as it takes for an impulse that I have planted in a child’s soul as a Christmas impulse to complete its cycle, only to rise again after thirty-three years as an Easter impulse.

[ 45 ] Such things are not merely for theoretical, vain knowledge. Such things gain value only when they become practical action, when our soul is so filled with conviction of them that it cannot help but act in their light. Then, however, the soul is filled with love for those beings toward whom actions in this light are to be performed. Then love is concrete; then love is a love connected to the warmth of the world, and has nothing of that sentimental love that is on everyone’s lips today and that has led to the greatest impulse of hatred in humanity in our catastrophic age.

[ 46 ] Those who have long spoken of love have no right to continue speaking of this love, which has turned into hatred; rather, they have a duty to ask themselves: What did we fail to do with our talk of love—with our Christmas talk of love—that it could thus become a seed of hatred? — But humanity must ask: What are we seeking in the spiritual worlds so that we may once again find that which is lost: the love that flows and lives, warming all beings, but which is love only when it springs forth from a living understanding of being. For to love a being means to understand that being. To love does not mean filling one’s heart with selfish warmth to the point that one’s mouth overflows with sentimental words; to love means being able to look into the eyes of the beings toward whom one is to act in such a way that one understands them down to their very core—understands them not only with the intellect, but with the whole being of one’s human existence.

[ 47 ] May humanity now, in these solemn times, recognize that such love—which can spring from the deepest spiritual understanding—has a place within us; that there is a longing for such love; and that the will to nurture such love may arise. Let this be the message to those who wish to follow the Magi from the East to the manger in Bethlehem. Let them say to themselves: Just as the Magi from the East sought understanding in order to find the way—the way of love leading to the manger in Bethlehem—so will I seek the way that opens my eyes to that light under which the true deeds of love for humanity are performed.

[ 48 ] Just as the Magi from the East no longer regarded the external constellations as authoritative, but instead brought the knowledge of these constellations, the spirit of sacrifice for them, and the connection of immortality with them before the Christ Child on Christmas night, so too should modern humanity bring forth whatever deepest impulses it can muster in its soul before that which the Christmas festival symbolically expresses each year! With such awareness, humanity will once again celebrate worthy Christmases—honest, sincere Christmases. For in this celebration there will lie not a denial, but a knowledge of the Being for whom we light the Christmas candles.