The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] An Egyptian sage once said to a Greek sage something to the effect of: “You Greeks are, in fact, a people who live only in the present, without a history. You speak of what is happening immediately around you and give no thought to the way in which what exists in the present has taken shape and developed since time immemorial.

[ 2 ] What did that Egyptian sage actually mean? He meant to say that the Egyptians pondered cosmic problems on a grand scale—the evolution of the Earth through various forms—and he believed that the Greeks had, at most, imagery expressed in myths and legends regarding these matters. But in fact, the Egyptian wanted to point precisely to what emerged from the practice of mummifying human beings, as I attempted to clarify in the two preceding discussions. The Egyptians sought to incorporate into their breathing rhythm that which they could attain by placing themselves in the presence of the abodes of certain spiritual beings, to whom they were able to give form in the mummies. We must try to form as vivid a picture as possible of what the mummy signified during the heyday of Egyptian initiatory culture.

[ 3 ] The mummy was the human being in its form, in its physical structure, after the spiritual and soul elements had been removed from that structure, from that form. While the human being is alive, that which is active in its etheric organism, in its astral organism, and in its I-being is at work within the form. The form is illuminated by what, emanating from the blood and the rest of the organism, permeates the form as the human complexion. In the mummy, one had the mere form—a form that can exist on Earth only through the human being, a form that could not come into being if the human being were not on Earth. Without the immediate presence of the soul and spirit, the Egyptian initiate needed this form in order to possess something that he could not have possessed had he not advanced to the culture of mummification.

[ 4 ] We must try to form a picture of those times, when people lived in a state of mind quite different from our own today—a picture that is, admittedly, very unlike our current worldview. We must be clear that everything humanity had inwardly in terms of ideas and thoughts up until the Egyptian era—everything they experienced inwardly in their souls—was given to them directly from the spiritual world; that is to say, they lived within revelations from the spiritual world, even when they were absorbed in their own thoughts. In the era of ancient Indian and ancient Persian culture, human beings had only such thoughts—those revealed to them from the spiritual realm. They gave no thought to the external world—to plants, animals, or minerals. Their inner life was fully filled with thoughts arising from the spiritual realm; these provided them with sufficient insight into the world. They lived with the plants and animals, and they also gave them names. But they perceived even these names as having been revealed to them by the gods. When, in ancient Indian or ancient Persian culture, a person gave a flower a name, it meant to them that a divine voice had told them—so that they heard it clearly—how they should address the flower. When he gave a name to an animal, he was conscious of hearing within himself: this is what he was to say to the animal. All the names for the things he designated came from within the members of the ancient Indian and ancient Persian civilizations.

[ 5 ] In Egyptian civilization, things took a different turn. There, inner experiences increasingly receded into the twilight. Human beings could no longer clearly grasp what was being revealed to them from the spiritual world. Consequently, they felt an ever-increasing need to live in harmony with the external natural world—with the animal, plant, and mineral realms—but they were not yet able to do so, for the time had not yet come. That time actually did not come until after the Mystery of Golgotha. Humanity was not yet ready to live in harmony with the external world. As a result, they were compelled to mummify the dead. For it was precisely from what now dwelt within the no longer animated human being that he could gain insights into the nature surrounding him—into plants, animals, and minerals. Humanity’s earliest knowledge of plants, animals, and minerals came about because those spiritual beings spoke to them from within the mummies, to whom humanity had provided dwellings on Earth through the mummies. One might say that during the time when the gods from the supersensible worlds increasingly ceased to speak to human beings, humanity took refuge in the helpers who could now live on Earth because humans preserved the human form through mummification. The process was actually quite complicated. For the initiates, it would certainly have been possible to obtain insights directly through those lunar-spiritual beings dwelling in the mummies regarding what was to take place in human life, and to receive guiding principles for directing, leading, and educating human beings. But even for the initiates, it would not have been readily possible—since the human soul initially lacked the necessary capacities—to gain insights into nature, into the plant, animal, and mineral kingdoms, through the beings inhabiting the mummies. And yet, it was precisely in this that the Egyptians were great. For example, they had already established a marvelous form of medicine specifically through the culture of mummification.

[ 6 ] Of course, when a smart person today interprets these things, he says: The Egyptians preserved the mummies; in doing so, they became familiar with the various organs they preserved, and thereby laid the foundation for anatomy, not merely for medicine. — But that is merely a superficial view; it is not the true view. The truth is that, in those days, such logical considerations and purely observational research would not have served the Egyptians at all; for they did not interact with the outside world in that way. Their interaction with the outside world was much more subtle. But one thing was brought about by the fact that the form of the mummy was preserved so meticulously: the souls of those who had died were bound to their mummies for a time.

