The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Among the spiritual conditions that led to the anthroposophical movement—and which, from a spiritual perspective, are, so to speak, contained within the karma of the anthroposophical movement—I have cited the two outward symptoms: the one expressed in the emergence of catechetics, in the emergence of the catechism with its questions and answers—which led to a faith not directly connected to the spiritual world—and the exotericization of the Mass, which, in its entirety—including with regard to transubstantiation and Communion—became accessible to all people, even the unprepared, and thus lost the character of the ancient mystery. In these two earthly events, what took place—as observed from the spiritual world—served to prepare, within the course of spiritual development, in a very specific way, what was to become spiritual revelation at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century: the spiritual revelation, as it is appropriate to the course of time, as it had to come after the Michael Event, and as it had to come at the time when the old, dark epoch of Kali Yuga was drawing to a close and a new, luminous age was about to dawn for humanity.

[ 2 ] Today we have a third point to add. And only when we have brought before our souls these three spiritual prerequisites for all spiritual development in the present and the future—these three spiritual conditions that were capable of bringing together a number of people even before they descended into the physical world in the last third of the 19th century or around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century— only when we have come to know these prerequisites will it be possible to comprehend individual extra-karmic events that have flowed into the life courses bound together in the anthroposophical movement.

[ 3 ] The particular way of relating to nature, and the way of relating to the spiritual—as it has already developed to a high degree today—actually dates back to the period that began in the 14th and 15th centuries. Before that, humanity’s relationship to the spiritual, in particular, was fundamentally different. People did not approach the spiritual through concepts and ideas, but through experiences that still penetrated—albeit weakly and softly—but still penetrated into the spiritual.

[ 4 ] When we speak of nature today, we are referring to an insubstantial, lifeless abstraction. When we speak of the spirit, we are referring to something indefinite that we somehow presuppose to exist in the world, something we encapsulate in abstract ideas and concepts. This was not the case in the time when the souls who today come together in their longing for spirituality had their defining previous incarnation, and in that defining previous incarnation listened to what the enlightened leaders of humanity had to say regarding the needs of their souls.

[ 5 ] First, we must consider the era extending up to the 7th and 8th Christian centuries, when there was still a faint connection between the human soul and the spiritual world—an actual experience of the spiritual world itself—and when even those with spiritual insight maintained a living relationship with the spiritual world. And then we have the era that begins with the 7th and 8th centuries and lasts until the great turning point in the 14th and 15th centuries, when those human souls who, in the first Christian centuries, had still experienced on Earth the era I have described, were in the life between death and a new birth.

[ 6 ] But even though there was no direct connection to the spiritual world from the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries onward, I would say that a certain awareness of this connection still found its way into individual centers of learning. In certain places of learning, people still spoke in the same way as they had in the early Christian centuries when it came to matters of knowledge. And so it was quite possible that certain exceptional individuals, through the very way in which the spiritual world was discussed, received inner impulses that enabled them to break through into the spiritual world, at least at certain times. And there were, after all, individual places where teaching was conducted in a way that is impossible to imagine today.

[ 7 ] It was not until the 12th and 13th centuries that this process truly came to an end, and there, I would say, it finally found its way into a significant work of poetry in which it found its culmination in human experience: Dante’s Commedia, the Divina Commedia. What lies prior to the creation of the Commedia constitutes a marvelous chapter in human development, precisely because the forces at work here on Earth and those from the spiritual realm are constantly interacting. The two constantly flow together: because people on Earth had somewhat lost their connection to the spiritual world, and because for those who lived above and had still experienced this connection here on Earth, the sight of the earthly realm evoked a particularly wistful mood. They saw what they themselves had once experienced on Earth sinking into oblivion, and from the supersensible world they inspired and spiritualized individualities in the sensory world in order to establish, here and there, a place of nurturing for that which constitutes humanity’s connection with the spiritual realm.

