| 274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: Introduction
25 Dec 1923, Dornach |
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| 274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: Introduction
25 Dec 1923, Dornach |
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Translated by Steiner Online Library during the founding meetings of the General Anthroposophical Society. Yesterday I took the liberty of saying a few words about the historical origin of the plays that we are performing for you here during this Christmas Conference. Today I would just like to add something about the way these plays were performed in the Hungarian German colonies at the time when Karl Julius Schröer found them there in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The plays were the handwritten property of the most respected families in the village, so to speak. And they were performed from the village in which they were available, in neighboring villages within a radius of two to three hours. When the grape harvest was over in the fall, around the middle or end of October, the village's farming dignitaries would meet and discuss – not every year, but when fate would have it, I would say. The school teacher, who was also the notary, was not present; he kept to the intelligentsia, and the intelligentsia disdained these plays. But the farmers, after a few years when the plays were not performed for some reason, then said: Well, it wouldn't hurt our young boys if they had something better to do at Christmas time! And then they discussed whether there were any real men around who could be used to play. A list was put together. But then, when the men were asked if they wanted to play, and if they were chosen to play, they were subject to a number of strict conditions. It says a lot for these areas that the boys – think about it, the whole time from October to Christmas and Epiphany – were not allowed to get drunk, were not allowed to go to the Dirndl and what we certainly cannot do here, had to obey absolutely the one who rehearsed the matter with them. Now, if we were to demand something like that, the other players would be very annoyed with us! So these exercises were carried out with extraordinary diligence for weeks, during which the plays were rehearsed. But there was something else we could not do. Whoever forgot something or did something badly had to pay a half-kreuzer fine. Well, we can't do that either, we can't impose penalties for forgetting! And so these exercises were carried out in the strictest way until the first Sunday of Advent. Because on Advent Sunday they already started playing the 'Paradeis' play, which you saw yesterday. At Christmas there was the 'Christ-Birth' play and around January 6th there was the play that will be shown here in the next few days. The arrangement of the play – I already mentioned some of it yesterday – was that the boys gathered and dressed up at the teacher's house, and from there they went to the inn where the performance took place. But the devil had already been sent away earlier. You saw him yesterday too. He was equipped with a cow horn and did something that we, on the other hand, cannot imitate, because he blew into each window. Perhaps the people in our village would also enjoy this, but we don't want to try it for the time being. Then he also jumped onto each cart and caused trouble. Then he joined the whole gang, as it was called. It was performed as follows: in the middle of the inn hall was the stage, and on the walls were benches for the audience. Karl Julius Schröer, my old friend and teacher, described the staging to me in great detail; after all, he wrote these plays down based on the way he heard them from the farmers themselves, and then corrected them according to the manuscript. Nevertheless, mistakes were made. And I must say that it is only over the years that I have come across some of the original text of these plays. For example, we could never get along with the first two lines that God speaks in the Paradeis play over the years. Schröer says: “Adam, take the living breath that you receive with the day.” It doesn't rhyme, nor does it make sense. It doesn't rhyme, nor does it make sense. It was only this year that it became clear to me that it is absolutely true:
with the date. That is absolutely traditional, that is, on this day. That is absolutely what was written there. I therefore found it really painful when, a few years ago, these plays were reprinted with tremendous sloppiness and carelessness. I have often been asked to reissue these plays; I did not want to do so without first editing these plays. But such prints were made with great carelessness, and so line after line of such nonsense can be seen everywhere in the prints that are now in circulation. Of course, we have different means at our disposal here. We are not playing in an inn and cannot develop the same level of simplicity as was possible there, but nevertheless: in terms of the basic character, we would like to present these plays as they were originally performed among the peasants until the mid-19th century. You will get to know plays in which you can really see the basic customs of the people of yore. In these greetings, as they are presented before this Christmas Play, for example, there is something that beautifully established contact between the players and the audience of that time. Everyone actually felt that they belonged to the event, which at that time was precisely due to these greetings, which are actually something wonderful. Therefore, I have investigated whether there was not also such a greeting before the Paradeis play, and you could really, without the historical document being available, purely from the spirit of tradition, have such a greeting performed for the Paradeis play last year. You will also see that in these plays, the most inner piety truly does prevail, sincere, honest piety, always together with a certain earthiness. And that is precisely something that is found in the fundamental character of Christian piety at that time. It was thoroughly honest, without sentimentality. The farmer could not become sentimental, he could not make a long face; he also had to laugh, even with the most pious. And that comes across to us in such a beautiful way in these plays. Some expressions will be noticed as unknown in the language, for example, some people will not know what “Kletzen gefressen” means. These are dried pears and plums that are eaten as such, especially in these areas at Christmas time. The pears were dried, then cut into slices; the plums were dried, and that is what the Kletzen were made of. But these dried fruits were especially baked into the bread, and in the bread these small pieces of the Kletzen were enjoyed with particular appetite. At Christmas, the Kletzen bread was something very special in these parts. That is why you heard in the Paradeis-Spiel:
than if they had eaten the apple in paradise! It is precisely in such things, which are so rooted in folklore, that one can see how genuinely these plays have been preserved. Now, we would like to present to you what has been preserved from ancient folklore as a piece of medieval history that extends into the present. Perhaps I may also draw your attention to our poster, which is more appropriate to the Shepherds Play than to the Three Kings Play, but it has already been used by us today. We wanted to capture in pictures the mood of what these Christmas plays can still be in the present day. On the occasion of the Christmas Conference 1923/24, both the Paradise Play and the Christmas Play were performed on 24 and 25 December at 4:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. due to the large crowds. Both speeches correspond almost word for word, so only the first introduction is printed here. |
| 274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: Introduction
27 Dec 1923, Dornach |
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| 274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: Introduction
27 Dec 1923, Dornach |
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Translated by Steiner Online Library during the Christmas Conference Today we will take the liberty of presenting the third of the folk plays that were performed everywhere around Christmas time in the older folk traditions in the areas of which I have already spoken. The first play was the Paradeis play, which always began on the first Sunday of Advent and was then performed throughout the Advent season. The second was the actual Christmas play, which was performed roughly from the last Sunday of Advent until the end of January. This third play was performed around the time of the Feast of the Epiphany. I have already spoken about the history of these plays. Likewise, I have taken the liberty of mentioning some of the ways in which the plays were performed. I will only briefly explain the spirit in which this was done, with particular reference to this Epiphany or Herod play. Here, too, you will see how contemplative piety, in this case even extraordinarily solemn piety, is compatible with a certain coarseness. This is the fundamental character of these plays and it is all the more interesting because there is actually a radical difference between the Christmas play, which we also presented the day before yesterday, and this Epiphany play. It has happened in some incomprehensible way that my dear old friend and teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, printed these two plays – the Christmas play and the Epiphany play – mixed up. I admit that perhaps some of the merging of the two pieces has occurred somehow through inaccurate transmission. But originally the two plays — the actual Christmas play and the Epiphany play — are quite different from each other in terms of their origin. I myself still have some of this Epiphany play, which indicates the way it was received where it was shown. I discussed the other plays at length with the man who discovered them, Karl Julius Schröer, at the beginning of the 1880s, and they have become very present to me as a result. More and more of the details of these plays then emerged. But this play about Herod could actually be seen in all areas of German-speaking Austria around New Year's time until the time of the Three Kings and beyond. You could see people dressed as the Three Kings – which is what the story was reduced to – Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, wandering around with a star and singing very similar songs to the ones that appear here. Now I would like to point out that the structure of these plays is actually reminiscent of the oldest drama. We have the common choruses in them everywhere, as they were called in the vernacular: the companions' songs, which actually represent the same thing – only in a late-vernacular way – as the Greek chorus represents. And then we have grown out of these songs, which would also be performed on their own, the actual dramatic dialogue and so on. Now, when I spoke of a radical difference between the two pieces, this can be seen not only in the basic character, but also in the origin. Everything that is the style of the Christmas play, the play about the birth of Christ, points to the fact that the actual cultivation of these plays about the birth of Christ and probably also of the Paradise Play originated with the Brethren communities, which before the 16th century were much more numerous in Europe than one would think today. Everywhere there were such Christian brotherhoods, which had particularly cultivated that which is also reflected in these dramatic representations, which is based on the basic style of the Gospel of Luke. You will find the keynote of the Gospel of Luke in the Christmas play, so to speak. In contrast, this Epiphany play, which you see today, originated in the churches, from church people, albeit church people who were completely immersed in folklore. And this Epiphany play is truly Catholic, while the Christ Birth play comes from, I would say, the forerunners of Protestantism. Where these plays were performed in German Hungary, Catholics, Protestants and everything were mixed up; they were taken quite interdenominationally. But originally the Christmas plays emerged from the brotherhoods, in which there were also wonderful Bible translations in a very magnificent German. It would give me great pleasure to present some pieces of these older German, truly wonderful Bible translations, because they show very clearly what a historical legend it is, an incredible historical legend, when it is handed down everywhere that Luther translated the Bible into German for the first time and invented the language for it, which is not true at all, because the older translations, which are just not known, are much more beautiful and much more poignant, even matching the original text much better than the Lutheran translation. So these plays originally also emerged from these brotherhoods. In contrast, this Epiphany play clearly has a Catholic character, originating from medieval clerics who had settled into the folk tradition and who also wanted to promote the interests of the church. In contrast, the Christmas play has above all the character of the graceful, while this Herod play has in part the character of the suggestive. I would like to say that it would be quite disturbing at the Christmas play if you had incense with you; that would not be folksy. On the other hand, it would do nothing at all to this Epiphany play, which was performed by the clergy – you will feel it – even if the smell of incense were to be noticed somehow, because there is an extraordinary amount of suggestion in it that is to be brought out during the performance. But of course the church of earlier times also knew very well how to appeal to the people. Therefore, there is also genuine folklore, beautiful, true, full solemnity combined with folksy coarseness, and above all something extraordinarily deep that speaks to the hearts of the people. Therefore, this Epiphany play, Herod play, can be seen as a beautiful piece of medieval history, which has come down to the 19th century in its purest and most unadulterated form in those areas where the German colonists were among foreign peoples, where nothing of the so-called intelligence and newer improvement on the part of the clergy has mixed in , so that in the Christmas play, as in the Herod play, we have something that comes from the pre-Reformation period in both the folk-artistic dramatic style and the style of folk piety, and that brings the history of Christianity in Central Europe in the pre-Reformation period very beautifully to life. And so that this may happen, which must be the desire of many people, we would like to perform these Christmas plays for you. |
| 274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: Introduction
29 Dec 1923, Dornach |
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| 274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: Introduction
29 Dec 1923, Dornach |
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Translated by Steiner Online Library during the Christmas Conference I have already told you something of the history of these Christmas plays on the occasion of the performance of the Paradise Play, so that today I would just like to speak about how these plays were actually performed in the German-Hungarian colonies where Karl Julius Schröer found them. So I will just briefly repeat that these Christmas plays, plays that had migrated from their Central European homeland to the east as early as the late 15th or early 16th century, were performed in the most diverse areas of Hungary well into the 19th century. Karl Julius Schröer later found them in the vicinity of Pressburg, in the Oberufer region in the Malatitsch family. The performance of these plays, regarded as an expensive inheritance that was always passed down in a family, was usually discussed after the grape harvest, i.e. in mid to late October, to determine whether the plays should be performed. This was necessary for the simple reason that the necessary mood was not present in people every year, for one reason or another, and especially because the necessary performers were not always available. But at certain times, after the grape harvest, people would gather at their regular table and say: Now our boys would need a certain new embellishment for their piety, and we could perform these plays again this year. And if the person in the family who kept these plays agreed to do so, they would look around to see which boys in the village would be suitable to perform them that year. These plays were now rehearsed in a very strict way. You see, the whole performance was regarded as something that was connected with the most intimate religious life, with the most intimate piety of the people in those areas. And so there were strict rules for those who were to play during the preparation period. For example, they were not allowed to get drunk during this time, which meant a lot in these areas; they were not allowed to go to the Dirndl; they were not allowed to do many other things that they otherwise liked to do. The whole thing was seen as something that belonged to a solemn time, and as something to which one must bring a solemn mood. For example, in certain seasons of the year, not a Sunday went by without music in the inns in those villages where the Haidbauern or similar plays were performed. Now these people, who performed the folk plays, came to a village where, in their honor, a not-so-bad music was performed during Advent when they came. They said, “Do you think we are comedians that music is performed in our honor?” So all the entertainment had to stop during the performance. There were also other strict rules that we cannot possibly imitate. For example, those who performed in the plays had to obey their teachers strictly. Of course, we cannot imitate that. Furthermore, if any of the rehearsed gestures or attitudes were forgotten, a penalty had to be paid. Of course, we can't do that here either. The entrance fee was two kreutzers, children paid half. Two kreutzers is four centimes. We can't do that either. We also cannot imitate the fact that invitations to the plays were issued in such a way that the devil would walk around the village half an hour or an hour before the performance began with his tail—imagine! —and a cow horn, blowing it into the windows everywhere, and telling people that they had to come, that it was the custom. Then he also jumped up on carts and drove his mischief. We could try it, maybe the sympathy for us would not decrease, but even increase a little. But so far we still believed that we should actually leave such things out. So this was rehearsed. And when the Advent season approached, the Paradeis play was performed, as we did it here a few days ago, at Christmas time the Christ-Birth play and at the time of the Feast of the Epiphany the Herod or Three Kings play, which you will see or have already seen. We can see from the outward structure of these plays what the nature of this particular rural piety was, which has been so miraculously preserved. This piety displays its honest, inner truth by avoiding all sentimentality and instead having a very matter-of-fact coarseness. This earthy nature, this indulging in earthy jokes, is something that was absolutely typical of folk plays, despite the fact that these people had full, honest piety. That is what is particularly characteristic. Therefore, you will see scenes of great solemnity here, and scenes that show the massive earthiness of the peasantry, of the folk. From a remark such as that made by the leader of the singers, where he points out that the Rhine is nearby, you can see that the things from the area north of the Rhine have migrated here to the east, and they have indeed retained the language. Karl Julius Schröer wrote them down by ear, based on the people who knew these plays by heart and had performed them often in the 1840s and 1850s. In doing so, he made a number of mistakes. And these mistakes, which occurred in Schröer's print, made it impossible for me to fulfill the request to reprint a text of these plays, because it would truly take many weeks to restore the original, the genuine, honest version. Of course, one cannot consent to producing a sloppy text. You see, some things only come to light after a very, very long time. The printed text was thoroughly corrupted; for example, at this point it should read:
namely: with this date. That is: from this day on you receive the living breath. If you want to bring these things to the stage today, you have to be conscientious about creating such texts. And so, my dear friends, we will endeavor to give you a picture of the way such things were originally performed, how genuine piety was sought in folklore, even though we have to use modern means. I will explain some of this at the next performance of the Herod play. It has also emerged from an artistic element that has arisen precisely in Central Europe, as a folk performance of ancient dramatic art. You will see how there are choruses, and how the dialogue and the other dramatic elements grow out of the choruses in a beautiful way. It is really so, when you compare this primitive art with the Greek tragedies, you see how there is a very beautiful continuation in these folk areas. And the contact that exists with the whole audience, that you actually feel at one with the audience as a fellow player, is particularly evident in this greeting of everything in and outside the hall, on and off the earth. It brought something to light, to feel something of being at home. That is what gives these plays their special artistic appeal. We would like to use it to present you with a vivid piece of history that has basically been lost outside our circles for the most part. |
| 274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: Introduction
31 Dec 1923, Dornach |
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| 274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: Introduction
31 Dec 1923, Dornach |
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Translated by Steiner Online Library during the Christmas Conference We will now take the liberty of presenting the Epiphany or Herod play to you. In the past few days, we have presented the Paradise Play and the Nativity Play to you, and today we bring you the Epiphany Play. I have already spoken about the history, that is, the origin of the plays, as well as how they are rehearsed. I will just note today that the Paradeis play was usually performed in the way I have described to you, during the Advent season, the Christ-Birth play in the actual Christmas season and this Epiphany play around the time of the Epiphany, on January 6, around this day. One can clearly perceive how the style of the two plays, the Christmas play and also the Paradeis play and this Epiphany play, differ from one another. In the Christmas play, one sees quite clearly that one is dealing with something that comes directly from the folk mind. One must imagine something like the following. There were, especially before the Reformation in Central Europe, but after the Reformation in the various German colonies, one of which is the one in Oberufer, where these plays originated, the Moravian Church, which had a Christian community life as its mission and wanted to keep alive the religious sentiment present in the Gospel of Luke. And such brotherhoods were very widespread. It was a kind of communal life that sought religious edification in the shared feelings of those who came together in such a brotherhood. It was in these circles that plays such as this Christmas play, the Christ-Birth-Play, came into being. On the other hand, the play that we will see today was combined with the Christmas play only through an incomprehensible misunderstanding on the part of my old friend and teacher Karl Julius Schröer, I believe, and the two plays are not at all compatible in terms of style. This Epiphany play emerged from the clergy, which set itself the task of giving something to the people. You can see it everywhere in the play that it comes from the inspiration of the clergy, albeit from clergymen who have been intimately involved with folklore, who have completely immersed themselves in folklore, and who wanted to represent the interests of the church through such plays in folklore. Therefore, a certain primitive nature can be seen in the Christmas play, genuine piety combined with rural coarseness in honor of a religious folk style. By contrast, in this play, which comes before our souls today, we find solemnity. Solemnity that arises from the interest of the church. This Epiphany play has a thoroughly suggestive power, both in terms of the composition, which is extraordinarily dramatic, and in terms of the individual elements that we notice in it. The Paradeis play and the Christ-Birth play were always on my mind during my conversations with Karl Julius Schröer at the end of the 1880s. He had seen the plays performed by the farmers himself, knew how to tell the story in an extraordinarily vivid way, and even then I was able to develop a clear idea of the ancient folklore contained in these plays. But I myself saw the basis for this Epiphany play during my childhood. In Catholic Christian areas, you could see these groups everywhere from New Year's towards Epiphany, with the three magi, the three kings, forming the center with the star. They went from house to house in the villages and performed the play together; not dramatically. But what you have here with us as choral songs, they sometimes performed with some dramatic things in front of the doors and in the houses they visited when there was space. But you could see that in this wandering of the Magi there was something that came from the church. And so the whole Epiphany play actually came from the church, and that is why it has its special suggestive power in the individual parts. It is therefore quite incorrect to lump these two plays with their completely different styles together and to perform them as if they belonged together, one after the other. This can only have happened because these plays had perhaps been combined before, and Karl Julius Schröer found them combined in Malatitsch's work. But anyone who can follow the whole development of the plays knows that these two things do not belong together at all, but even have completely different origins. But again, when you look at the whole complex of this Christmas play, you can see the great value placed on it by the Moravian Brethren community, which had moved from what is now Czechoslovakia to the east - they were, after all, the most excellent most ardent supporters of the Christmas play. You can see what is meant by the whole complex, on the one hand, in the folk tradition of honest, genuine piety; procuration, I would say, of the church from the other side with the Epiphany play. In this way, people have sought to pave the way to people's hearts; they have also found it. And it is true that one comes into quite interesting areas of religious life when one considers the diverse religious life before the Reformation. Of course, what was perhaps already influenced by the Reformation was added later, but historically one should at least recall how an honest, inward mood prevailed at the time when the Reformation was opposed. The clergy had to take such measures to win the people's hearts. Some of what is presented in the story today is based on misunderstanding. For example, it is extremely interesting to get to know Bible translations, if not of the whole Bible, then of large parts of the Old or New Testament in those older, pre-Lutheran times. The language is much more original, much more heartfelt than the language that was supposedly created for the Bible by Luther. And it is actually just an historical legend when it is repeatedly told that Luther first translated the Bible into German. It is not even the case that he practiced the best art of translation, but rather that what existed earlier is actually better. And from the same mood that gave rise to such Bible translations in religious communities in the pre-Reformation period, such plays also emerged. So we are vividly transported into a piece of ancient folk culture through these plays. We have to do this with modern means, but we try to perform them in the way they were performed back then. I have said before: certain things we cannot repeat. Perhaps an attempt could be made to send the devil around with the cow horn in Arlesheim and Dornach. He would have to blow into each window to make it clear to the people – that is the custom – that they should come to the Christmas play today! But I don't know whether that would make us more popular or even less popular. There are some other things we can't imitate either. For example, these plays were only performed by boys. It wouldn't work for us to have them performed only by boys either. Then we can't repeat this in particular, that penalties have to be paid if someone doesn't remember something the teacher had rehearsed in the right way. Yes, there would be a revolution among the players. Then we also cannot introduce the fact that we would take two rappen as an entrance fee, or four rappen were given and taken as an entrance fee at that time. Children paid half. We cannot imitate that either. I don't know, but it is reported that defective clothes and so on were repaired for the next performance from the money received in this way. Well, the audience was usually not as large as this one. So we also see into times when things were even cheaper. But apart from all this, we would like to try to present a real piece of old folklore to your soul with this play, this Epiphany or Herod play, even though we can only do so by transposing it into modern circumstances, so to speak, but shaping these modern circumstances in such a way that the old style is preserved. And so we would like to present this Epiphany play to you in particular. |
