The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophy and the Human Soul III

[ 1 ] In the first of these lectures, I attempted to explain to you how Michael’s struggle with the dragon existed—as an idea that shapes humanity, indeed as an impulse that shapes humanity itself—right up into the 18th century; and in the second lecture, I then attempted to show how a fruitful revival of this impulse is possible and, in fact, must become possible. But before we discuss the specifics—let’s say, the organization of a Michaelmas festival at the beginning of autumn—which I plan to do tomorrow, I would like to speak today about some of the prerequisites for such an undertaking.

[ 2 ] The point is that impulses such as the Michael Impulse are in fact always connected with the fact that human beings gain a supersensible insight into their connection not only with earthly conditions but also with cosmic conditions; that they learn to feel themselves not only as citizens of the Earth but as citizens of the universe as they perceive it—whether perceived in a spiritual way, or in a physical reflection. Yet in general education today, the conditions for sensing the human being’s connection to the cosmos are as minimal as possible. We must say: Through their materialistically colored science, human beings certainly know earthly conditions to such an extent that they—at least as far as their material life in the broader sense of the word is concerned—feel connected to these earthly conditions. However, this knowledge of such a connection does not inspire enthusiasm. That is why all outward signs of such a connection have, in fact, become mere shadows. Human feelings toward the traditionally observed festivals are now but shadows. While these festivals—Christmas, Easter—had a profound influence on the entire social life and social institutions in earlier periods of human development, today they are little more than a faint reflection of what they once were; this reflection manifests itself in all sorts of customs, which, however, no longer have any profound social significance.

[ 3 ] If we are to consider how to bring the Michaelmas Festival to life—particularly in terms of its social significance, which I will discuss tomorrow—we must first, of course, cultivate a sense of what such a Michaelmas Festival might mean. For such a Michaelmas celebration should not have the same character as today’s festivities; rather, as I already hinted at here the day before yesterday, it must be drawn from the depths of the human being. But one can only reach those depths by once again penetrating and entering into the connection between the human being and the extraterrestrial cosmos, and with what arises from the extraterrestrial cosmos for the course of the year. To illustrate what I actually mean by this, I would simply like to bring to your attention just how abstract—and how terribly little it touches human beings—is everything that enters human consciousness today in the form of feelings and sensations regarding the extraterrestrial cosmos. Just think, in this regard, of all that astronomy, astrophysics, and so on accomplish today. They calculate the paths of the planets—or, for that matter, the positions of the fixed stars—and they are able, through spectral analysis, to draw conclusions about the material composition of these celestial bodies. But what does all that is discovered in this way actually have to do with the inner, intimate life of the human soul? With all this celestial knowledge, human beings feel like hermits on what they regard as the Earth. And the way of thinking associated with these matters today is, in essence, merely a system of very narrow concepts.

[ 4 ] To bring this home to us, let us consider a state of consciousness that is certainly present in ordinary life, even if it is of a lower order: the state of consciousness during dream-filled sleep. I’d like to briefly outline what pertains to dream-filled sleep, just to provide some context for today’s discussion.

[ 5 ] Dream-filled sleep is linked, as I already mentioned yesterday in my public lecture, to the inner states of the human organism; it transforms these inner states of the organism into images that resemble symbols, so that, for example, the movements of the heart are symbolized by flames of fire and the like; we will very easily be able to determine in detail how dream symbols are related to inner organic states and processes. Or they symbolize external events in life that exist within us as memories and the like. It is misleading under all circumstances to take the imagery of a dream too seriously. It is interesting; it has a sensational side; it is what fascinates many people immensely. But for those who look more deeply into human nature, the imaginative content of the dream is of extremely little significance. In contrast, the dramatic unfolding of the dream is of the utmost importance. I will illustrate this with an example.

[ 6 ] Someone might dream that he is embarking on a mountain hike. The hike is extremely difficult; the higher he climbs, the more difficult it becomes. He eventually reaches a region where his strength fails him; he can go no further. Conditions become so unfavorable that he cannot continue climbing; he must stop. A sense of anxiety, a touch of disappointment, creeps into the dream. Perhaps the dreamer then wakes up. Underlying this dream is something that should not actually be sought in the imaginative nature of the dream images, but rather in the emotional experience of an intention, in the escalation of the obstacles that stand in the way of this intention, and in the encounter with increasingly insurmountable obstacles. If we imagine all of this unfolding in an emotionally dramatic way, we have, so to speak, an emotional content that lives as a dramatic element behind the actual visual images of the dream. The very same thing that lies within this emotional content could now also be dreamed in a completely different way. The person in question might dream that he is entering a cave; it grows darker and darker; he feels his way farther and farther, and finally arrives in a swampy area. There he wades a little further, but after wading long enough, he reaches a kind of quagmire. He cannot go any farther. The same emotional and sensory drama lies within this image. The same dream, in terms of its dramatic content, could be dreamed in many other ways.

