Rosicrucianism and Modern Initiation
GA 233a
6 January 1924, Dornach
III. The Time of Transition
I spoke to you yesterday of the special form in which the results of research in the realm of spiritual knowledge were communicated in the Middle Ages. This form was, so to speak, the last Act before a door was shut for the evolution of the spirit of man, a door that had been open for many centuries and given entrance by way of natural gift and faculty into the spiritual world. The door was shut when the time came for man, so far as his instinctive faculties were concerned, to be placed out-side the kingdom of the divine-spiritual Will that ruled over him. From that time forward he had to find in his own inmost being, in his own will, the possibility to evolve conscious freedom in the soul.
All the great moves of evolution, however, take place slowly, gradually, step by step. And the experience that had been attained by the pupil when the teacher led him up into the Ether-heights and down into the deep clefts of the Earth—even in those times it was no longer possible in the form it had taken in the ancient Mysteries—this experience was now, in later times, directly connected with an experience of Nature (though not with Nature on the Earth's surface itself) which came to man in a more unconscious form.
Think for a moment how it was with those persons who strove after knowledge about the year 1200 and on through the following century. They heard tell how, only a short time before, pupils were still able to find teachers, like the one of whom I told you yesterday; but they themselves were directed to human thinking as the means of attaining knowledge.
In the succeeding time of the Middle Ages we can see this human thinking developing and spreading, asserting itself in an impressive manner. It sets out on new paths with inner zeal, with sincere and whole-hearted devotion, and these paths are followed by large circles of knowledge-seekers. What we may truly call the knowledge of the Spiritual, that too continued its way. And after a few centuries we come to the time when Rosicrucianism proper was founded. Rosicrucianism is connected with a change that took place in the whole spiritual world in respect of man. I shall best describe the change by giving you once again a picture.
Mysteries in the old sense of the word were no longer possible in the time of which I have been speaking. There were however men who yearned for knowledge in the sense of the ancient Mysteries, and who experienced hard and heavy conflicts of soul when they heard how in the past men had been led up to the mountain and down to the clefts of the Earth, and had thus found knowledge. They developed all possible inner methods, they made all possible inner efforts in order to rouse the soul within them, that it might after all yet find the way. And he who is able to see such things can find in those times, as we said just now, not places of the Mysteries, but gatherings of knowledge-seekers who met together in an atmosphere warmed through and through with the glow of piety. What appears later as Rosicrucianism, sound and genuine Rosicrucianism, as well as the debased and charlatan kinds, comes in reality from men who gathered together in this simple way and sought so to temper their souls that genuine spiritual knowledge might yet be able to arise for them. In such a gathering, that took place in most unpretentious surroundings, the simple living-room of a kind of manor house, a few persons were once met, who, through certain exercises half thoughtful and meditative in character, half of the nature of prayer, done in common by them all, had developed a mystical mood in which all shared. It was the same mystical mood of soul that was cultivated in later times by the so-called “Brothers of the Common Life,” and later still by the followers of Comenius and by many other Brotherhoods. In this small circle, however, it showed itself with a peculiar intensity, and whilst these few men were there gathered together, making devotion, so to say, of their ordinary consciousness, of their whole intellect, in this intense mystical atmosphere of soul, it happened that a being came to them, not a being of flesh and blood like the teacher whom the pupil met and who led him to the mountains and to the clefts of the Earth, but a being who was only able to appear in an etheric body in this little company of men. This being revealed himself as the same who had guided the pupil about the year 1200. He was now in the after-death state. He had descended to these men from the spiritual world; they had drawn him thither by the mood of soul that prevailed in them—mystical, meditative, pious.
My dear friends, in order that no misunderstanding may arise, let me expressly emphasise that there is there no question of any mediumistic power. The little company who were gathered there would have looked upon any use—or any sanctioning—of mediumistic powers, as deeply sinful; they would have been led to do so by certain ideas belonging to old and honoured tradition. Just in those very communities of which I am telling you, mediumship and all that is related to it was regarded not merely as harmful but as sinful—and for the following reason. These persons knew that mediumship goes together with a peculiar constitution of the physical body; they knew that it is the physical body that gives the medium his spiritual powers. But the physical body they looked upon as “fallen,” and information that came by the help of mediumship they could not but regard under all circumstances as acquired by the help of Ahrimanic or Luciferic powers.
In those times, things like this were still clearly and exactly known. And so we have not to think of anything mediumistic in this connection. There was the mood of mysticism and meditation, and that alone. And it was the enhancing and strengthening of this mood through fellowship of soul, that, so to speak, enchanted into the circle, but of his own free-will, that disembodied human being, purely spiritual, and yet at the same time human.
The being spoke to them thus, in a deeply solemn manner:—“You are not altogether prepared for my appearance but I am among you discarnate, without physical body, forasmuch as a time has come when for a short period of Earth existence the Initiate of olden times is unable to appear in a physical body. The time will come again when he can do so, when the Michael period begins. But I am come to reveal to you that the inner being of man nevertheless remains unchanged, that the inner being of man, if it holds itself aright, can yet find the way to the divine-spiritual existence. For a period of time, however, the human intellect and understanding will be so constituted that it will have to be suppressed in order for that which is of the Spirit to be able to speak to the human soul. Therefore remain in your mystic and pious mood of soul ... You have received from me, all of you together, the picture, the imagination. I have, however, been able to give you no more than a mere indication of that which will come to fulfilment within you; you will go on further and find a continuation of what you have here experienced!”
And now, three from the number gathered there together, were chosen, to the end that they might establish a special union with the spiritual world, once more not at all through any kind of mediumistic powers but through a development of that mystic, meditative, pious mood of soul. These three, who were guarded and protected by the rest of the circle, closely and intimately cared for by the others, experienced from time to time a kind of absence of mind. They were at these times, in their external bodily nature, wonderfully lovely and beautiful, they acquired a sort of shining countenance, shining like the sun, and they wrote down, in symbols, revelations which they received from the spiritual world. These symbolic revelations were the first pictures by which the Rosicrucians were shown when it behoved them to know of the spiritual world. The revelations contained a kind of philosophy, a kind of theology and also a kind of medicine.
And the remarkable thing was that the others (it seems to me as though the others were four in number, so that the whole was a company of seven), after the experience they had with their brothers, beholding how their eyes shone like the sun and how their countenances were bright and radiant—these other four were able to give again in ordinary language what was conveyed in the symbols. The brothers whose destiny it was to bring the symbols from the spiritual world, could only write down the symbols, they could only say, when they returned again into their ordinary consciousness: “We have been among the stars, and have found the old teachers of the secret knowledge.” They could not themselves turn the symbolic pictures that they drew, into ordinary human speech. The others could and did. And this is the source of a great deal of knowledge that passed over into the literature of theology, more particularly such as was philosophical in character (not the theology of the Church but rather of the laity) and into the literature of medicine. And what was thus received from the spiritual world in symbols was afterwards communicated to small groups that were organised by the first Rosicrucians.
Again and again, in the time from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, there was still the possibility in certain very small groups for experiences of this nature. Revelations came frequently to men from the spiritual world in this or some similar way. But those who had to translate what was thus revealed in pictures were not always capable of doing it quite faithfully. Hence the want of clarity in the philosophy of this period. One has to discover for oneself what it really means, by seeking for it again in the world of the Spirit. For those however who have had knowledge of this kind of revelation received from the spiritual world, it has always been possible to link on to such revelations.
But picture to yourselves, my dear friends, what strange feelings must gradually have come over these men, who had to receive the very highest knowledge—for what was given to them was so accounted—from a direction that was growing more and more foreign, almost uncanny, to them; for they could no longer see into the world out of which the secrets came to them; ordinary consciousness could not reach so far. It can readily be understood that such things easily led to charlatanism and even to fraud. Indeed at no time of human evolution have charlatanism and the highest and purest of revelation stood so close to one another as in this period. It is difficult to distinguish the true from the false—so much so that many regard the whole of Rosicrucianism as charlatan. One can understand this, for the true Rosicrucians are extra-ordinarily hard to find among the charlatans, and the whole matter is all the more difficult and problematic for the reason that one has always to bear in mind that the spiritual revelation comes from sources which in their real quality and nature remain hidden.
The small circles gathered by the first Rosicrucians grew to a larger brotherhood, who always went about unrecognised, appearing here and there in the world, generally with the calling of a physician, healing the sick, and at the same time spreading knowledge as they went. And it was so that in regard to very much of this knowledge, the spreading of it was not without a certain embarrassment, inasmuch as the men who carried it on were not able to speak of the connection in which they stood to the spiritual world.
