The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Above all, I must ask for your forgiveness if I am unable to give the lecture I am supposed to give in one of the local languages. The fact that this lecture is being held corresponds to the wish of the friends of our Theosophical Society, for whom I was invited here, to hold a series of lectures for a fortnight, and who thought that there was a possibility of also inserting the two announced public lectures within this time. Of course, this means that I will have to apologize in advance if some of the names and terms, which are borrowed from the national epic of the Finns, are not pronounced quite correctly by me, as I am not familiar with the language. However, only next Friday's lecture will be able to introduce us to spiritual science itself. Tonight's lecture will rather concern a kind of neighboring area that can be illuminated from a spiritual scientific point of view. However, the talk will be about an area that, in the very deepest sense of the word, is one of the most interesting for human historical reflection and human historical thought.

Folk epics! We need only think of some of the better-known folk epics, the epics of Homer, which have become Greek folk epics, the Central European Nibelungen saga and, finally, Kalewala, and it will immediately become clear to us that these folk epics lead us deeper into human souls and human than through any historical research, so that important ancient times are brought to life and presented to our souls as if they were present, but in such a way that they touch us in the here and now like the fates and lives of people living around us. How uncertain and hazy are the historical times of the ancient Greek people, as told to us by the Homeric epics. And how do we look into the souls of those people when we let the content of the Iliad and the Odyssey take effect on us, people who have actually been completely removed from the usual view of history? No wonder that the study of folk epics holds something of a mystery for those who study them scientifically or literarily. We need only point out one fact about the ancient Greek epics that a spirited observer of the Iliad repeatedly expressed in a very beautiful book about Homer's Iliad that was only published a few years ago. I am referring to Herman Grimm, the nephew of the great Germanic myth, saga, and language researcher Jakob Grimm. By letting the figures and facts of the Iliad take effect on him, Herman Grimm felt compelled to say again and again: Oh, this Homer – we do not need to go into the question of the personality of Homer today – seems, when he describes something that is borrowed from a craft or an art, as if he were a specialist in this craft or art. When he describes a battle, a fight, he seems to be completely familiar with all the strategic and military principles that come into play in warfare. — Herman Grimm is right to point out that a strict judge in such matters was an admirer of Homer's factual depiction of battles, namely Napoleon, a man who was undoubtedly entitled to pass judgment on whether or not the military is directly and vividly presented to our minds in the spirit of Homer. From a general human point of view, we know how vividly Homer presents the figures to our minds, as if we had them directly before our physical eyes.

What about a national epic like this, how does it prove itself over time? For truly, anyone who observes the circumstances impartially will not get the impression that artificial arrangements of humanity, such as an artificial pedagogical discipline, have repeatedly held the interest of the centuries in the Iliad and Odyssey down to our days. This interest is a matter of course, it is a general human interest. But in a certain sense these folk epics give us a task, and if we want to study them, they immediately present us with a very specific, one might say interesting, task. They want to be taken very seriously in all their details. We immediately feel that something about the content of such folk epics will remain incomprehensible to us if we want to read them in the same way that we read a modern work of art, a modern novel or the like. We feel right from the first lines of the Iliad that Homer is speaking precisely. What is he describing? He tells us at the beginning. We know from other accounts, which are not contained in the Iliad, about events that follow on from the facts of the Iliad. Homer wants to describe only what he says succinctly in the first line: the wrath of Achilles. And if we now go through the entire Iliad and look at it impartially, we have to say: there is nothing in it that cannot be characterized as fact, that follows from the wrath of Achilles. - And further, a peculiar fact right at the beginning of the Iliad. Homer does not begin with the facts, nor with some personal opinion, but with something that modern times might be tempted to take as a mere phrase: “Sing to me, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles!” And the deeper we penetrate into this national epic, the clearer it becomes to us that we cannot understand the meaning and spirit and significance of it if we do not take this saying seriously at the outset. But then we must ask ourselves: what does it actually mean?

And now the way it is presented, the whole way the events are brought before our soul! For many, not only expert and scientific observers, but also for artistically comprehensive minds like Herman Grimm, it was a question these words: “Sing to me, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles.” A question that went to their very hearts. In this Iliad, just as in the Song of the Nibelungs or in Kalewala, the deeds of spiritual-divine beings—in Homer's poems, first of all, the deeds and intentions and passions of the Olympian gods—intertwine with the deeds and intentions and passions of men who, like Achilles, are in a sense far removed from the ordinary human, and again with the passions and intentions and deeds of men who are already close to the ordinary human, like Odysseus or Agamemnon? When this Achilles appears before our soul, he seems lonely to us compared to the people with whom he lives. We very soon feel in the course of the Iliad that in Achilles we have a personality before us who cannot really talk about her innermost affairs with all the other heroes. Homer also shows us how Achilles has to sort out his actual heart affairs with divine spiritual beings that do not belong to the human realm, how he stands alone in relation to the human realm throughout the entire Iliad, and yet is close to supersensible, supermundane powers. And yet it is strange that when we gather all our human feeling into the way of thinking and feeling that we have acquired in the cultural process and direct our gaze to this Achilles, he then appears to us in such a way that we often have to say: How selfish, how personal! — A being in whose soul divine-spiritual impulses play, he acts entirely out of the immediate personal. For a long time, a war that was so important for the Greeks, such as the Trojan War of the legends, only progresses, and the special episodes that the thliad describes, are won by Achilles making up for himself what he has to make up for personally with Agamemnon. And we always see that supernatural powers are at play. We see Zeus, Apollo, Athena handing out impulses, so to speak, putting people in their places. It was always strange before the task came to me to approach these things from the standpoint of spiritual science, like a very spiritual man with whom I was lucky enough to often discuss these things personally, to find his way around these things like Herman Grimm. He expressed this not only in his writings but also often in personal conversations, and there much more precisely. He said: If we only consider the historical forces and impulses at work in the development of humanity, then we cannot get to grips with what lives and creates in the great folk epics. Therefore, for Herman Grimm, the brilliant observer of the Iliad and folk poetry in general, something that goes beyond the ordinary powers of human consciousness, beyond understanding, reason, sensory perception, beyond ordinary feeling, becomes a real power, a power that is creative just like the other historical impulses. Herman Grimm spoke of a real creative imagination that runs through the development of humanity, spoke of an imagination as one speaks of an essence, of a reality, of something that prevailed for people and that could tell them more in the beginning of the times we can observe, in the development of the individual peoples, than what the ordinary soul forces tell people. Herman Grimm's words always appealed to the creative imagination, which for him thus took on the role of a co-creator in the process of human becoming.

But now, when we look at this battleground of the Iliad, this representation of the wrath of Achilles, with all the interplay of divine, spiritual powers, we cannot get by with such view as Herman Grimm took it, and in his book on the Iliad we find many a word of resignation that shows us how the usual point of view, which one can take today, whether literary or scientifically, cannot deal with these things. Where does Herman Grimm come to in relation to the Iliad and the Nibelungen saga? He comes to the assumption that the historical dynasties and ruling houses were preceded by others. In fact, one might say, Herman Grimm literally thinks in such terms. He considers, for example, that Zeus and his entire entourage represent a kind of ruling house that preceded the ruling house of Agamemnon. He thinks, so to speak, of human history in a certain uniformity, thinks of the gods or heroes depicted in the Iliad or the Nibelungen saga as ancient humans, whom later humans dared to depict only by clothing their deeds and characters in the guise of superhuman myth. There are many things that cannot be understood if one takes such a premise as a basis, especially the particular way in which the gods intervene in Homer. I ask you, my dear attendees, to consider just one thing: how do Thetis, the mother of Achilles, Athena, and other divine figures intervene in the events of Troy? They intervene by taking on the form of mortal men, inspiring them, as it were, and leading them to their deeds. They do not appear themselves, but permeate living men. Living men figure not only as their representatives, but as the shells that are permeated by invisible powers that cannot appear on the battlefield in their own form, in their own essence. It would be strange to assume that ancient people of the ordinary kind should be depicted in such a way that they would have to take the representative people from the mortal race as their shell. This is just one of the indications that can prove to us all that we cannot get by with the old folk epics in this way.