[ 7 ] The content of a dream can always vary. What lies behind the dream—the movements, the tension and relaxation, the anticipation and disappointment—is the essence of the dream. But the dream is clothed in images. How do these images arise? They arise, for example, when, upon waking, the “I” and the astral body—which are outside the physical body and the etheric body—experience something. What is experienced there as a supersensory experience is, of course, something that cannot be traced back to images from the sensory world at all; but as the “I” and the astral body submerge into the physical body and the etheric body, they are prompted to draw from the store of images that is available whatever happens to be on hand at that moment. And so the peculiar drama of the dream is clothed in images. Now the content of these images begins to interest us. The context is entirely different from that of external experiences. Where does this come from? The dream draws upon a multitude of external and internal experiences, but it places them in a different context. Why is that? It is because the dream is a protest against the way we live in the physical-sensory world between waking and falling asleep. In this physical-sensory world, between waking and falling asleep, we live interwoven with our entire lives within the laws of nature. The dream breaks through these laws of nature. It does not put up with these laws of nature; it tears events out of their context and arranges them in a different sequence. It protests against the laws of nature.

[ 8 ] People should learn that the moment one delves into the spiritual realm at all, one is protesting against the laws of nature. In this regard, those who seek to penetrate the spiritual world using the usual scientific method are, in a certain sense—I would say—quite comical. Dr. Ludwig Staudenmaier’s book Magic as an Experimental Natural Science is exceptionally characteristic in this regard. Such a person proceeds from the view that everything that is to be understood must be understood according to the scientific way of thinking. — Now, Staudenmaier does not focus specifically on dreams, but rather on so-called mediumistic phenomena, which are, in essence, a further development of the dream world. For a healthy person, the dream remains an experience that does not spill over into the outer organization. In the case of a medium, however, what is otherwise experienced by the ego and the astral body—and takes shape in the images of the physical body and the etheric body—then also spills over into the experiences of the physical body and the etheric body, and this gives rise to all the phenomena that manifest in the medium. Staudenmaier did not want—and in this he is absolutely right—to rely on what other mediums gave him, and so he made himself, in a certain sense, a medium. He dreamed, so to speak, while writing. He began to put pen to paper and pencil to paper, just as he had always seen mediums do, and sure enough—it worked! But he was utterly astonished by what came to light; he was astonished by the connections he would never have imagined before. He wrote down all sorts of things that lay completely outside the realm of his conscious life. And at times it was so far removed from his conscious life that he asked: “Yes, who are you who are writing here?”—“Spirits,” they replied. He had to write down: “Spirits!”—Just imagine, the materialist, who doesn’t believe in spirits at all, had to write down: “Spirits!”—Now he was convinced that whatever was writing there was lying. So he asked further why the spirits were lying to him like that. Then they said: “Yes, we have to lie to you like this; that’s just our way.” — Then he asked them all sorts of questions that related to himself. At one point, they even said: “Cabbage head.” — It’s hardly plausible that it stemmed from his own state of mind to refer to himself as a cabbage head. So all sorts of things came out that were characterized by the statement: “We have to lie to you.” — But then he said to himself: Of course there are no ghosts; it’s just my subconscious speaking.—But now the matter is becoming increasingly troubling, because now the subconscious is something that tells the conscious mind “cabbage head” and is lying, and such a process would have to lead the person in question to say to himself: “In my subconscious, I am a complete liar.”

[ 9 ] But ultimately, all of this points to nothing other than this: just as the world of dreams does, so too does that world into which one plunges protest against the connections governed by the laws of nature. Everything we can think, will, and feel in the physical-sensory world is distorted as soon as we enter this more or less subconscious world. Why? Well, it is precisely the dream that serves as the bridge to the spiritual world, and the spiritual world is thoroughly interwoven with a system of laws that is not that of the natural world—one that has an entirely different inner character. The dream is the transition to it. Anyone who believes they can understand the spiritual world through the laws of nature is very much mistaken. And so the dream is, in a sense, the harbinger of the necessity that, when we enter the spiritual world, we cannot simply continue to apply the laws of nature. We can continue using the same methods by preparing ourselves for it, but we enter into an entirely different system of laws when we enter the spiritual world.