[ 7 ] This is what is troubling about Egyptian culture—it must always remind us that this Egyptian culture was, in fact, a culture in decline, a culture of decadence, which cannot be described as a culture of flourishing within the context of humanity as a whole, for it also interfered with the supernatural destinies of human beings. In a certain sense, it bound human souls after death to their preserved form—the mummy. And while insights into the guiding principles for humanity were gained through the spiritual beings inhabiting the mummies, such insights into nature—the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms—could not be gained directly; rather, they were obtained indirectly through these lunar-spiritual beings, who in turn communicated the secrets of nature to the human souls still lingering with the mummies. And from these human souls still lingering with the mummies, the initiates of Egypt in turn received insights into the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms. Thus, a remarkable atmosphere prevailed within Egyptian culture. The Egyptian initiates said to themselves: Our human bodies are not suited to gaining insights into nature until death. We cannot attain a natural science; our bodies are not yet suited for that—it will only be possible later, after the Mystery of Golgotha. But we must still gain some insight. As our present bodies are, human beings will only be capable of knowing anything about nature after death. Although they live here in nature, they cannot yet use their bodies to form concepts about nature. Only after death do these concepts about nature become clear to them. That is why we hold on to the dead for a while, so that they may provide us with insights into nature. — So, in essence, something quite troubling entered the historical development of humanity precisely through Egyptian culture. The Chaldean culture kept its distance during this period and is, one might say, a purer culture.

[ 8 ] Everything I have just explained to you—which, of course, is considered a fantasy by modern science, but then again, much that is true is considered a fantasy by modern science—was known above all by the people of ancient Hebrew times. Hence the aversion you find in the Old Testament toward Egyptian culture, even though, indirectly through Moses, a great deal of Egyptian influence found its way into the Old Testament. You can see from the Old Testament what the attitude was toward everything I have just had to describe to you as the essence of Egypt’s historical development. And so the prevailing sentiment in ancient Egypt was precisely this: We must create external means—since we no longer possess internal ones—to obtain the forces that govern and educate human beings. But we must also anticipate something that is yet to come in the future: a natural science. We have no choice but to first receive this from the dead, whom we bind to their mummies.

[ 9 ] Then came the Mystery of Golgotha, followed by the 4th and 5th centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. The old state of the soul, with its pictorial conception of the world, faded away completely. The time was already dawning when human beings were to form concepts of external nature based on that nature itself, wherever they were able to do so. The entire human constitution was transformed from within. Human beings felt more and more that their souls remained empty when they waited for revealed thoughts and ideas that were to come directly from the spiritual world. Instead, however, they looked at external things and beings, observed them, and formed their concepts and ideas from these observations and, later, from experiments. And now the task arose once again of obtaining in a different way that which could not yet—or no longer—be attained through human powers alone. More and more, from the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. onward, humanity had to say to itself: There must be a future in which, even though we form ideas and thoughts about external natural phenomena through our intellect, a kind of spiritualization of the intellect will once again take place; in which thoughts and ideas will once again point directly to the divine-spiritual; and in which the power inherent in these ideas can pass into the outbreath. But this power is not yet here. For the time being, we are dependent on the intellect, which is bound solely to the physical body.

[ 10 ] Based on certain traditional beliefs—which have now almost completely faded from history, about which nothing is known historically, but which were held during the Middle Ages from the 4th and 5th through the 12th, 13th centuries and then, albeit largely in secret, continued to exist within human civilization, a kind of mummy was also created—analogous to Egyptian mummies—but because they are, after all, somewhat different from Egyptian mummies, they are not perceived as such.

[ 11 ] Modern humanity would have gained nothing from preserving the human form as a mummy, as the Egyptians did. It had to preserve something else, and it preserved ancient cults, primarily pre-Christian ones. Then, especially starting in the 14th and 15th centuries, as a thoroughly intellectualistic culture emerged, ancient cults were preserved within a wide variety of occult orders. And indeed, marvelous ancient ritual practices have been preserved in all manner of orders. We see how customs and occult ceremonies live on in the various occult lodges. They are truly just as much mummies as the human mummies of Egypt. They become mummies when they are not purified and warmed by the Mystery of Golgotha. Such cults and ceremonies contain an extraordinary wealth of elements, but of what once lay within them in ancient times, they have preserved only the dead—just as the mummy had preserved only the dead form of the human being. And in many cases, this has remained so to this very day. There are countless orders that perform ceremonies, have rituals, and engage in all manner of practices, but life has fled from them; they are mummified. Just as the ordinary Egyptian felt only a kind of shudder when looking at a mummy, so too does modern man—though perhaps not exactly a shudder, but still something that is not a true feeling of the soul—when he comes into contact with these mummified spiritual practices. He perceives them as something mysterious, just as the mummy was also perceived as something mysterious.