But we are just as little at home with the figures of the Song of the Nibelungs, that Siegfried from Xanten on the Lower Rhine, who is transferred to the court of the Burgundians at Worms, woos Kriemhilde, Gunther's sister, and then, because of his special qualities, can only woo Brunhilde. And how strangely such figures as Brunhilde from Isenland, like Siegfried, are described to us. Siegfried is described as having overcome the so-called Nibelung race, as having acquired, conquered the Nibelung treasure. Through what he has acquired through his victory over the Nibelungs, he acquires very special qualities, which are expressed in the epic by saying that he can make himself invisible, that he is invulnerable in a certain way, and that he also has powers that the ordinary Gunther does not have, because the latter cannot acquire Brunhilde, who does not allow herself to be defeated by an ordinary mortal. Siegfried defeats Brunhilde with the special powers that come from being the owner of the Nibelungen hoard, and because he can conceal the powers he displays, he is able to present Brunhilde to Gunther, his brother-in-law. And there we find that Kriemhilde and Brunhilde, who we then see at the Burgundian court at the same time, are two very different characters, characters who are obviously influenced by things that cannot be explained by the ordinary human soul. This leads to quarrels between them, and also to Brunhilde being able to tempt Hagen, a loyal servant, to kill Siegfried. This again points to a trait that appears so peculiarly in Central European legend. Siegfried has higher, superhuman powers. He has these superhuman powers because he possesses the hoard of the Nibelungs. Ultimately, these do not make him an unconditionally victorious figure, but a figure who stands before us tragically. The powers that Siegfried has through the Nibelungen hoard are also a curse for the human being. Things become even stranger when we add the related Nordic saga of Sigurd, the dragon slayer, but this has an enlightening effect. There we are immediately confronted with Sigurd, who is none other than Siegfried, as the slayer of the dragon, who thereby acquires the Nibelungen hoard from an ancient race of dwarves. And we are introduced to Brunhilde as a figure of superhuman nature, as a Valkyrie figure.

We see, then, that there are two ways of presenting these things in Europe. One way, which directly links everything to the divine-supernatural, which still shows us how something in Brunhilde is meant that directly belongs to the supernatural world, and the other way, which legend has humanized. But we can still recognize how the divine can be found resounding everywhere in this way too.

And now let us turn our gaze from these legends, from these folk epics, to that region about which I can truly only speak as someone who can see things from the outside, only as they can be recognized if one does not speak the language in question. I ask you to bear in mind that I can only speak about everything that a Western European encounters in Kalewala as one who sees the spiritual content and the great, powerful figures and who, of course, must inevitably miss the subtleties of the epic, which only come out when one really masters the language in which it is written. But even when viewed in this way, how peculiarly the triad in the three presents itself to us, indeed, one is actually at a loss to use a name, one cannot say gods, one cannot say heroes, so let us say in the three entities: Wäinämöinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen. These figures speak a strange language, when we compare their characters with each other, a language from which we clearly recognize that the things we are to be told go beyond what can be achieved with the ordinary human powers of the soul. After all, if we look at them only superficially, these three figures grow into the monstrous. And yet again, which is the peculiar thing, in that they grow into the monstrous, every single trait is vividly before our eyes, so that nowhere do we somehow have the feeling that the monstrous is a grotesque, a paradox; everywhere we have the feeling that what is to be said must, of course, appear in superhuman greatness, in superhuman significance. And then: what mystery in the content. Something that inspires our soul to think of the most human of things, but which in turn goes beyond what ordinary soul forces can grasp. Ilmarinen, who is often called the blacksmith, the most artistic blacksmith of all, forges the Sampo on pins for Wäinämöinen in a realm inhabited, so to speak, by humanity's older brothers or at least by more primitive people than the Finns, for some foreign realm. And we see this strange thing happening, that far from the scene of the facts under discussion, many things take place, that time passes, and we see how, after a certain time, Wäinämöinen and Ilmarinen are again caused to retrieve what was left to them in a foreign land, the Sampo. Anyone who allows themselves to be drawn into the peculiar spiritual language that emerges from this forging of the Sampo, from this keeping away and regaining of the same, has the immediate impression – as I said, I ask you to bear in mind that I speak, so to speak, as a stranger and can therefore only speak of the impression of a stranger – that the most essential, the most meaningful in this grandiose poem is the forging, the keeping away and the later regaining of the Sampo.

What strikes me as particularly strange about Kalewala is the ending. I have heard that there are people who believe that this ending may be a later addition. For me, this ending of Mariata and her son, this introduction of a very strange Christianity – I say explicitly a very strange Christianity – is part of the whole. It acquires Kalevala, through the presence of this conclusion, a very special nuance, a coloring that can, so to speak, make the matter even more understandable to us. I may say that, for my feeling, such a delicate, wonderfully impersonal presentation of Christianity is nowhere to be found at all than at the end of Kalevala. The Christian principle is detached from all locality. The journey from Mariata to Herod, who in Kalevala appears as Rotus, is so impersonal that it hardly reminds us of any locality or personality in Palestine. Indeed, one is not even remotely reminded of the historical Christ Jesus. At the end of Kalewala, we find a delicate hint of the penetration of the noblest cultural pearl of humanity into Finnish culture as the most intimate affair of the heart of humanity. And linked to this is the tragic train, which in turn can have such an infinitely deep effect on our soul that when Christianity moves in and the son of Mariata is baptized, Wäinämöinen takes leave of his people in order to go to an unspecified location, leaving behind only the content and power of what he knew how to tell through his art of singing about the ancient events that include the history of this people. This withdrawal of Wäinämöinen towards the son of Mariata seems to me so significant that one would like to see in it the living interplay of all that prevailed at the core of the Finnish people, of the Finnish national soul, from ancient times until the moment when Christianity found its way into Finland. The way in which this ancient power relates to Christianity is such that one can feel everything that takes place in the soul with a wonderful intimacy. I say this as someone who is aware of the objectivity of what I am about to say, which I do not say to please anyone or to flatter anyone. In this national epic, we Western Europeans have one of the most wonderful examples of how the members of a nation stand before us in the flesh, with their whole soul, so that through Kalevala we get to know the Finnish soul in a way that allows us to become completely familiar with it.

Why have I said all this? I have said it to characterize how something speaks in the folk epics that cannot be explained by ordinary human soul powers, even when one speaks of imagination as a real power. And even if to some what is said sounds only like a hypothesis, then perhaps what spiritual science has to say about the nature of these folk epics may be adduced in this consideration of folk epics. Certainly, I am aware that what I have to say today still touches on something to which very few people can give their consent in our present time. Many may perhaps regard it as a reverie, a fantasy; but some will at least accept it alongside other hypotheses put forward about the development of humanity. For those who penetrate spiritual science in the way that I will dare to describe in the next lecture, it will not be a hypothesis, but a real research result that can be put alongside other scientific research results. The things that have to be discussed sound strange because the very science that today believes it stands firmly on the ground of the factual, the true, the only thing that can be attained, limits itself only to what the outer senses perceive, what the mind, bound to the senses and the brain, can explore of things. And that is why today it is often considered unscientific to speak of a research method that reaches to other powers of the soul, which make it possible to see into the supersensible and the way the supersensible plays into the sensory. By means of this method of research, by means of spiritual science, one is not merely led to the abstract imagination to which Herman Grimm was led in regard to the folk epic, but one is led to something that goes far beyond imagination, that represents a quite different state of soul or consciousness than that which man can have at the present moment in his development. And so, through spiritual science, we are led back to human prehistory in a completely different way than through ordinary science.

Today, ordinary science is accustomed to looking back on the development of humanity in such a way that what we call human beings today have gradually developed from lower, animal-like creatures. Spiritual science does not confront this modern research with a combative attitude, but fully recognizes the greatness and power of the achievements of this natural science of the 19th century, the significance of the idea of a transformation of the animal forms from the most imperfect to the perfect, and an attachment of the outer human form to the most perfect animal form. But it cannot stop at such a view of the becoming of man, of the becoming of organisms in general, which would present itself if one could survey with an external sensory view that which has taken place in the organic world up to man in the course of earthly events. Today, in spiritual science, the human being stands alongside the animal world. We see the variously shaped animal forms in the world around us. We see the human race spread out over the earth as a unified entity in a certain way. In spiritual science, we also have an unbiased view of how everything in the outer form speaks for the relationship between man and the other organisms, but in spiritual science, when we trace the development of humanity backwards, we cannot go back so far that we can directly place the stream of humanity into the animal series of development in some distant past. For we find, when we go back from the present into the past, that we cannot, anywhere, directly attach the present human form, the present human being, to any animal form that we know from the present.