| 274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: Introduction
06 Jan 1924, Dornach |
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| 274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: Introduction
06 Jan 1924, Dornach |
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Translated by Steiner Online Library We will take the liberty of presenting to you here once again this year one of the Christmas plays that come from ancient German folklore. Perhaps I may start with something personal. I myself got to know these Christmas plays – the Paradeis-Spiel and the Christ-Geburt-Spiel, which are not being performed in public this year, and the Dreikönig-Spiel, which is being performed today – about forty years ago, I can say. At that time, I got to know these plays from my old friend and teacher, Karl Julius Schröer. Karl Julius Schröer, who was a university professor in Vienna at the time he named these plays to me, was a professor in Pressburg, which today belongs to Czechoslovakia, but in the mid-19th century, in the 1840s and 1850s, was in a German colony in Hungary, western Hungary. If you go just a little further east along the Danube from Prefburg towards Budapest, you come to the so-called Oberufer region. There was a German colony in this Oberufer region. In my youth, it was very German, as were the German colonies in Hungary in general before the Magyarization: in the Spiš region, the Transylvanian Saxons, in the Banat and so on. Now, when Schröer was a professor in Preßburg, he once heard that interesting folk Christmas plays were being performed out in Oberufer by the descendants of those German colonists who had moved from the west towards Hungary to settle there, from areas that were probably located north of the Rhine in southern Germany, directly bordering Switzerland, north of the Rhine and as far as Alsace. And that seems to be the origin of these Christmas plays. It is the case – and we can still see this today – that these Christmas plays were really still being performed in the 13th and 14th centuries across the Rhine, perhaps later in northern Switzerland, at most in Brienz. The people then moved eastward, took these Christmas plays with them as an expensive spiritual heirloom with a deep piety and then held it in extremely high regard. And throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, they were then performed around Christmas and Epiphany in these villages by the so-called Haidbauern. It was a great annual experience of Christian piety in these German areas of Hungary. Because these Christmas plays had precisely this fate, I would like to say, they remained completely unadulterated until very recently. Because, you see, Christmas plays originated everywhere in older times, before and after the Reformation, and were gladly performed. But in later times, they were improved by so-called intelligent people, which is what it is called, that is, their popularity was thoroughly expelled from them. And the improvements that the intelligentsia wanted to make have become a fundamental deterioration, so that these folk plays could only be found in a really poor state in the more westernized areas. But down there, these Christmas plays meant nothing to the intelligentsia. When Karl Julius Schröer came to the villages in the early 1850s, the schoolteachers and the village notary found that these plays were neglected. The “intelligent people” saw it as useless stuff. And so these Christmas plays have remained completely unadulterated because no one has improved them, that is, in reality, made them worse. They have remained that way throughout the centuries, and that is how Karl Julius Schröer found them in the mid-19th century. They were no longer performed every year, but only when it was thought that the necessary personnel were available. When the grape harvest was over in October, the village dignitaries would gather at their regular table and say: “This year we have young men again – because only young men were allowed to play – to be able to perform these Christmas plays, and it does our people good to get a little piety back in their veins. Now we want to do it again this year. And there was always one among them – it was always a respected family among the farmers of the village – who was the owner of the “manuscript”. They were not printed, these Christmas plays. He had received it from his father and his father before him, and so on. In this way they had been preserved through the centuries. And when the time came after the grape harvest, the person in possession of the manuscript would gather the boys around him and be their teacher, preparing the performances for the Advent and Christmas season, around the time of the Epiphany. And these performances were really carried out with the utmost seriousness. There were strict rules for the boys who were to take part. For example, these boys were not allowed to get drunk during the entire period in which they were supposed to prepare these plays. Anyone who knows these areas – I lived there for a long time – knows that it was a great, an extraordinarily great deprivation for these young boys if they were not allowed to get drunk from the grape harvest until Epiphany; nor to fight, for example. Who knows what else happened in those days when, for example, a mayor or even a district councilor was elected – that was one of the county's trusted officials – what it all meant in these areas: the boys were not allowed to fight on Sundays! So they had to lead a very pious life. It was really genuine piety, popular piety. Furthermore, it was prescribed that they not go to the Dirndl at any time. And no secular music was allowed to be performed in the villages where they traveled throughout the weeks. All the rules that we have here with our players, of course, we cannot enforce, that is, we can enforce those mentioned so far; but not the others. If, for example, someone had forgotten something they had learned, they had to pay a fine. We couldn't do that at our place. Nor could we enforce the rule that no one could be late and so on. So all these things were handled in the strictest sense there. It was really something extraordinarily disciplining for the boys of the place. The Christmas plays themselves – when the time came, they were celebrated in such a way that you could say: real, genuine popular Christian piety mixed with what was there as folk customs, not sentimentality. There was real popular piety in it: honest piety, not some kind of hypocritical piety, but honest piety, which is also mixed with a certain earthiness. That was precisely the sincere piety of old. It had been preserved until the 19th century. Then, as the performances approached, some things came up that we can't imitate in the same way, because I don't know how it would be received if we did imitate them, for example. The devil had to go around the whole village with his long tail when the performance was approaching and blow his horn everywhere and tell people that they had to come to the Christmas play now. I don't know how it would be received; it might well be that people would like it! And we can't imitate that here either, with the devil jumping on every cart and doing his mischief when the performance is approaching and so on. When the people had gathered in the inn, sitting on the benches all around, the performance was given in the middle of the inn hall. Something else that we cannot imitate here was that people paid only two kreutzers, that is four rappen, as an entrance fee. That was an extraordinarily high entrance fee for that time; children paid half. When Karl Julius Schröer found these plays, everything was still preserved exactly as it had been in the mid-19th century, including the customs from the 16th century, when the people moved there and brought these Christmas plays with them. And it was back then, forty years ago, that I developed this endless love for these wonderful Christmas plays, and I truly believe that something beautiful can be preserved if you play them again where you have the opportunity. Because there, in the former German areas of Hungary, they have not been performed for a long time. The last family that had them has probably died out, and they have not been renewed, so what we have done for these plays, which we started doing before the war, is actually a real renewal of the matter. There is a piece of German folklore in these plays. Something has really been preserved that used to be very honored and appreciated among the people. And here I believe that this still has its special value in that the Swiss remember, perhaps still in northern Switzerland, but most certainly when they have turned their eyes across the Rhine, that these plays were performed everywhere there in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. So it is here in particular that we can connect very good memories with it, and that is why we believe that it is also quite good to bring these plays here for demonstration. With this in mind, we ask for your attention for these plays. Of course, we have to work with completely new means, with the means that a contemporary stage operation, as far as we have it here, provides, but within that we try to give the form, with the dialect and everything, as it was performed by the people. So we may call them: Christmas plays from ancient folklore. This is the last speech by Rudolf Steiner about the Oberufer Christmas Plays. In the fall of the same year, he became seriously ill and died on March 30, 1925. |
| 275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Technology and Art
28 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis |
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| 275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Technology and Art
28 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis |
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The main intention of these lectures is to build a bridge from spiritual-scientific knowledge to the kind of conception of life which our time demands, and I intend also giving a few indications on this theme in the coming days. What we call modern life takes living hold of all those people who, through living in towns or in similar circumstances, have been torn away from a direct connection with nature. And we know that since the advent of modern life people have always thought about its significance both for the intellectual as well as the material progress of human civilisation. And now it is time that the impulses we are acquiring from spiritual science should enter into modern life. Gradually we shall have won through to the feeling that with respect to many a thing that meets us in life today we need spiritual science as a kind of compensation for those things in modern life that weaken, we might actually say destroy, something of the general divine-spiritual life forces of man. People who are able, by means of the first stages of the life of initiation, really to let modern civilisation affect them in all its aspects, will have experiences that give them deeper insight into the significance which modern life has for man's whole existence, than that obtained from an external view of life unsupported by spirituality. People who have taken the first steps in the life of initiation will pass differently through the experience of spending a night in a train or on a steamer, especially if they sleep on the journey. What is different for the person who is in these first stages of initiation and the one who has not had any connection with it is that the experiences become conscious for the former, and he finds out what is actually happening to him when he spends a night travelling on a train or a ship, especially if he goes to sleep. Of course the person who does not acquire initiation knowledge of things also undergoes the effects that an experience of that sort has on the whole human organism. With regard to the whole effect on the human being there is, of course, no difference. If we want to understand what these indications actually mean we must recall to memory a spiritual scientific truth which you no doubt know, namely, that whilst we are asleep our ego and astral body are outside our physical and etheric body. In fact, because of certain limitations which cosmic laws impose on us in the natural order of things, our ego and astral body are very close to our physical body and etheric body in a case like this, so that if we are asleep on a train journey our ego and astral body are right inside all the rattling, rumbling and braking going on in the wheels and the engine of the train. And it is just the same on a modern steamer. We are inside everything going on around us. We are inside these not exactly musical experiences in our surroundings, and you need only have taken the very first steps in initiation to notice on waking up that when the ego returns with the astral body into the physical body and etheric body they bring with them what they experienced while they were being squeezed through the machinery, for they really were inside the moving machinery right up to the moment of waking. We bring all this disharmonious squeezing and tearing back into our physical and etheric body, and if you have ever woken up with all the after-effects of what the engines of a steamer or a train have done to your ego and astral body, and bring that into your waking consciousness, you will notice how little it synchronises with what is going on within you in the way of a kind of experience the ego and the astral body have of the inner harmony of the physical and etheric body. You do in fact bring back with you the wildest confusion, the most frightful din of pulling, screeching and rattling and if you are sensitive to it you will feel that the effect on the etheric body really is as though your physical body were being bruised and dismembered—which is, of course, a clumsy expression, but you will not misunderstand. This is an absolutely unavoidable side-effect of modern life, and I want to give a word of warning right at the outset, as the kind of lecture I want to give today can very easily rouse what I would call theosophists' hidden arrogance, which flourishes very well here and there. I am not making a general allusion, of course, let alone a particular allusion, for when one holds a talk on a matter like this, one immediately provokes judgments. I think that in the case of this theosophists' arrogance, it can easily happen that people imagine they must take great care not to expose themselves to these destructive forces; that they must protect themselves from all the influences of modern life; that they must closet themselves in a room containing the right surroundings, with walls of the colour indicated by theosophy, to make sure that modern life cannot reach them in any way that would be harmful to their bodily organisation. I really do not want my lectures to have this effect. Everything of the nature of withdrawing and protecting oneself from the influences of all that we necessarily have to encounter as world karma arises out of weakness. But anthroposophy can only strengthen the human soul (Gemüt), and should develop those forces that inwardly strengthen and arm us against these influences. Therefore, never within the compass of our spiritual movement could any kind of recommendation be given to cut oneself off from modern life, or to turn spiritual life into a kind of hothouse culture. This could never apply in the realm of true spiritual culture. Although it is understandable that weaker natures prefer to withdraw from modern life and go into one or another kind of settlement where they are out of reach of it, the fact remains that this arises not from strength but from weakness of soul. Our task, however, consists in strengthening our soul life by permeating ourselves with the impulses of spiritual science and spiritual research so that we are armed against the onslaughts of modern life, and so that our souls can stand any amount of hammering and knocking and are still capable of finding their way into the divine-spiritual realms right through the hammering and knocking of the ahrimanic spirits. One thing must be taken into account, however, which I have often referred to. We human beings do not only sleep at night. We actually sleep in the daytime as well, only we do not notice our daytime sleep as much as our nighttime sleep. During the night our thought life is dimmed down, and because our soul lives predominantly in our thoughts we are, as a matter of course, more aware of the dimming down of our thought life during nighttime sleep. During the day our life of will is more at rest, yet we are less aware of this because we live less in our will. All the arguing the philosophers have done about the freedom and lack of freedom of the will is due to this. As they have not taken into account that they are investigating the will whilst they are daytime sleepers and therefore cannot arrive at its true nature, they talk a lot of nonsense about free will and unfree will, indeterminism and determinism. In actual fact, whilst we are open to the waking life of day, we are only conscious of our will life to a very small degree; it dips down into the subconscious, into the region that belongs purely to the astral body. Thus during our waking day, too, we are involved in all that modern life has produced around us in the way of the stress and noise of modern technology. During the night it is more our life of thought and feeling that becomes submerged in the noise and stress, during the day it is more our life of feeling and will. Now in the course of human evolution what we call modern life has not always existed. It came on the scene essentially at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.4 The beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch actually coincides with the beginning of the modern age. What does modern intellectual culture say about the beginning of the modern age? As we know, modern intellectual culture is proud of the achievements of modern life. It is expressed somewhat like this: Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages people were incapable of developing a real observation of nature such as could have led to natural science. This did not happen until modern times. And when people talk of modern times like this they are speaking of the time which began with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. That was when people broke away from the old way of observing nature and observed it impartially, solely according to abstract laws. And it was through this knowledge of the laws of nature that natural science came into the position of opening up the possibility of mastering the forces of nature, and mastering them in an unprecedented way, as we so often hear. Yet this is just what modern technology is. And the characteristic nature of modern technology arose as a result of man acquiring knowledge of natural laws and then proceeding to use the material world to fashion his machines according to these natural laws, machines with which he can then work back on nature and life by filling modern life with them and creating his own technological setting; that is, modern life in its essence and function. Thus we see that it is the modern age that has established real natural science and the resultant mastery over nature and its forces. You often hear people speaking like this. However if we speak like this we are speaking Ahriman's language for this is using the language of Ahriman. But let us see if we can translate this language of Ahriman into the real and true language that we are trying to acquire again by means of spiritual science, a language where words not only acquire the meaning ascribed to them through observation of external nature, but also acquire the meaning ascribed to them when we look at the cosmos in its entirety, that is, both as nature and as spiritual life. Let us start by looking quite superficially at what happens when we develop modern technology. What is happening in the first place is just work being carried out in two stages. The first stage consists of destroying the interrelationships of nature. We blast out quarries and take the stone away, maltreat the forests and take the wood away, and the list could go on—in short, we get our raw materials in the first instance by smashing and wearing down the interrelationships in nature. And the second stage consists of taking what we have extracted from nature and putting it together again as a machine according to the laws we know as natural laws. These are the two stages, if we look at the matter on the surface. But what is it like if we look below the surface? Looking at it from inside, the matter is like this: When we take things from nature, mineral nature to begin with, we know from previous lectures that this is linked with a certain feeling of well-being belonging to the elemental spiritual beings that are within it. This, however, does not concern us so much now. What is important here is that we cast out of nature the elemental spirits belonging to the sphere of the regular progressive hierarchies who, in fact, are the very spirits who maintain nature. In all natural existence there are elemental spiritual beings. When we plunder nature we squeeze out the nature spirits into the sphere of the spirit. That is, in fact, what is constantly happening during the first stage. We smash and plunder material nature and thus release the nature spirits, driving them forth from the sphere allotted them by the Jehovah gods into a realm where they can fly about freely and are no longer bound to their allotted dwelling places. Thus we can call the first stage the casting out of the nature spirits. The second stage is the one where we put together what we have plundered from nature, according to our knowledge of natural laws. Now when we construct a machine or a complex of machines out of raw material according to our knowledge of natural laws, we put certain spiritual beings into the things we construct. The structure we make is by no means without its spiritual beings. In constructing it we make a habitation for other spiritual beings, but these spiritual beings that we conjure into our machines are beings belonging to the ahrimanic hierarchy. Thus at the first stage we encounter nature spirits who are in progressive evolution and cast them out and at the second stage we unite these ahrimanic spirits with our mechanisms or other products of technology. This means that by living in this technological milieu of modern times we create an ahrimanic setting for everything that goes on in us in a sleeping state, by night or day. So it is no wonder that a person at the first stages of initiation, bringing back with him into his waking life all that he has experienced outside in the way of noise and confusion, feels its destructive character when he comes back into his physical and etheric body with this in his ego and his astral body. For he is bringing back into his own organism the results, as it were, of his having been in the company of the ahrimanic elemental spirits. Thus we could say that at the third stage, at the cultural level, we have technology around us, stuffed full of ahrimanic spirits which we have put there. This is what things look like from inside. Now if we turn our attention away from the occult side of modern life and look back at those times when people slept with only a thin partition dividing them from nature, a partition through which spirit could easily pass, and when their daytime work was within the realm of nature that still harboured regular spirits of the Jehovah hierarchy, we have to admit that in those