The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Michael Imagination: Spiritual Milestones Throughout the Year

[ 1 ] What I have to say to you today will be expressed in the language of imagery, drawn from the life of the imagination—that life of the imagination which is the expression, the revelation, of the spiritual world, that spiritual world into which the human being is woven with his entire being and all his activity. We know, of course, from the various descriptions that have been given here, that one cannot speak of the spiritual world—when its concrete manifestations are concerned—in the same abstract way that one speaks of external, sensually perceptible nature. But we also know that the way in which one must speak about it is not an unreal one, but on the contrary, a much more real one than the logical, abstract speech we use when we merely wish to express natural truths. With this, I merely wished to point out the overall approach to the consideration I now intend to undertake before you.

[ 2 ] When a person looks beyond the physical-sensory world with the eye of the spirit, a spiritual world is revealed to them, in the face of which they feel compelled to use the phenomena of the physical world as images to express what is spiritually revealed to them. And so let me begin these remarks with an image that is, in truth, a profound reality. It has always been the case in the history of human development that humanity has received the impulses for its activity from the spiritual world. And those who were able to see found these impulses, as it were, inscribed in a spiritual light in letters of bronze, so that they could guide themselves by them. It is the case in the spiritual world that we can compare what is at stake here to mile markers in the physical world—but not the kind that perhaps merely bear a hand-drawn sign with some place name on them, but rather mile markers in which, in words of great resonance, it is expressed what is to be transmitted into human thinking, feeling, and willing. It is spiritual milestones that I am speaking of. Such indications in the spiritual world, however, are usually formulated in a peculiar way for human beings, and in every age they are expressed in a kind of enigmatic language. One must first make a certain effort to get to the heart of the actual enigma. One must bring together much of what one knows so that the signpost, in its enigmatic language, can become a genuine impulse for life. And so, especially today—in keeping with our present time and the near future—one finds such guiding words in what I would call—for my sake—the astral light, which can become impulses for human beings.

[ 3 ] On a wide variety of occasions—I would say, in a wide variety of places—it appears to us today, if we have the ability to perceive it, as something both admonishing and somewhat enigmatic, which then evokes in the human being the feeling that he should align himself with it, that he should take it in as a powerful impulse into his will, into his entire soul life. And that which shines out at us in the astral light like such a spiritual milestone consists, in a sense, of the words:

You shape it to serve you,
You reveal it according to its intrinsic value
In many of your works.
Yet it will only be your salvation
When the supreme power of its spirit
Is revealed to you.

[ 4 ] First, a call to figure out what is actually meant. There is talk of some kind of impulse, of something that is there, something that people are familiar with—otherwise, one could not expect them to find an answer.

You shape it to serve you,
You reveal it according to its intrinsic value
In many of your works.
Yet it will only be your salvation
When the supreme power of its spirit
Is revealed to you.

[ 5 ] Today’s reflection will be devoted to explaining these words, which are revealed to human beings like a guiding impulse emanating from the astral light.

[ 6 ] Let us recall some of the points I have already discussed here. Let us remember that the cycle of the year—through spring, summer, fall, and winter—has a spiritual content in its regularity; that spiritual and supersensible events are revealed in what takes place throughout the year, just as the human being’s supersensible soul and spirit are revealed in what occurs in his physical life between birth and death. Let us remember that in what appears outwardly in the course of the year—in the snow of winter, in the sprouting, growing life of spring, in the blooming life of summer, in the ripening, fruiting life of autumn—that in all that is revealed so physically to human beings, a spiritual element is hidden, a spiritual element that is the bearer. And let us first turn our gaze to what takes place in the course of the year, from spring through summer and into fall.