If we go back in the development of humanity, we first find, one might say, the soul forces, the powers of mind and feeling and will, that we also have in the present, developing in ever more primitive forms in humans. Then we go back to the mists of time, of which old documents tell us only very little. Even where we can go back as far as the Egyptians or the peoples of the Near East, we are led everywhere back to an ancient humanity, which, although more primitive in some respects, also has more magnificent the same powers of mind, and will forces, which have only recently reached their present development, but which we recognize as the most important human impulses, as the most important historical impulses, as far as we can trace back humanity by considering this present soul. Nowhere do we find the possibility of placing even the most ancient race of men in a special relationship to the present animal forms. This, which spiritual science must assert for itself, is recognized today even by thinking natural scientists. But if we go further back and consider how the human soul changes when we compare how a person thinks, say, scientifically or otherwise, how he applies his intellect and how his powers of feeling work, when we trace this back — oh, we can trace it quite accurately — to a certain time when it first shone forth in humanity. We might say that it first appeared in the sixth or seventh century before Christ. The whole configuration of present-day feeling and thinking does not go back farther than the times of which we are told as the times of the first Greek natural philosophy.

If we go further back and have an unprejudiced eye, we find, without yet touching on spiritual science, that not only does all present-day scientific thought cease in the past, but that the human soul is in a completely different state altogether, in a much more impersonal state, but also in such a state that we have to address its powers much more as instinctively. Not in the sense that we are saying that people in this period acted on instincts like those of animals today, but the guidance of reason and intellect, as it exists today, was not there. Instead, however, there was a certain instinctive, direct certainty in people. They acted on the basis of direct, elementary impulses; they did not control them through the intellect tied to the brain. There we find, however, that in the human soul those powers still prevail unmixed, which we today have separately as powers of reason, and those powers, which we today carefully separate from the powers of reason and lead to science, the powers of imagination. Imagination, understanding and reason, they all work together in those ancient times. The further back we go, the more we find that we can no longer speak of what prevailed in the soul of human beings, what worked there as imagination and understanding, as we call a soul power today, when we call it imagination. Today we know very well that when we speak of imagination, we are speaking of a soul force whose expressions we cannot really apply, to which we cannot ascribe reality. The modern human being is careful in this matter, he is careful not to mix together what imagination gives him with what the logic of reason tells him. If we look at what the human mind expresses in those prehistoric times before imagination and reason appear separately, then we feel an original, elementary, instinctive power prevailing in the souls. We can find characteristics of today's imagination in it, but what – if we use the term – imagination gave the human soul back then had something to do with a reality. Imagination was not yet imagination, it was still – I must not be afraid to use the expression directly – clairvoyant power, was still a special soul faculty, was the gift of the soul through which man saw things, saw facts that are hidden from him today in his developmental epoch, when understanding and reason are to be particularly developed. Those powers that were not imagination but clairvoyant power penetrated deeper down into hidden forces and hidden forms of existence that lie behind the sensual world. This is what an unbiased consideration must lead us to: that when we look back at the development of humanity, we have to say to ourselves: Truly, we must take the word evolution, development, seriously.

That humanity in the present, in the last centuries and millennia, has come to its present high level of rational and intellectual powers, so to speak, is a result of development. These soul powers have developed out of others. And while our present soul powers are limited to what presents itself in the external sense world, an original humanity, which of course had to do without science in the modern sense, without the use of reason in the modern sense, an original human soul power at the basis of all individual peoples looked into the foundations of existence, into a realm that, as a supersensible one, lies behind the sensual. Once upon a time, all peoples possessed clairvoyant powers as part of the human soul. It was out of these clairvoyant powers that the present human powers of understanding and reason were formed, as well as the present way of thinking and feeling. These soul powers, which we may refer to as clairvoyant powers, were such that the human being felt at the same time: I am not the one who is thinking and feeling within me. Man felt as if he had been given over, with all his physicality and also with his soul being, to higher, supersensible powers that were working and living in him. Thus man felt like a vessel through which supersensible forces themselves spoke. If one considers this, one also understands the meaning of the further development of humanity. Human beings would have remained dependent beings, who could only have felt themselves to be vessels, as shells of powers and entities, if they had not progressed to the actual use of intellect and reason. Through the use of intellect and reason, man has become more independent, but at the same time, for a while of development, he has also been cut off from the spiritual world in certain respects, cut off from the supersensible foundations of existence. In the future, this will change again. The further we go back, the deeper the human soul sees into the foundations of existence through clairvoyant powers, and sees how those forces that worked on the human being himself in prehistoric times emerged from these foundations of existence until a point in time when all conditions on earth were quite different from today, when they were such that the forms of living beings were much more mobile, much more subject to a kind of metamorphosis than today. Thus we have to go back far from what is called the present human cultural period, we have to observe human forms and animal forms side by side. And much further back than is usually believed today is the separation of the animal form from the human form. The animal forms then solidified, became more immobile at a time when the human form was still quite soft and pliable and could be shaped and molded by what was experienced inwardly by the soul. In this way, we come back to a time in human development that is beyond our present consciousness, but for which another consciousness was present in the soul, one that was connected to the clairvoyant powers that have just been characterized. Such a consciousness, which could look back into the past and saw the development of humanity in its origin from the past already in complete separation from all animal life, also saw how human forces ruled, but still in a living connection with the supersensible forces that played into it. It saw what in the times when, for example, the Homeric epics were written was only present as an old echo, and what was present to a much greater extent in even earlier times. If we go back to the time before Homer, we find that people had a clairvoyant consciousness that, as it were, remembered human events from prehistoric times and was able to tell the story of the origin of man from memory. By Homer's time, the situation was such that people felt that the old clairvoyant consciousness was dwindling, but they still felt that it was there. That was a time when man did not speak of himself as an independent, egoistic being, but when gods and supersensible spiritual forces spoke through him. So we must take it seriously when Homer does not speak of himself, but when he says: Sing to me, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles! Sing in me, higher being, being that speaks through me, that takes possession of me as I sing and say. This first line of Homer is a reality. We are not referred to ancient dynasties that are similar in the ordinary sense to our present humanity, but we are pointed to the fact by Homer himself that there were other people in primeval times, people in whom the supersensible lived. And Achilles is definitely still a personality from the transitional period from the old clairvoyance to the modern way of looking at things, which we already find in Agamemnon, which we find in Nestor and Odysseus, but which is then further developed into a higher way of looking at things. Only in this way do we understand Achilles when we know that Homer wanted to depict him as a member of the ancient human race who lived in a time that lies between the time when people still directly reached the ancient gods and the present time of humanity, which begins with Agamemnon.