[ 8 ] Let us be clear—as I hinted at here years ago—that as late as the 7th and 8th centuries, as an aftereffect of pre-Christian initiation, Christianity was received in places that still existed as centers of higher knowledge, as the last vestiges of the mysteries. It was the case that people—not initially through formal instruction, but through an education directed toward the spiritual in both the physical and spiritual realms—were prepared for the moment when they could cast a gentle gaze upon the spirituality that can reveal itself in the human environment on Earth. Then their gaze turned outward to the mineral and plant kingdoms, and to all that lives in the animal and human kingdoms. And then they saw, aurically, the spiritual-elemental beings that lived in all of nature sprouting forth and being fertilized anew from the cosmos.

[ 9 ] And then, above all else, the “Goddess Natura” appeared to them—like a being whom they addressed as they would another human being, only as a being of a higher order. It was that very goddess whom they saw before them—I cannot say in the flesh, but in spirit, in all her splendor. People did not speak of abstract laws of nature; they spoke of the creative power of the goddess Natura, present everywhere in nature.

[ 10 ] She was the metamorphosis of the ancient Proserpina. She was that creative goddess with whom, in a certain way, the one who was to seek knowledge connected—knowledge that appeared to him from every mineral, from every plant, from every creature, appeared from the clouds, appeared from the mountains, appeared from the springs. From this goddess, who creates alternately above and below ground in winter and summer, from this goddess they sensed: she is the helper of that deity of whom the Gospels speak; she is the active divine power.

[ 11 ] And when such a person, who strove for knowledge, had been sufficiently instructed by this goddess about the mineral, plant, and animal realms, and had been initiated into the living forces, then through her he came to know the nature of the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. And he came to understand how these four elements—earth, water, air, and fire—which pour out concretely over the world, surge and weave within the mineral, animal, and plant realms. And he felt himself, with his etheric body, woven into the weaving of the earth with its heaviness, of water with its life-giving power, of air with its sensation-awakening power, and of fire with its self-igniting power. There, the human being felt himself woven into this fabric. He perceived this as a gift from the teachings of the goddess Natura, the successor and metamorphosis of Proserpina. And the teachers sought to ensure that the students gained a sense of this living communion with nature—filled with and substantiated by the divine—and penetrated to the very fabric and life of the elements.

[ 12 ] Then, once the students were ready, they were introduced to the planetary system. And they learned how knowledge of the planetary system simultaneously yields knowledge of the human soul: Learn to recognize how the variable stars surge across the sky, and you will learn to recognize how your own soul works, weaves, and lives within you. This was presented to the students.

[ 13 ] And then they were led to what was called the “Great Ocean.” But this ocean was the cosmic sea that stretched from the planets, from the variable stars to the quiet stars, to the fixed stars.

[ 14 ] Then they penetrated the mysteries of the “I” by coming to know the mysteries of the world of the fixed stars.

[ 15 ] Today, people have forgotten that such teachings ever existed. But such teachings did exist. And this kind of living knowledge was, after all, cultivated among the followers of the Mysteries right up until the 7th and 8th centuries. And as a doctrine, as a theory, it continued to be cultivated until the turn of the 14th to the 15th century, which I have spoken of so often. And we can trace, in specific places where such teachings were preserved, how these ancient teachings lived on—albeit amid the greatest possible difficulties, albeit reduced almost to mere concepts and ideas—yet concepts and ideas so alive that they could still kindle in individual people a glimpse of all that I have spoken of.

[ 16 ] In the 11th century, but especially in the 12th century—extending into the 13th—there was a truly wonderful school where the teachers knew exactly how, in the preceding centuries, students had been guided to experience the spiritual. It was the great school of Chartres, where all the insights that had emerged from that spiritual vitality I have described had converged.

[ 17 ] In Chartres, where those marvelous architectural masterpieces can still be found today, a ray of the still-living wisdom of Peter of Compostela—who worked in Spain and cultivated a living, mystical Christianity there that still spoke of the Helper of Christ, Nature, and which still spoke of the fact that only when this Nature has introduced humanity to the elements, to the world of the planets, to the world of the stars—only then does humanity become ripe to come to know the seven Helpers—I cannot say in bodily form, but in soulful form—Helpers who did not appear before the human soul in abstract theoretical chapters, but as living goddesses: Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music. The students came to know them as living, divine-spiritual beings.