times people's souls, their egos and astral bodies, brought back into their physical and etheric bodies the kind of nature spirits that had an enlivening effect on their inner life of soul. And the further we go back in the history of mankind's evolution the more we find what is becoming a greater and greater rarity today, namely that people did not fill themselves with the ahrimanic spirits of technology, but with nature spirits that were progressing on a straight path and which the good spirits of the hierarchies, if we may use the expression, have linked to the events and being of nature. Now man will only attain the kind of connection he needs in order to be truly human if he seeks it in his inner life, if he delves so far down into the depths of his soul that he reaches the forces that connect him with the spirit of the cosmos, out of which he was born and in which he is embedded, but from which he can be separated. A separation has already taken place in his sense perception and intellect, and now again through his being filled with ahrimanic beings in the course of modern life, as we have seen. Only by penetrating into the depths of his own being will man find the connection with divine spiritual beings that he needs for his salvation, the spiritual hierarchies that are progressing on a straight path. This connection with the spiritual hierarchies for which we were actually born, in the spirit, this living connection with them, is made difficult to the highest degree by the saturation of the world by modern technology. Man is being, as it were, torn away from his spiritual-cosmic connections, and the forces which he should be developing within him to maintain his link with the spiritual-soul being of the cosmos are being weakened. A person who has already taken the first steps in initiation will therefore notice how the mechanical things of modern life penetrate into man's spiritual-soul nature to such an extent that a great deal of it is smothered and destroyed. He will also notice that the destruction of these forces makes it particularly difficult for him really to develop those inner forces which unite the human being with the ‘rightful’ spiritual beings of the hierarchies—please do not misunderstand the word. When a person who has taken the first steps in initiation tries to meditate in a modern railway carriage or on a modern steamer, he makes a great effort, of course, to activate the necessary forces of vision to lift him into the spiritual world, yet he notices the ahrimanic world filling him with the kind of thing that opposes this devotion to the spiritual world, and the struggle is enormous. You could call it an inner struggle experienced in the etheric body, a struggle that wears you out and crushes you. Other people who have not taken the first steps in initiation also go through this struggle of course, and the only difference is that the student of initiation experiences it consciously. Everyone has to go through it; the effects of this are experienced by everyone. It would be the worst possible mistake to say that we should resist what technology has brought into modern life, that we should protect ourselves from Ahriman by cutting ourselves off from modern life. In a certain sense this would be spiritual cowardice. The real remedy for this is not to let the forces of the modern soul weaken and cut themselves off from modern life, but to make the forces of the soul strong so that they can stand up to modern life. A courageous approach to modern life is necessitated by world karma, and that is why true spiritual science possesses the characteristic of requiring an effort of the soul, a really hard effort. You so often hear people saying “These books of modern spiritual science are difficult; they make you exert yourself in order to develop your soul forces and really penetrate into spiritual science.” This is why ‘well-meaning’ people—and I am saying this in inverted commas—keep on coming to me and saying that they want to smooth out difficult passages for their fellow men and change what is written in rather a difficult style into something as trivial as can be—and these last words are not said in inverted commas. However, it belongs to the essence of spiritual science that it makes demands on soul activity, that you do not accept spiritual-scientific truths lightly, as it were, for it is not just a matter of taking in what spiritual science says about one thing and another, but of how you take it in. You should take it in by dint of effort and soul activity. To make spiritual science your own you must work at it in the sweat of your soul—please forgive me for not being very polite. That belongs to the business of spiritual science, if you will excuse the mundane expression. It shows a further misunderstanding of the actual nerve of spiritual science if people shy away from the difficult ideas and conceptual structures of spiritual science. And don't we know how many people shy away from it, how many people would prefer to dream—the Lord gives it to His Own in sleep! They would far rather have things conjured up before them in all kinds of visions of the spiritual world than acquire knowledge through the activity of exerting their inner life of soul. We know how many people there are who prefer having visions rather than sitting down and studying a difficult book of spiritual science, even though it is capable of speaking to the human soul forces that are asleep during ordinary daily life, for spiritual science really does activate the part of man that is otherwise unconscious and transport him into the life of the spiritual world. The right approach is not to receive conscious daily life apathetically and to grope in the dark, but to make an effort out of soul activity to get through what is given for the development of thoughts and ideas. For when you make an effort and have the courage to make yourself at home in this development of thoughts and ideas, this brave and active effort will bring you to the stage where mere theorising on what is given and mere acceptance in thought passes over into seeing and really being in the spiritual world. However, the really modern conception of life that arises for us from these considerations is that, because of our technological surroundings, we descend into a kind of ahrimanic sphere and become filled with ahrimanic spirituality. The most terrible calamity would have come about in earth evolution if, in earlier ages, provision had not been made for these experiences of ahrimanic spirituality that world karma is bringing to modern mankind. Life always progresses like the swing of a pendulum. It is experienced like a pendulum swinging in one direction or the other. You cannot say “Beware of Ahriman!” for nothing can protect you from him. And if someone longs to shut himself up in a room surrounded by the colour that suits him best, where he has no factories near him or trains passing by if he can possibly help it, but is completely cut off from modern life, there are many, many ways in which ahrimanic spirituality can get into his soul. Even though he withdraws from modern life, modern spirituality will still reach him. Now something entered into human evolution that, as it were, held off the calamity, and I gave an indication of this a long time ago in a lecture cycle in Munich.3 We must take all these things together, for that is also part of the active experiencing of modern spiritual science. Man has been given art; art, which also takes its raw material from nature by reducing and wearing it down, and at the second stage puts it together again to make something new, with a breath of life in it, although it is only of a pictorial nature. The life of the artistic impulses given us in the past has the capacity, as I said in Munich, to imbue its material with a more luciferic spirituality. Luciferic spirituality, beauty as an illusion, in fact everything that has an effect on man through the medium of art, leads man away from matter into the spirit, yet it does so through the life in the material. Lucifer is the spirit who constantly wants to flee from matter and bear man into the life of the spirit in an unjustified way. That is the other swing of the pendulum. It is only because we have to go through a technological atmosphere in the present incarnation that it is possible for us to come into connection with Ahriman, whereas in earlier incarnations we were more connected with a quality that could be steeped in art. Thus we are countering certain luciferic forces by means of the present-day ahrimanic forces, which together form a balance, whilst the pendulum of life swung one way in the past and swings the other way now. What spiritual science quite specifically has to want at the present time is that human beings do not sleep and dream through what world karma is imposing on them. Yet people who wish to know nothing about spiritual science do sleep and dream through all the influences of Ahriman and Lucifer. They are exposed to these influences even if they themselves know nothing about them. But ‘life cannot go on like this; life has to be lived consciously from now on, and that is what spiritual science is for, so that people do not go through the world sleeping and dreaming, but understand what is around them. For this to happen, however, we must really get down to the subtleties of our spiritual-scientific business—if you will forgive the word. Such subtleties often go unnoticed, and this is the sort of thing I find when I read through transcripts of lectures I have given. Often what is of essential importance to me does not appear at all in the transcript. Just look at two examples of this. I used a certain sentence a little while ago and did not say that spiritual science wants something, but that spiritual science should want it, or has to want it. That is a particular expression which comes quite naturally to a person who is speaking out of the spirit of spiritual science, for spiritual science leads as a matter of course to a more impersonal grasp of the truths of spiritual life than other sciences do. Speaking in the manner of other sciences we would say “Spiritual science wants something”. But spiritual science says “what it should want or must want” And I say “The way I must express myself” and not “The way express myself”. A great deal depends on such subtleties; we must not pass them by. On the contrary we must begin to believe that everything depends on spiritual science taking hold of man's innermost soul forces, and that it is capable of transforming them. Therefore it will not do to approach spiritual science with the kind of thinking one is in the habit of using in ordinary life. People are still largely unaware of what I mean by this. This can be seen, actually sensed, so to speak, in certain crude symptoms in the evolution of ordinary science. Let us take one example out of many. Modern science of religion—irreligious science of religion—is especially proud of the fact that it has found a connection between New Testament utterances and commandments and Old Testament and heathen utterances and commandments. People have followed up the origin of every phrase in the Lord's Prayer, for instance, and said “This particular phrase comes from here and that one from there”. If you hear it like this it can sound credible. Yet the moment you approach the Mystery of Golgotha in a spiritual world-historical light you notice that all these things appear in a new context, and that the important thing is not the discovering that all these expressions were there in earlier times but looking at them in the context which gives them a new shade of meaning. In this respect the Old and the New Testament differ entirely. Subtle things like this convey the essence of the Mystery of Golgotha. The words and even the word connections often stay the same but their shade and colouring is different, and that makes all the difference. There is something tremendous behind the fact, for instance, that the conception of the ego in the whole evolutionary system of language is quite differently constructed the further back we go in pre-Christian times, than it is later on when we go forwards from the Mystery of Golgotha. The way people spoke about the ‘I’ changed, and this can be seen in the configuration of language. When the ‘I’ becomes part of the word for the verb, as is the case in many languages, it signifies something entirely different from when it is separated from the verb and spoken as a separate word, and so on. The important thing is to work our way with the help of spiritual science to an approach to life which looks consciously at the things which influence our human organism of spirit, soul and body. The way I have described man's relationship to his technological surroundings is, of course, only in its beginning stages. It was about four centuries ago that things began to get like they are today. Then the nineteenth century that was so proud of itself took a tremendous leap forward in the ahrimanisation of human life. Yet a great deal more will take place in future human evolution in the direction of this ahrimanisation. We have been in it for about four hundred years. It is coming slowly and gradually. It has already reached a certain climax among the vast numbers of our fellowmen who, because of the isolation caused by living in towns, hardly have any connection any more with real nature spirits. I once said, symbolically, that it is important for man's development to be able to distinguish oats from barley. Yet really, how many people are there in a town environment today who cannot tell the difference any more between oats and barley! Perhaps they can distinguish the plants, as that is comparatively easy in the case of oats and barley, but where the grains are concerned they can no longer tell the one from the other. If they have lived in a town or were actually born there, they usually cannot tell the difference. Now it happens like this in the evolution of mankind, that when human beings have progressed a stage, this progress is always bound up with another experience that is at another stage, as it were, in a parallel stream. And this has happened. Whilst technological life has been drawing modern man closer to Ahriman in the way I have described, he has also been getting closer to him in another way. When a spiritual view of history replaces the crude way of viewing history introduced by materialism, people will understand what spiritual science has to say on this matter. If we go back to the time that preceded the last four centuries, man not only had a different relationship to his environment than he has today, but he had, above all, an entirely different relationship to something that comes to expression in himself, really comes to expression in himself; he had a different connection with his speech, to the way he spoke. Speech does not only contain what modern materialistic science believes it does; there is something in speech which in many ways is connected with man's not fully-conscious experiences, which often occur in the subconscious realms of his being, and which are therefore interpenetrated by spiritual beings. Spiritual beings live and are active in man's speech, and when man forms words, elemental spiritual beings pour into these words. During human conversations spiritual beings fly about the room on the wings of the words. This is why it is so important that we pay attention to certain subtleties of speech, and do not simply let uncontrolled feelings get the better of us when we speak. Right into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we could say that man still possessed the remnant of a living experience of the elemental spirituality contained in language. The spirituality of language was still active within him, for language is in a certain respect more inspired and spiritual in many ways than an individual human being. It is only occasionally nowadays that we notice a person reverting from a materialistic way of thinking to a feeling for the inspired spirituality of language. On one occasion4 here I gave a very clear if trivial example showing in what way a person's mind can revert from the materialistic role of today. On the whole it still happens to many people, but they are not immediately aware of it. If someone is travelling down the Rhine and he speaks for instance of the ‘old Rhine’, what does he mean? No doubt he feels something. But what is he referring to? When people speak of the ‘old Rhine’ I do not think they mean the riverbed, the hollow in the ground. That would be the only permanent part, of course. But we cannot discover what else the ‘old Rhine’ is supposed to be, for the water is certainly absolutely new; it keeps flowing on, and if you try and find anything old except the hollowed out riverbed, it cannot be done. The old Rhine! Language is more inspired than man, because the language obviously means the River God, even if people are not conscious of it. One is describing the elemental being that belongs to it very suitably when one says the ‘old Rhine’. That is a rough example. This spirituality, this belief in spirituality exists throughout language. And a feeling, at least, for this connection with spirituality in language still really existed in the disposition of soul of all the peoples of Europe, during the course of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch and right up to modern times as far as the fifteenth and sixteenth century. If you are not aware of this fact you cannot have the right feeling for the beginning of the St. John's Gospel. For the opening words of the St. John's Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word”, arose, in fact, out of a consciousness that the part the word plays within the whole human organism and human life, provides the connection for man, by way of elemental spirituality in the first place, to the whole of the world lying behind the world of the senses. If, with the means that spiritual science puts at our disposal, we observe the way human life has run its course from the Middle Ages up to modern times, and are able to look right into the soul, we shall in fact find that man's relationship to speech was altogether different in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, even in the last phase of it that lasted up till the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Whenever they spoke people heard undertones, genuine undertones. People no longer believe this, because nowadays human beings really only live in the material aspect of the sounds of speech. A spiritual element joined with the sound as though it sounded again an octave lower. Thus when people spoke, or heard people speaking, something resounded in the words that was not differentiated according to one or another language, but was of a universal human character. One can really say that when human experience comes to expression, as it were, in the flowering of the separate languages, mankind today experiences the flowering as a vibrating of sounds in the ear, and experiences the sounds as something that have a meaning. Whereas in earlier times they experienced a steeping of the whole element of speech in something that joined with it and was not differentiated into the various languages. The dividing line between the one experience and the other fell in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Mankind was torn away from the genius of language. Nobody can understand the actual jolt mankind was given in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, unless he studies the special character of this damping down of undertones in the experiencing of speech. Something was lost to mankind, and this comes to light in the happenings of the times, whether they be battles or peacetime creations. Before the point of time mentioned the human soul still experienced it. Whenever people spoke, this resounding of undertones in the experiencing of speech still lived in human souls. That is why the whole of history has an entirely different quality before this turning point, than afterwards. Through spiritual science we must develop a spiritual ear, as I would like to call it, for the completely different tone that events had in the Middle Ages than they have today, as human souls were connected to their experiences in quite a different way in those times. I will choose the Crusades as an example of a general human soul-experience. They are only conceivable in the way they came about in the Middle Ages if we know of the existence of these spiritual undertones in the experiencing of language. The present-day peoples of Middle and Western Europe would most certainly not be so affected by the words of Clermont's synod:5 God wills it—Dieu le vent—as the peoples of the Middle Ages were. The reasons for this, however, can only be recognised if we take into account what has just been said. An important phenomenon in all modern intellectual life is also connected with this. The whole formation of modern history has to do with this. If you once envisage history with these subtle language undertones in mind, you will understand why, at the point of time I have indicated, the various European nationalities grouped themselves together, those nationalities who before that time had quite different relationships with one another; who were governed by quite different impulses in their relationships to one another. The way the different nationalities group themselves in the various parts of Europe, right up to the present day, has to do with impulses that we interpret quite falsely if we go back from the present to the Middle Ages to look for the origins of nations, without bearing in mind the tremendously important rubicon that had to be crossed in the life of the soul. I can only give you indications of these themes whereas they would actually require a whole series of lectures. The most important part of all this must be left to your meditation, which will discover what can be found as a result of these indications. What I would hope to have achieved is to have given you a picture of how to build a bridge between spiritual science and knowledge of life, and shown you how spiritual science can lead to a conscious approach to the reality in which we live. Having spoken of the real foundations on which these indications are based, it would appear quite natural that this modern age of ours makes a renewal of many things necessary, compared to the past. Through being placed today by world karma in a setting that functions in an especially ahrimanic way, and through having to make our soul forces strong enough to find our way into spiritual spheres, despite all the hindrances that come to us from ahrimanic spirituality, our souls are in need of different kinds of sustenance than before. For the same reason art must also adopt new paths in all its branches. Art obviously had to speak differently to the souls that were less exposed to the attacks of Ahriman than we are today. Art has to speak in a new way to souls today, and our Goetheanum building6 is meant to be the very first step, really and truly the very first step towards art of this kind, and not anything perfect. It is an attempt actually to create the kind of art that calls on the soul to be active, on the lines of the whole conception of modern life, yet a spiritual conception of modern life. Let us remember the frightfully trivial comparison I made regarding the Goetheanum building a few weeks ago. I asked, “How does the effect our Goetheanum building is intended to have, compare with that of an older building, or an older work of art in general? A work of art from the past made an impression by means of its forms and colours. Its forms and colours made an impression. If we make a diagram of it and the form is like this, this form had an effect on the eye (he did a drawing). What was in space and what the form was filled out with, was what made the impression. And it is the same with the colours. The colours on the walls made the impression. I said that our building is not intended to be like that; our building is meant to be—and this is the terribly trivial comparison—like a jelly mould that does not exist for its own sake but for the sake of the jelly. Its function is to give a form to what is put into it, and when it is empty you can see what it is for. What it does to the jelly is the important thing. And the important thing with our building is what a person who goes inside it experiences in the innermost depths of his soul, when he feels the contours of the forms. All that the forms do is set the process going that creates the work of art. The work of art is what the soul experiences when it feels the shape of the forms. The work of art is the jelly. What has been built is the jelly mould, and that is why we had to try and proceed on an entirely new principle. Likewise what you will find in the way of paintings in our Goetheanum building will not be there for their direct effect, as used to be the case with art in the past, but will be there for the soul to encounter, so that the experience resulting from this encounter will be a work of art. This of course involves a metamorphosis—I can only give indications of all this—the metamorphosis of an old artistic principle into a new one, which we can depict by saying that when the sculptural, the pictorial element is taken a stage further, it is led over into a kind of musical experience. There is also the opposite step, from the musical element back into the sculptural-pictorial. These are things which are not created arbitrarily by the human soul, but have to do with the innermost impulses we have to go through, because we are in the first third of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It has been, as it were, ordained by the spiritual beings that guide this evolution. A start has to be made in every realm. If people find things about our building that are imperfect they may be assured that the people who are actually engaged in building it will find far more imperfections than the people who criticise it—far, far more. There are faults to be found in it which people who just look at it would not think of. But that is not the point. The point is that a start is being made, for there are so many things that have to happen. The important thing is not the perfection we achieve in what we must will to happen, but that a start is made on what has to come to life here, however imperfect it has to be. For everything new that comes into the world is imperfect compared with old things that have stood the test of time. Things that are old have reached their highest level, whereas new creations are still in their infancy. That is quite obvious. I will begin tomorrow where we have stopped today, and consider the renewal of an artistic conception of the world and the connection this has with the whole cultural life of today.