[ 7 ] Spiritual beings live in everything the Earth reveals—in stone and plant, in all living things; not merely a general, vague spirituality, but individual spiritual beings, nature spirits. These nature spirits take refuge in the bosom of the earth during the winter; these nature spirits are, so to speak, all breathed in by the earth; they are within the earth. When spring comes, the earth, so to speak, breathes out its spirituality, and these nature spirits strive upward. They strive upward with the forces of sprouting, budding life; they strive with the life that manifests itself in the light-filled, sun-warmed air; they flow upward with it. And when we then reach the time of St. John’s Day, the height of summer, we see up there in the heights—when we gaze up at them— the image that reveals itself—embodied in the formation of clouds, but also powerfully embodied in lightning and thunder, embodied in all that is meteoric up there—is precisely that which lived as nature spirits in the bosom of the earth during the winter. During the winter, we must turn our gaze downward toward the earth and must sense or observe how the nature spirits work, hidden beneath the blanket of snow, so that spring and summer may arise once more from the creative earth out of winter.

[ 8 ] If we look down toward the Earth during the summer, we see that the Earth is, in a sense, depleted of these nature spirits. But these nature spirits have gone out into the universe. They have united with the cloud formations and with everything that the human eye can perceive in the heights. These nature spirits have flowed upward into the heights in everything I have already mentioned, but they have carried with them—in immense subtlety, in an immensely fine dilution—that which manifests coarsely and outwardly as lifeless in sulfur, in what is called “sulfur.” And in fact, these nature spirits weave and live during midsummer, undulating and surging in cloud formations and the like, particularly in sulfur, which is present in an extraordinarily fine form precisely during the summer months in the heights of earthly existence. So that if we could, for example, travel through the heights of our earthly formation during midsummer with our sense of taste, we would perceive a sulfuric taste or perhaps even a sulfuric odor, but in an extraordinarily subtle, in an extraordinarily intimately delicate way. Nevertheless, what develops up there under the influence of the sun’s warmth and sunlight is similar to what takes place in the human organism when desire, longing, emotion, and the like well up from within it. And whoever is able to see and sense such things knows that the nature spirits live in an element up there in the heights during midsummer, one that is actually as saturated with desire as the life of desire connected to the animal nature of the human being—that animal nature in which the human being is also “sulfurized,” permeated by highly diluted sulfur. In a sense, we see the lower aspect of the human being—the animalistic aspect—as a swelling natural formation, permeated by the nature spirits, above us in midsummer.

[ 9 ] What we recognize as such “sulfurized” matter when it weaves and lives within human nature—that is what we call the Ahrimanic; the Ahrimanic actually lives within it. So we can also say: When we turn our spiritual gaze upward into the heights at the height of summer, the Ahrimanic reveals itself to us in the cosmic craving for sulfur. — When we imagine the human being placed within this entire cosmic context, we must say to ourselves: That which constitutes the lower nature within the human being is absorbed by the Earth in winter, and the Earth spreads crystalline snow over it; “in this way, the Earth takes the Ahrimanic from it.” — When it is free in midsummer, it acts as a cosmic craving out in the cosmos; it is even subject to the laws emanating from the planets neighboring the Earth and acting upon it. And now it becomes evident that there exists in the cosmos a counterforce against this Ahrimanic craving, against this animalistic, craving aspect of the human being that has, so to speak, been projected outward into the cosmos. That which emotionally subdues human beings, which pulls them down from the human realm into the animal realm, and which reveals itself up in the heights during midsummer—it is against this that the counterforce is set within the cosmos. And this counterforce reveals itself in those remarkable products that occasionally fall from the cosmos to Earth in the form of cosmic products containing meteoric iron. When you look at a piece of meteorite iron, you have in that piece a remarkable testimony to the iron spread throughout the cosmos. In the frequent meteor showers of August—which, so to speak, set the meteorite iron in motion quite particularly in the cosmos—this counterforce of nature against the desire-driven, which has gone out into the cosmos at this time, reveals itself outwardly. And in the cosmic iron that is concentrated in meteorites, we have the arrows that the cosmos sends out against the desire-driven, animalistic forces that manifest themselves in the cosmos in the way I have just described to you.