[ 18 ] Well, those around Peter of Compostella spoke of such vibrant figures. The teachings of Peter of Compostella radiated into the School of Chartres. At this School of Chartres, for example, the great Bernard of Chartres taught; though he could no longer show his students the goddess Natura or the goddesses of the seven liberal arts, he spoke of them with such vitality that at least the images of the imagination were conjured before the students, so that in every lesson, science became a radiant art.

[ 19 ] There, Bernardus Silvestris taught, bringing to life before his students—in powerful descriptions—that which was, in fact, ancient wisdom. Above all, John of Chartres taught, speaking of the human soul in a truly magnificent and inspired manner; this John of Chartres, also known as John of Salisbury, developed views in which he engaged with Aristotle and Aristotelianism. The particularly gifted students were influenced in such a way that they came to realize that such a teaching as existed in the early Christian centuries could no longer exist on Earth, that Earth’s evolution could no longer sustain it. It was made clear to the students: There is an ancient, almost clairvoyant insight, but it is fading. One can still know about dialectics, rhetoric, astronomy, and astrology, but one can no longer behold the goddesses of the seven liberal arts, for Aristotle—who had already grown, even in antiquity, into the concepts and ideas of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—must continue to exert his influence.

[ 20 ] And with an inspiring force, what was taught in this way at the School of Chartres—that is, such a doctrine—spread to the Cluniac Order as well and was secularized in the decrees concerning the Church issued by the Cluniac abbot Hildebrand, who later became Pope Gregory VII; but with extraordinary purity, this teaching continued to flourish at the School of Chartres, and the 12th century shone with these teachings. And in particular, there was one who truly surpassed all others, and who, I would say, taught the mysteries of the seven liberal arts in their connection to Christianity at Chartres with an idealistic inspiration: Alanus of Lille.

[ 21 ] Alanus of Lille truly inspired his students in Chartres in the 12th century. He had a profound insight into the fact that, in the centuries to come, what was taught in this manner could no longer benefit the world, for it was not merely Platonism; it was the doctrine of mystical vision from the pre-Platonic era, except that this vision had incorporated Christianity. And to those whom he considered capable of understanding, Alanus of Lille taught even during his own lifetime: Now, an Aristotelian-influenced understanding must take effect on Earth for a time, in precise concepts and ideas. For only in this way can the ground be laid for what must return in a later age as spirituality.

[ 22 ] To some people today, when they read the literature of that time, it may seem dry, but it is not dry if one can gain an insight into what lay before the souls of those who taught and worked in Chartres. This sense of connection to the living gods of the seven liberal arts comes through vividly, even in the poetry that originated in Chartres. And in the poem “La bataille des VII arts”—which is deeply moving to those who can understand it—we feel the spiritual breath of the seven liberal arts. All of this was at work in the 12th century.

[ 23 ] All of this, you see, was still alive in the spiritual atmosphere at that time; all of this still exerted its influence in a certain way. All of this, after all, still had many points in common with schools that still existed in northern Italy, in Italy in general, and in Spain, though they led a very sporadic existence. Yet it continued to spread in a living way into various currents of thought across the world. And toward the end of the 12th century, much of this was present at the University of Orléans, where remarkable teachings of this kind were cultivated, and where much was influenced by the School of Chartres.

[ 24 ] And then one day, down in Italy, an envoy who had previously been staying in Spain—overwhelmed by a powerful historical impression—experienced something akin to sunstroke, and everything he had learned in school as preparation became, under the influence of this mild sunstroke, a powerful revelation: where he saw what a human being could see under the influence of the living principle of knowledge, where he saw the mightily rising mountain with all that springs forth from minerals, plants, and animals; where the goddess Nature appeared; where the elements appeared; where the planets appeared; where the goddesses of the seven liberal arts appeared; where Ovid then appeared as the guiding teacher—where, once again, that mighty presence stood before a human soul, the very presence that had so often stood before human souls in the early centuries of Christianity. It was Branetto Latini’s vision, which was then passed on to Dante and flowed into Dante’s Commedia.