[ 10 ] This is precisely what is so often overlooked. It is indeed true that today it is considered a fundamental principle that one can and should understand the world only in accordance with the intellectual capacity that has only developed over the course of the last three to four centuries. This has developed gradually. Today, people like that no longer exist—though they were still around in the first half of the 19th century—people such as Johannes Müller, Haeckel’s teacher, who himself admitted that certain problems he sought to investigate purely as a physiologist did not make sense to him when he thought about them in his ordinary, fully awake state; but then a dream would come over him, presenting him once more with the tissue he had dissected while awake, reenacting all the manipulations he had performed. Then, in his dream, the solution to many such puzzles became clear to him. Johannes Müller was still imbued with the belief that during sleep one is in this peculiar weaving of the spiritual, where one is not affected by the harsh necessity of the laws of physical nature, where one can even penetrate into the laws of physical nature, because even these laws of physical nature are based on something that is spiritual, and because the spiritual, in its foundations, is not of physical natural law, but merely presents this to us on its surface.

[ 11 ] One really has to think in paradoxical terms when following such thoughts to their logical conclusion, as they arise quite naturally from spiritual research. No one who thinks in terms of modern natural science would believe that a light, when it shines here at a specific location, still shines just as brightly at some distance away. The physicist calculates the decrease in light intensity as the square of the distance, and he calculates the decrease in gravitational force in the same way. With regard to these physical entities, he tells himself: What applies here on the surface of the Earth loses its validity as we move out into the cosmos. — Yet he does not apply this principle to the content of his own thinking. And yet this way of thinking is no different from what we learn here in earthly laboratories, in hospitals, and generally on Earth—except for the fact that two times two equals four—about earthly matters. If gravity decreases with the square of the distance, why should not the validity of what is a law of nature also decrease with the square of the distance and cease to apply beyond a certain distance? But this is precisely where spiritual science comes in. And it must say: If you wish to investigate the Orion Nebula or the nebula in the Hunting Dogs, you are doing the same thing as if you were applying earthly concepts and, for example, trying to illuminate Venus with an earthly candle. — When the truth is presented through such analogies based on spiritual research, it seems paradoxical to people. And yet, in that state in which we enter the spiritual world during sleep, we have more opportunities to explore, for example, the Orion Nebula or the nebula in the Hunting Dogs than we do with the methods developed through work in laboratories and observatories. We would learn far more about these things by dreaming about them than by thinking about them intellectually. Once one enters the cosmos, it is of no use to apply to that cosmos the things one has researched on Earth. Thus, with our current level of education, we find ourselves in a position where we actually wish to apply what we consider correct within our small earthly sphere to the entire cosmos, and it is readily apparent that, in reality, the truth cannot come to light in this way.

[ 12 ] If one proceeds from such considerations, then much of what was presented to humanity in earlier times through a primitive yet vivid clairvoyant perception becomes more valuable than it is to humanity today. And one will not even pass over those insights into human nature—which once arose among the shepherds of primeval times—as superficially as is usually done today. For these people dreamed more profoundly of the mysteries of the stars during their life as shepherds than people today, with their intellectual lives in observatories, are able to research, calculate, and determine with the spectroscope. As strange as it sounds, it is true. But one enters into this mysterious connection between humanity and the universe when one examines certain remnants preserved from ancient times from a spiritual-scientific perspective. And so please allow me today to speak of what may emerge when, on the one hand, we examine from a spiritual-scientific perspective the profound religious-ethical—but also social—significance of the ancient Druidic institutions, and on the other hand, that of the ancient institutions of the Mithraic Mysteries; for as we let these pass before our souls, gain insights into how a Michaelmas festival should actually be conceived.

[ 13 ] With regard to the Druidic mysteries, the lecture series I gave a few weeks ago in Penmaenmawr, Wales—located right next to the spot in England where the island of Anglesey lies offshore—was truly of very special significance, because there is a place there where, scattered among the ruins, one can find many remnants of the ancient sacrificial sites and the Druids’ mystery sites. Today, the remains—these ancient cromlechs and dolmens—are actually rather unsightly. One climbs up to these mountain heights and finds stones arranged there in such a way that they enclose a kind of chamber, with a larger stone lying on top, or one also finds such cromlechs arranged in a circle—there were originally always twelve. Right in the immediate vicinity of Penmaenmawr, one could climb up and find two such sun circles directly adjacent to one another. And it is precisely in this special region—where so much in the spiritual life of nature still exists that has a different effect than nature usually has today in other areas—that one could once again examine with the utmost clarity what I have expounded in various anthroposophical lectures specifically in relation to the Druidic mysteries. It is there—where King Arthur’s society also had a settlement on the island of Anglesey—that a special spiritual atmosphere truly prevails. I must characterize it as follows:

