The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] In our recent reflections, we have pointed to overarching impulses within the course of world history. For historical analysis, such overarching impulses must, so to speak, stand as guiding stars that can shed light on the individual events that have taken place in the course of human development. After all, each individual historical epoch can really only be understood in a very superficial way if one is unable to sense and penetrate the impulses lying behind it. These impulses are at work. They exert their strongest influence, for the most part, through the unconscious forces of the human soul. And what unfolds externally before people’s consciousness only appears in its true light when one is able to trace it back to such impulses.

[ 2 ] Let us consider an event that is, of course, well known to everyone from history—an event, or rather a series of events, that had a profound impact on the entire course of Western civilization in the middle of the Middle Ages; a series of events that, outwardly speaking, came to an end relatively soon, after one or one and a half centuries, but whose effects persisted and, in fact, for those who can understand the deeper currents in the development of world history, continue to this day: Let us take the series of events known as the Crusades, which began in the 11th century—the year 1096 is usually cited—and outwardly extended until the year generally accepted as 1270. We can also see that even in external history, attention is drawn to how a variety of ways of life took shape out of the series of events known as the Crusades.

[ 3 ] For example, the Knights Templar are mentioned, who only came to play a significant role in public life during the Crusades; other religious orders such as the Knights of St. John, the later Knights of Malta, and others are also mentioned. And what began through such communities of life and spirit, born out of the spirit of the Crusades, later developed in such a way that its origin in that spirit was less frequently mentioned, yet its effects were clearly evident in Western life.

[ 4 ] If we first consider the external historical context, we know that the Crusades arose because those Christians of the West who believed they could continually renew their Christian zeal through pilgrimages to Palestine encountered resistance due to the fact that Palestine, Jerusalem had gradually fallen into the hands of a very different people—the Turkish people—and that the pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem found themselves mistreated by this Turkish population, which then became a widespread cause for complaint in Europe. We see how, out of this widespread outcry, the spirit of the Crusades—which had long existed in a different form—was unleashed when people arose who called for the holy sites of the East, the Christian sites, to be freed from Turkish oppression. It is said that Peter of Amiens, who had personally experienced this Turkish oppression, first traveled throughout Western Europe on pilgrimage, winning the hearts of many with his heartfelt speeches, inspiring them to set out to free Jerusalem from Turkish oppression. But we also know how this initially led to nothing, and how the First Crusade eventually came about when a large number of knights from the West gathered under the leadership of Godfrey of Bouillon, who then succeeded in at least temporarily liberating Jerusalem from the Turks.

[ 5 ] One need only mention these external events; they are well known from external history. But the point is to also look at them with true understanding from within, to see what has been at work more or less unconsciously within people’s souls, so that over such a long period of time, numerous people continually undertook these seven Crusades to the East—in some cases with extraordinary devotion and bravery—and found leadership among the most distinguished princes of the West. Above all, we must ask ourselves where this enthusiasm for the Crusades came from, which prevailed within European life, particularly at the very beginning of the Crusades. Later, however, once the matter—if I may put it that way—had been set in motion, starting with the Fourth Crusade, other interests began to intermingle with it. European princes then set out for the East for entirely different reasons—for example, to consolidate their prestige and power, and the like. But the beginning of the Crusades remains an extraordinarily significant historical event.

[ 6 ] It is, in particular, of extraordinary historical significance when one considers the immense force that suddenly seized a large number of Europeans from all walks of life, driving them to undertake something that was to be connected with the most sacred matters of the European people’s hearts. People certainly felt that these most sacred matters of the heart were inextricably linked to the liberation of Jerusalem from the Turks and to the opening of the possibility that European Christians might once again find free access to the tomb of their Savior. When the historical facts are recounted so dryly or read in books, one usually fails to sense the immense fire that burned through Europe at that time, when the noble knights set out on the First Crusade and when, drawing from the very depths of their souls and the fire of their being, figures such as Bernard of Clairvaux and others in turn fanned this fire, this current. There is something immensely great in the very origins of these Crusades. And one must ask oneself: What impulses were at work in European hearts, in European souls—impulses that then flowed into the spirit of the Crusades?