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| 275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution I
29 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis |
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| 275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution I
29 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis |
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In the course of the following considerations I shall be speaking to you about the important impulses of transformation present in our era for the artistic evolution of mankind. I would like to connect this with what may occur to you as a result of your own observation of this building, or rather with that of which this building is merely a beginning. But as a basis for these considerations it will be necessary to establish a connection between art and the knowledge we have gained about man and his relationship with the world in general. I will begin today with these seemingly more theoretical considerations and continue tomorrow with our actual theme concerning the impulses of transformation in artistic development. Though I said that I would begin today with a seemingly more theoretical basis, in actual fact anyone who looks upon spiritual science as something living will find these preliminaries very much alive and not at all theoretical. They will, however, only be quite clear to those for whom the ideas of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, and so on, are not mere designations in a diagram of man's being but the expression of actual experiences in feelings and ideas relating to the spiritual world. If we consider the different forms of art, it appears that architecture is the one that has become most separated from the human being as a whole. Architecture is separated from the human being, because it is placed at the service of our external impulses, either those of utility, which call for utilitarian structures, or those having idealistic aims, as in the case of religious buildings. We shall see during the course of the lecture how other forms of art have a more intimate connection with the real being of man than has architecture. Architecture is in some way detached from what we describe as the laws of man's inner being. And yet, seen from the point of view of spiritual science, this external character of architecture very largely disappears. When we begin to look at the human being, the part that first strikes us, because it is the most outward, is the physical body. But this physical body is permeated and penetrated and filled by the etheric body. The physical body might be simply called a space body or described as an organisation in space. But the etheric body, which dwells in the physical body and, as you know, also extends beyond the limits of the physical body and is intimately connected with the whole cosmos, cannot be contemplated without the aid of time. Basically everything in the etheric body is rhythm, a cyclical rhythm of movement or activity, and it has a spatial character only in as far as it inhabits the physical body. For human imaginative perception, it is true, the etheric body also has to be conceived in spatial pictures; but these do not show its essential nature, which is cyclic, rhythmic, moving in time. Music takes up no space, but is solely present in time. In the same way, what matters with regard to the human etheric body in reality (not in the imaginative picture we draw) is mobility, movement, formative activity in rhythmic or musical sequence, in fact the quality of time. Of course, this is a difficult thing for the human mind to conceive, accustomed as it is to relating everything to space; but in order to gain a clear concept of the etheric body we must try much harder to allow musical ideas rather than spatial ideas to come to our aid. In order to bring to the fore another characteristic of the etheric body it can be said: Occupying the physical body and extending, as it does, its activity and rhythmical play into this physical body, it is above all a body of forces. It is a flowing-out of forces, a manifestation of forces, and we notice them in a number of phenomena that occur during the course of a man's life. One of these phenomena, to which not much attention is paid by external science or from an outward view of the world, but one which we have often stressed, is the ability of the human being to stand upright. On entering the world at birth we are not yet able to assume this vertical posture, which is the most important of all postures for the human being. We have to acquire the ability. It is true that this is initiated by the astral body, which as it were transfers its power of upward-stretching to the etheric body, but it is the latter which in the course of time sets about raising the physical body into a vertical position. Here we see the living interplay of the astral and etheric bodies in the formation of the physical body. But this acquisition of the upright posture is only the most striking of these phenomena. Whenever we lift a hand a similar process takes place. In our ego we can only contain the thought of lifting a hand; this thought must at once act upon the astral body, and the astral body transfers its activity, which lives in it as an impulse, to the etheric body. And what happens then? Let us assume that someone is holding his hand in a horizontal position. Now he forms the idea: I want to raise my hand a little bit higher. The idea, which in life is followed by the act of lifting the hand, passes over to the astral body; there an impulse arises and passes over from the astral body to the etheric body. And now the following happens in the etheric body: The hand is at first horizontal; then the etheric body is drawn up higher, then the physical hand moves, following what occurs first as a development of force in the etheric body. The physical hand follows the etheric. I shall explain the whole process tomorrow. At the moment I simply want to point out that the making of any movement involves a development of force which is followed by a state of equilibrium. In the life of our organism we are continually dealing with a development of force followed by a state of equilibrium. Of course the human being has no conscious knowledge of what is really going on within him; but what takes place is so infinitely wise that human ego cleverness is nothing by comparison. We would be unable to move a hand if we had to depend on our own cleverness and knowledge alone; for the subtle forces developed by the astral body in the etheric body and then passed on to the physical body are quite inaccessible to ordinary human knowledge. And the wisdom developed in this process is millions of times greater than that required by a watch-maker in making a watch. We do not usually think of this, but this wisdom actually has to be developed. It must be developed and it is developed as a result of our being left to ourselves with our ego. But the moment the ego sends the impulses of its concept into the astral body we need the help of another being; unaided we can do nothing here. We are dependent on help from a being belonging to the hierarchy of the angels. For even the tiniest movement of a finger we need the assistance of such a being, whose wisdom is far in advance of our own. We could do nothing but lie on the earth immobile, making concepts in utter rigidity, if the beings of the higher hierarchies did not constantly surround us with their activity. Therefore the first step towards initiation is to gain an understanding of how these forces act upon the human being. I have tried to show here what is involved even in a movement as simple as resting the head in the hand. We learn to know, in the form of a spatial system of lines and forces, the exterior of our being, that which happens to our physical body through the activity of the etheric body. If we carry this spatial system of lines and forces constantly active in us out into the world, and if we organise matter according to this system, then architecture arises. All architecture consists in separating from ourselves this system of forces and placing it outside in space. Thus we may say: Here we have the outer boundary of our physical body, and if we push the inner organisation, which has been impressed by the etheric body on to the physical body, outside this boundary, then architecture arises. All the laws present in the architectural utilisation of matter are to be found also in the human body. When we project the specific organisation of the human body into the space outside it, then we have architecture. Now we know, in our way of looking at things, that the etheric body is attached to the physical body. Looking once more at any work of architecture, what we can say to ourselves about it? We can say that here, carried into the space outside us, is the interaction between vertical and horizontal and between forces that react together, all of which are otherwise to be found within the human physical body. In the same way we can carry what streams from the etheric body into the physical body, not outside ourselves this time, but down from the etheric into the physical body. In other words we can bring about something which we do not separate from ourselves by placing it outside us, but which we only push down into ourselves. This is the process by which the laws of the etheric body, which it has received from the astral body, can become physical, just as in architecture the laws of the physical body are projected into the space outside us. Through this process, sculpture arises out of the etheric body, just as architecture arises out of the physical body. In a way we push the laws of the etheric body down one step.
Just as in architecture we push the laws of the physical body into the space outside us, so in sculpture we push the laws of the etheric body one step downwards. We do not separate these laws from ourselves, we push them directly into our own form. Just as we find in architecture the expression of the laws of our own physical body, so we find in sculpture the natural laws of our etheric body; we simply transfer this inner order into our works of sculpture. In architecture we transplant into the space outside ourselves only the laws of the physical body, its spatial lines and interplay of forces, taking nothing of the etheric body, nothing of the astral body, nothing of the ego. In the same way, where sculpture is concerned, we take only the laws of the etheric body and bring them down one step lower, using nothing of the astral body and nothing of the ego except in so far as they send impulses into the etheric body. This is why a work of sculpture appears to be alive. It would actually be alive if it contained also the ego and the astral body. So if we seek the laws of sculpture we must realise that they are in fact the laws of our etheric body, just as the laws of architecture are to be seen in the laws of our physical body. If we do the same in connection with the astral body, as it were pushing what is in us of an astral nature a step lower down into the etheric body, we are pushing down what lives inwardly in man. Now nothing arises that could truly have a spatial nature, for the astral body, when it moves down into the etheric body, is not entering a spatial element: the etheric body is rhythmic and harmonious, not spatial. Therefore what arises can only be a picture, indeed a real picture, in fact the art of painting. Painting is the form of art which contains the laws of our astral body, just as sculpture contains the laws of our etheric body and architecture those of our physical body.
If we now take the fourth member of the human being, the ego, and push it with its laws down into the astral body, there allowing it to move and act, then we obtain yet another form of art. This art does not contain what works in the ego as something which can be expressed in language or ordinary ideas; it is something that has moved from the ego down one step towards the subconscious. It is as though the horizon of consciousness were to be moved down by the amount of half a member of the human being; we take half a step downward, our ego descends into the astral body: then music is born.
So music contains the laws of our ego, though not as they are manifested in ordinary, everyday life, but pressed down into the subconscious, into the astral body; the ego dives, as it were, beneath the surface of the astral body, there to flow and stream within the organisation of the astral body. If we go on to speak about the higher members of the human being, starting with the spirit-self, we can refer to them only as something which is still outside the human being. For, in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, we are only just beginning to make this spirit-self one of our inner members. But if we accept it as a gift from a higher sphere and sink it into our ego, if we dive down, like a swimmer into the water, into our ego, taking with us what as yet can only be dimly felt of the spirit-self, then poetry is born.
And proceeding still further, one can say, though to a limited extent: Round about us, in the environment of soul and spirit which we shall absorb at a later stage, the life-spirit is also present. Therefore one day the life-spirit may come to be lowered into the spirit-self. But of course at the moment this is something that will only reach a certain degree of perfection in the very distant future. For when he tries to lower the life-spirit into the spirit-self, man will have to be living entirely in an element which as yet is absolutely strange to him. So what we can say in this domain is like the babbling of a child when compared with the later perfection of speech. One can foresee for the far distant future that there will be an art of great perfection that will stand out beyond poetry, as poetry stands out beyond music, music beyond painting, painting beyond sculpture, and sculpture beyond architecture (this being a question not of superiority, but of arrangement). You will guess, of course, that I am referring to something of which we know only the most elementary beginnings today: Something of which we can only receive the very first indications: the art of eurythmy. Eurythmy is indeed something that must appear in human evolution at this time; but there is no call for pride, for at present it can be a mere babbling compared with what it will become in the future.
We can now begin at any point with a somewhat more extended view. But in order to do so we must realise that the organisation of man's being is not nearly as simple as we would like to imagine in our intellectual indolence. It is incredibly easy simply to imagine that the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, and so on. If one is able to enumerate these various members and has an approximate conception of them, one may easily consider this rather simple form of knowledge quite satisfactory. But things are not so simple. Physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego are not simply sheaths which fit easily into one another; they are, on the contrary, very complex structures. Take, for instance, the astral body. It is not enough merely to say: This is the astral body and nothing more. Things are much more complicated. Words here are only an approximation, but we could say that the astral body, for instance, is in itself structured and consists of seven members. Just as the human being can be said to have seven members (physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, spirit-self, life-spirit, spirit-man), so the astral body has a connection with each of these. There is as it were a ‘thinnest’ part of the astral body which could be described as being especially moulded and fashioned for the physical body. That is to say: there is a living system of laws in the astral body for the physical body, a living system of laws in the astral body for the etheric body, a living system of laws in the astral body for itself, a living system of laws in the astral body for the ego, a living system of laws in the astral body for the spirit-self, for the life-spirit, and for the spirit-man. Thus each member of the human being has in turn seven members. So taking into consideration that the human being consists of seven members which are in turn each structured into seven members, we already find we have a total of forty-nine members. This of course sounds perfectly horrible to modern psychologists, who like to regard the soul as a unity and would prefer to have nothing to do with these things. But for true knowledge, which must gradually arise in the course of the spiritual evolution of mankind, it is certainly not without significance. For when we know that the astral body is sevenfold in its nature and that it is an organism of inner living impulses, then we shall say to ourselves: Within this astral body, with its sevenfold organisation, individual activities must surely take place between the various members. The part of the astral body that corresponds to the physical body must have a certain interplay with the part that corresponds to the etheric body and with the part that corresponds to the astral body itself, and so on. These are no mere abstract suppositions; it is quite possible in the human organism for a man to feel inwardly—though more subconsciously than consciously—a movement of that part of the astral body which corresponds to the physical body. And then something may produce another movement which will have to start in that member of the astral body that corresponds to the astral body itself, and so on. This is not a mere theory; it really happens. Now imagine the seven members of the astral body to be interrelated as are the tones of the scale: tonic, second, third, fourth, etc. If you allow the effect of a melody to work upon you, you will find that your human organisation permits this to occur because the various tones of the melody are experienced inwardly in the corresponding member of the astral body. The interval of a third is experienced in the part of the astral body which corresponds to the astral body itself. A fourth is experienced in the part of the astral body which—well, let us now be more specific—corresponds to the intellectual or mind soul. A fifth is experienced in the part of the astral body which corresponds to the consciousness or spiritual soul. And remembering that when we divide the human organism more exactly we find it contains nine members, we must, accordingly, structure the astral body in the same way. Instead of saying “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the physical body” when enumerating the various members, I could now say “the member experienced in the tonic”. Instead of “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the etheric body”, I could say “the member experienced in the second”. And instead of saying “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the astral body itself” I could say “the member experienced in the third”. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] You can now also see that the existence of the major third and the minor third really corresponds to the incorporation of the astral body in our whole human organisation. If you look up the relevant passage in my book Theosophy you will see that there is an overlapping of what we call the sentient soul on the other. Therefore what I described as an interval of a third can correspond either to the astral body or to the sentient soul: in the one case we have the major third and in the other the minor third. It is a fact that our ability to experience a musical work of art depends upon this inner musical activity of the astral body: only while we listen to the music with our ego we immediately sink the experience into our astral body, into certain realms which are subconscious. This leads us to a very important fact. Let us look at ourselves as astral beings, as possessors of an astral body: what is our nature in this respect? As astral beings we have been created out of the cosmos according to musical laws. Inasmuch as we are astral beings we are musically connected with the cosmos. We are ourselves an instrument. Let us now suppose that we do not need to hear the physical sound of tones, but are able to listen to the creative activity of the cosmos that has brought us into existence as astral beings out of the cosmos: in such a state we should hear the universal music, what has always been called the music of the spheres. Let us suppose that we are able to dive down consciously into our astral entity, developing its spiritual strength to such an extent that we can hear the creative activity of the cosmic music; we could then say to ourselves: With the help of our astral body the cosmos is playing our own being. This thought, which I have just expressed to you, was alive in men in ancient times, really alive. And in pointing this out one is also pointing to the way in which right into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch human evolution has become more and more materialistic. For we all know that this thought is not alive in the external human culture of today; humanity knows nothing about the fact that, so far as the astral body is concerned, the human being is a musical instrument. But this was not always the case, and the fact that it was not always the case has been, so to speak, forgotten. For there was a time when men said: A man once lived who was called John, and this John was able to transport himself into a state of spiritual consciousness in which he could hear the music of the heavenly Jerusalem. They said: All earthly music can only be a copy of the heavenly music which began with the creation of mankind. And the more religious part of humanity felt that by passing over into the world of physical desires, man had absorbed impulses which veiled and darkened the celestial music for him. But at the same time they felt that there must exist in human evolution—through purification from external and chaotic life—a road leading to the goal of hearing the spiritual cosmic music, as it were, through and beyond the external music of the physical world. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, this relation between external, materialistic music, of which the divine origin was pointed out, and its heavenly prototype, was still beautifully expressed: men were required to employ music as a form of sacrificial or religious service and were expected to free themselves of their connection with the purely chaotic and—as it was felt to be—impure outer world when they produced musical sounds. Life in ordinary external speech was felt to be impure. People felt themselves transported to spiritual heights when they lifted themselves up from speech to music, which is the image of celestial music. This feeling was expressed in the following words.