[ 14 ] When speaking of supersensible matters, one cannot form one’s thoughts in the same way as one otherwise does in everyday life or in science. There, one forms abstract thoughts, draws conclusions, and so on. Even if one is compelled to speak more or less abstractly—since our language, which has become abstract, demands it—one cannot be so abstract in one’s inner soul life when seeking to present spiritual science. There, everything must take place in images. One must have images and imaginations before one’s soul. But having images and imaginations before the soul means something different still from having thoughts in the soul. Thoughts in the soul are—depending on how more or less sluggish one is inwardly—extremely patient; one can hold onto them. Imaginations, however, always have a life of their own. One feels quite precisely: an imagination presents itself before one. It is different and yet similar to when one writes or draws. One writes or draws with the soul. But imaginations are not something as abstractly fixed as mere thoughts. One writes them down. Now, in most parts of Europe, where civilization has already taken on such an abstract character, these imaginations flit by relatively quickly; one must always wage an inner struggle when one wishes to depict the supersensible. It is just as if one were writing, and some demonic force were immediately erasing what had been written. It is gone again in an instant. So it is with the imaginations through which one makes the supersensible tangible in the imagination and experiences it as a soul experience.

[ 15 ] The spiritual atmosphere in those places in Wales that I mentioned has the peculiarity that, while imaginations are more difficult to imprint upon the astral realm there, they remain present longer and are more deeply engraved. This is precisely what one could perceive as particularly striking in that region. And it was indeed true that everything pointed to the possibility of finding a way back there—in a more spiritual manner—to what those Druid priests had actually intended back then—not during the decline of these Druidic cults, when they had something rather unsympathetic, even very terrible about them, but during their heyday.

[ 16 ] One need only look at a cromlech like this: it encloses, in a primitive way, a certain space that was covered. Now, when you consider sunlight, you first have the physical sunlight. But this physical sunlight is thoroughly permeated everywhere by the spiritual effects of the sun. And to speak of physical sunlight alone, as physicists do today, would be exactly like speaking of a human being in terms only of his muscles, bones, blood, and so on, without taking into account the soul-spiritual life within him. Light is by no means merely “phos.” Light is phosphorus, a bearer of light; it possesses an active, soulful aspect. This soulful aspect of light is lost to human beings in the purely sensory world. When the Druid priest stood within this burial site—the cromlechs were, like other ancient places of worship, usually built over graves—he would set up this structure, which was, in a certain sense, impervious to the physical rays of the sun. But the spiritual effects of the sun passed through it, and the Druid priest was specially trained to perceive these spiritual effects of the sun. And so, through the specially selected stones—they were always specially selected—he looked into that space where the spiritual effects of the sun entered, while the physical effects of the sun were excluded. And by then he had intimately trained his perception. For what one sees there in such a primitively constructed dark chamber is different in February, different in July or August, and different in December. In July, it has a slightly yellowish tinge; in December, on the other hand, it has a slightly bluish inner quality. Anyone who can observe this sees, in the qualitative changes that this enclosed shadow form undergoes in such a darkroom over the course of the year, the entire course of the year in the spiritual-psychic effects of the sun’s rays. And again, in these sun circles, the structures are arranged in such a way that they are arranged in a series of twelve, like the signs of the zodiac. Right on the mountain we had climbed, there was a larger sun circle of this kind, and a short distance away from it was a smaller one. If one had risen high into the air, say in a hot-air balloon, and looked down upon these two Druid circles—disregarding the short distance between them—one would have seen something truly moving: the same floor plan as that of the burned-down Goetheanum in Dornach.

[ 17 ] The old Druid priest had trained himself to observe what lay before his soul, noting how the sun’s shadows fell differently not only at every hour of the day but also in every season. He could trace these shifting shadows and, based on them, state precisely: “Now it is March; now it is October.” Through the perception this gave him, he stood within what was taking place in the cosmos, but also within what, emanating from the cosmos, held significance for life on Earth. Now just imagine what people do today when they want to determine the influence of cosmic life on earthly life. What do even the farmers do? They have their calendar, which tells them what to do on this or that day. Even that is done only approximately, for the thorough insights that once existed regarding these matters have faded away today; but there were no calendars in the ancient Druidic era—there wasn’t even a written language. What the Druid priest could say based on his observations of the sun was what was known about the connection between heaven and earth. And just as the Druid priest would say, “Now the sun is in such a position that the wheat should be sown”—or, “Now the sun is in such a position that the breeding bull must be led through the herd”—so it came to pass. Those times had a cult that was truly not an abstract prayer, but rather a cult that organized immediate, practical life according to how one connected with the spiritual essence of the universe. The great language of the heavens was interpreted, and it was applied to earthly matters.