But now something else was developed in this pursuit of spiritual knowledge and spiritual research, something that is of very great beauty. There were the three brethren and the four. The three are only able to attain their goal when the four work together with them. The two groups are absolutely interdependent. The three receive the revelations from the spiritual world, the four are able to translate them into ordinary human language. What the three give would be nothing but quite unintelligible pictures, if the four were not able to translate them. And again, the four would have nothing to translate, if the three did not receive their revelations, in picture form, from the spiritual world. This gave rise to the development within such communities of an inner brotherhood of soul, a brotherhood in knowledge and in spiritual life, which in some circles of those times was held to be among the very highest of human attributes. Such small groups of men did indeed learn to know through their striving the true worth of brotherhood. And gradually they came more and more to feel how the evolution of humanity towards freedom is such that the bond between men and Gods would be completely severed were it not kept whole by such brotherhood, where the one looks to the other, where the one is in very truth dependent on the other.
We have here a picture of something in the soul which is wonderfully beautiful. And much that was written in those days possesses a certain charm which we only understand when we know how this atmosphere of brotherhood which permeated the spiritual life of many circles in Europe in those times, shed its radiant light into the writings.
There is however another mood that we find in those who are striving for knowledge, and this mood began gradually to pervade their whole endeavours and made people anxious. If in those times one did not approach the sources of spiritual revelation, ultimately it was so that one could no longer know whether these revelations were good or evil. And a certain anxiety began to be felt in regard to some of the influences. The anxiety spread later over large circles of people, who came to have fear, intense fear of all knowledge.
The development of the mood of which I speak may be particularly well studied in the examples of two men. One is Raimund of Sabunda, who lived in the fifteenth century, being born about 1430. Raimund of Sabunda is a remarkable man. If you study carefully what remains to us of his thought, then you will have the feeling: This is surely almost the very same revelation that was communicated in full consciousness about the year 1200 by the teacher who took his pupil to the mountain tops and to the chasms of the Earth! Only in Raimund of Sabunda of the fifteenth century, it is all given in a vague, impersonal style, philosophical in character, theological too and medical. The truth is that Raimund of Sabunda had also received his revelations by way of the genuine Rosicrucians, that is to say, by the path that had been opened by the great Initiate of the twelfth century, whose work and influence I described to you yesterday, and who continued to inspire men from out of the spiritual world, as I have been relating to you today. For the revelation that afterwards came through Rosicrucianism, as I have often described to you, came originally from this great Initiate and those who were with him in the spiritual world; the mood and feeling of the whole teaching was set by him. Anxiety, however, was at this time beginning to take hold of men. Now Raimund of Sabunda was a bold, brave spirit, he was one of those men who can value ideas, who understand how to live in ideas. And so, although we notice in him a certain vagueness due to the fact that the revelations have their source after all in the spiritual world, yet in him we find no trace of anxiety or fear in regard to knowledge.
All the more striking is another and very characteristic example of that spiritual stream: Pico della Mirandola, who also belongs to the fifteenth century.
The short-lived Pico della Mirandola is a very remarkable figure. If you study deeply the fruits of his thought and contemplation, you will see how the same initiative I have just described is everywhere active in them, due to the continuation of the wisdom of that old Initiate by way of the Rosicrucian stream. But in Pico della Mirandola you will observe a kind of shrinking back before this knowledge. Let me give you an instance. He established how everything that happens on Earth—stones and rock coming into being, plants living and growing and bearing fruit, animals living their life—how all this cannot be attributed to the forces of the Earth. If anyone were to think: There is the Earth, and the forces of the Earth produce that which is on the Earth, he would have quite a wrong notion of the matter. The true view, according to Pico della Mirandola, is that up there are the Stars and what happens in the Earth is dependent on the Stars. One must look up to the Heavens, if one wants to understand what happens on Earth. Speaking in the sense of Pico della Mirandola we should have to say: You give me your hand, my brother man, but it is not your feeling alone that is the cause why you give me your hand, it is the star standing over you that gives you the impulse to hold out your hand to me. Ultimately everything that is brought about has its source in the Heavens, in the Cosmos; what happens on Earth is but the reflection of what happens in the Heavens.
Pico della Mirandola gives expression to this as his firm conviction, and yet at the same time he says: But it is not for man to look up to these causes in the stars, he has only to take account of the immediate cause on Earth.
From this point of view Pico della Mirandola combats—and it is most characteristic that he does so—the Astrology that he finds prevalent. He knows well that the old, real, and genuine Astrology expresses itself in the destinies of men. He knows that; it is for him a truth. And yet he says: one should not pursue Astrology, one should look only for the immediate causes.
Note well what it is we have before us here. For the first time we are confronted with the idea of “boundaries” to knowledge. The idea shows itself in a significant manner, it is still, shall we say, human in character. Later, in Kant, in du Bois-Reymond, you will find expressed in them: “Man cannot cross the boundaries of knowledge.” The idea is said to rest on an inner necessity. That is not the case with Pico della Mirandola in the fifteenth century. He says: “What is on Earth has undoubtedly come about through cosmic causes. But man is called upon to forgo the attainment of a knowledge of these cosmic causes; he has to limit himself to the Earth.” Thus we have in the fifteenth century, in such a markedly characteristic person as Pico della Mirandola, voluntary renunciation of the highest knowledge.
My dear friends, we have here a spiritual event in the history of culture of the greatest imaginable importance. Men made the resolve: We will renounce knowledge! And that which comes to pass externally in such a person as Pico della Mirandola has once more, in very deed and fact, its counterpart in the Spiritual.
It was again in one of those simple gatherings of Rosicrucians that in the second half of the fifteenth century, on the occasion of a ritual arranged for this very purpose, man's Star-knowledge was in deeply solemn manner offered up in sacrifice. What took place in that ritual, which was enacted in all the solemnity proper to such a festival, may be expressed as follows.—Men stood before a kind of altar and said: “We resolve now to feel ourselves responsible not for ourselves alone nor our community, nor our nation, nor even only for the men of our time; we resolve to feel ourselves responsible for all men who have ever lived on Earth, to feel that we belong to the whole of mankind. And we feel that mankind has deserted the rank of the Fourth Hierarchy and has descended too deeply into matter” (for the Fall into Sin was understood in this sense) “and in order that man may be able to return to the rank of the Fourth Hierarchy, may be able to find for himself in freedom of will what in earlier times Gods have tried to find for him and with him, let now the higher knowledge be offered up for a season!”
And certain Beings of the spiritual world, who are not of human kind, who do not come to Earth in human incarnation, accepted the sacrifice in order to fulfil therewith certain purposes in the spiritual world. It would take us too far to speak of these here; we will do so another time. But the impulse to freedom was thereby made possible for man from out of the spiritual world.
I tell you of this ritual in order to show you how everything that takes place in the external life of the physical senses has its spiritual counterpart; we have only to look for it in the right place. For it can happen that such a celebration, enacted—I will not say in this instance, with full knowledge, but enacted by persons who stand in connection with the spiritual world—may have very deep meaning; from it can radiate impulses for a whole culture or a whole stream of civilisation. Whoever wants to know the fundamental colouring and tone of a particular epoch of time must look for that source in the Spiritual whence spring the forces that stream through this epoch of time.
In the years that followed, whatever came into being of a truly spiritual nature, was an echo of this creative working from out of the unknown spiritual worlds. And side by side with the external materialism that developed in the succeeding centuries, we can always find individual spirits who lived under the influence of that renunciation of the higher knowledge.
I should like to give you a brief description of a type of man who might be met with from the fifteenth century onwards through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. You might find him in some country village as a herb-gatherer for an apothecary, or in some other simple calling. If one takes an interest in special forms and manifestations of the being of man as they show themselves in this or that individuality, then one may meet and recognise such a person. At first he is extraordinarily reserved, speaks but little, perhaps even turns away your attention from what you are trying to find in him by talking in a trivial manner, on purpose to make you think it is not worth while to converse with him. If, however, you know better than to look merely at the content of the words a man says, if you know how to hear the ring of the words, how to listen to the way the words come out of a man, then you will go on listening to such a one, despite all discouragement. And if out of some karmic connection he receives the impression that he really should speak to you, then he will begin to speak, carefully and guardedly. And you will make the discovery that he is a kind of wise man. But what he says is not earthly wisdom. Neither is there contained in it much of what we now call spiritual science. But they are warm words of the heart, far-reaching moral teachings; nor is there anything sentimental about his way of uttering them, he speaks them rather as proverbs.
He might say something like this. “Let us go over to yonder fir-tree. My soul can creep into the needles and cones, for my soul is everywhere. From the cones and needles of the fir-tree, my soul sees through them, looks out into the deeps and distances of the worlds beyond; and then I become one with the whole world. That is the true piety, to become one with the whole world. Where is God? God is in every fir-cone. And he who does not recognise God in every fir-cone, he who sees God somewhere else than in every fir-cone—he does not know the true God.”
I want only to describe to you how these men spoke, men that you might find in the way I have described. Such was their manner of speaking. And they might go on to say more. “Yes, and when one creeps into the fir-cones and into the needles of the fir-tree, then one finds how the God rejoices over the human beings in the world. And when one descends deep down into one's own heart, into the abysses of the innermost of man's nature, there also one finds the God; but then one learns to know how He is made sad through the sinfulness of men.”