To translate this we would have to say: “So that thy servants may sing with liberated vocal cords the wonders of thy works, pardon the sins of the lips which have become earthly—one might say which have become capable of speech—O Saint John.” It was to one who could hear the heavenly Jerusalem that men looked up in this connection. Let us extract certain things that lie hidden in such a verse: Ut (this word was later replaced by do), resonare (re), mira (mi), famuli (fa), solve (sol), labii (la), S.J. (si). So you find that ‘do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si’, the names of the notes in medieval musical notation, have been carefully hidden in this verse. In such an instance we can go back to what still lived in human minds right until the eleventh or twelfth centuries through atavistic clairvoyant cognition, and we see how it all disappears in the flood of materialistic views and passes out of the consciousness of men. But now we are living at a time when through spiritual knowledge we must find it again and recreate it. Everything points clearly to the way in which evolution has made a descent so deep that a swamp has formed. The muddy water of this morass is made up of all the ideas originating in a materialistic view of the world. And now we are about to struggle up again out of the swamp of materialism, to ascend and rediscover what mankind has lost in its descent. I have pointed out that properly speaking we do not sleep by night only but that certain parts of our being also sleep by day. At night it is principally the thinking and feeling parts which sleep, while during the day it is more the willing and feeling parts which sleep. It is in this will sphere that we are submerged when we dive down with the ego into the astral body. And when we hear a musical work, what happens is that we consciously dive down with our ego into the part of us which is otherwise asleep. When you sit and listen to a symphony, the inner process which takes place is a dulling of your ordinary, everyday thought life while you plunge with soul and spirit down into a region which otherwise sleeps during daytime consciousness. This brings about the connection between the effect of music and all the life-giving forces in the human organism, all that streams with living force through the whole human being, letting him grow together as one with the streaming volume of sounds. And at night we sleep; then our ordinary thought life is dulled in an element which as yet is not present in our normal consciousness. But if we succeed in bringing into ordinary everyday consciousness that which awakens when we sleep; if that in which we live when asleep dives down into our waking experience, then . . . . Just in contrast: I have just said that when we experience music the ego's awareness dives down into a region which sleeps during the day. But when we submerge what we experience at night into the consciousness of daytime, then poetry arises. This is what people like Plato felt when they called poetry a ‘divine dreaming’. When we thus explore the connection that exists between man and the whole cosmos, which we can do to a certain extent under the guidance of art, we can bring a certain measure of life into what otherwise remains a mere skeleton of ideas. Please do realise that these things are not a mere skeleton! Some people take such pleasure in arranging what I have described in my book Theosophy in the pattern of a diagram; no doubt they thought that it was from pure obstinacy that I deviated from the pattern of earlier theosophical teachings, when I described three threefold organisations1 that are not separate but interlaced. But if these matters are approached through what one experiences and what is absolutely real, then even the nature of major and minor melodies will show that things are deeply rooted in the whole structure of the cosmos. Only when things are taken as living entities out of the whole structure of the cosmos do they correspond to a true reality. Of course it was necessary in the beginning to say a number of things, the reasons for which have only appeared by degrees during the course of many years. This naturally involved the risk that people would start to criticise, because they did not know on what certain statements were based, nor how things of necessity present themselves when the whole structure of the cosmos is taken into consideration. This is still the case with many matters. Many things that are said now are open to numerous objections if they are approached with superficial ideas. But in the course of years even decades they will certainly be verified. And the knowledge gained through spiritual science will become fruitful as soon as it is no longer a theory but a living experience. All depends upon the capacity to surmount the first ideas presented by the words: physical body, etheric body, astral body, etc., so that these ideas can become alive; a real understanding of the universe radiates from this process of bringing to life. Those who are able to do this should now compare the kind of aesthetics that have come to the fore during the last century and a half, with what can be learned from a knowledge of the human being in discovering the origin of the arts. Those who make this comparison will see that, unless there is an understanding of the human organisation, it is impossible to reach a real comprehension of what lives around us and gives us joy. I want to awaken in you a recognition of the fact that spiritual science is itself an initial impulse that will continue to grow and develop, that we are in a sense called upon to make the very first steps, and that we can imagine what these first steps will lead to, long after we have laid aside our bodies in our present incarnation.
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| 275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution II
30 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis |
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| 275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution II
30 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis |
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We can obtain maybe the best survey of what ought to enter into our souls and hearts as a result of our efforts in spiritual science if we turn our attention for a moment to the greater part of what I have dealt with in my book Occult Science, an Outline. Leaving aside the introductory chapters, which are necessary as a preparation for the subject, we can begin with those chapters that introduce us to the being of man, his relation to birth and death, and his life in the spiritual worlds. After this comes a description of the great cosmic relationships, of course only in rough outlines; we are led through the transformations of our earth before it became the earth, through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions leading up to our present Earth evolution. Then follows a sketch in the form of brief hints giving us a glimpse of the future Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Finally, instead of a more detailed description of the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions we have an account of what must be undergone by the individual who wishes to set in motion within his being those inner soul experiences which must eventually lead him to initiation. These processes have been described in greater detail up to a certain stage in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved?. It will become apparent that for us spiritual science falls into two parts. In one part we describe cosmic relationships; we describe how what we have before us today as the earth and its beings and as the rest of the cosmos has been coming into existence out of the very, very distant past, and we describe the prospect of how it will develop further. If you review the many observations that we have made, you will see that a large part of them are in a way under the influence of what we take into ourselves concerning the development and coming into being of the cosmos. The other part of spiritual science is concerned for us with what the soul must do in order to enter the spiritual worlds or, in other words, to reach initiation. It is these inner experiences, conquests, battles, redemptions, and achievements of the soul with which we are always concerned in this second sphere of observation. Our observations always belong essentially to one or other of these two spheres. Starting now with the first sphere of observations, we see that by describing the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions up to the present Earth evolution, we are placing something in the world which is entirely contrary to both the religious and the scientific world concepts of today; indeed the modern world for the most part considers these descriptions to be absurd. It is quite natural that to our modern minds a description of a world order appropriate, for instance, to the conditions of the Saturn evolution must appear too fantastic; the description of a cosmic order of this kind must appear to our present way of looking at things as absolute nonsense, as something that cannot exist, as the outcome of fantastic speculation. And this is just as true of the other parts of our portrayal. Now bear in mind a remark that I have made here several times: The human being does not only sleep at night, when his conscious thoughts and ideas are dulled, but a part of his being is also asleep during the day. At night it is more the life of concepts that is asleep; but during the day, in a part of our being, the life of the will is more asleep. The will sleeps in the depths of our bodily being, or at least a large part of the will sleeps thus. This sphere of our will is much more comprehensive than the part which we develop consciously; the latter is only a small part. We may say with complete assurance that in his ordinary daily consciousness, either at work or enjoying leisure, the human being is really for the most part a sleepwalker. A vast number of things take place within him unconsciously; and even a great part of what seems to be done consciously is, in reality, done half or more than half unconsciously. If we observe the human being exactly in what he does half or more than half unconsciously, then we may see with our spiritual eyes that during sleep he is not nearly so unbelieving as when awake. When awake his modern view of the world prompts him to say: The description of the Saturn evolution in a book like Occult Science is pure and absolute nonsense! Of course he must say this. But as a complete human being he does not speak like this; for he carries within himself something through which he—if I may say so—knows unconsciously that there was once upon a time a Saturn existence. He does something which proves that he in a certain way unconsciously remembers this Saturn existence: he becomes an architect. Architecture would never have come into being if man did not now carry within himself the laws which were imprinted on his physical body during the ancient Saturn period. Yesterday we discussed how these laws in the physical body can be projected into the space outside, where they become the laws of architecture. Man mysteriously projects into the laws of architecture all that he took into his being during the ancient Saturn period. Obviously he has to use such means as are at his disposal today; accordingly the present aspect of architecture is quite different from what we know of ‘Saturn architecture’. But the essential and living elements in our architectural activities stem from what was implanted in us during the ancient Saturn evolution. Let us enter still deeper into the matter which we thus place before our souls. What does the human being do when he becomes totally absorbed in the creativity of architecture, either as the architect or as the observer or admirer? He lives within the Saturn laws of his physical body; if he immerses himself entirely into the laws of architecture, he forgets all about the life of his etheric body, his astral body and his ego: he becomes once more a Saturn man. All the impressions produced by architecture, its austerity, its chaste proportions, its silence which is yet so eloquent, result from the fact that, abandoning the higher members of his being, he immerses himself in what was given to him by the spirits of the higher hierarchies, the Thrones and Archai, who were active at the beginning of the Saturn period. It was mainly these two groups of higher spirits who were active then, assisted by the other beings belonging to the higher hierarchies. So when he creates or enjoys architecture (where it is a case of real art of course), the human being really lifts himself not only out of the present Earth existence but also out of the more distant past and places himself once more into the period of Saturn existence. Let us now pass on to sculpture. Yesterday we saw that the laws of sculpture are the laws of the etheric body which have been pressed down one step into the physical body. Just as that which lives in the physical body, when compelled into the space outside, becomes architecture, so sculpture appears when what lives in the etheric body is made to descend into the physical body. In enjoying sculpture we abandon the astral body, the ego, and all the higher members of our being, living as though we had only the physical body, and in the physical body an expression of the etheric body; in such a condition we are once more participants of the ancient Sun condition. All that the ancient Sun evolution planted in us reappears when we enjoy or create works of sculpture. On the one hand these works appear so congenial to us because they give us back our own very distant past which is still creative within us, our Sun period; and on the other hand they are so smooth and cold in their marble because what rays out to us from them is like light coming to us from the far distances of the cosmos. Now let us pass on to painting. We know that painting comes about when the inner impulses of the astral body are pressed down into the etheric body; in painting we abandon the ego and live as though we were only in the astral, but were pressing it down into the etheric body. We experience ourselves in all that the ancient Moon evolution has implanted in us, this being our inner astral nature as human being. Painting is, as it were, the outward projection of this inner astral nature of ours. Just as we experience in our astral nature sorrow or joy, things that affect or impress us, whatever fate brings us, so do we experience what the painter conjures upon the canvas for us, which is a reflection of our own inner astral being. If you try to enter a little into what is described in Occult Science as the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, you will discover that an architectural mood underlies the description of the Saturn evolution, a sculptural mood underlies the description of the Sun evolution, and a pictorial mood underlies the description of the Moon evolution; an attempt was made to express these moods by choosing suitable words. The presentation of occult events definitely requires more than the current literary equipment of today. It would be an entire misconception of the style of an occult description to believe that it could be achieved by the dreadful literary devices of our time. We now come to the Earth evolution. Here we are in the immediate present, in the reality appointed for us; what we experience here we do not immediately feel the need to place before ourselves in the form of art. But the need the human being feels of projecting his inner life outward in the form of art is not exhausted by, as it were, recreating his cosmic past in architecture, sculpture, and painting out of the memory implanted in him. Our need for art progresses further and we can find the spiritual foundation for this if we turn again to the book Occult Science. After the descriptions of the Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth evolutions and after the brief outline of the future Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolutions, we come to the description of the processes of initiation, which are essentially at first inner human processes. These initiation processes are, in the form in which we encounter them today, the beginning of important changes for the life of human beings on earth and for the whole of future humanity. Is it not so that our deeper experience of the life of humanity on earth is expressed in the words: Alas, in so far as man is consciously aware during life on earth he appears to be but an orphan in the cosmos, a child abandoned by the cosmos, or even a traveller who has lost his way in the cosmos! For his everyday waking consciousness man does not know the origin of what lives in him as a result of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions; nor does he know what will become of him in the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Knowing neither his origin nor his future he wanders about at the edge of the abyss that bounds our earthly valley. Sometimes his consciousness may give him a feeling of assurance or he may feel secure as to his future; nevertheless, neither the past nor the future can be determined objectively and competently by man on earth. But something capable of giving him clear guidance in his life will appear before his soul. This will come about when man makes himself acquainted with the guidelines given him in the laws of initiation. Initiation, in ancient times, took the form of a kind of inheritance left to men by the gods, which manifested itself as atavistic clairvoyance; but in the course of our progress towards the future it must take hold of man more and more firmly and actually shape his inner soul life. The path to initiation has two sides. The one side leads man to discover the secrets, the riddles of life so that he can enter into the spiritual experience of existence. The other side may be called the more subjective side of initiation that takes place more within the soul itself. It is, at the same time, the side from which men shrink the most, because it presents in fact something which does not fit in with the comfortable indolence of experience to which the soul so easily yields or wants to yield. An extremely wide and detailed range of inner experiences awaits the one who is to be gradually led by his inner experience to initiation. Conquest and liberation, hindrance and redemption alternate in manifold ways with inner experience on the way to initiation. One goes through everything the soul experiences when it suddenly feels it has become an entire stranger to itself; as though it had been cast into an abyss where it cannot help feeling that it is eternally lost and can never recover anything which it may have acquired during any lifetime. It may feel an unlimited dismay and grief at the loss of the existence already won. Then the soul may feel itself forced into complete fragmentation, as though it must disintegrate into an endless multiplicity and dissolve into all the beings out of which the cosmos is composed. Further the soul may feel itself wandering through the beings of the cosmos, becoming akin to one of them, then leaving it again and becoming akin to another, in the way I have described it in my book The Threshold of the Spiritual World, in the part dealing with experiences that are always attended by painful privations, painful loneliness as they are passed through one by one. Then comes the experience of the most radical transformation of all, when the soul must decide to undergo what can be expressed with the words: Now you must lose yourself for a while, you must thrust yourself away from yourself; but you must have faith that while you are losing yourself, while you are thrusting yourself away from yourself, beings reposing in the wide expanses of the divine hierarchies will protect you, will cause you to find yourself again after you have lost yourself. This is the passage through births and deaths. This is to be undergone among the inner experiences which lead to initiation. At last comes the awful passage through all the forces which are not necessary for life on earth, but which are necessary for the life of the extra-terrestrial cosmos and which become the forces of evil when they are brought without justification into the life of the earth by Lucifer or Ahriman. It is the dreadful passage through the forces of evil, together with all the disruptive, devouring, engulfing forces they represent throughout the cosmos. And finally man passes through a stage when he ought to feel himself to be only an instrument, a tool through which the spiritual beings speak; he becomes symbolically what his larynx is as a single organ, he becomes the larynx of the divine spiritual beings, he feels himself to be resting in the all-powerful divine world. And then at last a condition will be reached in the future in which this feeling emerges into sharing the experience of the divine will, working in the cosmos itself. Only single stages have been described here. But the grades of experience through which the soul passes are infinite. In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved? and, more descriptively, in The Threshold of the Spiritual World, you will find set forth as far as is necessary for the present time, how the soul is able to adjust itself to all these states and how, at each stage, it advances one step further into the spiritual world. All that the soul passes through on the path to initiation is consciously undergone and consciously experienced. This is why this path of knowledge is so beset with pain and yet so full of liberation. But long, long before the human being enters consciously into all that I have described to you as the stages of the path to initiation, he is able to express these experiences in his own way in pictures, and this is done through music! In the last analysis genuine music is essentially a process of life taking its course in