Likewise, we are referred to a human prehistory in the Central European Nibelungen saga. The whole presentation of this epic shows us this. We are already dealing with people of our present time in a certain respect, but with such people of our present time who have preserved something from the time of ancient clairvoyance. All the qualities that Siegfried is said to have, that he can make himself invisible, that he has powers through which he overcomes Brunhilde, which an ordinary mortal cannot overcome, all this shows us, along with the other things that are told about him, that we have in him a man who, as in an inner human memory, has carried the achievements of the ancient powers of the soul, which were linked to clairvoyance and connection with nature, over into the present human condition. At what transition does Siegfried stand? This is shown by Brunhilde's relationship to Kriemhilde, Siegfried's wife. It cannot be explained in detail here what the two figures mean. But we can make sense of all these legends if we see in the figures that are presented to us pictorial representations of inner clairvoyant or remembered clairvoyant conditions. Thus we may see in Siegfried's relation to Kriemhilde his relation to the powers of his own soul as they rule in him. His soul is, as it were, a transitional soul, and this is because Siegfried, with the treasure of the Nibelungs, that is, with the clairvoyant secrets of ancient times, brings something into the new time that at the same time makes him unsuitable for his present time. The men of the old time could live with this Nibelung hoard, that is to say with the old clairvoyant powers. The earth has changed its conditions. Thus Siegfried, who still carries an echo of the old time in his soul, no longer fits into the present, and so he becomes a tragic figure. How can the present relate to what is still alive for Siegfried? For him, something of the old clairvoyant powers is still alive, because when he is overcome, Kriemhilde remains. She is brought the hoard of the Nibelungs, she can use it. We learn that later on, the hoard of the Nibelungs will be taken from her by Hagen. We can see that in a way, Brunhilde is also able to work with the old clairvoyant powers. In this way, she is opposed to those people who fit into the then-present: Gunther and his brothers, Gunther above all, for whom Brunhilde has no time. Why is that? Well, we know from the saga that Brunhilde is a kind of Valkyrie figure: in other words, something in the human soul, and specifically that with which, in ancient times, man was still able to unite through clairvoyant powers, but which has withdrawn from man, has become unconscious, and with which man, as he currently lives in the age of reason, can only unite after death. Hence the union with the Valkyrie at the moment of death. The Valkyrie is the personification of the living soul forces that are in the present human being, those soul forces that the old clairvoyant consciousness was able to perceive, but which the present human being only experiences when he passes through the gate of death. Only then is he united with this soul, which is represented in Brunhilde. Because Kriemhilde still knows something of the old clairvoyant times and the powers that the soul receives through ancient clairvoyance, she becomes a figure whose anger is described, as in the Iliad the anger of Achilles. This is sufficiently indicated to us that the people who were still endowed with clairvoyant powers in ancient times did not control with reason, did not let reason prevail, but acted directly from their most elementary, most intense impulses. Hence the personal, the directly egoistic, in both Kriemhilde and Achilles.

The whole matter becomes particularly interesting when we consider the folk epics, if we add Kalewala to the folk epics listed. We will be able to show, today, because of the limited time, that spiritual science in our present time can only point to the old clairvoyant states of humanity because it is possible today, again — albeit in a more advanced way, permeated by reason, not dream-like — to evoke clairvoyant states through spiritual training. Modern man is gradually growing into an age in which hidden powers will arise from the depths of the human soul, pointing to the supersensible. These powers will be guided by reason, not uncontrolled by it. They will point to the supersensible realm, so that we will become familiar again with the realms of which the old folk epics speak to us from the dim consciousness of ancient times. Therefore, we can say: One learns to recognize that it is possible to gain a revelation of the world, not only through the external senses, but through something supersensible that underlies the external physical human body.

There are methods – which will be discussed in the next lecture – by which man can make the spiritual supersensible inner being, which is so often denied today, independent of the sensual outer body, so that man does not live in an unconscious state as in sleep, when he becomes independent of his body, but perceives the spiritual around him. In this way, modern clairvoyance shows man the possibility of living cognitively in a higher, supersensible body, which, like a vessel, fills the ordinary sense body. Spiritual science calls it the etheric body. This etheric body rests within our physical body. When we detach it inwardly from the physical body, we can enter into the state of perception through which we become aware of supersensible facts. We become aware of two kinds of supersensible facts. Firstly, we become aware of it at the beginning of this clairvoyant state, when we begin to know that we no longer see through our physical body, we no longer hear through our physical body, and we no longer think through the brain that is bound to the physical body. At first, we know nothing of the external world. — I am telling you facts that can only be explained in more detail in the next lecture. — But the first step of clairvoyance leads us all the more to an insight into our own etheric body. We see a supersensible physicality of human nature that underlies it and that we can only address as something that works and creates like a kind of inner architect, inner foreman, that permeates our physical body in a living way. And then we become aware of the following.

We become aware that what we perceive in ourselves, what we perceive as the actual living part of our etheric body, is, on the one hand, limited and modified by our physical body, so that it is, as it were, clothed on the physical side. In that the etheric body lines the eyes and ears and the physical brain, we belong, as it were, to the earthly element. Through this we perceive how our etheric body becomes a specific, individual, egoistic human being, integrated into the sheath of our physical body. On the other hand, however, we perceive how our etheric body leads us precisely into those regions where we stand impersonally before a higher, supersensible reality, something that is not us, but that is present in us with full presence, something that works through us as spiritual, supersensible power and strength. In spiritual scientific observation, the inner life of the soul then breaks down into three parts, which are enclosed in three outer bodily sheaths, filling them. We initially live with our soul in such a way that we experience in it what our eyes see, our ears hear, our senses can grasp in general, and what our mind can comprehend. We live with our soul in our physical body. Insofar as our soul lives in the physical body, we call it the consciousness soul in spiritual science, because it is only through the complete integration into the physical body in the course of becoming human that it has become possible for the human being to become aware of himself. Then the modern clairvoyant, in particular, also gets to know the life of the soul in what we have called the etheric body. The soul lives in the etheric body in such a way that it has its powers, but the soul's powers work in such a way that we cannot say that they are our personal powers. They are general human powers, powers through which we are much closer to the hidden facts of nature as a whole. Insofar as the soul perceives these forces in an outer shell, namely in the etheric body, we speak of the mind or emotional soul as a second soul element. So that just as we find the consciousness soul enclosed in the shell of the physical body, we have the mind or emotional soul enclosed in the etheric body. And then we have an even more delicate body through which we can reach up into the supersensible world. Everything that we experience inwardly as our very own secrets, at the same time as that which is hidden from consciousness today and which in the time of ancient clairvoyance was felt as the formative forces in the human process of development, which was felt as if one could look back into the events of the dim and distant past, we ascribe all this to the sentient soul, ascribe it to it in such a way that it is enclosed in the finest human body, in what we — please, do not be put out by the expression, take it as a terminus technicus — call the astral body. It is the part of the human being that connects to the external earthly that inspires the human being, which he cannot perceive through the external senses, nor can perceive when he looks into the etheric body through his own inner being, but what he perceives when he becomes independent of himself, of the etheric body, and is connected with the forces of his origin.

Thus we have the sentient soul in the astral body, the mind or emotional soul in the etheric body, and the consciousness soul in the physical body. In the days of ancient clairvoyance, people were more or less instinctively aware of these things, for they looked within themselves and saw this threefold soul. Not that they analyzed the soul intellectually, but because they had a clairvoyant consciousness, the threefold human soul stood before them: the sentient soul in the astral, the mind or emotional soul in the etheric, and the consciousness soul in the physical body. Looking back, they saw how the outer man, the physical form, developed out of what is now before us as the threefold soul-forces. They sensed that this threefold division is born out of supersensible creative powers. They sensed that the sentient soul is born out of supersensible creative powers, which gave man the astral body, that body which he not only has like his etheric and physical bodies between birth and death, but which he takes with him when he passes through the gate of death, and which he already had before he came into existence through birth. Thus the old clairvoyants saw the sentient soul connected with the astral body and that which, so to speak, has an inspiring effect on man from the spiritual worlds and creates his astral body, as the one creative power that forms man out of the world as a whole. And as a second creative power, they saw what we have today as a result of the mind or emotional soul, and what creates the etheric body in such a way that this etheric body transforms all external substances, all external matter, so that they can permeate the physical human form in the human, not the animal, sense. The creative spirit for the etheric body, which manifests itself in our mind soul, was seen by the ancient seers as a superhuman cosmic power, working into physical matter as in magnetism, and into man. They looked up into the spiritual worlds and saw a divine spiritual power that shapes and forges the etheric body of the human being so that this etheric body becomes the master craftsman, the architect, who reshapes outer matter, confuses it, pulverizes it, grinds it, so that what otherwise exists as matter is structured in the human being and the human being acquires human abilities. The ancient clairvoyants saw how this creative power artfully transforms all matter so that it could become human matter. Then again they looked at the third, at the consciousness soul, which actually makes the egoistic human being, which is the transformation of the physical body, and they attributed those powers that prevail in this physical body solely and exclusively to the line of inheritance, to what comes from father and mother, from grandfather and great-grandfather, in short, what is the result of human powers of love, of human powers of reproduction. In this they saw the third creative power. The power of love works from generation to generation.