[ 12 ] But just as there were some among the Egyptian initiates who misused the messages from the spirits inhabiting the mummies in the education and guidance of humanity—and there were certainly such individuals among them— so too in the mummification ceremonies of many occult orders there is a false impulse to achieve this or that in the guidance and direction of humanity. What entered people at that time through inhalation came from what they received from the mummy. I told you yesterday that the spiritual beings whom the Egyptians needed had no shelter, and that shelter had to be created within the mummies. Now, the spiritual beings who were to carry the inner human form into the etheric world through exhalation—as I have told you—find no paths out in the world, but they can move along the path within the ceremonies, even if misunderstood, mummified ceremonies are performed. The moon spirits during the time of Egyptian civilization were, in particular, homeless during the day. The spirits of exhalation—these earth elemental spirits, who are meant to be humanity’s helpers today—are homeless at night, though they slip into what is performed in such ceremonies. There they find their paths; there they can live. During the day, it is still possible for them—I would say—to live honestly through the breath, for during the day the human being thinks, and after all, he sends out his intellectual thought-forms with the breath, which is driven through the cerebrospinal fluid via the spinal canal and then expelled again. At night, however, when a person is not thinking, no thought-forms go out; in a sense, there are no ethereal little vessels on which these earth spirits could travel from the person out into the world to imprint his form upon the etheric cosmos.

[ 13 ] Through such mummification ceremonies, humans create the paths and directions that these earth demons are meant to follow. These have their own valid purpose. What all manner of occult orders have in more recent times—namely, since the rise of intellectualism—has a similar basis to the emergence of mummies in Egypt. For human beings cannot perceive what exists in external nature without themselves, without their own form; and since the Egyptians were dependent on creating a knowledge of nature, they were able to set the human form before them through the mummies. When modern people found themselves in need of something that is not merely a passive, powerless thought—which the human being develops intellectually—but rather something that can reach out into the world to become effective, they needed to have something around them in the external world that is symbolic, that serves as an interpretation of what should actually take shape within them spiritually.

[ 14 ] Now, these forms that are carried out as rituals in the lodges are, in fact, soulless. Just as the human soul did not live within the mummy, so too does the spiritual life that once existed in these rituals—when they were practiced among the ancient initiates—no longer live within them. Back then, direct spiritual life still pulsed through those ceremonies, flowing from the human being into the ceremony. There, the human being and the ceremony were one. Compare this with how superficial the ceremonies and rituals are among modern people in modern orders.

[ 15 ] But now something else is affecting modern human beings. Modern human beings cannot escape their intellect. Yesterday, using the example of a Benedictine monk, I showed you how even a person whose profession is to be a servant of the spiritual cannot escape the intellectual realm. Modern man cannot step outside the realm of the intellectual, just as the ancient Egyptians could not enter into it. The ancient Egyptians needed human bodies—even after they were dead—so that they could impart natural science to them. Modern man, in turn, needs something that imparts spiritual science, spiritual knowledge, to him.

[ 16 ] Now, I will completely set aside those occult orders that do indeed exist in great numbers—which are nothing but empty shells, driven more by cultural affectation than by any deeper foundations. But there have also been—and indeed, up until the first half of the 19th century, there were—very serious orders that conveyed more than what, for example, the average Freemason today receives from his order. And they were indeed able to impart more for the reason that certain needs prevail today in the spiritual world within the hierarchy of the Angeloi—needs that, admittedly, are of less interest to us here on Earth, but which were very important to us in our pre-earthly existence. Certain beings within the hierarchy of the Angeloi have specific needs for knowledge, which they can satisfy only by allowing human souls—as it were, on a trial basis—to reach precisely those places where such serious occult orders exist, before they actually descend from their pre-earthly existence into earthly existence.

[ 17 ] It was certainly the case that in certain lodges that observed ancient ceremonies, those who were truly able to perceive these things would say to themselves: “Here is already the soul of a person who will not descend to Earth until the future.” — Before a human descends to Earth, this soul enters such an occult lodge, and one can intuitively gain an extraordinary amount from it. Just as the human soul hovered around the mummy—still, in a sense, bound to it—so, in occult lodges, the spirits of those not yet born hover about as if in a previous existence that is still unfolding. This, in turn, does not come to light through intellectual thoughts, for modern people have those anyway—they do not need them—but when they are in their occult lodges with the right spiritual disposition, they receive messages there from people not yet born, from people who are still in their pre-earthly existence and who can now be present through this ceremony. And these people sense the spiritual world and can also speak from within it.