[ 25 ] But a different fate awaited all those who had worked in Chartres when they passed through the gate of death and, having passed through the gate of death, entered the spiritual world. It was a significant spiritual life that Peter of Compostella, Bernard of Chartres, Bernard Silvestris, John of Chartres-Salisbury, and Henri d’Andeli—who wrote the poem “La bataille des VII arts”—had led, but especially that of Alan of Lille. In his own way, he wrote the treatise Contra Haereticos, thereby turning against the heretics from the perspective of the ancient worldview in a Christian sense, but specifically from the perspective of the spiritual world.

[ 26 ] And now all these individual souls—who were the last to have been active in the afterglow of the ancient, clearly perceived wisdom, the wisdom perceived in the light—now entered the spiritual world: that spiritual world where, in preparation for earthly existence, were the most important souls who were soon to descend into earthly existence to work in the way that was then necessary to bring about the turning point that occurred in the 14th and 15th centuries.

[ 27 ] Here we have a spiritual existence, my dear friends: the last great figures of the School of Chartres had just arrived in the spiritual world. Those individuals who ushered in the heyday of Scholasticism were still in the spiritual world. And one of the most important exchanges of ideas behind the scenes of human development took place at the beginning of the 13th century between those who had carried the old contemplative Platonism from the School of Chartres into the supersensible world, and those who were preparing to bring Aristotelianism down as the great transition for the advent of a new spirituality that was to flood into the development of humanity in the future.

[ 28 ] It was agreed that precisely these individuals, who came from the School of Chartres, would tell those who were just preparing to descend into the sensory-physical world and to cultivate Aristotelianism within Scholasticism as the proper element of the age: For us, working on Earth is not possible for the time being, for the Earth is not yet in a state to cultivate knowledge with this vitality. What we were still able to cultivate as the last bearers of Platonism must now be superseded by Aristotelianism. We remain up here. And so the spirits of Chartres remained in the supersensible world, without having entered into any significant earthly incarnations to date. But they played a powerful role in shaping that magnificent imagination that was taking form in the first half of the 19th century, of which I have spoken to you.

[ 29 ] They worked in complete harmony with those who first descended to Earth as Aristotelians. And in particular, it was the Dominican Order that included individuals who, I would say, were in a kind of supernatural covenant with the spirits of Chartres, who had, so to speak, made an agreement with them: “We will descend to continue cultivating knowledge within Aristotelianism. You will remain above.” We will also be able to remain in contact with you on Earth. For the time being, Platonism cannot flourish on Earth. We will find you again when we return, and when the time is to be prepared in which, after the Earth has undergone the scholastic development of Aristotelianism, spirituality can once again be developed together with the spirits of Chartres.

[ 30 ] It was of profound significance, for example, when Alanus of Lille—as he was known during his earthly life—sent down from the spiritual world a disciple whom he had thoroughly instructed there, specifically to bring down to Earth all the discrepancies that might exist between Platonism and Aristotelianism, but in such a way that harmony could emerge from the scholastic principles of that time. And so, particularly in the 13th century, efforts were made to ensure that the work of those who were on Earth—for example, in the habit of the Dominicans—could converge with the work of those who had remained in the other world, since they were initially unable to find earthly bodies in which to express their particular form of spirituality, which could not be reconciled with Aristotelianism.

[ 31 ] And in the 13th century, a wonderful interplay arose between what was happening on Earth and what was flowing in from above. Often, the people acting on Earth were not at all aware of this interplay, but those acting in the spiritual realm were all the more so. It was a living interplay. One might say: the principle of the mysteries had ascended into the heavens and let its rays of sunlight fall upon what was taking place on earth.