The ancient seers saw three powers, a creative being that our sentient soul ultimately evokes by forming the astral body in man, which powers can be inspired because it is the body that a person had before becoming a physical being through conception, the body that a person will have when he has passed through the gate of death. This formation of forces, or, as we might better say, this heavenly formation in man, lasts while the etheric and physical bodies pass away. At the same time, for the old seers this was what their direct experience revealed to them as being capable of bringing all culture into human life. That is why they saw in the Bringer of the astral body that power which brings in the divine, which itself consists only of the permanent, through which the eternal sings and sounds into the world. And the old seers, from whom — I say it unashamedly — the figures of Kalewala have sprung, have presented the living plastic embodiment of that power of creation that penetrates to us in the result of the sentient soul, that inspires the divine into the human, in Wäinämöinen. Wäinämöinen is the creator of that human limb that outlasts birth and death and that brings the heavenly into the earthly. And we see the second figure in Kalewala: Ilmarinen. When we go back to the ancient clairvoyant consciousness, we find that Ilmarinen creates everything that is an image in its living formation from the forces of the earth and from what does not belong to the sensual earth but to the deeper forces of the earth, starting from the etheric body. In Ilmarinen, we see the bringer of that which transforms all matter, that which surrounds it. We see in him the smith of the human form. And we see in the Sampo the human etheric body, forged by Ilmarinen out of the supersensible world, so that the sensual matter can be pulverized and then passed on from generation to generation, so that the human consciousness soul continues to work in the physical human body through the forces that the third divine supersensible being gives from generation to generation through the forces of love. We see this third divine supersensible power in Lemminkäinen. Thus we see deep secrets of the origin of mankind in the forging of the Sampo, we see deep secrets from the ancient clairvoyant consciousness at the bottom of Kalewala and thus we look back into human prehistory, of which we may say: Not at that time was the age when one could have dissected natural phenomena with reason. Everything was primitive, but in the primitive lived the intuition of what lies behind the sensual. Now it was the case that when these bodies of man were forged, when in particular the ethereal body of man, the Sampo, was forged, that it first had to be processed for a while, that man did not immediately have the powers that were thereby prepared for him by the supersensible powers. Once the etheric body has been forged, it must first become familiarized inwardly, as when we prepare a machine that must first be finished, so to speak, must first mature fully in order to be used. In the process of becoming human, there must always be intermediate periods between the creation of the corresponding limbs and the use of them. Thus man had forged his etheric body in distant primeval times. Then came an episode when this etheric body was sent down into human nature. Only later did it shine forth as the soul of the intellect. Man learned to use his powers as external natural forces, he brought forth from his own nature the hidden Sampo. We see this mystery of becoming human in a wonderful way in the forging of the Sampo, in the hiddenness, in the ineffectiveness of the Sampo, in the episode that lies between the forging and the recovery of the same. We see the Sampo first immersed in human nature, then brought out to the external forces of culture, which first appear as primitive forces, as described in the second part of Kalewala.

Thus everything takes on a deep meaning in this great national epic when we see in it descriptions of clairvoyantly acquired ancient processes of becoming human, of the coming into being of human nature from its various elements. I can assure you that I did not get to know Kalevala until long afterward. Once I had clearly visualized these facts about the development of human nature, it was a wonderful and surprising fact for me to rediscover in this epic what I was able to present more or less theoretically in my Theosophy, which was written at a time when I did not yet know a single line of Kalevala. And so we see how the secrets of humanity are revealed in what Wäinämöinen gives, he who is the creator of extrasensory inspiration: the story of the forging of the etheric body. But there is another secret hidden there. I understand, mind you, nothing of Finnish, I can only speak from the spiritual science. I would be able to express the word Sampo only and solely only by the fact that I would try to form a word that could arise in the following way: In the animals we see the etheric body so effective that it becomes the master builder for the most diverse forms, from the most imperfect to the most perfect. In the human etheric body, something has been forged that combines all these animal forms as if in a unity, with the only exception that the etheric body, that is, the Sampo, is forged over the earth according to climatic and other conditions, so that this etheric body has the special characteristics of the people, the special peculiarities of the people in its powers, that it shapes one people in this way and another differently. The Sampo is that for each people which constitutes the particular shape of the etheric body, which brings precisely this particular people into being, so that the members of this people have the same appearance in relation to what shines through their living and their physical being. Insofar as the same appearance is crafted out of the etheric in the human form, the forces of the etheric body lie in the Sampo. In the Sampo we thus have the symbol of the cohesion of the Finnish people, that which, in the depths of humanity, makes the Finnish nation have lived itself out in precisely this particular form.

But this is the case with every folk epic. Folk epics can only arise where culture is still enclosed in the forces of the Sampo, in the forces of the etheric body. As long as culture depends on the forces of the Sampo, the people bear the stamp of this Sampo. This etheric body therefore carries the character of the popular, the folk-like, in all of culture. When could a break in this popular, in this folk-like, occur in the course of the cultural process? It could happen when something entered the human cultural process that is not for one person, for one tribe, for one people, but for all of humanity. Something that is taken from such depths of human nature, from such subtleties and intimacies, and incorporated into the cultural process that it applies to all people without distinction of nationality, race and so on. But that was given when those powers spoke to people, not speaking to one people but to all humanity, those powers that are only so impersonal even in the sense of the folk, so finely and delicately hinted at in the end of Kalewala, in that the Christ is born of Mariata. When He is baptized, Wäinämöinen leaves the land, something has occurred that brings the special folk character together with the general human character. And here, at this point, where one of the most significant, concise, and magnificent folk epics flows into the description, into the completely impersonal – allow me the paradoxical expression – unpalestinianized description of the Christ impulse, Kalevala becomes particularly significant. It leads us particularly into what can be felt where the benefits and the happiness of the Sampo are felt as continuing to have an effect through all human development and at the same time in interaction with the Christian idea, with the Christian impulse. This is the infinitely delicate thing at the end of Kalewala. It is also what explains so clearly that what lies before this conclusion in Kalewala belongs to the pre-Christian era. But just as everything universally human will only continue to exist by preserving the individual, so the individual folk cultures, which derive their essence from the ancient clairvoyant states of the peoples, will continue to live in the universally human. And so everything that Kalewala indicates as Christian at the end will always combine and retain its special consequence through the never-ending effect that is hinted at in the inspirations of Wäinämöinen. For Wäinämöinen means something that belongs to that human part that is above birth and death, that walks with man through all human becoming. Thus, such epics as Kalevala present something to us that is immortal, that can be imbued with the Christian idea, but that will assert itself as something individual, that will always prove that the general human essence, just as white sunlight is divided into many colors, will live on in the many folk cultures. And because this general humanity in the essence of folk epics permeates the individual, which in turn shines into and speaks to every human being, that is why the individualities of the peoples live so much in the essence of their folk epics. That is why the people of old, who in their clairvoyance saw the essence of their own nationality as it is described in all folk epics, stand so vividly before our eyes. But we can get to know it in a very wonderful way when humanity is embraced in its intimacies by circumstances such as those in which the Finnish nation lives, where these, lying at the depths of the soul, are presented in such a way that they can be directly compared with what the most modern spiritual science can reveal to us about human secrets.