tones, which is an external picture of what the soul experiences consciously in initiation. If he remains in the everyday sphere, the human being cannot at once accomplish what we described yesterday as the submerging of the ego in the astral body. To submerge the ego in the astral body in the right way is to enter into the divine world, and this is the passage through initiation. A picture of this is given to us in the processes we perceive in musical compositions. When he surrenders himself to musical creativity, either as the composer or the listener, the human being abandons his ego, he pushes it back; but at the same time he surrenders it to those divine spiritual powers who are to work upon his astral body when he has ascended to existence on Jupiter. Please observe how we are entering upon a consideration of the creative art of music which links us with the future of mankind. It is almost, one feels, lacking in modesty to say that musical creativity is called upon to perfect itself more and more in the world, to become continually more profound, and that the musical creativity that has entered into our world so far is still more or less at the experimental stage, even though so much greatness and so much genius has already been involved. So far we have made attempts at what will be infinitely more meaningful in the musical creativity of the future. And this musical art of the future will be most significantly stimulated when human beings begin to engage in learning to know the inner nature of the path of initiation. When one day what can be described concerning the path of initiation will no longer be experienced by human beings as it is today, but will be experienced in such a way that the description of what the soul must feel will cause human beings to go through bliss and bitter disappointment; when the knowledge that can be gained by reading about the path of initiation has become a complete inner experience: only then will it be possible for human souls to be so deeply moved through their participation in the destinies of all those beings who take part in the events of the cosmos outside the human realm, that they will feel within themselves the shocks, privations and liberation that will impel the soul to express in tonal relationships what is experienced through the description of the path of initiation. In time to come there will be individuals who will feel what is described as the path of initiation; they will feel that things which are put before us in such an apparently abstract way can be intensely experienced, much more intensely than is the case with our outward physical experience. Then a moment will come when those who are able to experience the truth of what is described as the path of initiation will say to themselves: Now I feel that what I am experiencing does not connect me with the realm of nature that surrounds me on the earth but with all that lives and weaves in the cosmos; not only can I experience all this, but I am able to sing it, to set it to music! In what can thus be described we have an indication of what spiritual science is to become for human beings. Spiritual science must be a living stimulus for the human soul; it should be more than mere theory, mere understanding, mere knowledge. Spiritual science must live in the soul, taking hold of all its powers, transforming the human being into another being. Or vice versa, the human being must transform himself into another being when he becomes devoted to spiritual science. In ancient times, even in the case of the Greeks who were Sun men, an atavistic clairsentience led men to abandon their astral and their ego beings completely and only to express the laws of the physical human form created during the Saturn and Sun evolutions. Thus Greek statues were made, those works of sculpture that really stand before our physical eyes as the mankind of the Sun evolution must stand before our spiritual eyes, when we understand that the human being of that period consisted only of the physical human body which contained within it the living etheric forces but not as yet the astral. Indeed, a work of Greek art such as the Venus of Milo stands before us as the personification of absolute chastity, since unchastity is only possible in the astral body, in all that permeates the astral body as passion and desire. Unchastity is not yet possible in the etheric body. It was a heritage from the gods bestowed upon men which caused them to create such works of art. The human being has lost this ability to feel himself within the etheric and physical bodies alone, without the ego or the astral body. When he awakes and submerges his ego and his astral body into his etheric and physical bodies, he feels and experiences only what is present in his ego. Even the processes in the astral body are in the subconscious realm, and he has no inner knowledge at all of what takes place in the etheric and physical bodies. The ancient Greeks were still dimly aware of all this. But today, when we seek to bring spiritual knowledge to life once more within ourselves and cause it to embrace not only our abstract and theoretical thoughts but also the whole of our soul life, we gradually penetrate the different members of our being and learn to know what permeates our astral and etheric bodies in rhythmical and harmonious cycles. Then we become able to follow with the soul the etheric forces which pulsate through the body and through space, calling forth forms out of the etheric. An attempt of this kind was made in the creation of the columns and architraves in our Goetheanum building; it was a diving down into the spheres made accessible to us by spiritual science which have been forgotten by mankind. In this we must indeed take deeply seriously what spiritual science can mean to us. You can glean from all that has so far been said about spiritual science that when we enter consciously into the spiritual world (and one must enter the spiritual world consciously), in other words when with understanding we give form to what lives in the etheric world and in the human etheric body and wish to enjoy what we have thus formed, then we must inevitably make the acquaintance of those beings which are called the luciferic and ahrimanic spirits. Now consider how much of what we create today has an ahrimanic character. You will remember1 what I have said with regard to our modern technical environment; and of course we cannot do otherwise than use modern technical methods in our work. If we wished to do without them we would produce the equivalent of hothouse plants. So it afforded me a certain satisfaction that we were able to use concrete, one of the most modern building materials, for part of our building here. For progress consists not in shutting oneself off, as in a hothouse, from the life around one, but in using what is offered by it. By grasping the spiritual nature of the world through spiritual science, we try to use modern materials in such way that what we know through spiritual science finds a living expression in them. Of course this is only possible up to a certain point, and you will understand why this is so when you perceive all the implications of what has been said about the technical environment. For it is not possible to separate technical methods from ahrimanic forces, for instance, if we wish to create something in architecture or sculpture for ourselves. Thus it was a difficult task to take what of necessity had an ahrimanic nature in our building and, as it were, banish it from the building as something rendered harmless. It really was a difficult task, for we know that the ahrimanic element is inseparable from modern technology. For a while it seemed that Ahriman would easily gain the upper hand. Then we should have been compelled to incorporate into our main building all the technical equipment necessary for running it. As a result, Ahriman would have been permanently installed within the building. We had to think of a way of excluding the ahrimanic forces from the building, and the only possibility was to take the boiler house out and make it a separate unit. This has been done, as you can see for yourselves, and with great success. It has been possible to create, in the most modern building material, forms that truly express the following: Here, near the building, but outside it, stands the part that must not be included in it, though it must be present outside; and the material out of which it has been formed represents an architectural structure that is truly in keeping with spiritual-scientific knowledge. It was of immense importance that this should be achieved, particularly as the most modern building materials were employed. For if you look more deeply into what I have written about spiritual science, taking in this case the last chapter of The Portal of Initiation, you will find expressed there the fact that Lucifer and Ahriman are at their most harmful when they are not seen, when they remain invisible. Let us suppose that somebody is tormented by ahrimanic forces; what would be the best remedy? The best remedy would be for him to have some kind of picture made of Ahriman which he could place in his room. The best remedy against an astral being which torments one, is to place it before oneself in a physical form. It is incorrect to suppose that if we have Ahriman before us we will be persecuted by him; the contrary is true. Things must be made visible. But we must not let the matter get on our nerves; we must not develop a condition in which, if we happen to pass by the picture of Ahriman and look at it unconsciously, we then carry the image within ourselves. For this image will then be invisible inside us, thus making us nervous or excited. You will also see, if you study our ahrimanic chimney along with the whole boiler house, how it is indeed possible to make an architectural structure of what belongs, one might say, to the most blatant elements of ahrimanic civilisation in our time. Certain defects of this civilisation will not vanish until mankind resolves to give architectural form to the things that concern the ahrimanic elements of our civilisation. Apart from all else, apart from our having a building for our own purposes, it is simply important that the first step should be taken in relating our present culture to art and in relating spiritual science to our present culture. Our boiler house is a first small step in this direction, and will lead, it is hoped, to the solution of other problems later. One enormous problem, for instance, would be to find a suitable form for the modern railway station; for the horrors and abominations which perform that function today are a contradiction of all decent human requirements. In its entire form our boiler house is not only suited to its specific purpose but also corresponds to the whole relationship of Ahriman to our building; in the same way the form of a railway station must correspond to what happens through it, with it, and in it within the framework of our modern civilisation. Such things as these should indicate the way in which spiritual science can provide inspiration for artistic creativity and for many other fields. And we may rest assured, if we enter into the true sense and spirit of what is to develop for us out of spiritual science, that one day, when human beings immerse themselves in the nature of the Saturn condition, then the deeper laws of architecture will reveal themselves; and if people immerse themselves in the nature of the Sun condition, the the deeper laws of sculpture will reveal themselves; and if they immerse themselves in the nature of the Moon condition, then the deeper relationships between form and colour and the nature of chiaroscuro will become apparent, creating inspiration for the art of painting. And from the description of the path of initiation will spring inspirations and intuitions for the creation of music and yet further for the creation of poetry. Then the time will come when poetic creativity in the true sense of the word will reappear in the world. For poetic creativity has to a certain extent died away. The ‘divine dreams’ incorporated in the work of the true poets were the last vestiges of the ancient heritage from the gods. But a time must come when, out of an understanding of the mysteries of initiation, poets will speak in dramatic or epic or lyric poetry about those intimate processes which take place in the soul when the human being is not alone with himself, but lives together with the gods of the higher hierarchies. In the not too distant future people will be saying: Stop bothering me with your perpetual jingles about men's experiences in the physical world; your daily routine of love and hate and enjoyment is your own affair. It is about what they experience together with the gods when they have found their way outside earthly experience, that men will sing in their music and in their dramas, epics, and lyrical poems. For we know that all men's experiences with the extra-terrestrial world must be brought into these arts through true creativity that is not involved in everyday life. We have now seen what impulses of transformation lie in the knowledge brought to us by spiritual science, even in the field of artistic appreciation. And we have now seen how, if we enter into spiritual-scientific knowledge, we can dimly perceive the forces which must reign over the spiritual culture of future humanity. Indeed, we may believe that without achieving a profound inner transformation nobody can really make contact with spiritual science; and we may believe that spiritual science is something which can grasp man in a deeply inward way, leading beyond the narrow connections of physical life alone. If we bear in mind this ideal of spiritual science, if we bear in mind that spiritual science can lead out into a sphere that is different from ordinary experience, then it is always an event of immense significance to see somebody within the spiritual-scientific movement, really igniting within himself the spark that leads him out of and beyond the narrow limits of ordinary personal experience. In a way, the only joyful experience which is so far made possible for us through the spiritual-scientific movement is, that as a result of this movement, individuals can appear among us who really find their way out of their personal sphere into those spheres where the personal element ceases to exist. In our everyday life we must, of course, cultivate the personal element; but in so far as we are together as students of spiritual science, all personal willing and feeling is changed into something impersonal if we take hold of spiritual science in the right way. And every victory over personal feelings and over the weight of personal feelings and over the weight of personal matters in life is of immense significance and value. But on the other hand it is one of the bitterest disappointments if something that is striven for in spiritual science with a will that is purely spiritual, becomes entangled again in the merely personal will and purpose of human beings, and if personal matters begin to play a role within a society whose object it is to unite us in striving for spiritual-scientific knowledge. I shall not elaborate on these concluding remarks or go into more detail because I believe that there are a good many among you who will perhaps understand much of what is meant by them, who will understand that they were intended as an indication of a number of things that are satisfactory and a number that are disappointing. Today, having tried for a while to walk together along a path of spiritual science, it is good to think about these things for a moment; for there are various reasons why we should reflect and ask ourselves to what extent our own soul is participating in the sincere and honest effort to achieve the spiritual purposes which are nourished by the current of spiritual science. What a superb perspective unfolds before us when we say: Life, science, religion, and also art can receive impulses of transformation from spiritual science when it is truly understood. In the case of the pictorial and plastic arts the impulses come from what we learn in spiritual spheres about the past; and in the case of the arts involving music and speech the impulses come from that which we are striving for inwardly, in order to be able to approach the future. This perspective is so immense and so powerful that we cannot bring enough realisation to bear on it, in order to make it more intensely clear to ourselves. And the more we succeed in making clear to ourselves the inner mood resulting from this vision, the better we shall be as true members of that great organism known to us as spiritual science, an organism which is small today, but which has within it great possibilities. With this today I not only want to appeal to your reason and your understanding, but I also want to sow it as a seed in your souls and in your hearts.
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| 275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Cosmic New Year: the Dream Song of Olaf Asteson
31 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis |
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| 275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Cosmic New Year: the Dream Song of Olaf Asteson
31 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis |
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Our end-of-year festival will begin with Frau Dr. Steiner giving us a recitation of the beautiful Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson, of whom we are told that at the approach to Christmas he fell into a kind of sleep which lasted for thirteen days; the thirteen holy days that we have explored in various ways. In the course of this sleep he had significant experiences, that he was able to narrate when he awoke. During these past days we have examined various things that make us aware that the spiritual-scientific outlook gives us a new approach to an understanding of gems of wisdom which, in past times, people realised belonged to spiritual worlds. Time and again we shall encounter this prehistoric knowledge of the spiritual worlds in one instance or another, and we shall continually be reminded that what was known in former ages, was due to the fact that the human being was so organised at that time that he had the kind of relationship with the whole of the cosmos and its happenings that we would now call being immersed with his human microcosm in the laws or the activities of the macrocosm, and that in this process of immersion in the macrocosm he was able to experience things that deeply concern the life of his soul, but which are hidden from him as long as he lives as microcosm on the physical plane and is equipped only with a knowledge given him by his senses and an intellect bound to the senses. We know that only a materialistic outlook can believe that man is the only being in the world order equipped with thinking, feeling and willing, whereas a spiritual point of view must acknowledge that just as there are beings below the human level, there are also beings above the human stage of thinking, feeling and willing. The human being can live his way into these beings when, as microcosm, he immerses himself in the macrocosm. However, in this case we should have to speak of the macrocosm not only as a macrocosm of space, but as if the course of time were of significance in cosmic life. Just as in order to kindle the light of the spirit within him when he wants to descend into the depths of his own soul, man has to shut himself off from all the impressions his environment can make on his senses and has, as it were, to create darkness round him by closing off his sense perception, likewise the spirit we can call the spirit of the earth has to be shut off from the impressions of the rest of the cosmos. The outer cosmos has to have least effect on the earth spirit if the earth spirit is to be able to concentrate its forces within. For then the secrets will be discovered that man has to discover in conjunction with the earth spirit, because the earth has been separated as earth from the cosmos. The time when the outer macrocosm exercises the greatest effect on the earth is the time of the summer solstice, midsummer. And many accounts of olden times connected with festive presentations and rituals remind us that festivals like these take place at the height of summer; that in the midst of summer, the soul, in letting go the ego and merging with the life of the macrocosm, surrenders in a state of intoxication to the impressions from the macrocosm. On the other hand, the legendary or other kind of presentations of that which could be experienced in olden times remind us that when impressions from the macrocosm have least effect on the earth, the earth spirit, concentrated within itself, experiences within the eternal All, the secrets of the earth's life of soul, and that if man enters into this experience at the point of time when the macrocosm sends least light and warmth to the earth, he learns the most holy secrets. This is why the days around Christmas were always kept so sacred, because whilst man's organism was still capable of sharing in the experience of the earth, man could meet the spirit of the earth during the point of time when it was most concentrated. Olaf Åsteson, Olaf the son of earth, experiences various secrets of the cosmic All whilst he is transported into the macrocosm during the thirteen shortest days. And the nordic legend which has recently been extricated from old accounts, tells of these experiences Olaf Åsteson had between Christmas and New Year up till the 6th January. We often have reason to remember this former manner in which the microcosm took part in the macrocosm, and we can then take these things further. First of all, however, let us hear the legend of Olaf Åsteson, the earth son, who during the time in which we are now, experienced the secrets of cosmic existence in his meeting with the earth spirit. Let us listen to these experiences.