[ 18 ] But this extended even into the most intimate aspects of social life. Based on what he perceived from the cosmos, the druid priest would specify what one should do on this or that day of the year so that it would be in harmony with the entire cosmos. This was a form of worship through which life itself was, in effect, a kind of religious service. In contrast, even the most mystical mysticism of today is a kind of abstraction, for it allows, so to speak, external nature to take its course, pays it no further attention, but acts and governs according to traditions, while it elevates itself inwardly, closes itself off as much as possible, and concentrates within itself in order to establish an abstract relationship with a divine-spiritual realm that is like a pipe dream. That was different, however, in those ancient times. There, through a cult that maintained a real connection to the universe, people united with what the gods created in the world and continually brought about. And as human beings on Earth, they carried out what they read as the will of the gods in the “star script” through institutions such as those of the Druids. But this “star script” first had to be deciphered. It is an immensely moving experience to be able to transport oneself back, right there on the spot, to what once took place during the heyday of Druidic culture, just as I have now described. And one finds such remnants of the ancient Druidic culture everywhere in those regions—and even in other regions as far as Norway.

[ 19 ] Thus, throughout Central Europe—in the regions of Germany extending as far as the Rhine Valley, and even into western France—one finds remnants and traces of the ancient cult of Mithras everywhere. I will mention only the most essential aspects of these as well. Everywhere you find, as the outward symbol of the cult of Mithras, the bull with a man riding it, thrusting a sword into the bull’s neck. You find a scorpion biting the bull, or a snake below. But wherever the images are complete, you find this image of the bull with the man surrounded by the starry sky, specifically by the signs of the zodiac. Once again, we may ask ourselves: What does this image actually express? — What this image expresses will never be uncovered by an external, antiquated history, because it cannot establish the connections through which one might arrive at the meaning of this figure riding the bull. To arrive at that meaning, one must first know what kind of training those who served in the Mithras cult underwent. The entire ceremony can, of course, be conducted in such a way that it is a beautiful—or, for that matter, an ugly—ceremony, and that one gains nothing of any substance from it. Only those who had undergone a certain training could derive anything meaningful from it; that is why all the descriptions of the Mithraic Mysteries, despite the promising nature of the images, are actually rather vague. For anyone who wished to serve the Mithras cult had to cultivate their sensibility in a particularly subtle and intimate way. Everything depended on the Mithras initiate cultivating his sensibility in this way.

[ 20 ] Yesterday, in my public lecture, I said that the human heart is actually a subconscious sensory organ. The head subconsciously perceives, through the heart, what is happening in the physical functions of the lower abdomen and the chest. Just as we perceive external events in the sensory world through the eye, so the human heart is in reality a sensory organ with regard to the functions mentioned. The head—specifically the cerebellum—subconsciously perceives through the heart how the blood is nourished by processed food, how the kidneys, the liver, and so on function, and everything else that takes place within the organism. For this reason, the heart is the sensory organ of the upper part of the human being. Elevating this heart—as a sensory organ—to a certain level of consciousness constituted the training of those who were to be engaged in the Mithraic cult. They had to develop a subtle, conscious perception of what is taking place within the human organism—in the liver, kidneys, spleen, and so on. The upper human being—the head human—had to perceive with subtlety what was taking place in the chest and limb human. Such training in earlier times was not an intellectual training, as we are accustomed to today, but a training of the whole human being, directed primarily toward the capacity for feeling. And once the student had attained the necessary maturity, he could say—just as we say, based on what we perceive with our physical eyes, “There are rain clouds” or “There is a blue sky”—“Now this process is taking place in my organism; now that process is taking place.”

[ 21 ] This is, in fact, what takes place in the human organism—though for the abstract thinker, it remains the same throughout the entire year. Once science has once again arrived at real truths about these matters, people will be amazed at how — though not in that crude, clumsy way in which it can already be investigated using today’s precision instruments — it can be determined in a completely different way for human beings: how their blood changes, how their digestion differs in January from that in September, so that the heart, as a sensory organ, is a marvelous barometer for the course of the year within the human organism’s metabolic system. To this end, the Mithras disciple was trained to perceive the course of the year within himself through the organization of the heart, through the science of the heart, which taught him the path of food—metamorphosed through digestion—within the organism and the absorption of the digested matter into the blood. And in what was perceived there, the entire course of external nature was actually revealed in the human being, in the movement of the inner human being.

[ 22 ] Ah, what is our abstract science, even if we describe plants and plant cells, animals and animal tissues with the greatest precision? What is this abstract science compared to what once existed in a more instinctive way—namely, that the whole human being could make himself an organ of knowledge, that he could, like the Mithraic disciple, develop his emotional faculties as an organ of knowledge? Human beings carry animal nature within themselves, and they truly carry it within themselves in a more intense way than is commonly thought. And what the ancient Mithraic disciples perceived through their science of the heart could be represented by nothing other than the bull. And the forces that act through the metabolic-limb human and are tamed only by the higher human—these forces are symbolized by all that which appears as the scorpion and the serpent surrounding the bull. And the true human being, in his crippled state, sits above with the primal power, thrusting the sword of Michael into the bull’s throat. But what is to be conquered there—as it manifests itself in the course of the year—was known only to those who had been trained in this regard.