Thus, my dear audience, such folk epics are at the same time a living protest against all materialism, against all attempts to derive man from purely external material forces, material conditions, material entities. Such folk epics, especially Kalewala, tell us that man has his origin and primal state in the spiritual and soul. Therefore, a renewal, a re-fertilization of old folk epics can also provide immeasurably great services in the most vital sense of spiritual, of intellectual culture. For just as spiritual science today seeks to renew human consciousness in the sense that humanity is rooted not in matter but in spirit, so a close examination of an epic like Kalewala shows us that the best that man has, and the best that man is, comes from the spiritual and soul. In this sense, it was interesting to me that one of the runes, the kanteles, immediately, I would say, protests against an interpretation of what appears in Kalevala in a materialistic sense. That instrument, that harp-like instrument with which the old singers sang from the old days, is depicted as if it were made of materials from the physical world. But the old rune protested against this, protested in a spiritual-scientific sense, one might say, against the fact that the string instrument for Wäinämöinen was made of natural products that the senses can see. In truth, the old rune says, the instrument on which man plays the wise melodies that come to him directly from the spiritual world comes from the spiritual soul. In this sense, the old rune is to be interpreted entirely in the spiritual-scientific sense, a living protest against the interpretation of what man is capable of in the materialistic sense, an indication that what man possesses , what his nature is and what is only symbolically expressed in such an instrument as that attributed to Wäinämöinen, that such an instrument originates from the spirit and that the whole nature of man originates from the spirit. It can be regarded as a motto for the spirit of spiritual science, the old Finnish folk rune, which is translated into German as follows, and in which I can summarize the basic tone, the basic nuance of what the lecture wanted to explain about the nature of folk epics:

Those who believe that
And are in error,
Those who believe that Wäinämöinen
Made the kantele,
Our beautiful stringed instrument,
From the jaws of the pike,
And that he spun strings
From the tail of the hiisi horse.
It was made out of necessity,
Then sorrow bound its parts,
Bitter tears of longing span
And the sufferings their strings.

Thus all being is not born out of material, but out of spiritual-soul, so this old folk rune, so again spiritual science, which wants to place itself in the living cultural process of our time.

We are trying to penetrate the theosophical life and knowledge bit by bit, but often during this penetration we have a heartfelt need to ask ourselves: why do we want and seek theosophy in the spiritual life of the present? We need not strain our minds or hearts too hard when such a question arises, and a word will come into our soul that will immediately have an enlightening and even more enlightening effect on our feelings: the word responsibility. Responsibility! This word should give us something that should exclude from the outset in our soul, in our hearts, that we are pursuing Theosophy out of some personal longing. If we observe what may befall us, perhaps without our being properly aware of it, when we hear the word responsibility in relation to the spiritual life that we call theosophical, then we will increasingly come to realize that we owe it to present-day humanity and to the best in us, which can serve this present humanity, to concern ourselves with 'theosophy'. We must not practise Theosophy just for our own pleasure, to satisfy ourselves somehow because we have this or that personal yearning, but we must feel that Theosophy is something that present humanity needs if the process of human development is to continue at all. We need only realize that without Theosophy, or whatever one might call it, without that spiritual life which we mean, humanity on earth would have to face a bleak future, truly a bleak future. This is so for the simple reason that all the spiritual impulses of the past, all that could be given to man in the past in the way of spiritual impulses, has been exhausted. It is gradually living itself out and can bring nothing new into the evolution of humanity. What would have to come if only the old impulses were to continue to work would be something that is perhaps still undreamt of today: not only an overwhelming, externally overwhelming, but numbing domination of mere outward technique, but also a perishing because all religious, scientific, philosophical, artistic and also, in the higher sense, ethical interest is moving out of the human soul. People would become a kind of living automaton if new spiritual impulses did not come. This is how we must feel when we think of Theosophy, as those whom their karma has brought to know that humanity needs new impulses.

We may well ask ourselves: What can we, each one of us, do according to our particular qualities and abilities, in the face of this general sense of responsibility? The way in which Theosophy has come into the world in recent times, and how it has developed over the last few decades into our days, is instructive for answering this question of the heart and soul, perhaps especially for you, my dear friends. We must never forget that the way the word Theosophy has entered the world in modern times is something of a spiritual miracle of civilization. This spiritual miracle of civilization is linked to a personality who, as a personality, is indeed close to you, my dear friends, since she drew her spiritual roots from your national heritage in a certain way. I am talking about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. And for Western Europeans it is undeniable, in every respect undeniable, that the body in which the individuality, who in this incarnation was called Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, was enclosed, could only have come from the environment of Eastern Europe, from Russia. For she had all the Russian characteristics. But Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was taken from you by very special circumstances; Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was transferred to the West by the special karmic conditions of the present time. Now, let us consider what a strange cultural miracle actually took place.

Take this personality of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She was a personality who, basically, remained a child throughout her entire life in many, many ways, a real child; a personality who, throughout her entire life, did not learn to think logically; a personality who, throughout her entire life, has not learned to control her passions, urges and desires to any extent, and was always able to fall into extremes; a personality who basically had very little scientific education. Through this personality, it is revealed to the world, one might say, as it could not be otherwise, through the medium of such a personality, in a chaotic, mixed-up, colorful way, a sum of the very greatest eternal wisdom of mankind. And anyone who is well-versed in these matters will find in Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's works wisdom, truths, and insights of humanity that could not have been understood by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's intellect and soul, not even remotely. There is nothing clearer, if one only approaches all the facts impartially, than that for everything that was in the work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the outer soul, the outer intellectuality of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was only a detour, only a means by which significant, great spiritual powers could communicate with humanity. And there is nothing clearer than that in the way it was to happen at the beginning of the last third of the 19th century, it could not have happened to anyone in Western Europe. It took the very special, on the one hand selfless, almost des-ensouled, and on the other hand again radically selfish, egoistic nature of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, to allow what happened to happen through higher spiritual powers. The selfless nature for the reason that every Western European mind would have brought into its own forms of thinking, into its own intellect, what had been revealed. And it needed the completely selfish, egotistical kind, because in the coarse, materialistic way of life in Western Europe at that time, there was no possibility of doing otherwise than to make, one might say, iron fists out of such a radical state of mind, out of such delicate hands, which had to cultivate and care for the occultism of modern times. It is a peculiar phenomenon. But, my dear friends, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky went to the West, went to that cultural center which, in all its idiosyncrasy, in its entire structure and configuration in all fields, except America, is the most materialistic cultural area of our time, a cultural area that lives in its language, in its thinking, absolutely in materialistic thoughts and in materialistic feelings. It would be going too far here to discuss the power that led Helena Petrovna Blavatsky to England in particular. And so we see that the sum of occultism, which expresses itself in a culturally idiosyncratic way in a medium – I do not mean this in a spiritualistic sense – initially strives for the western part of Europe.

Within this European West, the fate of this occultism was initially sealed in a certain direction, because there was no way around the fulfillment of a significant karma in this materialistic European West with the founding of the Theosophical Society. This karma was also fulfilled. This Western Europe has a heavy karmic debt; it cannot penetrate the secrets of existence without this karmic debt asserting itself in a certain way. When occultism is involved somewhere, karma immediately deepens, and forces are brought to the surface that would otherwise remain hidden. And not to criticize anything in particular, but to characterize, it is said what is to be said: The European West, in carrying out something that is historically necessary, has perpetrated countless injustices against the bearer of ancient spiritual culture, against the bearer of ancient occult secrets, in whose life, although spiritual things have become rigid and no longer exist for the present, they live at the bottom of the soul. — For that is the truth in India, in South Asia. The moment occult impulses came to Western Europe, a reaction immediately set in against the spiritual forces at work in the depths of Indian culture, and it became impossible – it was already impossible in the time of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky – to retain what was indeed intended by certain spiritual powers as the actual spiritual movement necessary in our present time. It was impossible to hold on to that. The intention was to give humanity a body of occult teachings that could fit all people, all hearts, that everyone could go along with. But because of certain necessities, the impulse was transplanted to Western Europe, and an egoistic reaction asserted itself. Those spiritual powers that wanted to give the world a new impulse without distinction of any human differences were pushed back, and India, once suppressed in its occultism, took revenge karmically by infiltrating its own national egoistic occultism at the first opportunity when occultism appeared in the West. And that happened in the days of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. This was already happening when Helena Petrovna Blavatsky summarized the great truths and wisdoms of her “The Secret Doctrine”. Her first work, “Isis Unveiled”, shows only the very chaotic and illogical and passionate and confused nature of her being, but shows everywhere that behind her there are watching powers that want to guide her towards the general human. In the “Secret Doctrine,” alongside the self-evident greatest good, there is everywhere a human special interest, such an interest that emanates from certain occult centers that do not have the general human interest in mind today, but a partial, a special interest. Tibetan, Indian, and also Egyptian initiations today everywhere have only a partial human interest in mind, and want only to avenge the suppressed Eastern occultism in the Western world, to avenge the fact that the Western world has triumphed over the Eastern world through materialistic factors. It has triumphed over the Eastern world through materialistic factors; it has triumphed in so far as Christianity has been adopted into the actual progressive culture of human development, into the progressive life of human development. Christianity has not gone east of Asia, nor south of Asia; Christianity has gone west.