[ 10 ] In this way, we can look upon the wise guidance of the cosmos with understanding and reverence. We know, after all, that human beings need this animal nature precisely because it is only by overcoming it that they can develop the very forces that make them fully human. And human beings could not possess this nature of desire, this animalistic aspect, if this animalistic and desiring quality were not also a part of the cosmos. Thus, the sulfuric, the sulfur-like, the Ahrimanic-sulfuric is, so to speak, one pole out there in the cosmos, and the arrows sent from the cosmos through space to combat this sulfuric, this sulfur-like quality are then concentrated in meteoric iron—in the meteoric projectiles, I might say—of the universe.

[ 11 ] But man is indeed a true microcosm, truly a small world. Everything that manifests itself out there in the great world in such majestic and gigantic phenomena as meteoric events also manifests itself within the very core of the human physical being. For this physical being is merely an expression, a manifestation of the human spiritual being. And so we carry within us—originating, as it were, from the animalistic lower region of the human being—the sulfuric element. We must realize that this sulfuric-Ahrimanic force storms through the human organism, stirring up its desire-nature and its emotions. We feel it within us; we see it in midsummer in the cosmic veil of desire above us. But we also see how the iron arrows of the meteoric force pierce this cosmic veil of desire, purifying and clarifying it, as it were, acting as a counterpole to the animalistic-desire-filled nature. For in this piercing of the meteoric iron arrows from the cosmos, the animalistic-desire-filled veil of midsummer above us is purified.

[ 12 ] Just as this occurs in a magnificent, majestic way out there in the vast cosmos, so it also occurs continuously within us. We produce the iron particles of our blood within ourselves in combination with other substances, and while on the one hand the process of sulfurization pulses through our blood, the inner iron acts as a counterpole, functioning meteorically within us and performing the same role that meteoric iron performs out there in the cosmos. We may conceive of the relationship between the human being and the cosmos in such a way that we find in the flash of the meteoric the cosmic counterpart of that which, within us, is a continuous, meteoric inner flash—occurring millions and millions of times over—of what, from the iron in our blood, liberates us, clarifies us, and purifies us against the process of sulfurization taking place in that very same blood.

[ 13 ] Thus, we are an inner reflection of the cosmos. The cosmos undergoes this process during midsummer. Because human beings, having emancipated themselves from nature with regard to time, stand within nature, they continually carry this midsummer season within themselves alongside the other seasons, just as they continually carry within their memory what they have experienced in the past. Outwardly it disappears; inwardly it remains. So it is also with what constitutes the human being as a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm. But human beings must grasp spiritually and psychologically what they thus carry within their physical bodies; they must be able to experience it within themselves—that is, to experience this meteoric shooting of the “blood-iron” into the “blood-sulfur” as freedom, as initiative, as the strength of their will. Otherwise, it remains within him, at best, an animal or vegetative process. Our spiritual and soul development as human beings consists precisely in this: that we grasp the processes taking place within us—such as this iron-sulfur process—with our spiritual and soul nature, and send our spiritual and soul nature into them as an impulse. Just as we are able, when we make a tool for ourselves and can handle it, to use that tool to do this or that, so too can we, through our will, put that which works and lives within us—such as this iron-sulfur process—at our service, provided we handle it, provided we, as human beings, take control of the inner processes of our body.

[ 14 ] Let’s now shift our focus back from humanity to the cosmos. What is happening out there in the cosmos is a serious warning to humankind. For this process of meteoric iron in the cosmos truly reminds us of our physical inner being, which, however, can be placed in the service of our spiritual inner being. Now we come to the question of how we are to interpret that iron inscription in the astral light:

You shape it to serve you,
You reveal it according to its intrinsic value
In many of your works.

[ 15 ] Let us look around at modern life—the life that has emerged over the course of the last few centuries—and see what is a central feature of materialistic culture: the use of iron in the realm of earthly life. Let us look wherever our culture has flourished in recent times: it was iron that brought into the physical world everything that has led to the flourishing of materialistic culture. We look at what people have brought together in such an unprecedented way, what has, in such an unprecedented way, charted the course for the branches of materialistic culture and paved the way for them: everywhere we look, we see iron and its processing.