My dear friends, we have just heard how Olaf Åsteson fell into a sleep that was to reveal to him the secrets of worlds that are hidden from the world of the senses and ordinary life on the physical plane. This legend brings us tidings of ancient knowledge and insight into the spiritual worlds, which we shall regain once more through what We call the spiritual-scientific world outlook. You have often heard the words that are included in all proclamations concerning the human soul's entry into the spiritual world, namely, that man beholds the spiritual world only when he experiences the gates of death and then enters into the elements. This means that the elements of earth existence do not surround him in the way they do in ordinary life on the physical plane, in the form of earth, water, air and fire, but that he is lifted above this sensory exterior of the elements and enters into what these elements really are when you know their true nature, where beings exist that have a relationship with man's soul experience. We could feel that Olaf Asteson experienced something of this descent into the elements when we come to the part where Olaf reaches the Gjallar Bridge and crosses over it on to the paths of the spiritual world that all led far away. What a vivid description we are given of his experience as he descends into the element of earth. It is described in such detail that he tells us he himself feels earth in his mouth like the dead who lie in their graves. And then there is a clear indication of his going through the element of water, and of all that can be experienced in the watery element when one also experiences its moral quality. Then he also indicates how man meets with the elements of fire and of air. All this is described in a wonderfully graphic way and centred in the experience of the human soul meeting the secrets of the spiritual world. The legend was found at a later date; it was collected at the place where it lived orally among the people. Parts of the legend in their present form are no longer the same as in the original. No doubt the graphic description of the experiences in the earth realm originally came first and then the experiences in the realm of water. And the experiences in the realms of air and of fire were no doubt far more differentiated than they are in the feeble after-echo that we have today, and which was found centuries later. The conclusion was undoubtedly also much more impressive and less sentimental, for in its present form it does not in the least remind us of the sublime language of olden times, nor of the capacity to raise one on to a superhuman plane that used to exist in folk legends. The present conclusion merely moves on on a human level, and the reason why it is moving is purely because of its connection with such deep secrets of the macrocosm and of human experience. If we rightly understand the season of the year in which we now are, we have a strong urge to remember the fact that humanity used to possess a knowledge—even if it was less defined and clear-cut—that has been lost and which has to be regained. And the question can arise in us, that as we surely recognise today that that particular kind of knowledge has to return if mankind is to be made whole, then should we not consider it one of our most urgent tasks to do everything we can to bring knowledge like that into the culture of the present? Many things will have to happen in order for this change to come about in the right way, in what I would like to call the feeling content of man's world conception. One thing will be particularly necessary—I say one, for it is one among many, but you can only take one at a time—it will be essential for human souls to acquire on the basis of our spiritual-scientific world conceptual stream, reverence and devotion for what was known in ancient times in the old manner about the deep secrets of existence. People must arrive at the feeling that during the materialistic age they have neglected the development of this reverence and devotion. We must get the feeling of how dried-out and empty this materialistic age is, and how proud of our intellectual knowledge mankind was in the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, in face of the revelations of ancient religion and knowledge handed down from former times, which, when approached with the necessary reverence, truly give us the feeling that they contain the most profound wisdom. Fundamentally speaking we have no reverence for the Bible nowadays, either! Disregarding the kind of atrocious modern research that tears the whole Bible to shreds, we have merely to look at the dry and empty way we approach the Bible today armed, as it were, only with the knowledge of the senses and ordinary intellectual powers, and at the way we can no longer muster a feeling for the tremendous greatness of human perception that comes to meet us in some of its passages. I would like to refer to a passage from the second Book of Moses, chapter 33, verse 18: And Moses said to God, ‘I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.’ And the Lord said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’ But then the Lord said, ‘Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.’ And the Lord said, ‘Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I shall put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.’ If you gather together various things we have taken up in our hearts and souls during the years we have been working with spiritual science and then approach this passage, you can have the feeling that infinite wisdom is speaking to us there and how, in the materialistic age, human ears are so deaf that they hear nothing of the infinitely deep wisdom that comes to us from this passage. I would like to take this opportunity to refer you to a booklet that has been published under the title Worte Mosis by Bruns Publishing Co. in Minden, Westphalia, because certain things out of the five Books of Moses have been translated better in this booklet than in other editions. Dr. Hugo Bergmann, the publisher of Worte Mosis, has taken a lot of trouble over the interpretation. The fact that man, if he wants to penetrate to the spiritual world, has to acquire a totally different relation to the world than that which he has to the sense world, has often been stressed. Man has the sense world all about him. He looks at the sense world and sees it in its colours and forms and hears its sounds. The sense world is there, and we are in the midst of it, feeling its influence, perceiving it and thinking about it. That is how we relate to the sense world. We are passive and the sense world, as it were, works its way into our souls. We think about the sense world and make mental images of it. Our relationship is quite different when we penetrate into the spiritual world. One of the difficulties consists in getting the right idea of what a person experiences when he enters the spiritual world. I have attempted to characterise some of these difficulties in my booklet Die Schwelle der geistigen Welt (‘The Threshold of the Spiritual World’). We make mental images of the sense world and we think about it. If we go through all a person has to go through if he wants to follow the path of initiation, something occurs that can be described like this: We ourselves relate to the beings of the higher hierarchies in the same way as the things around us relate to us; they make a mental image of us, they think us. We think the objects around us, the minerals, plants and animals; they become our thoughts, whereas we are the conceptions, thoughts and perceptions of the spirits of the higher hierarchies. We become the thoughts of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and so on. They take us in, in the same way as we take in the plants, animals and human beings. And we must feel their sheltering protection when we say, ‘The beings of the higher hierarchies think us, they make mental images of us. These beings of the higher hierarchies take hold of us with their souls’. In fact we can actually picture that when Olaf Asteson fell asleep he became a mental image of the spirits of the higher hierarchies, and in the course of his sleep these beings of the higher hierarchies experienced what the beings of the earth spirit were experiencing (these are, of course, a plurality for us). And when Olaf Asteson sinks back into the physical world he remembers what the spirits of the higher hierarchies experienced in him. Let us imagine for a moment that we are setting out on the path of initiation. How can we relate to the spiritual world, which is a host of spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies, into which we wish to enter? How can we relate to them? We can appeal to them and say ‘How can we enter into you, how do you reveal yourselves to us?’ And then, when we have acquired an understanding of the different kind of relationship the human soul has to the higher worlds, there will sound forth to us, as it were from the spiritual worlds, ‘You cannot perceive the spiritual world the same way as you perceive the sense world, the way the sense world appears before you and impinges on your senses. We must think you, and you must feel yourself in us. You must feel the kind of experience in you which a thought you think in the sense world would have if it could experience itself within you. You must surrender yourself to the spiritual world, then the beings of the higher hierarchies who can reveal themselves to you will enter into you. This will stream into your soul and live within it, bringing grace, in the same way as you live in your thoughts when you think about the sense world. If the spiritual world wishes to favour you and have compassion on you, it will fill you with its love!’ But you must not imagine that you can approach spiritual beings in the same way as you approach the sense world. Just as Moses had to creep into the cave, you must go into the cave of the spiritual world. You have to put yourself there. Like a thought lives in you, you must be taken up into the life of the spiritual beings. You yourself must live as a universal thought in the macrocosm. To have experiences there of your own accord is not possible during earthly life between birth and death, but only after you have passed through death. No one can experience the spiritual world in this way before he has died, yet the spiritual world can come close to you, bless you and fill you with its love. And if after, or whilst you are within the spiritual world, you develop your earthly consciousness, the spiritual world will shine into this consciousness. Just as when an object is outside us we confront it, and when it enters our consciousness it is inside us, the soul of man is within the cave of the spiritual world. The spiritual world passes through him. Here, man confronts things. When man enters the spiritual world the beings of the higher hierarchies are behind him. There, he cannot see their face, just as a thought cannot see our face when it is within us. Our face is in front and the thoughts are behind, so they cannot see our face. The whole secret of initiation is concealed in the words Jehovah speaks to Moses. And Moses said to God, ‘I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.’ And the Lord said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’ But then the Lord said, ‘Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live.’—Initiation does indeed bring you to the Gate of Death. And the Lord said, ‘Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I shall put thee in a cleft of rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.’ It is the opposite of the way we perceive the sense world. You must muster a lot of the spiritual-scientific effort you have developed over the years, in order to encounter a revelation like this with the right kind of reverence and devotion. Then human souls will gradually acquire more and more of this feeling of reverence towards these revelations; and this reverence, this devotion, is among the many things we need in order that the change we have been speaking of can come about in mankind's spiritual culture. The time when the macrocosm sends down least influence to the earth, the days from Christmas over New Year until roughly the 6th of January, can be a suitable time not only for remembering the facts of spiritual knowledge, but also for remembering the feelings we have to develop as we take up spiritual science. We are really and truly taken up again into the life of the spirit of the earth, together with whom we form a whole, and in which ancient clairvoyant knowledge lived, as this legend of Olaf Åsteson shows us. Humanity in the materialistic age has in many ways lost this reverence and devotion for spiritual life. It is most essential to see to it that this reverence and devotion come back, for without them we shall not develop the mood to approach spiritual science in the right way. Unfortunately the mood with which spiritual science is spproached to start with is still the same mood we have for ordinary science. A thorough change will have to come about in this respect. Having lost the understanding for the spiritual world, mankind has also lost the proper relation to the being of man, to humanity. The materialistic world conception produces chaotic feelings about universal existence. These chaotic feelings about the world and humanity were bound to come in the age of materialism. Think of a time—and this is our time, the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—when people no longer had any real awareness that the being of man is threefold: a bodily nature, soul and spirit. For it really is like that. The threefold nature of man, which, to us, is one of the basic elements of spiritual science, was something that people did not have the slightest notion of from the first four centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch right into our time. Man was just man, and any talk of membering his being in the way we do into body, soul and spirit was considered complete nonsense. You might imagine that these things are valuable only in the sphere of knowledge, but that is not so. They are important not only as knowledge, but for the whole manner in which man faces life. In the fourth century of modern times, or, as we say in our language, during the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period, three great words came to the fore in which people saw, or at least endeavoured to see, the essence of human striving on earth. Important though these words are, what made them significant was the fact that they appeared at a time when mankind knew nothing of the threefold nature of man. Everyone heard of liberty, equality and fraternity. It was a profound necessity that these words were heard at a certain time in modern civilisation. People will only really understand these words when the threefold membering of the human being is understood, because until then they will not realise the significance these words can have with regard to man's real being. Whilst these words are being approached with the sort of chaotic feelings that are engendered by the thought that man is man, and the threefold membering of man is nonsense, human beings will find no guidance in these three words. For the three words, as they stand, cannot be directly applied to one and the same level of human experience. They cannot be. Simple considerations which do not perhaps occur to you because they seem too simple for such weighty matters, can go to show that if they are taken on the same level, what these three words mean can come into serious conflict. Let us start by looking at the realm where we find fraternity in its most natural form. Take human blood relationship, the family, where there is no need to instil brotherly love because it is inborn, and just think how it warms the heart to see real genuine brotherhood among a family, to see everyone united in a brotherly way. And yet—without losing any of the wonderful feeling we can have about this brotherly love—let us have a look at what can happen to a family fraternity just because of this brotherliness. Brotherliness is justified within a family, yet a member of a family can be made unhappy by it, and can long to get away from it because he feels he cannot develop his own soul within the family fraternity and must leave it in order to develop in freedom. So we see that freedom, the unfolding in freedom of the life of the soul, can come into conflict with even the best-meant brotherliness. Obviously a superficial person could maintain that it is not proper brotherliness if it does not agree with a person's freedom. But people can say anything they like. No doubt they can say that everything agrees with everything else. I recently saw a thesis in which one of the articles that had to be proved was that a triangle is a quadrangle. You can of course plead for a thing like that, you can even prove exactly that a triangle is a quadrangle! And you can also fully prove that fraternity and freedom are compatible. But that is not the point. The point is that for the sake of freedom many a realm of brotherliness has to be—and in fact is—forsaken. We could give further examples of this. If we wanted to count up the discrepancies between fraternity and equality it would take us a long time. Obviously we can say in abstracto that everyone can be equal, and can show that fraternity and equality are compatible. But if we take life seriously it is not a question of abstractions but of looking at reality. The moment we realise that the human being has a bodily nature that lives on the physical plane, a soul nature that actually lives in the soul world, and a spiritual nature that lives in the spiritual world, we have the right perspective for the connection between these profound words. Brotherliness is the most important ideal for the physical world, freedom is for the soul world, and insofar as man enters into the realm of the soul we ought to speak of the freedom of the soul, that is, of the kind of social conditions that fully guarantee the soul its freedom. If we bear in mind that in order to develop the spirit and enter spirit land we, that is, each one of us, has to strive for spirit knowledge from our own point of view, we shall soon see where we would get with our spiritual conceptions if each one of us only went his own way and we all filled ourselves with a different content. As human beings we can only find one another in life if we seek the spirit, each one for himself, yet can arrive at the same spiritual content. We can speak of the equality of spiritual life. We can speak of fraternity on the physical plane and with regard to everything that has to do with the laws of the physical plane and which affects the human soul from the physical plane; liberty with regard to all that comes to expression in the soul in the way of laws of the soul world; equality with regard to everything that comes to expression in the soul in the way of laws of the spirit land. So you see, a Cosmic New Year must come about, where there will be a sun that will increase in power to give warmth and to radiate light: a sun that must bring light-filled warmth to many a thing that lived on during the age of darkness, yet was not understood. It is characteristic of our time that many a thing is striven for and expressed in words, yet is not understood. This, too, can bring us to feel reverence and devotion for the spiritual world. For if we ponder on the fact that many people strove for fraternity, liberty and equality in the fourth century of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and uttered these words without understanding them properly, it is possible for us to see an answer to the question, ‘Where did these words come from?’ The divine-spiritual universal order implanted them into the human soul at a time when we did not understand them, in order that key words of this kind might lead us on to true universal understanding. We can notice the wise guidance in world evolution even in things like this. We can observe this guidance everywhere, whether in past ages or in more recent times, observing that often we do not notice until afterwards that something we did previously was actually wiser than the wisdom we had at our command at the time. I drew attention to this at the very beginning of my book, The Spiritual Guidance of Man. However, if you look, for instance, at the fact that in world evolution, in the evolution of man, a part is played by directional words that can only gradually be understood, you might be reminded of an image we can use when we want to characterise this period of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch that is drawing to a close. In many respects it can really be compared with the season of Advent where the periods of daylight grow shorter and shorter. And now in our time, when we can begin to have knowledge of revelations of the spiritual worlds again, evolution is entering the phase that we can picture as the days growing longer and longer, and we can speak of this season really being comparable to the thirteen days and to the time of increasing daylight. But it goes deeper than this. It would be absolutely wrong if we were only to find bad things to say of the materialistic age of the past four centuries. Modern times were ushered in by the great discoveries and inventions that are called ‘great’ in the materialistic age, sailing round the world, for instance, discovering lands that were not previously known and starting to colonise the earth. That was the beginning of materialistic civilisation. And then the time gradually came when people were almost stifled by materialistic civilisation. The time arrived when all our spiritual forces were applied to understanding and grasping material life. Insights, understanding and visions of the spiritual world existing in ancient knowledge were forgotten more and more, as we have seen. Yet it is wrong to have nothing but bad things to say about this age. It would be far better to put it this way: ‘The human soul has been thinking materialistically and founding a materialistic science and culture in the part of it that is awake, but this human soul is a totality.’ If I wanted to put it schematically I could say that one part of the human soul founded materialistic civilisation. This part was inactive before that, and people knew nothing about external science and outer material life; at that time the spiritual part was more awake. (He did a drawing.) During the past four centuries the part of the soul was awake that founded materialistic civilisation, and the other part was asleep. And, in truth, during the age of materialistic culture, the seeds were being sown in the sleeping parts of the soul for the forces we can now develop in humanity to bring us to spirituality again. During these centuries mankind was really an Olaf Asteson as far as spiritual knowledge was concerned. That really was so. And humanity has not yet woken up! Spiritual science must awaken it. A time must come when both old and young must hear the words that are being spoken by the part of the human soul that was asleep in the age of darkness. The human soul has slept long indeed, but world spirits will approach and call to it, ‘Awaken now, O Olaf Asteson!’—Only we have to prepare ourselves in the right way, so that it does not happen that we are faced with the call, ‘Awaken now, O Olaf Åsteson!’ and have not the ears to hear it. That is why we are engaged in spiritual science, so that we shall have the ears to hear, when the call to be spiritually awake sounds in human evolution. It is a good thing if man remembers sometimes that he is a microcosm and that he can be receptive to certain experiences if he opens himself to the macrocosm. As we have seen, the present season is a good one. Let us try to make this New Year's Eve a symbol for the New Year's Eve that has to come to mankind in earth evolution, a New Year's Eve that will herald a new era bringing ever more light, soul light, vision, knowledge of what lives in the spirit and which can stream and flow into the human soul from out of the spirit. If we can bring the microcosm of our experience on this New Year's Eve into connection with the macrocosm of human experience over the whole earth, we shall then have the kind of feelings we ought to experience, sensing as we do the dawning of the great new Cosmic Day of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, at whose beginning we stand, and the midnight of which we want to understand worthily.