In such wise spake these simple sages. A great number of them possessed—to speak in modern language—“editions” of the geometrical figures of the old Rosicrucians. These they would show to those who approached them in the right way. When however they spoke about these figures—which were no more than quite simple, even poor, impressions—then the conversation would unfold in a strange manner. There were many people who, although they took interest in the unpretentious wise man before them, were at the same time overcome with curiosity as to what these strange Rosicrucian pictures really meant, and asked about them. But they received from these wise men, who were often regarded as eccentric, no clear and exact answer; they received only the advice: If one attains the right deepening of soul, then one can see through these figures, as through a window, into the spiritual world. The wise men would give as it were a description of what they themselves had been able to feel and experience from the figures rather than any explanation or interpretation of them. And often it was so, that when one had heard these expressions of feeling in connection with the figures, one could not put them into thought at all; for these simple sages did not give thoughts. What they gave, however, had an after-working that was of immense significance. One left these men, not only with warmth in one's soul, but with the feeling: I have received a knowledge that lives in me, a knowledge I can by no means enclose in thoughts and concepts.
That was one of the ways in which, during this period from the fourteenth, fifteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, the nature of the Divine and the nature of the Human, what God is and what Man is, was taught and made known to man through feeling. We cannot quite say, without words, but we can say, without ideas, although not on that account without content.
In this period much intercourse went on among men by means of a silencing of thought. No one can arrive at a true conception of the character of this period who does not know how much was brought to pass in those days through this silencing of thought, when men interchanged not mere words but their very souls.
I have given you, my dear friends, a picture of one of the features of that time of transition when freedom was first beginning to flourish among men. I shall have more to say on this from many aspects. For the moment, taking my start from all that took place at the Christmas Foundation Meeting, I wanted here to add something further to what was given then.

Dritter Vortrag
Ich sprach Ihnen gestern von der besonderen Form, die die Mitteilung geisteswissenschaftlicher Ergebnisse in dem Mittelalter angenommen hat. Und diese Form, sie war im Grunde genommen ein Letztes, das sich abspielte, bevor für die menschliche Geistesentwickelung ein Tor geschlossen worden ist, das ja durch Jahrhunderte geöffnet war: das Tor eines gewissen, durch natürliche Begabung kommenden Eintrittes in die geistige Welt. Dieses Tor ist ja geschlossen worden zu der Zeit, in der die Menschen gewissermaßen mit ihren unwillkürlichen Fähigkeiten herausgestellt werden sollten aus dem Bereiche des sie beherrschenden göttlich-geistigen Willens und in ihrem Innersten, in dem eigenen Willen finden sollten die Möglichkeit, Freiheit in der Seele zu entwickeln, bewußte Freiheit. Alle Entwickelungsbewegungen geschehen aber langsam und allmählich, nach und nach. Und so ist es denn auch gekommen, daß dasjenige, was zwar nicht mehr in der-Form der alten Mysterien, aber in der Form des Hinaufführens in Ätherhöhen, des Hinunterführens in Erdenklüfte unmittelbar im Zusammenhange mit dem menschlichen Erleben der Natur, wenn auch nicht auf der Erdoberfläche selber, erreicht werden konnte, nun in der Folgezeit in einer mehr unbewußten Form an die Menschen herangetreten ist. Denken Sie sich nur einmal, wie es jenen Persönlichkeiten gegangen ist, die nach Erkenntnis gestrebt haben, um das Jahr 1200 und in dem folgenden 13. Jahrhundert, die ja natürlich Nachricht gehabt haben davon, daß Schüler noch solche Lehrer wie den, von dem ich gestern gesprochen habe, vor kurzer Zeit hatten finden können, denken Sie nur, wie es denen ergangen ist, die diese Nachricht gehabt haben und die nunmehr eigentlich darauf angewiesen waren, Erkenntnis nur mehr durch das menschliche Denken zu finden.
Wir sehen ja dann in der Folgezeit des Mittelalters mehr in größetem Kreise dieses menschliche Denken in einer wirklich imponierenden Weise ausgebildet. Wir sehen dieses menschliche Denken Wege nehmen, die aus innerstem Eifer, aus einer wirklichen Hingabe der ganzen Seele der Menschen gegangen worden sind. Das waren so mehr die Wege der größeren Kreise von erkenntnissuchenden Menschen. Aber das eigentlich Geisteswissenschaftliche setzte sich doch auch fort. Und wir kommen dann, indem wir wenige Jahrhunderte weitergehen, in die Zeit hinein, in der das eigentliche Rosenkreuzertum begründet worden ist. Aber dieses Rosenkreuzertum hängt eben mit einer Umänderung in der ganzen geistigen Welt in bezug auf den Menschen zusammen. Und ich werde Ihnen diese Umänderung wiederum am besten schildern, wenn ich auch hier Ihnen ein Bild gebe.
Mysterien im alten Sinne des Wortes waren nicht mehr möglich seit jenem Zeitpunkte, von dem ich Ihnen gesprochen habe; aber Menschen, die nach Erkenntnis lechzten im Sinne dieser alten Mysterien und die schwere Seelenkämpfe erlebten, wenn sie hörten von der Führung auf den Berg, von der Führung in Erdenklüfte, diese Menschen, sie entwickelten in ihren Seelen alle möglichen inneren Methoden, Anstrengungen, um die Seele aufzurufen, nun dennoch den Weg zu finden. Und derjenige, der solche Sachen sehen kann, sieht hinein, wie gesagt, nicht in Mysterienstätten, aber in von einer Atmosphäre von Frömmigkeit durchwärmte Versammlungsstätte von Erkenntnis suchenden Menschen. Und eigentlich ist dasjenige, was dann später sowohl die gute Rosenkreuzerei war wie auch die entartete, die scharlatanhafte, ausgegangen von solchen Menschen, die im Zusammensein, in anspruchslosem Zusammensein versuchten, ihre Seelen so zu arten, daß nun wirklich geistige Erkenntnisse noch hätten zustande kommen können. Und bei einer solchen Versammlung, die wirklich in recht anspruchsloser Umgebung, in dem einfachen Wohnraum eines schloßartigen Hauses stattgefunden hat, in einer solchen Versammlung von wenigen Menschen begab es sich einmal, daß diese Menschen durch gemeinsame Exerzitien, die halb denkerisch-meditativ, halb gebetartig waren, in Gemeinsamkeit eine Art mystischer Stimmung entwickelten, jene mystische Stimmung, die dann viel gepflegt worden ist von den sogenannten «Brüdern des gemeinsamen Lebens», gepflegt worden ist später von den Anhängern des Comenius und vielen anderen Bruderschaften, die sich aber ganz besonders intensiv einmal in einem solchen kleineren Kreise ausgeprägt hat. Und während mit einer wirklichen Hingabe des gewöhnlichen Bewußtseins, mit einer Hingabe des ganzen Intellektes in intensiv mystischer Stimmung diese wenigen Menschen beisammen waren, geschah es, daß zu ihnen ein Wesen trat, aber jetzt ein Wesen, das nicht Fleisch und Blut hatte wie jener Lehrer, dem der Schüler begegnete zu der Führung nach dem Berge, nach den Erdenklüften, sondern ein Wesen, das eigentlich nur im ätherischen Leibe in dieser kleinen Gemeinschaft erscheinen konnte. Und dieses Wesen enthüllte sich als dasselbe, das jenen Schüler um das Jahr 1200 geführt hatte. Aber es war im post mortem-Zustande. Es war aus der geistigen Welt zu diesen Menschen herniedergestiegen, die es angezogen hatten durch ihre fromm-mystisch, meditativdenkerische Stimmung.
Damit ja kein Mißverständnis entsteht, betone ich ausdrücklich: Irgendwelche medialen Kräfte waren dabei nicht im Spiele, denn gerade jene kleine Gemeinschaft, die da versammelt war, hätte aus gewissen Voraussetzungen, die altehrwürdiger Tradition angehörten, jede Verwendung medialer Kräfte, auch jeden Anklang an mediale Kräfte als etwas tief Sündhaftes betrachtet. Gerade in jenen Gesellschaften, von denen ich da spreche, wurde Mediumschaft und alles, was damit verwandt war, nicht nur als etwas Schädliches angesehen, sondern als etwas tief, tief Sündhaftes, aus dem Grunde sündhaft, weil ja gewußt wurde von jenen Menschen, daß Mediumschaft zusammenhängt mit einer besonderen Konstitution auch des physischen Leibes, daß dem Medium der physische Leib seine Kräfte, seine geistigen Kräfte gibt. Der physische Leib wurde aber von jenen Menschen als der Sünde verfallen betrachtet, und man hätte unter allen Umständen Kundgebungen mit Hilfe von medialen Kräften als ahrimanische oder luziferische Kräfte angesehen. Diese Dinge wurden in jener Zeit eben noch genau gewußt, und so war nichts irgendwie Mediumhaftes verwendet worden. Dagegen war es rein die mystisch-meditative Stimmung; und jene Verstärkung der mystisch-meditativen Stimmung, die durch die Gemeinsamkeit der Seelen erzeugt wird, die war es, welche hereinzauberte durch die eigene Willkür jenen entkörperten Menschen, jenes rein geistige, aber menschliche Wesen in diesen Kreis.