[ 7 ] These influences can only be properly understood by tracing their actual development back through the centuries. I would say that a pivotal point in historical development within Europe—where one can see an extraordinary amount of what later became significant and decisive—such a pivotal point in European development was the reign of Pope Nicholas I, around the middle of the 9th century. Nicholas I, who reigned from 858 to 867, was the Roman pope who saw before his soul three spiritual currents that, I would say, appeared before him like great question marks of civilization.

[ 8 ] One current moved, as it were, from Asia to Europe as if from a kind of spiritual height. We can say that this current, in a highly modified and transformed form, carried Eastern religious insights through southern Europe and northern Africa on to Spain, France, and the British Isles—but especially to Ireland. Let us therefore assume its point of origin to be, for example, the Arab regions of Asia. It then flows across Greece and Italy, but also through Africa into Spain and up through the West, while at various points radiating its essence to the rest of Europe as well.

[ 9 ] This current finds little expression in what is recounted as external history. Today, we shall characterize this current—which actually encompasses an immense amount—based on just two of its distinctive features. One element that lives within it is what one might call an esoteric understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. I have often drawn your attention to how those individuals who had preserved remnants of the ancient initiatory knowledge predating the Mystery of Golgotha understood the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Bible itself, this can be recognized in the appearance of the three Magi or kings from the East, who, drawing on the mystery of the starry world, foresee and seek the Christ event; they thus belong primarily to those for whom the earthly personality of Jesus of Nazareth was less familiar, and for whom the most important fact was that a spiritual being, Christ, had descended from the spiritual-soul worlds, had taken up residence in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and was to exert an impulse on the future development of the Earth. These people viewed the event at Golgotha in a wholly supersensible way, and this supersensible perception could take place only in souls that still preserved the ancient principles of initiation. For it was with the help of these principles of initiation that something like this—which cannot be understood within the natural and historical world of the Earth—could be comprehended. Within these principles of initiation, this purely supersensible event could be understood.

[ 10 ] However, as time went on, it became increasingly difficult to hold fast to these ancient principles of initiation, and so it became less and less possible to express oneself at all when one wanted to describe how Christ descended from super-earthly worlds and fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that its effect continues throughout the historical development of the Earth. People simply had no way of developing their concepts or shaping their ideas in such a way that they could have found words in an ideal form to describe what happened through the Christ with the help of the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 11 ] And so, in order to express this mystery, people were increasingly compelled to resort to figurative representations. One such figurative representation is the tale of the Holy Grail, that precious chalice which, on the one hand, is said to be the one in which Jesus Christ shared the Last Supper with his apostles, and, on the other hand, is said to be the very same chalice with which the Roman soldier at the foot of the cross caught the Savior’s blood. This chalice is then carried by angels to Montsalvatsch. You see, there are allusions here to the supernatural, and people stammer to express what ancient initiates could once have articulated in well-defined terms, but which can now only be conveyed through imagery. Angels thus carried this chalice over to the Spanish mountain of Montsalvatsch, where it was received by the exalted King Titurel, who founded a temple for this chalice, which was then inhabited by the Knights of the Holy Grail in order to guard and preserve what is in fact the repository of the continuing effect of that impulse that had emanated from the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 12 ] Thus we have—I would say—a deeply esoteric current that tends toward the mysterious. On the one hand, we see how this current establishes schools over in Asia that study the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, seeking to understand the event of Golgotha there with the help of Aristotle’s Greek concepts. We see how, later on, within European civilization, works of poetry such as Parzival attempt to capture in vivid language what was alive in this current. We see how, in the teachings found particularly in the schools of Ireland, everything that lives in this current shines through. We see how the best of what came from the Arabs has been poured into this current, yet how, at the same time, a foreign element enters through the Arabs—an element that, over in Asia, is further coarsened and barbarized by the Turkish influence.