[ 32 ] It went into great detail, and can be traced in particular through these details. Alanus of Lille—in his own earthly development as a teacher at Chartres—had been able to go only so far as to don the Cistercian habit at a certain age and become a priest of the Cistercian Order. And the Cistercian Order had become a refuge for the very last remnants of monastic practices of that time, with the aim of reviving Platonism—the Platonic worldview—in conjunction with Christianity.

[ 33 ] The way in which he sent a student forth is expressed in the fact that he sent this student to ensure, through the Dominican Order, that the task intended to lead to Aristotelianism would continue to bear fruit. This transition was manifested externally, in particular, by a remarkable phenomenon: that—I might say—supernatural disciple of Alanus ab Insulis first wore the Cistercian habit on earth, but later exchanged it for the Dominican habit.

[ 34 ] Here we have the individualities that interacted in a supersensory-sensory way during the 13th century and well into the 14th: influential later scholastics and their students, human souls long connected to one another, yet also linked in turn to the great minds of the School of Chartres.

[ 35 ] There we have, I would say, that magnificent, immense, world-historical plan, which held that those who could not descend to Earth through Aristotelianism would preserve themselves in the spiritual world above, waiting until the others could continue to cultivate on Earth that very thing in which they were so intimately connected with those left behind—under the influence of sharp concepts and ideas derived from Aristotelianism. It was truly like a dialogue ascending and descending from the spiritual world to the earthly world, and from the earthly world back up to the spiritual world, during this 13th century.

[ 36 ] Only genuine Rosicrucianism could have had an impact within this spiritual atmosphere.

[ 37 ] And then, when those who had descended to give rise to the Aristotelian impulse had, so to speak, fulfilled their task on Earth, they, too, were lifted up into the spiritual world; then there was a collaboration in the spiritual world—I would say—between the Platonists and the Aristotelians. And gathered around them were now those souls of whom I have spoken: the souls of the two groups I have mentioned.

[ 38 ] So that, in a certain sense, we are flowing into the karma of the anthroposophical movement—a widely spread circle of students from Chartres and the integration into this circle of all those souls who have just taken up one or the other of the two currents I have spoken of here in recent days—a large circle, for many live within this circle who have not yet found their way to the anthroposophical movement. But it is indeed true that what is present today in the anthroposophical field has been prepared through various experiences.

[ 39 ] For example, something peculiar had come to pass within the Cistercian Order when Alanus ab Insulis—Alanus of Lille—took the Cistercian habit and became a Cistercian priest while retaining his Platonism. That, I would say, essentially remained attached to the Cistercian Order. And I must say—for why shouldn’t small personal remarks be permitted in contexts such as these, which must now be opened up here, even if they could not exactly be incorporated into the “biography”—I must say: What taught me to recognize certain connections in this direction—other connections have simply arisen from entirely different directions—was that, up until my time in Weimar, I could not, in fact, escape the presence of the Cistercian Order in my life, and yet, in a certain sense, I was continually kept at a distance from the Cistercian Order. I grew up, so to speak, in the shadow of the Cistercian Order, which has important settlements around Wiener Neustadt. Priests of the Cistercian Order were the ones who educated most of the young people in the area where I grew up. I constantly had the Cistercian habit before my eyes—the white robe, the white habit with the black sash, which we call a stole, around the waist. And if I had been prompted to speak about such things in my Lebensgang, I would have said: Everything, absolutely everything in my childhood was actually predisposed toward me not following the educational path I actually took—through the Wiener Neustadt Realschule—but rather through the Gymnasium. But at that time, it was still a Cistercian Gymnasium. And there were strange forces that both drew me in and kept me at a distance.