Now you might say, my dear theosophical friends: So it is good. Then the West accepted Christianity, and since Christianity is a stage in the onward progress of humanity, it is natural that the West should have triumphed over the East. — Yes, if that were so! If it were so, it would be self-evident. But it is not so. Christianity, which was prepared for centuries and millennia and which came into the world, has not yet triumphed anywhere on earth. And anyone today who would believe that they could truly and genuinely represent the Christ principle and the Christ impulse in the present would have fallen prey to an indescribable arrogance. What has happened so far? Nothing more than that the Western nations have adopted certain externalities of Christianity, have occupied the name of Christ and have clothed their old cultures, which had been established in Europe before Christianity, with the name of Christianity. Does the Christ reign within Christian Europe? No follower of occult movements will ever admit that the Christ reigns within Christian Europe, but will say: You speak of the “Christ”, but you still mean the same as the ancient Central European peoples meant when they spoke of their god Saxnot. — The symbolum of the Crucifixus stands over the European peoples. In a certain respect, however, the traditions of the god Saxnot prevail, whose symbol is the former short Saxon sword, which was there for the expansion of only material interests, because that was the occupation of the European peoples. Therefore, this occupation has also produced the noblest flower of materialistic culture, an appearance that is noble in the realm of materialistic culture: chivalry. Where in any culture can we find anything similar to the knighthood of Western culture? It does not exist anywhere else. No one would think of comparing the heroes of the Trojan War with the medieval knights. The Christ still lives little in people. People only speak of the Christ. When Westerners speak of Christ, Eastern peoples feel that they, the Eastern peoples, are far, far ahead in terms of their spiritual understanding of the world, in terms of what these peoples know of the secrets of existence. These Eastern peoples know this.

Even ordinary people can explain to you that, in a certain way, Eastern peoples can already appreciate their spiritual advantages. What do the Western peoples still do today in their masses, in their majority, when the secrets of existence are revealed? Well, we still sit together in quite small groups when we speak, we speak of something like what was spoken about last night, of the ruling spiritual powers and secrets that surround us everywhere. To the average Western European, this is folly or madness, for he still cannot understand Paul's words: “What wisdom is with God is often folly with men, and what is folly with men is wisdom with God.” And only those who have been infected by Westerners in the East would dare to question even the slightest of the profound truths about the spiritual secrets of the cosmos, as we try to reveal them when they hear them, because such things, as they were said yesterday, for example, are taken for granted by those who are immersed in the Eastern spiritual life. Therefore, let us not be surprised that it often seemed to these eastern peoples as if the Europeans had attacked them, as it seems to a group of people when a herd of wild animals approaches them, against which they defend themselves, which they do not resent for what they do, but which they regard as something inferior. We Westerners are, for the reasons indicated – whether this is justified today or not is not the point here – and according to the traditions of the East, naturally regarded as inferior by every member of the Brahmanical caste, for example.

And if we disregard Brahmanism and look, for example, at the cultures of Central Asia, at Tibetan or Chinese culture, which in the near future will gain in importance for the world in a way that people today would never dream of Nevertheless, we are only a short time away from this, when we see and become aware of how the souls of many Zarathustra disciples are still embodied in these cultures, then we will be tempted to take these things very seriously. We will also be able to understand that the Indian, Tibetan and Egyptian occultists could have been tempted to channel their own wisdom out of her soul into that which Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was able to give, but that which is her own belongs to a past human development process. And we must recognize the character of the past of these oriental wisdom teachings, which are contained in the Blavatsky teachings. We do not need to misjudge the value of such a matter, we do not need to misjudge that when Chinese culture, which one might say has broken its fetters, now floods over the Western world, then a spirituality comes with it that is truly the successor, in many respects still the unadulterated successor, of the old Atlantean culture. It will have the effect of something bursting open that has been held together, and which can spread to all the world; so it will pour out – on a small scale, ancient Indian culture has poured out at the first opportunity.

Therefore, my dear Theosophical friends, it was possible that from that time on, everything that was referred to in all occultism came to pass, and that from then on, the Theosophical movement was no longer a suitable instrument for the advancement of European culture. Every occultist is well aware of the saying that goes: the guiding powers of occultism or those who are in any way occultly active must never allow any special interest to prevail over the general interest of humanity. There is no possibility of working occult favorably when a special interest outweighs the general human interest. The moment a special interest takes precedence over the general human interest in occultism, the possibilities for real error are given. That is why every possible error has been able to enter the theosophical movement since that time. Due to the way in which England is connected to India karmically in the world context, there was simply the possibility that those exalted powers, which are at the starting point of the theosophical movement, were falsified. For it is a common occurrence in occultism for powers that want to pursue their special interest to take on the form of those who have given the actual impulses before. From a certain point in the theosophical movement, there was no longer any possibility of simply accepting everything that lay within this theosophical movement, and karma has willed that this has become less and less possible. And so, when the call came to us to unite with this Theosophical movement, nothing else could be done but to go back to the original sources, to those sources which, in contrast to the specific ones, we can call the general human ones. And so you have perhaps seen in Central Europe that we are trying to get at the occult sources in such a way that you will not notice in all that you are encountering that some special interest is connected with it. You may try to compare everything that can be found in Central Europe in the way of special interests with the kind of Theosophy that is practiced among us: The two things really cannot be brought together. You can take this Theosophy and probably find nothing German in it, except that, because it has to be written in a language, the books by myself are written in German. You will find nothing German in Theosophy, nothing that is somehow connected with the external traditions of Central Europe. And wherever a tendency to connect Theosophy with a special interest arises, it is immediately recognized as an impossibility.

This has now been the special task of Central Europe, to free Theosophy from the special peculiarities that it has acquired in Western Europe. It was our mission to purify Theosophy, to completely detach it from all special interests. And the more you go into the matter, the more you will find that I myself was able to detach everything that I was allowed to bring theosophically from any special interest. This is a symbolic indication, my dear Theosophical friends, but symbolically speaking – I only needed to be guided by what was present as an immediate impulse in the present incarnation, do not misunderstand, it only reflects a fact – those who were the external bearers, for example, of the blood from which I descend, they came from German areas of Austria; I could not be born there. I myself was born in a Slavic region, in a region that was completely foreign to the whole milieu and the whole idiosyncrasy from which my ancestors came. Thus it was that at the starting point of my present incarnation, I was symbolically impelled to detach myself from all special interests, so that in Central Europe, Theosophy really stands before us in Central Europe as a goddess, as something divinely detached from all humanity, that has as much to do with the person who lives there as with the person who lives there, and that will always have to remain.

The ideal we have, my dear Theosophical friends, as simple as it is expressed, will always have to stand before us because it is harder to fulfill than to express. It will have to stand before us as our ideal, the truth and sincerity, the unadulterated divine truth. Perhaps just when we strive for it, we will find the way, not for us, but for what was impersonal in Central Europe after the whole mission of Europe, for this divine theosophy to the East. And there, if I may now describe the way in which Theosophy has taken hold in the West, is passing through Europe and is to come to the East, I would again like to emphasize the word here: the word 'responsibility'. The cultures of the world develop in such a way that, as it were, one culture develops with another in a spiritual shell. One culture connects to another. The fact that Theosophy had to be so impersonal in Central Europe has given it a certain character of spirituality, of spirituality detached from all interests. This Theosophy has, my dear Theosophical friends, something brittle about it; it has the brittleness that comes from being untouched by special interests; it will therefore not appeal to those who cannot open their hearts to that which does not serve any particular interest.