[ 13 ] We will discuss shortly what form this current took here through the Arabs—as it continued to spread ever further from east to west—once we have allowed the other currents to take effect. But if we wish to describe the fundamental character of this current, we must characterize it something like this: Those who lived in some way within this spiritual current saw all salvation in it—and one can still hear echoes of this in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival — in the act of rising from the sensory to the supersensory, that is, to have at least an approximate vision of the supersensory worlds, to allow human beings to share in the supersensory worlds, to let them know that their soul belongs to a current that cannot be directly perceived when the senses are directed toward earthly events. That was what was distinctive: this looking upward into otherworldly, supersensible regions; this sense that, if a person is to be a complete human being, they must belong to worlds that, in a sense, hover above the sensory and natural, in which events take place that are as hidden from the outer eye as the deeds of the Knights of the Grail. To the outer eye, the mystery flowing within this current was not to be seen. This was the very current that, in the 9th century, was perceived—albeit only very faintly—as something hostile within Rome, where Nicholas I was pope at the time. The mood already existed in Rome to regard this current as hostile, as one that is actually harmful to Western people if they surrender to it. Nothing esoteric, and nothing that even derives from the esoteric, was to be present within religious and intellectual life in Europe.

[ 14 ] It was without a doubt the first, but also the most terrifying question mark, especially for Nicholas I, for he still sensed the grandeur of the spiritual life in this movement, which, although it had already faded considerably since the 3rd, 4th centuries—a society had even been founded in Italy to eradicate all paths of spiritual knowledge—yet which nevertheless shone into people’s hearts through various mysterious channels and manifested itself here and there. Whatever often broke through from the mysterious depths of world-historical events into the experiences of human souls was accused of heresy. There was also a sense that the Roman-Latin essence had gradually developed in such a way that, in its concepts—which had increasingly shifted from the earlier Greek-Oriental inwardness toward Roman-Latin rhetoric, that is, toward a certain outwardness—it could no longer accommodate what still lived on from the fading esotericism. On the other hand, however, the revival within individual people and in individual communities—which were denounced as sects—was nevertheless extraordinarily powerful.

[ 15 ] The second question mark that loomed over Nicholas I in the context of world history was this: based on all the experience the Catholic-Christian Church had gathered up to that point, he had to consider the population of the European West unsuited to endure the intense spiritual strain that is brought about in the soul when it is to ascend, in the manner described, to a spiritual-esoteric understanding. One might say that a great doubt took root in the soul of this Nicholas I: What will become of us if too much of this esoteric-spiritual current enters European souls?

[ 16 ] In the Orient itself, what was there became increasingly confused. In fact, the purest form of this movement was preserved in the branch that extended as far as Ireland, and for a time there were indeed spiritual schools in Ireland that preserved the sacred mysteries of this movement with great purity.

[ 17 ] But then Nicholas I said to himself: This is no good for the European people. — Essentially, he wanted only what Boniface had already wanted in a somewhat different way; Boniface had regarded it as a European peculiarity that the European population was not suited to absorbing the spiritual life into their souls. And so it turns out that the peculiarity lies in the fact that in the East, the actual esoteric content melted away. The people of the East—including those in the European East extending into present-day Russia—could not reconcile their souls with this esoteric-spiritual content. They did, however, have a sense of it, insofar as such feelings were not thoroughly eradicated by the advancing Turanian peoples, who then revealed themselves as the Turks. These people of the East had a vague, dim sense that everything that constitutes high esotericism—and which cannot be grasped by human beings with their developing intellect—flows and surges within the cult, but only when the cult simultaneously has an outwardly real focal point, a geographical center, so to speak.