[ 18 ] There is something in Goethe’s biography that strikes a person with a feel for such things as extraordinarily significant, especially when it is said by people who do not actually know what is right, but who, out of a certain insight, point—as it were—semi-consciously toward what is right. In this regard, Karl Julius Schröer—whom I have often told you about—was quite remarkable when he spoke of Goethe. Whenever he presented the Goethe biography alongside Goethe’s works to his listeners, a certain phrase would always emerge that struck one, that captivated one immensely: “Goethe had relived that,” and “this experience had rejuvenated him.” And so Schröer actually portrayed Goethe as if he were a personality who, having once been young at the age of seven, then experienced something else at the age of fourteen, and through this experience was actually brought back a little further into childhood. Goethe rejuvenated himself. And then, let’s say at the age of twenty-one, he rejuvenated himself once more. And so Schröer did indeed portray Goethe as if he had undergone such processes of rejuvenation from one stage to the next.

[ 19 ] And finally, take a look at Goethe’s biography: there is something to be said for the fact that this youthful vigor was within him. Even when Goethe was already the portly Privy Councilor with the double chin in Weimar, even during the time when he treated certain people in such a way that they often perceived him as more or less a sourpuss—in this regard, much is known about how Goethe’s personal interactions with others were not always entirely pleasant—even then, it came over him more and more, and he actually underwent a rejuvenation in his very old age. And finally, he truly could not have written what he wrote in the second part of Faust during his very old age if he had not undergone such a rejuvenation. For around the year 1816 or 1817, Goethe was a person from whom one could not have expected anything like what he later wrote in the second part of Faust, beginning in 1824. That was truly a rejuvenation. Goethe had also sensed this, albeit in earlier years, when he had Faust drink a potion of rejuvenation. This is also something of an autobiography. And if one investigates what led Goethe to such a state, one sees that it was his membership in the lodge. The other respectable citizens of Weimar—with the possible exception of Wieland, Chancellor von Müller, and a few others—well, they were simply members of the lodge, just as people tend to be. If you’re a respectable civil servant in Weimar, you can’t help but go to church on Sundays, and so you’re also—even though it’s actually the opposite—a member of the lodge. That was simply the custom, at least in those circles. But that was not the case with Goethe, nor with Chancellor von Müller, Wieland, or a few others; they truly underwent such rejuvenation because, in their souls, they were in communion with human children not yet born.

[ 20 ] Just as the ancient Egyptian temple priests interacted with human souls after their death, so did such people interact with human beings before their birth. And human beings can now, before they are born, bring something of spirituality into the present world. They do not bring intellectual concepts into it, but they do bring spiritual elements, which a person then absorbs through their feelings and which become an integral part of their entire life.

[ 21 ] So one might say: The first lesson in intellectualism that humanity learned in the course of its historical development was learned by the Egyptians from the dead, and the first lessons about the spiritual realm learned in more recent times were, in turn, received by outstanding individuals from their initiatory teachings in occult lodges from those who have not yet been born. This is something that corresponds to one another in a remarkable way. Just take a look, for example, at Goethe’s works: you will sometimes see something flash through them that seems to penetrate spiritual wisdom—something he is unable to express in the form of thought. But he casts it into an image, and that image bears a striking resemblance to some lodge symbol. He could only have received it in this way. And so there are many who have received something in this way. But these unborn human beings can, after all, only provide insight into what can be experienced in the spiritual realm of the non-earthly world; naturally, they can only provide insight into the heavenly, into that which lies beyond earthly evolution. But because the elemental earth spirits were bound through these ceremonies, messages can in turn be conveyed from the unborn beings to the elemental earth spirits. And if there is even a talent, a genius, capable of eavesdropping on the elemental earth spirits to hear what the unborn human beings are communicating to them, then the people in question—who are able to eavesdrop on such things—will simply voice what the unborn human beings are saying to the nature spirits, the earth spirits.