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| 275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Moral Experience of the Worlds of Colour and Tone
01 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis |
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| 275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Moral Experience of the Worlds of Colour and Tone
01 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis |
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Everything in the world, each event and every act of human conduct has two sides, which are, as it were, polar opposites. Yesterday it was my task to point out to you that through a feeling understanding of our spiritual-scientific world outlook, the human soul should acquire reverence and devotion for the spiritual worlds. The opposite pole to this devotional attitude is energetic work on our inner life, an energetic taking-in-hand of the evolutionary factors of our own soul, making a point of always using our experiences for the purpose of learning something from them and making progress with regard to our inner forces, so that—whatever meets us in life and whatever takes place around us, whether it is easy to understand or not—we shall always avoid the danger of losing ourselves. May we always have the chance of keeping hold of ourselves and of finding within ourselves the strength to develop an understanding for what can encounter us in an often incomprehensible way, and may the kind of devotion for things we were talking about yesterday make such an impact on the development of our souls, that we acquire a proper understanding of universal existence; this, my dear friends, is the New Year greeting I wanted to give you today at the start of the year. We have just been remembering devotion, and I would like to follow that with a reminder of the energetic work on our inner life. The full moon shining down on us out of the cosmos on New Year's Eve is a symbol for the sequence in which we are remembering these things. If it had been the other way round, and the year had started with the new moon, I should have done the right thing in bringing these reminders to you in the opposite order. I should then have closed the year with a reminder of the power of inner development and should have had to leave the thoughts on reverence until today. We must attach more and more importance to really noticing a symbol like this that shines on us out of the macrocosm. And in our quiet moments this year let this indication work on us in such a way that it can have a special significance, to think first about the transformation the power of reverence can bring about in us, then to follow this with thinking about the transformation that the power of inner preservation, the maintaining of inner soul energy, should bring about in us. The sequence of these thoughts has been set for the coming year by the writing of the stars, and the world will gradually come to realise again that reading the star script really has a meaning for man. So let us try even in details like this to pay heed to the great law of human existence and to strive for harmony between the macrocosm and the microcosm. The macrocosm is speaking to us over these days in the most obvious way and we shall find how to keep our microcosm in harmony with the macrocosm, if we conduct ourselves in line with it, in the course of this year that has begun amidst such painful events. If you try and notice what has been the prevailing mood of our talks in the last few days you will discover that, regarding the facts that spiritual science has made significant for us, we live in a time of change, in a time of hope, as it were, for we should now be getting an inkling of the direction the further course of human cultural development should take; of the change that has to come about from a purely materialistic world conception to a spiritual one. What is meant here, however, cannot really fully take place unless it enters every sphere of life and particularly takes hold of the spiritual cultural areas to a marked degree. We have already had various indications showing that an understanding of the spiritual-scientific outlook, which has taken hold of our feelings and is not merely rational, is bound to bring a change into both artistic creativity and artistic appreciation, because the forces we gain from this can give us an artistic conception of the world. And in our Goetheanum building we have just made the attempt to show at least a small part of what can take an artistic form, from out of spiritual-scientific impulses. We can see a time coming when we shall be able to enter fully into the feelings that can arise from the spiritual-scientific world conception, a time when the way to artistic creation will in many respects be different from the past; it will be much more alive and the medium of artistic creation will be experienced much more intensely in the human soul; the soul will be capable of experiencing colour and sound far more inwardly, in a kind of moral-spiritual way, and in artists' creations we shall meet, as it were, traces of the artists' experiences in the cosmos. In essentials, the attitude of artistic creation and artistic appreciation in this past epoch was a kind of external observation, an appeal to something that affects the artist from outside . The need to refer to nature and to a model for external observation has become greater and greater. Not that in the art of the future there is to be any one-sided rejection of nature and outer reality. Far from it, for there will be a much more intimate union with the external world; so strong a union that it will cover not merely the external impression of colour and sound and form, but that which one can experience behind the sound and colour and form; what is revealed in them. Human beings will make important discoveries in the future in this respect. They will actually unite their moralspiritual nature with the results of sense perception. An infinite deepening of the human soul can be foreseen in this domain. Let us pick a particular example to start from. We will simply imagine that we are looking at a surface shining all over with the same shade of strong vermilion, and let us assume we succeed in forgetting everything else around us and concentrate entirely on experiencing this colour, so that we have the colour in front of us, not merely as something that works upon us but as something with which we ourselves are united, that we are within. You will then be able to feel as though you were in the world, and in this world the whole of you has become colour, the whole of your innermost soul, and wherever your soul goes in the world you will be a soul filled with red, living in, with and out of red. Yet you will not be able to experience this intensely in the soul unless the corresponding feeling is transformed into moral experience, real moral experience. If we float through the world as though we were red, had identified ourselves with red, and our very soul and the whole world were entirely red, we shall not be able to help feeling that this whole red world is filling us with the substance of divine wrath, coming towards us from all sides in response to all the possibilities of evil and sin in us. In this infinite red space we shall be able to feel as though we were before the judgment of God, and our moral feeling will become the kind of moral experience our souls can have in infinite space. And when the reaction comes, when something emerges in our soul as we are having this experience in infinite red or, I could also say in the one and only red, I can only describe it by saying we learn to pray. If you can experience the raying and glowing of divine wrath, together with all the possibilities of evil in the human soul, and if you can experience in the red how one learns to pray, the experience of red is enormously deepened. We can also experience the form red takes on when it enters space. We can then understand how we can experience a being that radiates goodness and is full of divine kindness and mercy, a being that we want to feel in the realm of space. Then we shall feel the need of expressing this divine mercy and goodness in a form which arises out of the colour itself. We shall feel the need to let space be pushed aside so that goodness and mercy may shine forth. Before space was there it was all concentrated at the centre, and now goodness and mercy enter space and, just as clouds are driven apart, space is rent asunder and recedes to make way for mercy, and we have the feeling that what is being scattered must be drawn in red. Here in the centre (a drawing was done) we shall have to indicate faintly a kind of magenta shining into the scattering red. We shall then be present with our whole soul as the colour takes on form. And with our whole soul we shall feel an echo of how the beings who belong especially to our earth process felt, when they had ascended to the Elohim stage and learnt to fashion the world of forms out of colours. We shall learn to experience something of the creative activity of the Spirits of Form who are the Elohim, and we shall then understand how colour can create forms, as indicated in our first Mystery Play. We shall also understand something of how the surface nature of the colour becomes something that has to be overcome, as it were, because we accompany colour into the cosmos. If strong desire is also present, a feeling can arise like Strader has when he sees the portrait of Capesius, and says he would like to pierce the canvas. You will see that an attempt has been made in these Mystery Plays really to show in artistic form what it is like for the soul, when it attempts to expand in the cosmic forces and to feel what the spirits of the cosmos are feeling. That was, in fact, the beginning of all art. But the materialistic age had to come, and ancient art, with its divine quality of differentiation, in which spirit was revealed in matter, had to change into secondary, materialistic ‘after’-art, which the art of the materialistic age is, in essence; the kind of art which cannot create but only imitate. The sign of all secondary art, all after-art, is that it needs objects to imitate, and that it does not produce the form primarily out of the material. Let us take another example. Let us imagine we do the same thing with a more orange coloured surface that we did with the red surface. We shall experience something quite different this time. If we submerge ourselves in it and unite with it, then instead of feeling divine wrath bearing down upon us, we shall have the feeling that what comes to meet us here has much less of the serious side of wrath about it and does not only want to punish us, but wants to impart itself to us and arm us with inner strength. When we enter the world and unite with the orange surface we move in such a way that with every step we take, we feel that by experiencing orange, by living in the forces of orange, we are becoming stronger and stronger, and that what comes to us out of orange does not come merely to punish us and break us with its judgment, but is a source of strength. This is how we go into the world in orange. We then feel the longing to understand the inner nature of things and to unite it with ourselves. By living in red we learn to pray, by living in orange we experience the desire for knowledge of the inner nature of things. If we do the same thing with a yellow surface we feel as though we were transported back to the beginning of our cycle of time. We feel that we are then living in the forces out of which we were created when we entered upon our first earthly incarnation. You feel an affinity between what you are throughout the whole of earth existence, and what comes to meet you from the world into which you take the yellow with which you are united. And if you identify yourself with green and accompany green into the world—which can be done very easily by gazing at a green meadow, shutting out everything else and concentrating completely on it, and then trying to immerse yourself in the green meadow as if the green were the surface of a coloured sea—you experience an inner increase in strength in what your are in that particular incarnation. You feel yourself becoming inwardly healthy, yet at the same time becoming inwardly more egoistic, you feel a stimulus of the egoistic forces within you. If you did the same with a blue surface, you would go through the world with the desire to accompany the blue forever and to overcome your egoism, become macrocosmic, as it were, and develop devotion. And you would find it a blessing if you could remain like this for your meeting with divine mercy. You would feel blessed by divine mercy if you could go through the world like this. Thus we learn to know the inner nature of colour and, as I said before, we can foresee a time when an artist's preparation will mean a moral experience in colour of this kind, when the experience preparatory to artistic creation will be much more inward and intuitive than it ever was in past ages. For these are only a few indications I am giving you, and they will be developed much further in the future. They will take hold of men's souls and enliven them with a tremendous sense for artistic creativity, whereas the materialistic culture that has entered our modern age has dried up the soul and made it passive. Souls must be stimulated again by a power from within; they must be taken hold of by the inner forces of things. As a specific example I have taken the colours that flood the world. The world of sound will deepen and enliven the life of soul in a very similar way. During the period that is now drawing to a close, the essential thing was that a person experienced a tone as such, and the relationship of one tone to another. In the future people will be able to experience what is behind the tone. They will regard the tone as a kind of window through which they enter the spiritual world, and then it will not depend on vague feeling of how one tone is added to another, to form melodies for instance, but by going through the tone the soul will also experience a moral-spiritual quality behind the separate tones. The soul will enter the spiritual world as though through a window. The secrets of the individual tones will be discovered in this experience behind the tones. We are still a long way away from this feeling of being able to go from the sense world to the spiritual world through the window of each tone. But this will come. We shall experience the tone as an opening made by the gods from the spiritual world yonder to this physical-material world, and we shall climb through the tone out of the physical-material world into the spiritual world. Through the tonic, for example, which we experience as absolute and not in reference to previous tones of the scale, we experience danger as we pass from the sense world into the spiritual world. We are threatened on entry with being taken captive; the tonic wants to suck us in most horribly through the window of the tone and make us completely disappear in the spiritual world. Assuming that we experience the tonic as absolute, we shall feel that we are still too weak in a spiritual sense in the physical world, and that we are sucked up by the spiritual world when we climb through this window. This is the moral experience to be had on entering the spiritual world through the tonic. I am over-simplifying it now, though; we shall have a very differentiated experience which contains an infinite variety of detail. When we climb out of the physical world into the spiritual world through the window of the second, we shall have the impression of powers in the spiritual world yonder that, as it were, take pity on our weakness and say, ‘Well! so you were weak in the physical sense world! if you only climb into the spiritual world through the tonic I must dissolve you, suck you up and break you to pieces. But, if you enter through the second, I will offer you something from the spiritual world and remind you of something that is there.’ The peculiar thing is that when we climb from the physical to the spiritual world through the second, it is as though a number of tones rang out to receive us. We enter a totally silent world if we enter the spiritual world through the absolute tonic. If we enter through the second we come to a world where, if we listen, various quiet high-pitched tones ring out wanting to comfort us in our weakness. Yet we must go through the window in a way we most certainly could not do in a physical-material house, for the owner would give us a strange look if we were to walk in through the window and take the whole window with us. But in the spiritual world that is what you have to do, take the tones with you and, in union with them, live over there in the beyond, the other side of the thin partition that separates us from the physical-material world, and in which we have to imagine the tones as windows. If you enter the spiritual world through the third, you will have the feeling of an even greater weakness. If you enter the spiritual world this way, you will feel that you were really very weak in the physical-material world, where its spiritual content is concerned. But with regard to the third—and remember that you have become sound; you yourself have become a third—you will feel that there are friends over there who, although they themselves are not thirds, approach you according to the kind of disposition you had in the physical-material world. If you enter through the second, it is like a gentle sounding of many tones, with whom you share life in general when you enter through them, whilst tones that are, as it were, friends with one another, come to meet you through the third. People who want to become composers will have to enter especially through the third, for that is where the tone sequences, the tone compositions are, that will stimulate their artistic creativity. You will not always be met by the same tone friends, for which ones you meet will depend on your mood and your feeling and your temperament—in fact how you are disposed to life at the time when you go through the third into spiritual life. This results in an infinite variety of possibilities. If you penetrate through the fourth into the spiritual world, you will have a strange experience. Although no new tones appear from any direction, those that have come before, when you were experiencing the third, will live lightly in the soul as memories. And you will find that in continuing to live with these tone memories they perpetually take on a fresh colouring; at one time they become as bright and cheerful as can be, at other times they descend to the utmost sadness; now they are as bright as day, now they sink down to the silence of the grave. The modulating of the voice, the way the sound ascends and descends; in short, the whole mood of a tonal creation will have its origin along this path, from these sound memories. The fifth will produce experiences that are more subjective, that work to stimulate and enrich the life of the soul. It is like a magic wand that conjures up the secrets of the sound world yonder, out of unfathomable depths. Experiences of this kind will come to one when one no longer just looks at the things and phenomena in the world, or just listens to them, but experiences them from within. These are the kind of experiences mankind must have, particularly through colour and sound, but also through form; in fact, altogether through the realm of art, in order to get away from the purely external relationship to things and their functioning—which is characteristic of the materialistic age—and to penetrate into the inner secrets at the heart of things. Then something tremendously significant will happen to man, and he will be filled with the awareness of his connection with the divine spiritual powers, which are sub-conscious when his awarenesss is confined to the material realm, and which guide and lead him through the world. And then, above all, he will have inner experiences, such as experiencing the forces which guide man from one incarnation to the next. If we omit to heat a locomotive, it cannot pull a train. The forces which make things happen in the world have to be continually stimulated. The forces which drive mankind forward also need to be stimulated. And this does happen. However, man has to learn that he is connected with these forces. I once had the following remarkable experience. There was a lawyer, a famous advocate, in the town where I lived for a while, an extraordinarily famous advocate, whom the people absolutely flocked to, because they believed he was bound to win the most difficult lawsuits. And this was often the case. His legal dialectic was extraordinary, and people who knew him had the deepest respect for it. Now he was once entrusted with the difficult case of a rich man. The rich man would have to suffer a severe penalty if the lawsuit resulted in his being sentenced. The advocate used his greatest dialectic and the most wonderful of his legal skills. He made a long speech, and the people who heard him were convinced that if the jury were not to acquit the accused, nothing further could be done about it. Everyone who heard the advocate's amazing skill were absolutely convinced the jury would now withdraw and acquit the accused. But in the law court there was not only a skilful counsel but also a skilful judge, and although the hour was not yet so advanced that a judgment could no longer be given, the judge said, ‘Let us close the session for today and continue tomorrow.’ So the jury's session was to take place the following morning, and this gave them time to think the matter over again during the night. The following day came. This ‘overnight delay’ as he called it, had already proved very irksome for the advocate. The session began, the jury withdrew, and everyone awaited their return with tense expectation, most of all our advocate. The jury came back after only a quarter of an hour, and when the advocate heard them coming back from the conference room so soon, he fainted. Yes, he fainted. He did recover again, and a friend helped him up. The accused really had been sentenced, but the advocate only heard this after he had recovered from fainting. Now what could be said about the course of events looked at from the point of view of external perception? One could say that the advocate was a very ambitious man, for he cared so much about winning this lawsuit that he lost consciousness before the verdict was pronounced. As soon as he saw that the jury had only conferred for a short time he was sure the accused had been sentenced, for if they had acquitted him they would, of course, have taken much longer. So he did not faint only out of wounded ambition; he fainited when the jury returned with the verdict after only a quarter of an hour, because his existence had in fact been destroyed. For he had no hope any more of replacing the deposit money he had lost. Therefore his whole existence had depended on the outcome of the lawsuit. He fainted as symbolic indication that he was now completely ruined for this incarnation. He had to escape to America after that, and had to endure a not very enviable existence there for the rest of his life. An example of this sort shows us that judgment can very often be wrong, for some people might never have had the chance to hear anything about what went on behind the lawsuit. If these people had only heard the clever advocate during the lawsuit and seen him fainting, they could very well have concluded that some people are so ambitious that they lose consciousness if a speech of theirs misfires. And they could have left it at that. To be able to judge correctly you would therefore have to know a further layer of facts. In many instances you would even have to know several more layers, otherwise you could be correct with regard to the layer you can see and yet make a wrong judgment. That is the external aspect. But the matter has more behind it. The fellow also had to find a way of getting from this incarnation to the next one. And here we have an example of how wise world guidance puts into the soul the forces it needs to lead it from one incarnation to the next. The man was in such inner conflict that it had destroyed his existence. He was in a terrible position. A situation had been created in which there were no forces left to carry him over to his next incarnation. Also, a situation had been created in which forces of that nature could not be brought to his conscious mind. So his consciousness had to be extinguished for a moment. During short breaks in consciousness all kinds of other spirituality can enter the human soul. And in that moment he received forces capable of restoring his impulse to go forward into the next incarnation. Of course an impulse like this can be given in many different ways. What I have described here was one particular case. These impulses are always there. But I just wanted to show you that man's conscious life is linked with an ongoing process in the unconscious, and that in man's conscious life there are really points where the consciousness is suppressed so that something can enter out of the unconscious. Sometimes these unconscious moments need not be long; they can be short spells similar to fainting. Yet a tremendous amount of spiritual life forces can stream into the human being at such moments, both good and bad, and capable of good and evil. What I want to show you with this example is that, in observing the world, mankind must try to notice links of this kind, which are of no significance to a materialistic outlook. You will gradually reach the point of becoming so perceptive for living links that you will recognise the moments in which the spirit comes near to each human being. In the future the world will no longer be explained so unequivocably as it is now, on the basis of material causes, but matter will be relegated to its right place, and at the same time people will realise that the material phenomenon is not the only thing, for spirit shines through We have seen that colours and sound are windows through which we can ascend spiritually into the spirit world, and life also brings to us windows through which the spiritual world enters our physical world. The advocate's fainting fit was this kind of window. If we interpret this phenomenon correctly we have to say that spiritual life streams down to us through this window. It is clear to us that these forces flowing into us cannot be explained on a purely material level. So there are windows in the tones through which we ascend from the physical-material world into the spiritual world; and there are also windows through which, if we remain in the physical-material world, the spirit can descend to us. If we do not perceive the fact that spirit descends to us through such windows, it is like someone opening a beautiful book who cannot read. He has the same thing in front of him as someone who can read, but if he cannot read he sees unintelligible scribble on the white pages which, at the most, he can just describe. Only a person who can read is capable of following a biography, perhaps, or a piece of information that has been laid down in these strange signs. A person who cannot read world phenomena is like a cosmic illiterate where these phenomena are concerned. A person who can read, however, reads the ongoing process of the spiritual world in them. It is characteristic of the present materialistic age that materialism has made people illiterate with regard to the cosmos, almost a hundred per cent so. At a time when people are so proud of having reduced the percentage of illiteracy in civilised countries to such a great extent, they are enthusiastically heading towards illiteracy where the cosmos is concerned. It is the task of spiritual science to eliminate this cosmic illiteracy. Few people nowadays are illiterate in the ordinary sense. In the time of ancient clairvoyance human beings were far less illiterate in the spirit. But this must not make us conceited. It is a fact that when we acquire an inkling of our task in the spiritual-scientific stream, we ought to change from being illiterate to becoming people who can read the cosmos. Yet we should remain humble, for the times are such that we are still very much in need of the elementary level of education. We can hardly read yet, but only spell out the letters. Yet we can be gripped by the impulse to change, an impulse which is breaking in upon mankind through these things. And if we are gripped by them we shall have the right attitude to what the signs of the times are demanding of us, and we shall enter into them as people who rightly belong to the spiritual-scientific world conceptual stream. |