[ 18 ] Thus, in Eastern Europe—where the truly esoteric-spiritual had been forgotten—a tendency toward worship arose, but one linked to an immense attachment to what was perceived as the center of that worship: an attachment to the Savior’s tomb. For the tomb of the Savior in Jerusalem was the site where the Savior, together with his apostles, had first celebrated the Last Supper—that Last Supper which, in its subsequent transformation, had become the death on Golgotha, had only been fulfilled through the death on Golgotha, and which then lived on in the central ceremony, in the sacrificial Mass, and in the rest of the ritual. And as people, so to speak, became estranged from the truly spiritual—because they did not rise to the level of esoteric understanding—they became attached in their hearts to the cult and to what this cult was outwardly connected with: the Saviour’s tomb and the site in Jerusalem. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem was intended, I might say, to crown the ceremonial festivities that could be celebrated in those places. All the ceremonies with their rituals that could be performed at the various sites were meant to find their culmination for the individual through the fact that he, as it were, internalized with his heart what he had experienced in the image and in the ceremony by making a pilgrimage himself to the Saviour’s tomb.

[ 19 ] What the ancient Egyptians had already developed through immense effort—as I have described in my examination of the mummy, the mummified human being—were these concepts: individual schools over in Asia were still able to grasp them, but they were lost to the general population. People could not bring themselves to grasp what constitutes the mystery of the human being and, with it, the mystery of the divine world.

[ 20 ] The further one went, therefore, into the era of Pope Nicholas I, the more one saw in the East a deep, heartfelt devotion to the liturgy and a deep, heartfelt attachment in the East to the interplay between the cult and everything one could experience and feel through it, and what was then perceived as the crowning achievement of these feelings—in a sense, the greatest act of worship: the pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher. When one looked eastward from the Rome of the 9th century—from the Rome of Pope Nicholas I—one saw precisely what Nicholas I and his advisors had declared to be unsuitable for the European, the Central European, and the Western European populations. They believed that the people of Central and Western Europe possessed too much of the intellect that was surging forward in human development to be attached to the mere—albeit deeply heartfelt—contemplation of the ceremony and the pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher. They believed that European humanity had too much of this emerging intellectualism to be able to be fully human in such a way. It was seen that this is possible in the East, but it was not deemed feasible for the people of Central and Western Europe.

[ 21 ] On the other hand, the first question mark also appeared. It was viewed as an immense danger if what lay within this current—which contained so much of the esoteric, so much of that which can truly be fully understood only through spiritualized ideas—were to make its way over to Europe. And so I would like to say: If one looked westward from the Rome of Pope Nicholas I, one saw danger; if one looked eastward, one saw danger. In the East, one saw a current spreading that penetrated deeply into Europe—actually a series of currents—the current of esoteric worship, in contrast to that other esoteric current. Central Europe cannot and must not be swept up by either of these currents—so it was said at the papal court of Nicholas I. What must be done? The spiritual good that the true adherents of this esoteric current perceived—this spiritual good must be cast into dogmatic forms. One must have words and sentences for it; it must be spoken. But one must protect people from being able to see or recognize what has been spoken.

[ 22 ] A religious belief system emerged. The idea arose that one must present people—without giving them the opportunity to see for themselves—with content in an abstract, dogmatic form in which they can believe. And so this third movement arose, which took hold of Central and Western Europe both religiously and scientifically; at first, it offered dogmas to the surging intellect, but not in such a way that these dogmas were insights expressed in concepts; rather, this movement presented the dogmas in such a way that they were simply stated. What they represented was no longer something one could perceive; one was simply supposed to believe in it.

[ 23 ] If this esoteric movement, which extended as far as Ireland and has since faded there in more recent times, had been properly pursued, then people would have had to find their way within it to a union of the soul with the spiritual world. For, fundamentally, what lived within this esoteric movement was the great question: How does a human being come to find their way in the etheric world, in the etheric cosmos? For the visions, which also encompassed the mystery of Golgotha in the way I have just characterized it again, related to the etheric aspect of the cosmos. So one could say: Here lay the great question concerning the nature of the etheric cosmos. But what related to the etheric cosmos became, for the middle current—that is, the current that was primarily expressed in the form of Latin culture well into the Middle Ages—a matter of dogma.