[ 23 ] And now this symbol truly begins to take on meaning. No matter how much one might look at it or try to depict it artistically based on what people generally know today, nothing comes of it. Something only comes of it when one knows something of the heart science of the ancient Mithras disciples. And then, when a person looked at themselves through their heart, they truly studied the spirit of the sun’s annual journey through the zodiac. Therefore, it was quite correct—and one gains these experiences in this way, with the human being, as a higher being, riding upon their lower nature—that the cosmos was arranged in a circle around the human being, for the spiritual aspect of the cosmos was experienced in this way. It is truly the case that the more one looks, through the resurgent spiritual science, into what an ancient, semi-conscious, dreamlike, yet clairvoyant perception has brought to light, the greater one’s respect for it becomes. One truly becomes reverent toward the ancient cults when one delves into them and, as one penetrates deeper, discovers—as with the Mithras cult, for example—that the ancient Mithras priest, by being able to penetrate the course of the year, could instruct his congregation on what was to be done on each and every day of the year. Thus, the cult of Mithras served to discern from the heavens what was to happen on Earth. Just imagine what a different kind of enthusiasm, what a different kind of impulsiveness arises for what is to be done on Earth when one feels oneself to be an active agent on Earth, so that the impulses one has first explored through the great cosmic scripture—which one has read from the universe—flow into this activity, proceeding from such knowledge and applying the resulting impulses to the individual tasks of life. As unsympathetic as this may be to us by today’s standards—and rightly so—it was good and right according to the old concepts. But in making this reservation, one must realize what it means to read from the heavens what is to happen on Earth in human life, and thus to know oneself to be one with the Divine, rather than discussing, in the spirit of Adam Smith or Karl Marx, what should be done with regard to social life. Only those who can hold these contrasts before their soul will know how to discern what new impulses are necessary for social life today.

[ 24 ] Only when one has laid this foundation does one attain the proper state of mind for extending one’s knowledge from Earth into outer space; no longer looking up—as is usually done—at Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and so on, by merely using abstract calculations or the spectroscope, but rather applying those means that lie in imagination, inspiration, and intuition. Then, however, one comes to realize—beginning with imagination—that the celestial bodies become something entirely different from how they are presented to modern astronomy, partly through sensory observation and partly through mere deductions. To today’s astronomer, for example, the Moon appears as a mineral celestial body that has grown old, reflecting sunlight like a kind of mirror, which then falls upon the Earth under certain conditions. Little attention is paid to the effects of this sunlight at all. For a time, people applied these ideas to the weather. Yet even the most intelligent minds of the nineteenth century, of course, did not believe in the connection between the phases of the Moon and the weather; those who possessed a slight mystical inclination in their souls—such as Gustav Theodor Fechner—did, however, believe in it. I have often told the story in our circles of how Schleiden, the great botanist of the 19th century, and Gustav Theodor Fechner worked together at a university, and how Schleiden naturally dismissed as superstition Fechner’s careful statistical comparison of how much rain fell on days of the full moon versus days of the new moon. For Professor Schleiden, what Gustav Theodor Fechner said about the moon’s effects on the weather was pure superstition. But then the following incident occurred. Both professors had wives, and back then in Leipzig, it was still customary to collect rainwater for laundry; barrels were set out for this purpose. So, naturally, both Professor Fechner’s wife and Professor Schleiden’s wife collected their rainwater in such barrels. If things had proceeded according to natural principles, Professor Schleiden’s wife would actually have had to say: “It is foolish to worry about what influence the phases of the moon have on the amount of rainwater.” — But even though Professor Schleiden called it foolish to give the matter serious consideration, Professor Schleiden’s wife got into a terrible argument with Professor Fechner’s wife over the fact that both women wanted to set up their barrels for rainwater at the same spot at the same time. The women knew from their own life experience what rainwater was all about, while the men, from their lecterns, behaved quite differently.

[ 25 ] The Moon’s outward appearance is, then, just as I have described it. But especially when one moves from imagination to inspiration, the Moon immediately presents itself with its spiritual content. This spiritual content of the Moon is not merely something conceived in an abstract sense, but rather a real lunar population; and from the perspective of spiritual science, the Moon appears as a kind of fortress in the cosmos. Outwardly, the Moon reflects not only the Sun’s rays but also the external influences of the universe as a whole back toward the Earth. But inside the Moon lies a self-contained world—a world that today can only be reached by ascending, in a certain sense, to the spiritual realm. You can read about many of the hints found in older literature regarding the Moon’s relationship to other beings in the cosmos and compare them with what can now be said about the nature of the Moon from the perspective of anthroposophy.