[ 22 ] Try, with this in mind, to trace some of Goethe’s wonderful expressions of his love for nature, as well as those of other people of that era in whom such feelings were particularly vivid—for example, the Dane Steffens, or let’s say people like Troxier, Schubert, who wrote so much about the ‘Iraum’ but actually drew his best inspiration for it from the spirits of nature. Explore this in many others—who were even more numerous in the first half of the 19th century than later on—and you will find evidence of what has come to people in this way. But sometimes something else has even come about. Sometimes the message that the unborn human beings conveyed in this way to the nature spirits on earth did not pass into people in such a way that they spoke of spiritual matters drawn from nature and its mysteries; rather, people sometimes absorbed it into their entire soul disposition. They absorbed the forces of the nature spirits into their entire soul disposition, and this then came to the fore in the style in which such people wrote. And where a feeling for such things exists, people today can say to themselves: When I read a historian today—such as Ranke or Taine, or a contemporary English historian—the style is already intellectualistic. Ranke, after all, already writes in an intellectualistic style; the sentences are constructed in an intellectualistic manner—everything is so clever, the subject cleverly placed in its proper place, the predicate cleverly placed in its proper place—so that even schoolmasters might almost be satisfied with such a style. But compare such a style, for example, with that of Johannes Müller in his 24 Books of General History. It is a style—one might say—as if an angel were speaking. And in other cultures as well, in the 18th century, quite a bit was still written in such a style—one that indeed lacks the impersonal, the insultingly objective quality of a contemporary historical or scientific style, but rather possesses something from which one can see that elemental forces of nature flow through the writer, and his style is written from the cosmos, from the universe.

[ 23 ] Modern human beings are confronted with something that, for our time, is analogous to what the mummies represented for the Egyptian initiates. These are extraordinarily important historical events unfolding behind the scenes of external history, which one simply must be aware of if one wishes to understand anything at all about the development of humanity. And so we see how the groundwork was laid in this way—something that is currently overlooked for a time, because virtually no one listens to such things in the right way anymore— how the spiritual was prepared—which in turn is also meant to enter the intellect and must live in the intellect in the future, if humanity in the newer civilization does not wish to follow Spengler’s path entirely into the Decline of the West. Thus we can say: The ancient Egyptians mummified the human form; modern humanity, since the 4th and 5th centuries A.D., has mummified the ancient cults in all areas. But in doing so, it at least provided the conditions for something extraterrestrial to live within the ceremonial practices of the ancient cults. Not much of the human element lived within these cults, but much of the non-human entities does live within them.

[ 24 ] The same is true of church rituals, and anyone who looks into these matters—who truly looks at them as they really are—can sometimes quite easily do without the personalities of flesh and blood standing before the altar, even in church rituals, because the spiritual beings are there—quite apart from the officiating priests—and because one can focus on the spiritual beings who are actually present within the ceremonies. When you take all this into account, you will say to yourself: One must choose a language quite different from what humanity today is accustomed to if one is to even begin to approach what truly surrounds us in a spiritual sense. — That is why you need not be at all surprised when works such as Fritz Mauthner’s Critique of Language appear today, in which it is intended to prove that everything people have imagined about spiritual beings lies solely in words—and if one does not want to believe in the words, then one cannot believe in spirits either! That is, after all, the point of Fritz Mauthner’s Critique of Language. Fritz Mauthner is right—truly right—for a large part of modern humanity. A large portion of modern humanity has nothing but words when speaking of supersensible things. For them, the Critique of Language applies—unfortunately. But it is equally necessary that substantial spiritual content be restored to these words. And that is why it was also necessary in the course of historical development that, during a period when human beings themselves were not yet able to grasp this spiritual content, this content was developed for them by extra-human beings and by people who had not yet been born, as well as by extra-human beings and by people who no longer lived on Earth but were already in the life after death—it was through them that intellectuality was prepared for the Egyptians. The intellectuality in which we now stand, the Egyptians learned from the dead. We must learn the spirituality in which we have not yet entered, in the present, by a roundabout route through the cult of mummification, which we must reclaim for ourselves, which we must at least study. For then it is highly revealing. We must incorporate the spirituality of the future into our intellectuality through this other mummy. The mummified human activity has taken the place of the mummified human being; the mummified human action has taken the place of the mummified human form. In a corresponding way, the other has developed as I have characterized it.

[ 25 ] One must therefore study what goes on behind the scenes of world history; otherwise, everything people say about historical events remains, for humanity, an incomprehensible conglomeration of external, coincidental facts—mere coincidences. But they are not mere facts of chance once one knows their background. They become mere facts of chance only when people refuse to recognize the underlying context. They become, so to speak, waves that one believes stand side by side, whereas in reality they all surge up together from the depths of the sea. In truth, historical events are waves that are hurled up from the immense depths of a spiritual sea of world evolution onto the surface of events immediately accessible to human beings. And one should see such a wave in every single historical fact, but not believe that one wave stands beside another of its own accord; rather, one should recognize that every single wave—that is, every single historical fact—originates from the spiritual depths of spiritual-historical development, which extends from one distant age to the next.