[ 24 ] In the West, the question—though unconsciously posed—was about the mystery of the etheric cosmos. In the East, the great question had arisen within humanity: What is the nature of the etheric organization, of the etheric human organism?

[ 25 ] In all the moods and insights of the East that unfolded in worship, ceremony, and ritual, the question lived unconsciously: How does the human being come to terms with his etheric body? — In the southwestern tradition, the question was: How does the human being come to terms with the etheric cosmos? — In earlier times, human beings had attained the truths about the supersensible world almost automatically through a dreamlike form of clairvoyance; they did not need to become conscious of the etheric in the world and within themselves. This was the significant development brought about by modern times: the great question regarding the nature of the etheric—in the West, the question of the etheric cosmos; in the East, the question of one’s own etheric body—came to confront humanity.

[ 26 ] The question of the ethereal cosmos calls upon human beings to achieve the highest unfolding of their spirituality. They must develop the strongest power of ideas in order to penetrate the mysteries of the cosmos. Yesterday I hinted at how one first finds this power by considering plant metamorphosis in the manner of Goethe, and then ascends to that all-encompassing metamorphosis that leads from one earthly life to another. But this was considered dangerous in Rome, particularly during the period of Pope Nicholas I to which I alluded. What was alive in this current was to be, so to speak, filled in and covered up.

[ 27 ] But the other current—the Eastern current—also consisted of an engagement with the etheric, though only with the etheric aspect of one’s own constitution, with one’s own etheric human body. The physical human body lives in harmony with what exists in the outer natural realm—animals, plants, and minerals—and with everything that humans manufacture in the form of machines. But if a person wishes to live with their etheric body here on Earth, they can do so only in an external way—through ceremonies, by living within ritualism, or by living within events that are not earthly, sensory, or real. In the East, people sought to immerse themselves in such events in order to experience the inner nature of their own human etheric organism.

[ 28 ] This, too, was deemed unsuitable for Europe in 9th-century Rome, the Rome of Pope Nicholas I. From the West, one retained only—and then extended it further westward, so that this esoteric current was completely obscured—that which the intellect brings forth up to the level of dogmatics, where supernatural truths are merely believed in and are no longer perceived. But even that inner relationship to worship that had developed in Eastern Europe was deemed unsuitable for the populations of Central and Western Europe, and this gave rise to the modification of worship that is found in the Roman Catholic Church.

[ 29 ] If you compare the form of worship as practiced in the Eastern, Russian Orthodox Church with that of the Roman Catholic Church, you will find the following difference: In the Roman Catholic Church, worship is more of a symbol to be contemplated; in the East, it is more something into which the soul immerses itself with full fervor. In the West, there has always been a need to move back and forth between worship—which was linked to dogmatic understanding—and the dogmas themselves, using the dogmas to shed light on worship. In the East, the cult stood on its own. And what made its way to the West was ultimately limited to gradually becoming what was then preserved in an external form within various occult communities—communities that still exist today, which play a major role but are stripped of all the esotericism of ancient times.

[ 30 ] To inaugurate a form of worship in Europe that does not penetrate the ethereal aspect of human nature as deeply as it does in the East, and to establish a dogmatics intended to spare people the need to raise their gaze to the spiritual world—to introduce such a dual current—that was the third major challenge facing Nicholas I. And he worked on this. As a result, the Greek-Eastern Church later separated completely from the Roman Catholic Church. The inner reasons actually lie in what I have just mentioned.

[ 31 ] Everything I have explained to you here was, in fact, still very clearly present in the depths of people’s souls during the reign of Pope Nicholas I in the middle of the 9th century A.D. There were also definitely still remnants of esotericism in the West. There were esoteric schools, particularly in Spain, France, and Ireland. There were people who could look into the spiritual worlds, people who also held a form of Christianity that was taught through vision. Later, all that remained of what had once existed as vision were merely the allusions—glimpses of the Holy Grail or its secularized counterpart, the Round Table of King Arthur—which were repeatedly and mysteriously imprinted time and again. But one already had the feeling: there is something there that is connected to a vision of supermundane worlds, to an experience of supermundane worlds.