Und dieses Wesen sagte in einer sehr feierlichen Art: Ihr seid ja gerade auf mein Erscheinen nicht vorbereitet, aber ich bin unter euch, entkörpert, ohne physischen Leib, weil die Zeit gekommen ist, in der Eingeweihte der alten Art eine kurze Periode des Erdendaseins im physischen Leibe nicht erscheinen können. Diese Zeit wird wieder kommen, wenn die Michael-Periode anbrechen wird. Ich bin zu euch gekommen, um euch zu offenbaren, daß das Menscheninnere unverwandelt geblieben ist, daß das Menscheninnere, wenn es sich in der richtigen Weise verhält, den Weg zum göttlich-geistigen Dasein finden kann. Aber es wird eine Zeitlang der menschliche Verstand so beschaffen sein, daß er unterdrückt werden muß, damit Geistiges zur Menschenseele wird sprechen können. Darum bleibet in eurer mystisch-frommen Stimmung. Ich konnte euch, indem ihr von mir das gemeinsame Bild, die gemeinsame Imagination empfanget, auf dasjenige, was sich mit euch vollziehen wird, nur hinweisen, aber ihr werdet die Fortsetzung desjenigen, was ihr erlebt habt, weiter erfahren.
Und siehe da, drei aus dem Kreise, der da versammelt war, waren wirklich dazu ausersehen, nunmehr eine besondere Verbindung mit der geistigen Welt herzustellen, wiederum niemals durch irgendwelche medialen Kräfte, sondern durch Fortführung jener mystisch-meditativ-frommen Stimmung. Und bei diesen dreien, die dann besonders behütet wurden von den andern dieses Kreises, wirklich innig gepflegt wurden, bei diesen dreien stellte sich heraus, daß sie von Zeit zu Zeit eine Art Geistesabwesenheit erlebten. Sie wurden in bezug auf ihre äußerliche Körperlichkeit wunderschön, erlangten etwas wie ein glänzendes Antlitz, sonnenleuchtende Augen, und während dieser Zeit schrieben sie symbolische Offenbarungen, die sie aus der geistigen Welt heraus erhielten, auf. Diese symbolischen Offenbarungen waren die ersten Bilder, in denen den Rosenkreuzern geoffenbart worden ist, was sie wissen sollten über die geistige Welt. In diesen symbolischen Offenbarungen war enthalten eine Art Philosophie, eine Art Theologie, eine Art Medizin.
Und dieses Merkwürdige stellte sich heraus: Die anderen - es scheint mir, als ob die anderen viere gewesen wären, so daß das Ganze eine Gemeinschaft von sieben gewesen war -, die anderen, sie konnten durch dasjenige, was sie erlebt hatten an den sonnenglänzenden Augen, an dem strahlenden Antlitz ihrer drei Brüder, in der gewöhnlichen Sprache dasjenige wiedergeben, was in den Symbolen lag. Die zum Herausholen dieser Symbole aus der geistigen Welt bestimmten Brüder, sie konnten nur diese Symbole hinschreiben, und sie konnten nur sagen, als sie wiederum in ihren gewöhnlichen Bewußtseinszustand zurückkehrten: Wir sind gewandelt unter Sternen und Sternengeistern und haben da die alten Lehrer des Geheimwissens gefunden. - Sie konnten selbst nicht in gewöhnliche Menschensprache diese symbolischen Bilder umsetzen, die sie aufzeichneten. Die anderen konnten es und taten es. Und vieles von dem, was dann übergegangen ist zum Teil in die philosophischtheologische - aber nicht mehr in die kirchlich-theologische, sondern in die profan-theologische - und in die medizinische Literatur, ist ursprünglich diesem eben gekennzeichneten Quell entsprossen. Und in kleineren Kreisen, die durch die ersten Rosenkreuzer organisiert worden sind, ist dann dasjenige verbreitet worden, was an solchen Symbolen aus der geistigen Welt erhalten worden ist.
Und immer wieder und wiederum kamen Möglichkeiten, in kleinsten Kreisen solches zu erleben zwischen dem 13. und 15. Jahrhundert. Es ist viel aus der geistigen Welt auf eine solche oder ähnliche Art zwischen dem 13. und 15. Jahrhundert den Menschen geoffenbart worden. Nicht immer waren diejenigen, die dann das in Bildern Geoffenbarte übersetzen sollten, in der Lage, es wirklich treu wiederzugeben. Daher hat manches, was Sie ja heute noch aus der Philosophie dieser Zeit überliefert finden können, einen in sich nicht ganz klaren Charakter, und man muß dann das, was es eigentlich bedeutet, selbst wiederum aus der Welt des Geistes heraus suchen. Aber immerhin war die Möglichkeit vorhanden bei denjenigen, die um diese Art der Offenbarung von seiten der geistigen Welt wußten, anzuknüpfen an solche Offenbarungen.
Aber Sie müssen sich ja denken, wie sonderbar allmählich die Stimmung der Menschen werden mußte, die diese höchsten Erkenntnisse - denn als solche wurde dasjenige, was ihnen gegeben wurde, anerkannt -, die solche höchsten Erkenntnisse von einer Seite her bekommen mußten, die ihnen eigentlich allmählich unheimlich wurde, weil sie ja nicht hineinschauten in die Welt, aus der ihnen diese Geheimnisse kamen, weil das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein nicht hineinreichte. Daher war es auch so naheliegend, daß solche Dinge sehr leicht zum Scharlatanhaften, ja zum Schwindelhaften führen konnten. Und in keiner Zeit der menschlichen Entwickelung ist eigentlich Scharlatanhaftes und Höchstes in der Offenbarung so nahe beieinander gewesen wie in dieser Zeit. Und schwierig ist für diese Zeit, das Echte von dem Falschen zu unterscheiden, daher auch von vielen die ganze Rosenkreuzerei als eine Scharlatanerie angesehen wird. Man kann es begreifen, daß es so geschieht, denn die wahren Rosenkreuzer sind unter den Scharlatanen außerordentlich schwer zu finden, und die ganze Sache wird dadurch besonders fragwürdig, daß man eben immer die Voraussetzung machen mußte, die geistige Offenbarung stamme aus Quellen heraus, die zunächst ihrer eigentlichen Beschaffenheit nach eben verborgen blieben.
Und es war so, daß diejenigen, die allmählich sozusagen gesammelt wurden von den ersten Rosenkreuzern zu einer größeren Brüderschaft, immer eigentlich als Unbekannte in der Weise auftraten, daß sie in der Welt da und dort erschienen, zumeist in der damaligen Zeit im Arztberuf, Kranke heilten, und bei dieser Gelegenheit, indem sie den Arztberuf ausübten, zu gleicher Zeit Erkenntnisse verbreiteten. Es war schon so, daß vieles, vieles an Erkenntnissen damals verbreitet worden ist, von dem man sagen muß: Es hat die Verbreitung einen etwas peinlichen Charakter, weil ja die Menschen, die diese Verbreitung betrieben, gar nicht sagen konnten, wie der Zusammenhang mit der geistigen Welt ist, in dem sie standen.
Aber es bildete sich ein anderes aus innerhalb dieses Betriebes geistiger Forschung, geistiger Erkenntnis. Es ist ja etwas ungeheuer Schönes, wenn man so sieht: Da sind drei Brüder und vier andere, drei Brüder, die eigentlich in dem, was sie der Welt bieten können, nur ein Zweckvolles erreichen können, wenn die andern viere mit ihnen zusammenarbeiten. Sie sind unbedingt aufeinander angewiesen. Die dreie bekommen ihre Offenbarungen aus der geistigen Welt, die viere können es in die gewöhnliche Menschensprache übersetzen. Das, was die dreie geben, wären ganz unverständliche Bilder, wenn die vier anderen sie nicht übersetzen könnten. Und wiederum, die vier anderen würden gar nichts haben zum Übersetzen, wenn die dreie nicht ihre Offenbarungen in Bildform aus der geistigen Welt empfingen.
Dadurch bildete sich innerhalb solcher Gemeinschaften dasjenige aus, was gerade in diesen Jahrhunderten in gewissen Kreisen als etwas angesehen wurde, das ein Höchstmenschliches ist: innerliche seelische Bruderschaft, Bruderschaft in der Erkenntnis, Bruderschaft im geistigen Leben. Solche kleinen Kreise lernten gerade durch ihr Streben den realen Wert der Bruderschaft kennen. Und sie empfanden allmählich immer mehr und mehr, daß die Entwickelung der Menschheit zu der Freiheit hin so ist, daß das Band zwischen den Menschen und den Göttern ganz zerreißen würde, wenn es nicht aufrechterhalten würde durch solche Bruderschaft, wo wirklich einer auf den andern angewiesen ist.