[ 16 ] When we speak of materialism in spiritual life, the essence of materialism in the spiritual realm lies in the fact that we think, in every instance, that everything is matter, and that the spirit is, so to speak, merely the byproduct of material activity. But the materialism of humanity over the last four centuries is revealed not only in the fact that people think materialistically, but also in their handling of external things. Driven by the impulses of modern culture, humanity has used iron for material culture, and has regarded what falls to it from the heights of the heavens in the form of meteoric iron at most as a rarity, or has sought to explain it with a science that cannot grasp much of it. But this meteoric iron, which falls to Earth from the cosmos and has a purifying and clarifying effect on animal life, is a reminder that we should look up from the material use of iron in earthly services to what iron, as a meteoric formation, plays out above us—and above all within us—in heavenly services. For these meteoric processes are always taking place within us. And so the first part of this admonition, shining toward us in astral light, appears to us as a word written in letters of bronze:

O man,
You have put iron to your earthly use.

You shape it for your service,
You reveal it according to its material value
In many of your works.
Yet it will only be your salvation,
When revealed to you
Is the supreme power of its spirit.

[ 17 ] Not only should we look beyond the materialistic worldview to a spiritual one, but we should also look beyond what we use in the service of material culture to the spiritual, cosmic aspect of these structures that serve material purposes. Thus, it is precisely this saying—which must first be unraveled—that points us to the spirit that lives in the universe, revealed in meteoric phenomena, especially during midsummer. For there the Ahrimanic process of sulfurization—which otherwise exists only within the human being—becomes a cosmic process, and the meteoric process is a counter-process: these are the arrows that the cosmos sends into the animalistic desires in the heights.

[ 18 ] When one allows all of this to take effect upon one’s soul, one truly feels the human being in connection with the entire world around him, and senses within him the human being’s own blood—the blood permeated by the soul, the blood imbued with spirit. One feels within it this contrast between the Ahrimanic and the blood-iron that purifies the Ahrimanic, one feels the inner meteoric process. One looks up with understanding at what is taking place out there, as the cosmic spiritual forces send their iron arrows into the animalized world of cosmic desires; one feels completely connected, completely devoted to the cosmos. It is precisely in these individual phenomena that one feels truly devoted to the cosmos.

[ 19 ] But when one feels this in all seriousness, a cosmic imagination takes shape out of this feeling; then one cannot help but shape and form this cosmic imagination. Just as an animal relates differently to external, sensory nature—unable to form concepts or ideas about it, but only general impressions—whereas a human being forms ideas, so too the contemplative soul, to whom exact clairvoyance has dawned, can do nothing other than take what it experiences in this way—feeling into its own meteoric process— contemplating the cosmic meteoric process as the rich fullness of life revealed through such phenomena, and to bring it into a synthesized, inwardly saturated image—an imagination that represents the intergrowth of the human being, the microcosm, with the macrocosm. Therefore, such an imagination is not merely something formed by the imagination, but rather it is the truly real expression of what lives through the world and through humanity—in our case, through the phenomena of the cycle of the year.

[ 20 ] The imagination that now presents itself to human beings through this experience is precisely the one that emerges from sharing in the natural processes of the annual cycle—from midsummer through autumn, until the end of midsummer and the beginning of autumn. And out of this experience springs, standing before the soul in living reality, the figure of Michael. From what I have described to you, the figure of Michael reveals himself in his struggle with the dragon, with the animal nature of the human being, with the process of sulfurization. And if one understands what is actually taking place there, then the soul—which is formed by emerging from cosmic life and weaving itself—simply creates Michael’s battle with the dragon. Michael himself appears as the outward expression of what is at work out there in the cosmos, combating the animalistic, desire-driven nature. But he appears with the pointing sword, through which he points toward the higher human nature. He appears with the pointing sword, and we envision Michael correctly when we perceive the iron of his sword as having been melted and forged in a cosmic manner. Thus, I might say, the figure of Michael steps forth from a spiritual cloud formation with a positive, gazing, pointing gaze, with an eye that is like a pointer, sending the gaze outward from itself rather than drawing it back inward, and Michael’s arm appears to us, sprayed from all sides by meteoric iron formations that, as if melted and recast by the cosmic forces of desire, take shape as Michael’s flaming sword.