[ 32 ] In Central Europe, and extending from there to those places in the West where esotericism still existed, there lived precisely that which resulted from a deep, faith-based dogmatism combined with a ceremonial world not fully connected to the human etheric body. And in the East lived what I have already characterized. When describing the European soul of the 9th century, one would have to characterize these three distinct spiritual dispositions in all their various forms. Everything else recounted in history is merely a fleeting, external expression of what reigned in the depths in this manner.

[ 33 ] But then came later times. There came those times in which this esoteric current was, so to speak, followed by what became increasingly externalized in Arabism. One might say that what had been made of Aristotle over in Asia also flowed over here; and in this later influx, this esoteric current—which had originated from a very spiritual perspective—became materialized. And we see that, for example, as early as the 11th and 12th centuries, esotericism was gradually fading and dissipating, and that this very esoteric current adopted the materialistic form of thought that later, through a metamorphosis, became materialism in the natural sciences; for materialism actually sprang from Arabism.

[ 34 ] The moderate movement, the true creation of Pope Nicholas I, but which had already been nurtured by Boniface, which had found substantial support among the Merovingians and the Carolingians, and which, over the centuries, had been only slightly influenced by what, through the legend of the Grail and other sacred legends, directed the gaze of the human soul toward the supernatural world—this movement increasingly tended to materialize worship and dogma. Those purer conceptions—such as those held in earlier times regarding transubstantiation, the course of the Mass, and so on—gave way to crude, materialistic views that could lead to nothing other than disputes over the Eucharist. The disputes over the Lord’s Supper were proof that it was no longer understood as it had originally been conceived. It can only be understood when it is permeated by spiritual insight. Thus this Western, East-South-Western current became materialistic; thus the middle current became materialistic; and, in an essential sense, the Eastern current, too, became increasingly materialistic. The wave of materialism surged forth. Yet everywhere, humanity nevertheless rebelled against this wave of materialism in a certain way.

[ 35 ] And now we move from the 9th century—the era of Pope Nicholas I—up into the 11th century. We must certainly imagine that the three question marks truly stood before a figure such as Pope Nicholas I like three terrible, soul-tormenting forces. For he could not simply say, as was later done in congresses where lines were drawn on maps according to what was deemed correct based on external circumstances—he could not say: “I decree that there is a border here and here.” — He could not say that, for souls could not be demarcated in that way. He could, so to speak, indicate directions and bestow a special strength upon the middle direction. In this, Nicholas I was particularly brilliant: in granting the middle European current a special strength. But it was nevertheless the case that, for example, the mood prevailing in the East extended far into the West—that mood which kindled the inner fervor of the human etheric organism through the sacred rites of worship and which, at the same time, now in a more Western European manner, linked the course of these rites to the center in Jerusalem.

[ 36 ] Whatever remained of the pilgrim spirit that had spread from the East into Central Europe and the West—that inclination toward the true center—could initially be preached by Peter of Amiens to some extent, but later by Bernard of Clairvaux with truly dazzling fervor. And what remained in Europe of this pilgrimage movement was mingled with the current that had survived from the West via the detour through the Grail tradition and the Arthurian legend: what had remained there as esotericism, I might say, had flowed out, and the human being remained with this outer form—that human being for whom the earth was not really the earth, but a special place within the entire cosmos.

[ 37 ] Such a view was indeed held by the knighthood of Western and Central Europe, which then joined the crusading spirit. And only as a faint undertone—which, however, grew stronger and stronger as the Crusades continued—did what Nicholas I had established as the true spirit of European civilization in religion and knowledge intermingle with it. That is why the Crusades strike us as something that, viewed from later circumstances, can no longer be fully understood. For the mainstream current then spread. Alongside this, the Eastern European current has persisted, which within Europe is viewed precisely as a backward religious current. The Western European current has transformed into the tendrils of the occult and esoteric, into all manner of occult societies, Masonic orders, and so on. The middle current has finally also taken hold of science in scholasticism and in modern natural science.