Was man da zu schildern hat, ist etwas seelisch außerordentlich Schönes. Und über manchem, was damals geschrieben worden ist, liegt ein Zauber, der erst verständlich wird, wenn man weiß, daß diese Atmosphäre von Menschenbruderschaft, die in dieser Zeit durch das geistige Leben vieler Kreise Europas ging, in dieses Schrifttum herrlich hineingeleuchtet hat. Aber das Ganze war eben - und immer mehr und mehr zeigte sich das - bei denjenigen, die so nach Erkenntnis strebten, in eine Stimmung getaucht, die die Leute ängstlich machte. Weil man nicht an die Quellen der geistigen Offenbarung herankam, so konnte man zuletzt gar nicht mehr wissen, ob diese Offenbarungen guter Art oder böser Art sind. Und eine gewisse Ängstlichkeit vor gewissen Einflüssen machte sich neben allem Guten in diesen Strömungen in dieser Zeit ganz besonders geltend. Diese Ängstlichkeit ging dann ja auf große Kreise des Volkes über, die Furcht hatten, starke Furcht hatten vor aller Erkenntnis.
Man kann diese Stimmung besonders gut studieren bei zwei Menschen. Der eine ist der im 15. Jahrhundert lebende, etwa 1430 geborene Raimund von Sabunda. Raimund von Sabunda ist ein merkwürdiger Mensch. Wenn man sich in dasjenige, was er gedacht hat, was er hinterlassen hat, vertieft, so hat man das Gefühl: Es ist fast dieselbe Offenbarung, die jener Berg- und Erdenklüftelehrer seinem Schüler um das Jahr 1200 übermacht hat, in vollem Bewußtsein übermacht hat. - Und doch wiederum, das Ganze ist in unbestimmtere und unpersönlichere Redensarten getaucht — philosophischer, theologischer, medizinischer Art - bei Raimund von Sabunda im 15. Jahrhundert. Das aber rührt davon her, daß Raimund von Sabunda eben auch seine Offenbarungen empfangen hatte auf dem Umweg durch die wahre Rosenkreuzerei, also auf jenem Wege, der dadurch eröffnet war, daß der große Eingeweihte vom 12. Jahrhundert, dessen Wirkungen ich Ihnen geschildert habe, weiter inspirierend wirkte für all das, was ich heute gekennzeichnet habe, aus der geistigen Welt her. Denn im Grunde genommen ging von ihm und denjenigen, die mit ihm in der geistigen Welt waren, all jene Offenbarung aus, die dann durch die Rosenkreuzerei so zog, wie ich es für die Rosenkreuzerei öfters beschrieben habe. Die Stimmung gab er. Aber Ängstlichkeit bemächtigte sich doch nun solcher Geister. Raimund von Sabunda war ein mutiger, ein kühner Geist, einer von jenen Menschen, die Ideen zu würdigen vermögen, die in Ideen zu leben verstehen. Daher merkt man bei ihm zwar etwas von dem Unbestimmten, das davon herrührt, daß ja die Offenbarungen eben aus der geistigen Welt heraus sind, aber man merkt nichts bei ihm von irgendeiner Ängstlichkeit, von einer Erkenntnis-Ängstlichkeit. Um so mehr tritt einem dasjenige, was aus jener Geistesströmung in dieser Art hervorging, besonders charakteristisch entgegen bei einem anderen Geist, bei Pico de Mirandola im 15. Jahrhundert.
Der frühverstorbene Pico de Mirandola ist ein sehr merkwürdiger Geist. Vertieft man sich in dasjenige, was er erdacht und ersonnen hat, so sieht man in seinem Denken, in seinem Sinnen überall dieselbe Inspiration wirksam, die ich eben charakterisiert habe: die Fortsetzung der Weisheit jenes alten Eingeweihten auf dem Umwege durch die Rosenkreuzerströmung. Aber man sieht wie eine Art Zurückweichen bei Pico de Mirandola, ein Zurückweichen vor dieser Erkenntnis. Er versichert zum Beispiel: Alles, was auf Erden geschieht, daß auf Erden Steine entstehen, daß auf Erden Pflanzen leben, wachsen, Früchte tragen, daß auf Erden Tiere leben, das alles rührt nicht von den Kräften der Erde her. - Wenn jemand glauben würde, da sei die Erde, und die Kräfte der Erde bewirken dasjenige, was auf der Erde ist, so habe er eine falsche Anschauung. Die richtige Anschauung nach Pico de Mirandola ist, daß es die Sterne sind, und dasjenige, was auf der Erde geschieht, alles abhängt von den Sternen. Das Kleinste, was auf Erden geschieht, ist nach Pico de Mirandola abhängig von den Sternen. Man muß zum Himmel hinaufschauen, wenn man begreifen will, was auf der Erde geschieht. Und es ist schon im Sinne von Pico de Mirandola geredet, wenn man sagt: Du gibst mir die Hand, mein Menschenbruder, aber es ist nicht nur dein Gefühl die Ursache davon, daß du die Hand gibst, sondern es ist der Stern, der über dir steht, der dir den Impuls gibt, mir die Hand zu geben. - Zuletzt ist alles bewirkt von demjenigen, was im Himmlischen, im Kosmischen begründet ist, und der Abglanz davon allein geschieht auf Erden.
Als bestimmte Überzeugung spricht das Pico de Mirandola aus, und zugleich sagt er: Aber die Menschen sind verpflichtet, nicht auf diese Sternenursachen zu sehen, sondern allein die nächste Ursache auf Erden zu berücksichtigen. - Von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus bekämpft Pico de Mirandola - das ist außerordentlich charakteristisch — die ihm überkommene Astrologie. Er weiß, daß die alte, wirkliche, echte Astrologie in den Schicksalen der Menschen sich ausspricht. Das weiß er, das hält er für eine Wahrheit. Allein er sagt, man solle nicht Astrologie treiben, man solle nur die nächsten Ursachen suchen.
Merken Sie, was da eigentlich vorliegt? Da liegt zum erstenmal in einer ganz eigentümlichen Art die Idee von den Grenzen der Erkenntnis vor, aber, ich möchte sagen, in der Form, in der sie ganz menschlich ist. Wenn Sie später bei Kart, bei Du Bois-Reymond nachschauen, da wird Ihnen gesagt: Der Mensch kann nicht die Grenzen der Erkenntnis überschreiten, es beruhe auf einer inneren Notwendigkeit. - Das ist bei Pico de Mirandola im 15.Jahrhundert nicht der Fall, sondern der sagt: Ja, dasjenige, was hier auf der Erde ist, ist von kosmischen Ursachen bewirkt, aber der Mensch soll verzichten, diese kosmischen Ursachen zu erkennen. Der Mensch soll sich auf die Erde beschränken. - Und so tritt uns im 15. Jahrhundert der freiwillige Verzicht auf die höchste Erkenntnis bei einer so charakteristischen Persönlichkeit wie Pico de Mirandola entgegen. Das ist eine kulturhistorische Geistestatsache von der denkbar weittragendsten Bedeutung. Dazumal vollzog es sich eben, daß Menschen sich gesagt haben: Wir wollen verzichten auf Erkenntnis. - Und in der Tat, dasjenige, was sich in solch einer Persönlichkeit, wie Pico de Mirandola ist, äußerlich abspielt, das hat wieder sein Gegenbild im Spirituellen.
Wiederum war es in einer jener anspruchslosen Versammlungswohnungen der Rosenkreuzer, wo bei einer Kultushandlung, die eigens zu diesem Zwecke angestellt worden ist, in allerfeierlichster Form im 15. Jahrhunderte, in der zweiten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts, das Opfer dargebracht worden ist der Sternenerkenntnis. Und man möchte sagen: Dasjenige, was sich bei jener einmal vollzogenen, in besonderer Feierlichkeit vollzogenen Kultushandlung zugetragen hat, das ist dieses. Menschen standen vor einer Art von Altar und sagten: Wir wollen uns jetzt verantwortlich fühlen nicht allein für uns oder unsere Gemeinschaft oder unser Volk oder die Menschheit der Gegenwart, wir wollen uns verantwortlich fühlen für alle Menschen, die jemals auf Erden gelebt haben. Wir wollen uns als Angehörige der ganzen Menschheit fühlen. Und wir fühlen, daß die Menschheit etwas durchgemacht hat, was ein Verlassen des Ranges der vierten Hierarchie ist, ein zu tiefes Hinuntersteigen in die Materie - so wurde der Sündenfall aufgefaßt. Deshalb, damit die Menschheit wiederum zurückkommen kann zu ihrem Range der vierten Hierarchie und im freien Willen dasjenige finden könne, was früher Götter für sie und mit ihr versucht haben, sei geopfert die höhere Erkenntnis für eine gewisse Zeit. - Und gewisse Wesenheiten der geistigen Welt, die nicht menschlicher Art sind, nicht in menschlicher Inkarnation zur Erde herabkommen, haben das Opfer entgegengenommen, um gewisse Ziele in der geistigen Welt zu erreichen, von denen hier zu sprechen zu weit führen würde, was ein anderes Mal geschehen soll. Den Menschen aber wurde dafür der Impuls zur Freiheit aus der geistigen Welt möglich.