[ 40 ] And again, the entire circle of monks who taught theology at the University of Vienna—the group that gathered around Marie Eugenie delle Grazie—consisted of Cistercians. The most intimate theological discussions, the most intimate discussions on Christology, I had with the Cistercians. I mention this only to suggest that it, in a sense, adds a certain color to our view of the 12th century in particular, when the splendor of Chartres shone into the Cistercian Order. For in the remarkable scholarship of the Cistercians—which is so appealing—something of the magic of Chartres still lived on, albeit in a corrupted form. The most important aspects of a wide variety of subjects were researched by Cistercians whom I knew well. And those subjects were the most important to me, where I could say: It is certainly impossible that those who were students of Chartres, for example, could have incarnated here; but it was evident even at a glance that some of the individualities associated with the School of Chartres—if I may call it that—incorporated themselves for brief periods into people who wore the habit of the Cistercian Order.

[ 41 ] I would like to say that, separated by a thin wall, what had been prepared in the supersensible realm in the way I have described continued to have an effect on Earth, and this ultimately led to the great preparation in the first half of the 19th century. And that conversation I mentioned in my Lebensgang—the one about the essence of Christ that I had with a Cistercian priest, not at home, but as I was leaving the house of delle Grazie—a conversation that was in fact conducted not from today’s dogmatic-theological standpoint or from the standpoint of neo-scholasticism, but with complete immersion in what once was, with Aristotelian conceptual precision, yet also with Platonic insight.

[ 42 ] What was to emerge in anthroposophy was already shining, albeit in a mysterious way, through the events of the time, it shone, not through the human soul bound up in one or another denominational or social current, but rather through that aspect by which this human soul is connected to the great spiritual currents at work on Earth. And one could already see how, in many of the things that were at work in various fields within individual human beings—from the beginning of the Michael Age until the end of the Kali Yuga—the spirit of the age spoke in such a way that this speaking was a summoning of the anthroposophical revelations. One could see this anthroposophy emerging in a living way, like a being, that had to be born, but which rested, as in a mother’s womb, within what the School of Chartres had prepared on Earth from the early Christian centuries—and which then found its continuation in the supersensible realm and in interaction with what continued to work on Earth in the Aristotelian-influenced defense of Christianity.

[ 43 ] Then, out of those impulses that we find in Alanus of Lille’s work Contra Haereticos, something like Thomas Aquinas’s Summa fidei catholicae contra gentiles emerged. And so emerged that trend of the times that we see in all the images where the Dominican Doctors of the Church trample upon Averroes, Avicenna, and others—a trend that marks both the vigorous defense of spiritual Christianity and, at the same time, the transition toward intellectualism.

[ 44 ] My dear friends, I am unable to present, in a theoretical manner, something that is a world of facts, for any theoretical approach would cause things to fade and lose their intensity. I wanted to present facts before your souls, from which you might sense what catches the eye when one looks upon those souls who, before their present earthly existence, had undergone a spiritual existence between death and rebirth in such a way that they came to long for anthroposophy while on Earth.

[ 45 ] The most diametrically opposed views interact in the world to form a whole. And now those souls who worked in the 12th century at the great school of Chartres, and those who were connected to them through one of the greatest spiritual communities—but in the supersensible world at the beginning of the 13th century—the spirits of Chartres are now working together with those who, connected to them at that time, cultivated Aristotelianism, regardless of whether some are active here on Earth while others cannot yet descend to Earth, with the intention of ushering in a new spiritual age for Earth’s evolution. Their task now is to gather the souls that have long been connected to them—the souls with whom a spiritual age can be established—in order to bring about, in a relatively short time and in some way within the otherwise collapsing civilization, the possibility for the spirits of Chartres from the 12th century and the spirits associated with them from the 13th century to work together in earthly incarnations, so that they may collaborate in earthly existence to revitalize spirituality within a civilization that is otherwise heading toward decay and ruin.

[ 46 ] I wanted to use this to characterize the intentions that are, so to speak, being cultivated today—not on Earth, then, but between Heaven and Earth, I would say—these are the intentions I wanted to describe to you. Delve deeply into what lies within these intentions, and you will find that the background of what must be in the foreground—the convergence of human souls in the anthroposophical movement—will have a profound effect on your soul.