[ 38 ] Anyone who sees only what has come to pass in more recent times cannot understand the spirit of the Crusades. Only those who can grasp what was alive in that impulse—from the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. right through the 12th and 13th centuries—and what Pope Nicholas I felt particularly strongly in the 9th century—namely, the question: How does one connect the events that exist in the outer world—events in which human beings themselves intervene, and of which religious rituals are the most prominent—with the living stream of spiritual life, the life of spiritual beings? One might say that for Europeans, it began in the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries: just as the realities of religious ritual had to fade away on the one hand, so too did the realities of spiritual vision fade away on the other. While the realities of worship faded into the vagueness of Asia and, with the Turkish conquest, obscured the holy site to which these ritual acts were meant to be linked for Christians, the discovery of America caused—if I may speak figuratively—the esoteric mysteries of Western currents to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. A mood arose in reaction to this: How does one fulfill what must surely be there—the sacred rites of consecration and their center, the place in Jerusalem—how does one fill this with spiritual life?

[ 39 ] Anyone who reads the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux can still sense today how his fervent devotion to the outward, sensory cult—in which esotericism lives—speaks through him, and how, on the other hand, his heart is set ablaze by what once lived in that esoteric atmosphere of the West. Resonating in the sermons and speeches of Bernard of Clairvaux—even if he does not state it explicitly, but rather allows it to resonate with magnificent artistry—is what the etheric cosmos wishes to reveal to humanity but can no longer reveal, and at the same time, what seeks to work from the Earth within the human etheric organism itself. This drives people across to Asia to seek once more what they had lost on their journey westward. Esotericism was, nevertheless, the driving impulse. What had been lost on the journey westward, people wished to become aware of by reconnecting with the Saviour’s tomb. Therein lies the tragedy of the subsequent era: that people did not grasp this; that they were unable, for example, to heed something like what the Rosicrucian movement—I mean in its true form—later became, which, however, sought Christ in spiritual heights rather than at the physical tomb. But today the time has come when humanity must realize that, just as it was said to the people who came to the tomb after the Saviour’s death: “The one you seek is no longer here; seek him elsewhere,” so too was it said to the Crusaders: “The one you seek is no longer here; seek him elsewhere.” Today is the time when we must once again seek elsewhere the One who is no longer here—a search that must be undertaken through a new exploration of the spiritual worlds.

[ 40 ] This is the task that lies before people today; this is what I wanted to add, so to speak, following the reflections that have been shared here over the past few days. And on this occasion, I would not want to fail to tell you—following what I have now attempted, albeit only in a very sketchy way, to draw from anthroposophical esotericism—that there really should live in the souls of those who count themselves among the members of the Anthroposophical Society and who wish to profess anthroposophy, may the sense of the immense significance of the present historical moment—the significance of seeking out the spiritual worlds—live on. And that is why, following these profound reflections I have just shared, I would like to say today: May an effort be made within the individual circles of the Anthroposophical Society to become aware of the gravity of the present historical moment and to ask themselves and examine the circumstances: Might it not be possible, in a certain sense, to revitalize this Anthroposophical Society once again, so that it might emerge from a certain state of lethargy and awaken to a true life? We need this today, when significant contributions in a wide variety of fields of scientific and practical life are to emerge from the Anthroposophical Society; we need this today so that the Anthroposophical Society, to the greatest extent possible, may have souls filled with vibrant life, souls fired by an understanding of the importance of this historical moment.

[ 41 ] If at all possible, ask yourselves and ask others whether it might not be possible in the near future to reinvigorate the old Anthroposophical Society and breathe life into it from the lives of its individual souls. It is necessary! Becoming skilled—that, too, is a possibility! But the human souls who wish to kindle their lives through an understanding of this important historical moment must find their footing on our soil. Do for the anthroposophical movement what many have more or less forgotten to do for it in recent times.