Ich führe diese Kultusszene aus dem Grunde an, weil ich durch sie Ihnen sagen möchte, daß eigentlich alles, was im äußeren physisch-sinnlichen Leben geschieht, geistige Gegenbilder hat, die wir nur suchen müssen da, wo sie sind. Denn zuweilen bedeutet irgendeine einzelne Kultushandlung, die von, ich will jetzt in diesem Zusammenhange nicht sagen Wissenden, sondern die von solchen Persönlichkeiten vollzogen wird, die mit der geistigen Welt im Zusammenhang stehen, bisweilen bedeutet sie etwas, wovon die Impulse für eine ganze Kultur oder Zivilisationsströmung ausstrahlen. Derjenige, der wissen will das Grundkolorit einer Zeitepoche, der muß den entsprechenden geistigen Ausstrahlungspunkt für die Kräfte suchen, die diese Zeitperiode durchströmten.
Das Folgende dann, was-an Geistigem, an wirklich Geistig-Spirituellem produziert wurde, war ein Nachklang eines solchen Schaffens aus unbekannten geistigen Welten heraus. Und man hat bis ins 19. Jahrhundert herein neben dem, was sich an äußerem Materialismus entwickelte, immer einzelne Geister kennenlernen können, die unter der Nachwirkung jenes Verzichtes auf die höhere Erkenntnis gelebt haben.
Einen Menschentypus, der vom 15. Jahrhundert durch das 16., 17., 18. lebte, den möchte ich Ihnen wenigstens mit ein paar Strichen charakterisieren. Einen Menschentypus, den man irgendwo auf dem Dorfe draußen fand als Sammler von Kräutern für Apotheken, als irgendwie anders in einem anspruchslosen Berufe drinnen. Irgend solch eine Persönlichkeit müssen wir uns vorstellen. Man trifft sie, wenn man selber Interesse hat an besonderen Gestaltungen des Menschenwesens in dieser oder jener Individualität, man trifft sie, diese Persönlichkeit. Zunächst ist sie außerordentlich zugeknöpft, redet wenig oder lenkt die Aufmerksamkeit von dem, was man in ihr suchen möchte, dadurch ab, daß sie unbedeutende, absichtlich ganz triviale Redensarten führt, durch die sie den Glauben erwecken will, es sei nicht der Mühe wert, sich mit ihr zu unterhalten. Wenn man aber versteht, nicht immer auf den Inhalt der Worte zu sehen, die ein Mensch sagt, sondern auf den Klang seiner Worte, auf die Art und Weise, wie sie von ihm kommen, dann hörte man einem solchen Menschen dennoch weiter zu. Und wenn er dann aus irgendeinem karmischen Zusammenhang heraus den Eindruck bekam, er solle reden, dann fing er an, vorsichtig zu sprechen, und man entdeckte, daß man eine Art von Weisen in ihm hatte. Aber dasjenige, was er sagte, war nun nicht Sternenweisheit. Das, was er sagte, war auch nicht irdische Weisheit. Es war überhaupt nicht viel von dem in ihm enthalten, was man jetzt Geisteswissenschaft nennt, aber es waren warme Herzensworte, Moralanweisungen weittragender Art, die aber unsentimental vorgebracht wurden, sprichwörtliche Redensarten.
Man konnte hören so etwas wie: Gehen wir zu jenem Baume. Meine Seele kann in die Nadeln hineinkriechen, in die Tannenzapfen hineinkriechen, denn meine Seele ist überall. Wenn sie in die Tannenzapfen und in die Nadeln hineinkriecht, dann schaut sie durch die Tannenzapfen und Nadeln hinaus in die Weltentiefen und Weltenfernen, und dann wird man eins mit der ganzen Welt. Und das ist wahre Frömmigkeit, wenn man so eins wird mit der ganzen Welt. Wo ist Gott? In jedem Tannenzapfen ist Gott. Und wer nicht Gott in jedem Tannenzapfen anerkennt, wer Gott irgendwo anders sucht als in jedem Tannenzapfen, der erkennt den wirklichen Gott nicht. - Ich will nur charakterisieren, wie etwa solche Menschen sprachen, die man auf diese Weise fand, wie ich es geschildert habe. So sprachen solche Menschen. Sie sagten etwa auch: Ja, und dann, wenn man in die Tannenzapfen und in die Nadeln hineinkriecht, dann findet man, wie der Gott sich freut über die Menschen in der Welt. Wenn man aber in das eigene Herz ganz tief hinuntersteigt, in die Abgründe der Innerlichkeit der Menschennatur tief hinuntersteigt, dann findet man auch den Gott, aber dann lernt man ihn erkennen, wie er traurig wird über die Sünden der Menschen. In solcher Art sprachen diese anspruchslosen Weisen. Eine große Zahl dieser anspruchslosen Weisen hatte gewisse - ich möchte in der heutigen Sprache sagen - Ausgaben der alten Rosenkreuzerfiguren. Sie zeigten sie ebensolchen Menschen, die ihnen so entgegentraten, daß sie sich aussprachen. Aber gerade, wenn über diese Figuren, die in anspruchslosen, recht schlechten Drucken unter diesen Leuten lebten, gesprochen wurde, da entwickelten sich die Gespräche auf eine merkwürdige Art. Manche Menschen waren dann, trotzdem sie Interesse faßten an dem anspruchslosen Weisen, von einer gewissen Neugierde befallen, was diese merkwürdigen Rosenkreuzerbilder eigentlich bedeuteten, fragten, und man bekam dann von diesen als Sonderlinge angesehenen einzelnen Weisen keine rechte, genaue Antwort, sondern nur den Hinweis: Wenn man sich so recht vertieft, dann kann man wie durch ein Fenster durch diese Figuren in die geistige Welt hineinschauen. - Sie beschrieben mehr, was sie an ihnen gefühlsmäßig erleben konnten, als daß sie irgendwelche Deutungen oder Interpretationen der Figuren gaben. Und manchmal konnte man, wenn man solche Aussprüche des Fühlens der Personen bei diesen Figuren schildern gehört hatte, nicht recht zurechtkommen mit Gedanken, denn es waren keine Gedanken, die sie gaben. Aber es hatte eine ungeheuer bedeutende Nachwirkung. Man ging nicht nur mit einer warmen Seele davon, sondern man ging davon mit der Empfindung: Du hast eine Erkenntnis bekommen, die in dir lebt, die du gar nicht in Begriffe bringen kannst.
Und das war einer der Wege neben den andern, die ich Ihnen geschildert habe, wie auf gefühlsmäßige Weise in diesem Zeitalter vom 14., 15. Jahrhundert bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts Menschlichkeit, Göttlichkeit in weiten Kreisen verkündet und verbreitet worden ist. Man kann nicht ganz sagen, wortlos, man kann aber sagen, ideenlos, jedoch deshalb nicht inhaltlos. Es ist in diesem Zeitalter viel durch Gedankenstummheit zwischen den Menschen verhandelt worden. Und niemand bekommt eigentlich einen rechten Begriff von dem Charakter dieses Zeitalters, der nicht weiß, wieviel in diesem Zeitalter durch Gedankenstummheit, indem die Menschen ihre Seelen gewechselt haben, nicht bloß ihre Worte, bewirkt worden ist.
Damit wollte ich Ihnen noch einen der Züge jenes Übergangszeitalters, in dem die Freiheit unter den Menschen gediehen ist, schildern. Ich werde ja in der nächsten Zeit auf die verschiedenste Art mehreres aus diesem Gebiete heraus zu schildern haben. Hier wollte ich nur eben anknüpfen noch, ergänzend einiges auch, anknüpfen an dasjenige, was während der Tagung geschehen ist, und ergänzend einiges Weitere sagen.

Third Lecture
Yesterday I spoke to you about the particular form that the communication of spiritual scientific results took in the Middle Ages. And this form was basically the last thing that took place before a gate was closed for human spiritual development that had been open for centuries: the gate of a certain entry into the spiritual world through natural endowment. This gate was closed at the time when human beings, with their involuntary faculties, were to be placed, so to speak, out of the realm of the divine-spiritual will that dominated them and were to find in their innermost being, in their own will, the possibility of developing freedom in the soul, conscious freedom. But all developmental movements happen slowly and gradually, little by little. And so it has come about that what could no longer be achieved in the form of the old Mysteries, but in the form of leading up into etheric heights, leading down into earthly clefts directly in connection with the human experience of nature, even if not on the surface of the earth itself, has now come to people in a more unconscious form. Just think how it was for those personalities who strove for knowledge around the year 1200 and in the following 13th century, who of course had news that pupils could still find such teachers as the one I spoke of yesterday a short time ago, just think how it was for those who had this news and who were now actually dependent on finding knowledge only through human thinking.