[ 26 ] We have often heard that, when one looks back through the Earth’s evolution, one arrives at ancient times when human beings not only possessed that instinctive wisdom I have already spoken of today, but also had as teachers beings who never took on a physical body, higher spiritual beings and beings who assumed only an etheric body; their teaching of human beings consisted not in speaking to them as we speak today, but in imparting wisdom to them inwardly—in a sense, instilling it into the etheric body. People knew that these higher beings were present, just as we know that a physical teacher or the like is present, but they also knew that these beings exist entirely in a spiritual form around human beings. Everything that is recognized even within the Catholic Church as the primordial wisdom of humankind—that primordial wisdom that once existed, of which even the Vedas and the noble Vedanta philosophy are but shadowy reflections—can be traced back to this teaching by higher spiritual beings. That primordial wisdom, which was never written down, existed in such a way that human beings did not conceive of it, but rather it grew within them; for we must not imagine the influence of the primordial teachers as having taken the form of a demonstrative lesson. Just as we children today learn language by imitating older people without any special instruction—just as we develop many things in general as if they were growing from within us—so in those times there was a mysterious influence of the primordial teachers upon these older people, not an abstract form of instruction, so that a person simply found themselves knowing at a certain age. Just as people today get their teeth or reach sexual maturity at a certain age, so, too, did knowledge dawn upon people in this way back then. I believe many a student today would be glad if something like that still existed—if knowledge would simply dawn upon them without having to make a special effort,

[ 27 ] But it was a very different kind of knowledge from what we have today. It was a form of knowledge that was an organic force within human beings, connected to the power of growth and so on. It was, therefore, this primal wisdom of a completely different character, and I can only illustrate what happened in relation to this primal wisdom by means of a comparison. Imagine that I first pour some liquid into a glass, then add a salt. I dissolve the salt so that I have a cloudy liquid; then I do something to cause the salt to settle at the bottom as sediment, leaving the solution at the top. The solution at the top is then clearer and brighter, while the sediment at the bottom is denser. Now, if I want to describe what permeated human beings during the time of ancient primordial wisdom, it is a mixture of the spiritually pure and the physically animalistic. When we think today, we believe that these abstract thoughts reign and weave within us without being anything in and of themselves, and that, in turn, something else—such as breathing and blood circulation—exists independently. But for the primeval human being in earlier earthly epochs, all of this was one and the same: he had to breathe, and his blood circulated within him, and his will was present in the blood circulation. Then human thinking rose more toward the head and became purer, like the thinner liquid at the top of a glass, while the sediment, so to speak, formed at the bottom.

[ 28 ] This was at the time when the Primordial Teachers were withdrawing more and more from the Earth, when this primordial wisdom was no longer imparted in the old way. And where did these Primordial Teachers withdraw to? We find them again in this lunar fortress! They are there, continuing their existence. And on Earth, the dregs remained behind—namely, the present form of the reproductive forces. These reproductive forces did not yet exist in their present form when primordial wisdom was present on Earth; they only came to be this way, so to speak, as the dregs. I do not mean to say that they are something bad, but in this context, they are the dregs. And what is, so to speak, the dissolving liquid above is our abstract wisdom today. So we see here how, with the development of humanity, on the one hand the more spiritual—in the abstract sense—emerges, and how, on the other hand, the coarser, animalistic elements result as dregs. In this way, one gradually gains an idea of the spiritual content of the Moon. Such a science, however—which at that time had a more prophetic character—was already present in people’s instinctive clairvoyance.