[ 21 ] We imagine him correctly, this Michael, in a way that is entirely true to reality, when we picture his face woven from the golden light of summer, with that positive gaze that is like a pointer leading the way, as it were, and that radiates like a beam of light from within. We picture Michael correctly when we see his outstretched arm ablaze with sparkling meteoric iron, which melts together into the sword with which he shows humanity the paths from animal nature to higher human nature, showing the way from the summertime, when human beings are most attuned to outer nature, when they most fully develop an awareness of nature, to that time, the autumn season, when human beings can only experience—if they experience nature at all—nature as it withers and dies. But it would be dreadful for human beings if, as autumn approaches, they could only experience this nature that is killing itself and withering away. If we experience spring and are truly whole human beings, then we surrender ourselves to nature as it sprouts, shoots forth, grows, and flourishes. If we are such whole human beings, then we bloom with every flower, we sprout with every leaf, and we ourselves ripen with every seed. There we surrender ourselves to nature as it rises, sprouts, and shoots forth. We can surrender ourselves to it; it embodies life. We feel life by sharing in its life. We do right to surrender ourselves to nature, for there we find life. In autumn, we cannot develop this awareness of nature within ourselves, for if we develop it one-sidedly, we must inevitably witness life as it dies and becomes paralytic. Human beings must not go along with this; they must summon the strength to resist it. Just as they must experience living nature through their own lives, so must they set their self against dying nature and death. Awareness of nature must give way to self-awareness.

[ 22 ] This is the grand, majestic picture of the approaching autumn: that we see in the events of the cosmos a warning that human awareness of nature must evolve into self-awareness! But to achieve this, human beings need the strength to overcome, through soul and spirit, the inner destructive forces of their animal nature. The guidance for this comes from observing the phenomena of the cosmos; the guidance comes from that which reveals itself in the form of Michael—with his pointing, positive gaze and the flaming meteor sword in his right hand. And this Michael appears to us precisely in conflict with the animalistic, desire-driven nature, for which the image also emerges from the whole of life as it unfolds. If we wish to paint the entire image, we cannot paint it out of human arbitrariness; we can paint it only from what the cosmos inspires in us. And there we can only allow the sulfuric, the yellowish-reddish, rising upward with the elemental spirits to take shape as the dragon form that emerges from the sulfur, so that above the sulfuric dragon—as, I might say, this very process of desire manifests itself as its blazing head—above this Ahrimanized, sulfurized dragon we have Michael in the form I have described.

[ 23 ] Whoever understands the world can depict it in the imagination. And whoever believes that one can paint Michael’s battle with the dragon in any way one pleases is sinning against the inner reality of the world. For the world contains the forces inherent in it in a specific form for human beings. All the great works of art—whether in painting or other media—in the world did not arise from the arbitrary whims of human beings. If they had, they would hold little appeal for people over the course of centuries, indeed millennia. Rather, they have grown out of a genuine understanding of what weaves and lives out there, and what also weaves and lives within human beings. And when, from the living and weaving forces of nature and humanity in their unity, that which arises in the imagination is created—that which, right down to the colors, the radiance, and the individual form, can be drawn from the mysteries of nature—and when this is artistically shaped, then the true, the great works of art come into being—those great works of art created by the seers, imitated by the imitators, and adorned by the dilettantes with all manner of frippery, so that one can no longer recognize the truly great that is meant to emerge from these works out of the cosmic creation and weaving. In this way, these works of art become what can act as an impulse within people throughout the ages. The great artistic, painterly, and sculptural motifs would never have become what they are if they had not been created from the observed impulses of natural and human life.