In the following period of the Middle Ages, we see this human thinking developed in a truly impressive way in the largest circles. We see this human thinking taking paths that were taken out of the innermost zeal, out of a real devotion of the whole soul of man. These were more the paths of the larger circles of people seeking knowledge. But the actual spiritual science also continued. And then, by moving forward a few centuries, we come to the time when Rosicrucianism proper was founded. But this Rosicrucianism is connected with a change in the whole spiritual world in relation to man. And I will describe this change best if I also give you a picture here.
Mysteries in the old sense of the word were no longer possible since that time of which I have spoken to you; but people who longed for knowledge in the sense of these old mysteries and who experienced severe soul struggles when they heard of the guidance up the mountain, of the guidance into earth clefts, these people, they developed in their souls all possible inner methods, efforts, to call upon the soul to now nevertheless find the way. And those who can see such things, as I said, do not see into mystery places, but into meeting places of people seeking knowledge, warmed by an atmosphere of piety. And actually that which later became both the good Rosicrucianism and the degenerate, the charlatanic Rosicrucianism, originated from such people who, in being together, in unpretentious togetherness, attempted to so cultivate their souls that spiritual knowledge could really have come about. And in such a meeting, which really took place in quite undemanding surroundings, in the simple living room of a castle-like house, in such a meeting of a few people, it once happened that these people, through common spiritual exercises, which were half thought-meditative, half prayer-like, developed a kind of mystical mood in common, that mystical mood which was then cultivated by the so-called “Brothers of the Common Life”, later cultivated by the followers of Comenius and many other brotherhoods, but which developed with particular intensity in such a small circle. And while these few people were together with a real devotion of the ordinary consciousness, with a devotion of the whole intellect in an intensely mystical mood, it happened that a being came to them, but now a being that did not have flesh and blood like that teacher whom the disciple met for the guidance to the mountain, to the earthly gulfs, but a being that could actually only appear in the etheric body in this small community. And this being revealed itself as the same being that had guided that disciple around the year 1200. But it was in a post-mortem state. It had descended from the spiritual world to these people, who had attracted it through their pious-mystical, meditative-thinking mood.
In order to avoid any misunderstanding, I would like to emphasize explicitly that no mediumistic powers were involved, because precisely that small community that was gathered there would have regarded any use of mediumistic powers, even any appeal to mediumistic powers, as something deeply sinful, based on certain assumptions that belonged to time-honoured tradition. Precisely in those societies I am talking about, mediumship and everything related to it was not only regarded as something harmful, but as something deeply, deeply sinful, sinful for the reason that those people knew that mediumship was connected with a special constitution of the physical body, that the physical body gives the medium his powers, his spiritual powers. The physical body, however, was regarded by those people as a slave to sin, and under all circumstances manifestations with the help of mediumistic powers would have been regarded as ahrimanic or luciferic powers. These things were still well known at that time, and so nothing of a mediumistic nature was used. In contrast, it was purely the mystical-meditative mood; and it was the intensification of the mystical-meditative mood, which is produced by the commonality of souls, that conjured into this circle through its own willfulness that disembodied human being, that purely spiritual but human being.
And this being said in a very solemn manner: You are not prepared for my appearance, but I am among you, disembodied, without a physical body, because the time has come when initiates of the old kind cannot appear in the physical body for a short period of earthly existence. This time will come again when the Michael period dawns. I have come to you to reveal to you that the human inner being has remained untransformed, that the human inner being, if it behaves in the right way, can find the way to divine-spiritual existence. But for a time the human intellect will be so constituted that it will have to be suppressed so that the spiritual can speak to the human soul. Therefore remain in your mystical-pious mood. By receiving from me the common image, the common imagination, I could only point you to that which will take place with you, but you will continue to experience the continuation of that which you have experienced.
And behold, three of the circle that was gathered there were really destined to now establish a special connection with the spiritual world, again never through any mediumistic powers, but through the continuation of that mystical-meditative-pious mood. And in the case of these three, who were then especially protected by the others in this circle, who were really cared for intimately, it turned out that they experienced a kind of spiritual absence from time to time. They became beautiful in terms of their outward physicality, acquired something like a shining countenance, sunlit eyes, and during this time they wrote down symbolic revelations that they received from the spiritual world. These symbolic revelations were the first pictures in which it was revealed to the Rosicrucians what they should know about the spiritual world. In these symbolic revelations was contained a kind of philosophy, a kind of theology, a kind of medicine.
And this strange thing turned out: The others - it seems to me as if the others had been four, so that the whole had been a community of seven - the others, they were able, through what they had experienced in the sunlit eyes, in the radiant countenance of their three brothers, to express in ordinary language that which lay in the symbols. The brothers destined to retrieve these symbols from the spiritual world could only write down these symbols, and they could only say when they returned to their ordinary state of consciousness: We have walked among stars and star spirits and found there the ancient teachers of secret knowledge. - They themselves could not translate into ordinary human language the symbolic images they recorded. The others could and did. And much of what then passed into philosophical-theological - but no longer ecclesiastical-theological, but profane-theological - and medical literature originally sprang from this source. And in smaller circles, which were organized by the first Rosicrucians, the symbols received from the spiritual world were then disseminated.
And again and again and again there were opportunities to experience this in the smallest circles between the 13th and 15th centuries. Much was revealed to people from the spiritual world in this or similar ways between the 13th and 15th centuries. Those who were to translate what was revealed in images were not always able to reproduce it faithfully. That is why some of what you can still find handed down today from the philosophy of this time is not entirely clear in itself, and you have to search for what it actually means from the world of the spirit. But at least there was the possibility for those who knew about this kind of revelation from the spiritual world to tie in with such revelations.
But you must imagine how strange the mood of people must have gradually become who had to receive these highest insights - because what was given to them was recognized as such - who had to receive such highest insights from a side that actually gradually became uncanny to them, because they did not look into the world from which these secrets came to them, because the ordinary consciousness did not reach into it. That is why it was so obvious that such things could very easily lead to charlatanism, even to dizziness. And in no time of human development have charlatanism and the highest in revelation been so close together as in this period. And it is difficult for this time to distinguish the genuine from the false, which is why the whole of Rosicrucianism is regarded by many as charlatanism. It is understandable that this is the case, because the true Rosicrucians are extremely difficult to find among the charlatans, and the whole thing becomes particularly questionable because the assumption always had to be made that the spiritual revelation came from sources that initially remained hidden according to their actual nature.
And it was so that those who were gradually gathered, so to speak, by the first Rosicrucians into a larger brotherhood, always actually appeared as unknowns in such a way that they appeared here and there in the world, mostly in the medical profession at that time, healed the sick, and on this occasion, by practicing the medical profession, spread knowledge at the same time. It was the case that much, much knowledge was disseminated at that time, of which one must say: The dissemination had a somewhat embarrassing character, because the people who carried out this dissemination could not even say what the connection was with the spiritual world in which they stood.
But something else developed within this enterprise of spiritual research, of spiritual knowledge. It is a tremendously beautiful thing to see: There are three brothers and four others, three brothers who can actually only achieve something worthwhile in what they can offer the world if the other four work together with them. They are absolutely dependent on each other. The three receive their revelations from the spiritual world, the four can translate it into ordinary human language. What the three give would be completely incomprehensible images if the other four could not translate them. And again, the four others would have nothing at all to translate if the three did not receive their revelations in pictorial form from the spiritual world.
Thus, within such communities, that which was regarded in certain circles in these centuries as something that is supremely human developed: inner spiritual brotherhood, brotherhood in knowledge, brotherhood in spiritual life. Such small circles came to know the real value of brotherhood precisely through their striving. And they gradually felt more and more that the development of mankind towards freedom is such that the bond between man and the gods would be completely torn apart if it were not maintained by such brotherhood, where one really depends on the other.
What one has to describe there is something extraordinarily beautiful in terms of soul. And there is a magic about much of what was written at that time that only becomes understandable when you know that this atmosphere of human brotherhood, which permeated the spiritual life of many circles in Europe at that time, shone wonderfully into this writing. But the whole thing was - and this became more and more apparent - immersed in a mood that made people anxious among those who were striving for knowledge. Because the sources of spiritual revelation could not be accessed, it was no longer possible to know whether these revelations were of a good or evil nature. And a certain fearfulness of certain influences, alongside all the good in these currents, was particularly evident at this time. This fearfulness then spread to large sections of the people, who were afraid, very afraid of all knowledge.