[ 29 ] Just as one speaks of the Moon in this way—by referring, I might say, to its population and its spiritual nature—so too can one speak of Saturn. If one comes to know Saturn through spiritual scientific effort—which is already possible to some extent through imagination, though not to a great degree, and even more so through inspiration and intuition—this leads to one becoming more and more deeply immersed in the universe, so that one follows the process of sensory perception. A person experiences this process of sensory perception: they see some object and then perceive the color red in that object. This is something entirely different from when, through the methods described in my books, one steps out of the physical body and can then observe how an external object affects the human physical organism—how, rising from within, the etheric forces grasp what takes place as a physical process—as a physical-chemical process, for example, in the eye during the process of perception. I would like to say that the ordinary way the world reveals itself in perception—and even in scientific observation—does not deeply move a person. But when one steps out of oneself in this way and then has before oneself, in one’s etheric body—and perhaps also in the astral body—and then subsequently sees how such a sensory process of perception or cognition came about, even though one has stepped out of one’s physical-sensory realm as a spiritual being, then one feels a powerful, an intense process within one’s spirituality: What one experiences there is a true sense of rapture. The world becomes vast. And what one is otherwise accustomed to seeing only in the outer realm—the zodiac in its outer manifestations as constellations—arises as something that wells up from within. Anyone who might say, for example, “Reminiscences are welling up in the one who speaks thus,” does not understand the process in question. For what wells up there are truly not reminiscences, but rather powerful imaginations interwoven with intuitions, and one then begins to see from within what one has otherwise only seen from the outside. As a human being, one becomes interwoven with all the mysteries of the zodiac. And from within the universe, if one seizes the right moment, the mystery of Saturn, for example, can then dawn upon one inwardly as it passes through the signs of the zodiac. Reading the cosmos consists in finding the methods to interpret the celestial bodies as they pass through the signs of the zodiac, as seen from within. What each individual planet tells you provides the vowels of the world’s script. And what takes shape around the vowels as the planets pass through the signs of the zodiac provides the consonants, if I may put it that way. One truly comes to know the essence of the planetary realm when, from within, one gains an insight into that which one otherwise sees only from the outside.

[ 30 ] This is the way, for example, to come to know Saturn according to its true inner nature. One then realizes: There is its population, which serves as the repository of our solar system’s memory. The spirits of Saturn preserve everything that has happened in our solar system since time immemorial, as if in a mighty cosmic memory. Therefore, anyone who wishes to study the historical, the great cosmic-historical course of our planetary system must certainly not speculate—as Kant and Laplace did—that there was once a primordial nebula which condensed and began to move in a spiral, from which the planets then separated, while the Sun remained at the center, around which the planets now orbit. I have spoken about this on several occasions and said: It is wonderful to demonstrate to children the experiment in which you have a drop of oil floating in a liquid, pierce a sheet of paper from above with a needle, and then set the oil drop in a rotating motion so that smaller drops of oil break away from it. It may otherwise be good in life to lose oneself. But in such a case, one must not forget what one is doing in the experiment itself—namely, that one has set the oil drop in motion oneself. And accordingly, in the Kant-Laplace theory, one should not forget the one who is turning it; one would have to project him out into the universe, imagining there a great, powerful “Master Teacher” who is turning the pin. Then one would have spoken truthfully and honestly. But as science speaks of these things today, it simply does not speak honestly.

[ 31 ] I described to you how one comes to see, in reality, what actually lives within the planets and within the celestial bodies in general. On Saturn, one must study the nature of the planetary system in its cosmic-historical development. A spiritual science, then, can in turn provide the human soul with an experience that can feel like a cosmic experience. Today, we really speak only of earthly experiences. Cosmic experience leads us out into a shared experience of the cosmos. And only when we experience the cosmos in this way will we, in turn, develop a spiritualized instinct for the cycle of the year, into which we are woven with our organic and social lives. We will develop an instinct for how the Earth stands in a completely different relationship to the cosmos as spring gives way to summer, and again in a different relationship as summer gives way to fall and into winter. Then we will gain a sense of how life on Earth flows differently when spring, with its sprouting and budding, is upon us, and how it unfolds differently when autumn, with its withering of nature, is upon us. We will gain an appreciation for the difference between the awakening life of nature in spring and the dormant existence of nature in autumn. Through this, human beings will in turn become ready to align themselves—through their festivals, which can have social significance—with the course of nature, just as the forces of nature, through their physical organization, align them with the rhythm of their breathing and blood circulation.

[ 32 ] When we look at what lies within our skin, we see that we live there through our breathing and blood circulation. What we are there—that is, who we are as physical human beings—is part of the course of the world, along with what takes place within us. Yet we live outwardly just as interwoven with the external natural world as we are inwardly interwoven with our breathing and our blood circulation. And what, in truth, is the human being in his consciousness? Yes, he is actually an earthworm—but, moreover, an earthworm for whom it never rains. It’s so lovely when you walk in certain areas where it rains a lot; that’s when the earthworms come out, and you have to be careful—as you do when you love an animal—not to step on them. And then you think to yourself, those poor creatures must always be down there; they only come out of the ground when it rains, and when it doesn’t rain, they stay down there. But today’s materialistic human being is just such an earthworm—one for whom it never rains. For if we are to stick with this comparison, the rain for him would have to consist of the radiance of spiritual insight; otherwise, he will always be wriggling around down there, where there is never any light. Humanity today must overcome this earthworm-like nature. It must break free from it, must come into the light—the spiritual light of the day. And the call for the Feast of Michael is the call for the spiritual light of the day.

[ 33 ] I wanted to point that out to you before I can discuss the things that can make a Michaelmas celebration a particularly meaningful one—including in a social sense.