[ 24 ] Thus we can look upon what—when depicted in today’s spiritual conception, this Michael with the dragon—the ancient conception has rendered precisely according to what it knew—which then appears as follows: the face formed from the golden radiance of the sun, with a positive gaze, a gaze that looks forth, wielding a flaming sword, melted and then reformed from the meteoric iron of the cosmos; beneath it, the dragon, the scourge of human nature, the dragon that reveals itself in midsummer, the sulfuric dragon that manifests from the innerly weaving, emerging, and immediately vanishing blaze. This restless dragon below, in its sulfuric nature—this taking-shape tormentor of humanity and adversary of the higher hierarchies—will be the necessary contrast to the battling Michael, who subdues the meteoric iron through his spiritual power.

[ 25 ] Here is an example of how true knowledge is transformed into art—and must always be transformed into art—because reality cannot be fully captured by abstract concepts. But it is a call to our time to embrace precisely such an image to strengthen and awaken humanity. That is why we wish to inscribe precisely this image—this modernized depiction of Michael’s battle with the dragon—deep, deep into human souls and hearts, so that it may take effect in the powers of human will and thought, both now and in the future. And we can already know this: if a portion of humanity were to take this image seriously, if a portion of humanity were to understand how this image is shaped by nature itself and by the guiding admonitions of the astral light, then the material use of iron in recent centuries—especially in the 19th century—would be accompanied by a spiritual permeation with the meaning of iron. Then this image would kindle within the human being the spiritual-soul power that enables him to master that which within him—the inner, meteoric iron coursing through his blood and combating the sulfur—desires. We must learn not to allow this process to play out merely in the subconscious to shape the lower nature of the human being; we must learn to place this process—this iron process in human blood—at the service of the spiritual and soul. This is what Michael desires within us.

[ 26 ] This is what calls out to us from the astral light, urging us to once again celebrate the Feast of Michael in a fitting manner at the beginning of autumn. When we now speak among ourselves of this Michaelmas festival, which is to join the festivals of Easter, Christmas, and St. John’s Day, this must certainly not be understood to mean that we are to celebrate a festival here or there in an outward manner; rather, the point is that we can only celebrate such a festival if we know how to link it to something meaningful. Christmas did not come about through a mere arbitrary, convenient decision, but because it was linked to the birth of Jesus Christ. Easter is linked to the Mystery of Golgotha. These are deeply significant events in the historical life of humanity. The Feast of St. Michael must be linked to something significant, to something great, to a fundamental inner experience of the human being—to that inner force that calls upon the human being to develop self-consciousness out of an awareness of nature through the power of his thoughts and the power of his will, so that he may become the master of the meteoric iron process in his blood, which is the opponent of the sulfurization process.

[ 27 ] Indeed, sulfur and iron have flowed in human blood ever since the human race came into being. The interaction between sulfur and iron determines the unconscious nature of human beings. It must be brought up into consciousness. We must learn to recognize this process as the expression of Michael’s inner struggle with the dragon. We must learn to raise this process to consciousness. Then the process will be in place for the Michaelmas Festival to build upon. But this must first be present, fully understood, and deeply grasped within. Then the Feast of Michael can be celebrated in the way that a festival drawn from the cosmos can be celebrated by human beings. Then we will have the insight that truly sees something else in iron besides what today’s chemist or mechanic sees in it. Then we will possess what iron teaches us to do within our own organism, within our inner human being. Then we will have the majestic image of Michael in battle with the sulfuric dragon—Michael with his flaming iron sword—as an inspiring impulse for what a human being must become if they wish to develop the forces of evolution not toward decline but toward progress.

[ 28 ] This is what appears to us as a warning from the spiritual world in the letters of bronze that form the enigmatic words—words that, however, can be understood precisely in the context of our own time:

O man,
You shape it to serve you,
You reveal it according to its material value
In many of your works.
Yet it will only be your salvation
When the supreme power
Of its spirit is revealed to you.

[ 29 ] This is iron. If we come to know iron—as we do all materials—not merely for its material value, but for the supreme power of its spirit, then there will once again be human progress and progress for the Earth—and we must strive for this if we wish to be human in the true sense of the word.