This mood can be studied particularly well in two people. One is Raimund of Sabunda, who lived in the 15th century and was born around 1430. Raimund of Sabunda is a strange man. If you immerse yourself in what he thought, what he left behind, you get the feeling that it is almost the same revelation that this teacher of the mountains and earth's crevices gave to his pupil around the year 1200, gave to him in full consciousness. - And yet again, the whole thing is immersed in more vague and impersonal expressions - philosophical, theological, medical - in Raimund von Sabunda's 15th century work. But this stems from the fact that Raimund of Sabunda had also received his revelations in a roundabout way through true Rosicrucianism, i.e. on the path that was opened up by the fact that the great initiate of the 12th century, whose effects I have described to you, continued to inspire all that I have characterized today from the spiritual world. For it was basically from him and those who were with him in the spiritual world that all those revelations emanated which then passed through Rosicrucianism in the way I have often described for Rosicrucianism. He gave the mood. But fearfulness now took hold of such spirits. Raimund von Sabunda was a courageous, bold spirit, one of those people who are able to appreciate ideas, who know how to live in ideas. That is why one notices in him something of the indeterminacy that comes from the fact that the revelations are from the spiritual world, but one notices nothing in him of any fearfulness, of a fear of knowledge. All the more, what emerged from that spiritual current in this way is particularly characteristic of another spirit, Pico de Mirandola in the 15th century.
Pico de Mirandola, who died at an early age, is a very remarkable spirit. If you immerse yourself in what he conceived and devised, you will see the same inspiration at work everywhere in his thinking, in his senses, that I have just characterized: the continuation of the wisdom of that old initiate on the detour through the Rosicrucian current. But one sees a kind of retreat in Pico de Mirandola, a retreat from this realization. He assures us, for example, that everything that happens on earth, that stones are formed on earth, that plants live, grow and bear fruit on earth, that animals live on earth, all this does not come from the forces of the earth. - If someone were to believe that there is the earth and that the forces of the earth bring about what is on the earth, he would have a wrong view. The correct view, according to Pico de Mirandola, is that it is the stars, and that everything that happens on earth depends on the stars. According to Pico de Mirandola, the smallest thing that happens on earth depends on the stars. You have to look up to the heavens if you want to understand what is happening on earth. And it is already in the spirit of Pico de Mirandola when one says: "You shake hands with me, my brother man, but it is not only your feeling that causes you to shake hands, but it is the star above you that gives you the impulse to shake hands with me. - Ultimately, everything is caused by that which is founded in the heavenly, in the cosmic, and the reflection of this alone happens on earth.
Pico de Mirandola expresses this as a certain conviction, and at the same time he says: "But men are obliged not to look at these star causes, but to consider only the next cause on earth. - From this point of view Pico de Mirandola fights - this is extremely characteristic - the astrology that has come down to him. He knows that the old, real, genuine astrology expresses itself in the destinies of men. He knows that, he believes it to be true. But he says that one should not practice astrology, one should only seek the proximate causes.
Do you realize what is actually going on here? There, for the first time, the idea of the limits of knowledge is presented in a very peculiar way, but, I would like to say, in a form in which it is entirely human. If you look later at Kart, at Du Bois-Reymond, you will be told that man cannot transcend the limits of knowledge, that it is based on an inner necessity. - This is not the case with Pico de Mirandola in the 15th century, but he says: Yes, what is here on earth is brought about by cosmic causes, but man should refrain from recognizing these cosmic causes. Man should confine himself to the earth. - And so, in the 15th century, we encounter the voluntary renunciation of the highest knowledge in such a characteristic personality as Pico de Mirandola. This is a cultural-historical intellectual fact of the most far-reaching significance imaginable. At that time it happened that people said to themselves: We want to do without knowledge. - And indeed, that which takes place outwardly in such a personality as Pico de Mirandola has its counterpart in the spiritual.
Once again, it was in one of those unpretentious meeting houses of the Rosicrucians that the sacrifice of the knowledge of the stars was made in the most solemn form during a ritual act that was performed specifically for this purpose in the 15th century, in the second half of the 15th century. And one would like to say that this is what took place during that ritual act, which was once performed with particular solemnity. People stood before a kind of altar and said: We now want to feel responsible not only for ourselves or our community or our people or the humanity of the present, we want to feel responsible for all people who have ever lived on earth. We want to feel that we belong to the whole of humanity. And we feel that humanity has gone through something which is an abandonment of the rank of the fourth hierarchy, a too deep descent into matter - that is how the Fall was understood. Therefore, in order that mankind might again return to its rank of the fourth Hierarchy and find in free will that which the gods had formerly attempted for it and with it, higher knowledge was sacrificed for a certain time. - And certain beings of the spiritual world, who are not of a human nature, who did not descend to earth in human incarnation, accepted the sacrifice in order to achieve certain goals in the spiritual world, of which to speak here would lead too far, which shall happen another time. But the impulse to freedom from the spiritual world was made possible for them.
I mention this cult scene for the reason that I want to tell you through it that actually everything that happens in the outer physical-sensual life has spiritual counter-images, which we only have to look for where they are. For sometimes a single act of worship performed by, I will not say knowledgeable people in this context, but by such personalities who are connected with the spiritual world, sometimes means something from which the impulses for a whole culture or current of civilization radiate. The one who wants to know the basic coloring of an epoch must look for the corresponding spiritual emanation point for the forces that flowed through this time period.
The following then, what was produced in the spiritual, in the truly spiritual-spiritual, was an echo of such a creation from unknown spiritual worlds. And right up to the 19th century, alongside the external materialism that developed, we were always able to get to know individual spirits who lived under the after-effects of this renunciation of higher knowledge.
I would like to characterize one type of person who lived from the 15th century through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, at least in a few lines. A type of person who could be found somewhere in the village outside as a collector of herbs for pharmacies, as somehow different in an undemanding profession inside. We have to imagine such a personality. You meet them when you yourself are interested in the special forms of the human being in this or that individuality, you meet them, this personality. At first, she is extraordinarily tight-lipped, talks little or diverts your attention from what you want to look for in her by using insignificant, deliberately trivial phrases, through which she wants to create the belief that it is not worth the effort to talk to her. But if you know how to look not always at the content of the words a person says, but at the sound of his words, at the way they come from him, then you will still continue to listen to such a person. And if he then got the impression from some karmic context that he should speak, then he began to speak carefully, and you discovered that you had a kind of sage in him. But what he said was not star wisdom. What he said was not earthly wisdom either. It did not contain much of what is now called spiritual science, but it was warm words from the heart, moral instructions of a far-reaching nature, but delivered unsentimentally, proverbial sayings.
You could hear something like: Let's go to that tree. My soul can crawl into the needles, crawl into the pine cones, because my soul is everywhere. When it crawls into the pine cones and needles, then it looks out through the pine cones and needles into the depths of the world and the far reaches of the world, and then you become one with the whole world. And that is true piety, when you become one with the whole world. Where is God? God is in every pine cone. And whoever does not recognize God in every pine cone, whoever seeks God somewhere other than in every pine cone, does not recognize the real God. - I only want to characterize how such people spoke who were found in the way I have described. This is how such people spoke. They also said, for example: "Yes, and then, if you crawl into the pine cones and needles, you will find how God rejoices over the people in the world. But if you go deep down into your own heart, deep down into the abyss of the inwardness of human nature, then you also find God, but then you learn to recognize him as he becomes sad over the sins of people. This is how these unpretentious sages spoke. A large number of these unpretentious sages had certain - I would say in today's language - editions of the old Rosicrucian figures. They showed them to just such people, who approached them in such a way that they spoke out. But it was precisely when these figures, who lived among these people in unpretentious, rather poor prints, were discussed that the conversations developed in a strange way. Some people, despite their interest in the unpretentious sage, were then seized by a certain curiosity as to what these strange Rosicrucian images actually meant, asked questions, and then one did not get a real, precise answer from these individual sages, who were regarded as eccentrics, but only the hint: "If you really delve into it, then you can look through these figures into the spiritual world as if through a window. - They described more what they could experience emotionally in them than that they gave any interpretations or interpretations of the figures. And sometimes, when one had heard such expressions of the characters' feelings described by these figures, one could not quite come to terms with thoughts, because they were not thoughts that they gave. But it had a tremendously significant after-effect. You didn't just walk away with a warm soul, you walked away with the feeling: You have received a knowledge that lives within you, which you cannot even conceptualize.
And that was one of the ways, alongside the others that I have described to you, in which humanity and divinity were proclaimed and spread in an emotional way in wide circles in this age from the 14th and 15th centuries to the end of the 18th century. One cannot quite say wordless, but one can say devoid of ideas, but not devoid of content. In this age, much has been negotiated between people through the muteness of thought. And no one can really get a proper idea of the character of this age unless he knows how much has been achieved in this age through the muteness of thought, in that people have exchanged their souls, not just their words.
With this I wanted to describe to you another of the features of that transitional age in which freedom has flourished among people. In the near future, I will have to describe several things from this area in various ways. I just wanted to tie in with what happened during the conference and say a few additional things.