But the spiritual content, this theosophy, can be found by the soul that thirsts for this spiritual content, that longs for this spiritual content. And here I must say, my dear theosophical friends, that I myself have met a soul from the spiritual world that longs for the spirit that expresses itself through theosophy. I have met this soul in the purely spiritual world. If we go up in the order of the hierarchies to the individual spirits of nations and speak within the individual spirits of nations of the national souls, then we also come across the Russian national soul, which is still young, so to speak, and which still has to develop further, as every being must develop. I know that this Russian national soul longs for the spirit that is expressed in Theosophy. It longs with all the strength it can develop. I speak of the sense of responsibility because you, my dear Theosophical friends, are children of this Russian national soul. It rules and works in you and you have a responsibility to it. The responsibility is to understand it! Don't be offended; this Russian national soul could often tell me many, many things. Most tragically, what this Russian national soul could tell me became clear to me around the year 1900. It became most tragically apparent at that time because one could notice something that I myself could only interpret in the right way long afterwards, because one could notice how little this Russian national soul is actually understood today. We in Western Europe have become acquainted with much, much from Russia, and much, much from Russia has made a great, powerful impression on us. We have become acquainted with the great impulses of Tolstoy, we have become acquainted with the psychology of Dostoyevsky, which has so deeply moved Western Europe, and finally we have become acquainted with a mind like Solovyov's, a mind that, when you let it take effect on you, makes the impression everywhere: that is how he is, as he has written. And what he has written only becomes truly clear when you stand behind him and feel the Russian national soul. And this Russian national soul has much more to say than even Solowjow knows how to say, because there is still much too much that comes from Western Europe before our hearts. Think, my dear friends, of the word sense of responsibility, think of the fact that you have this task of showing yourselves worthy of the Russian national soul, and that you should get to know the longing of the Russian national soul for impersonal theosophy. When you get to know Theosophy in terms of its innermost impulse, then, my dear friends, you will have all kinds of questions that can only come from a Russian soul: questions of the soul about the spiritual issues of Theosophy. I have found that so much noble, glorious, beautiful feeling has come to me from Eastern Europe: so much genuine, true human love and kindness, human compassion, overflowing feeling, subtle, intimate observation of what is in the world, and intense personal connection to the powers of existence. And from such loving, beautiful and noble feelings, many, many questions have been put to me by members of the Russian people, many questions – questions that must be asked one day because they are questions that humanity will not be able to live with in the future without answering. Questions that can only come from the east of Europe; so far only the Russian national soul has put them to me, the Russian national soul on the higher planes. I have often thought that the children of this national soul still have a long way to go to understand their national soul, to understand what this national soul actually longs for and how much still separates them, these children of the national soul, from the national soul itself. Therefore, do not be afraid to seek the path you can find, if you want, to your national soul. From your national soul you will find the questions without whose answers the humanity of the future will not be able to exist. But do not be afraid to go beyond personal interest, for be mindful of the great sense of responsibility that you should have towards the Russian national soul, be mindful of this feeling, for in the future the national souls will need their children, the people, to achieve their goals. And do not forget one thing. That which can carry you the highest, which can take you to the most beautiful, most luminous heights in the world, is most exposed to the danger of falling into error. You, my dear Theosophical friends, are to infuse the soul into the spiritual. You are to find the soul to the spirit. You can do it because the Russian national soul has immeasurable depths and possibilities for the future. But it is necessary that you are aware that the soul, which can rise to the spirit, has to inspire the spirit itself, and that you face the great danger of losing yourselves and getting stuck in the personal, in the individually personal, losing yourselves in the personal as such. Then the personal becomes strong when it comes from the soul.

You will not experience the obstacles that so many people in Western and Central Europe face. You are less born to skepticism; skepticism can only come to you from the West through indoctrination. You will learn to distinguish truth from untruth and dishonesty through a certain feeling in the field of occultism, where charlatanry and truth stand so close together. Not skepticism, but cynicism will be your danger. Your danger will be that the soul-spiritual, the powerful of your personalities, can spread clouds around you, astral clouds through which you then cannot penetrate to the objective-spiritual. Powerful of your personalities can spread clouds around you, astral clouds, through which you then cannot get through to the objective spiritual. Your fire, your warmth, they can spread around you like a cloudy aura, not letting the spiritual through, because you think you are enthusiastic about the spirit, but because of your enthusiasm you prevent the spirit from finding its way to you. So try to realize that you have a great advantage – now in the ideal spiritual sense – of being able to have a special interest because you are predestined, that is, your national soul, to receive the special interest of the Russian people to receive theosophy, which in Central Europe still had to be taken entirely as a divine power exalted above all human things, as something that you can receive as your own, as something that you can cherish and cultivate as your very own. For by your predestination you are endowed to breathe soul into the spirit. This has often been said in our ranks, but it is up to you to seize the opportunity as soon as possible, not to miss it, not just to develop feeling and will, but above all to develop energy and perseverance, less - if a word is to be said about the practical — to speak a word with regard to the practical side — talk about the way in which Theosophy must be in the West and in Russia and so on, and what is good for the one and the other, but first take in Theosophy, take it in, unite with the soul, with the heart. The rest will follow; it will follow for sure.

This, my dear friends, is something I wanted to talk to you about, wanted to talk about because wherever I am to speak directly to people, I have to face the sense of responsibility that we have towards people of the present day with regard to Theosophy. In the West, people should feel that they are sinning against humanity if they can have something of Theosophy and do not want it, reject it – sin against humanity! Sometimes it is quite difficult to grasp, because one must have an almost transcendental sense of duty, my dear friends, if one is to have such an obligation, such a sense of responsibility towards humanity. Your national soul tells you that it, this national soul itself, is indebted to you. The national soul has already assumed this obligation to humanity for you. You need only find this national soul. You need only let it speak through your thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, and when you feel the responsibility to the national soul, you will at the same time fulfill the duty to humanity. Therefore, you are also placed in a geographical position between the European West, which must have Theosophy, but for which it cannot become a personal matter to the same extent as for you, and the Asian East, which has had occultism and spiritual culture since time immemorial. You are placed in the middle. You would perhaps never manage to fulfill your task towards the spiritual culture of humanity in this geographically difficult situation, I would say, if you only had to think of your obligation to humanity. Because the temptations will be tremendously great when, on the one hand, not only the European West is at work, which has basically made many of the children of your national soul unfaithful to itself. In the face of a great deal of what is written by Russians and brought to us in the West, we have the feeling that it has nothing to do with the Russian national soul, but is a reflection of all kinds of Western things. The second temptation will come from the East, when the power of spiritual culture arises. There it will be our duty to know that, however great the spiritual culture of the East may be, the man of the present must say to himself: It is not the past that we have to carry into the future, but new impulses. It is not just any old spiritual impulse from the East that we have to take up, but to cultivate what the West can bring forth from its own spiritual sources. Then the time will come when Europe, if you also fulfill your duties towards your national soul, will begin to understand a little of what the Christ impulse actually is in the spiritual development of humanity. Seek, my dear friends, to understand everything that I have tried to express with and in these words, and above all seek in these words that which can become an impulse within you, not just to feel and sense that Theosophy is something something significant and great, but above all seek to take Theosophy into your soul and to organize your life and your deeds out of it.

We are trying to penetrate the theosophical life and knowledge bit by bit, but often during this penetration we have a heartfelt need to ask ourselves: why do we want and seek theosophy in the spiritual life of the present? We need not strain our minds or hearts too hard when such a question arises, and a word will come into our soul that will immediately have an enlightening and even more enlightening effect on our feelings: the word responsibility. Responsibility! This word should give us something that should exclude from the outset in our soul, in our hearts, that we are pursuing Theosophy out of some personal longing. If we observe what may befall us, perhaps without our being properly aware of it, when we hear the word responsibility in relation to the spiritual life that we call theosophical, then we will increasingly come to realize that we owe it to present-day humanity and to the best in us, which can serve this present humanity, to concern ourselves with 'theosophy'. We must not practise Theosophy just for our own pleasure, to satisfy ourselves somehow because we have this or that personal yearning, but we must feel that Theosophy is something that present humanity needs if the process of human development is to continue at all. We need only realize that without Theosophy, or whatever one might call it, without that spiritual life which we mean, humanity on earth would have to face a bleak future, truly a bleak future. This is so for the simple reason that all the spiritual impulses of the past, all that could be given to man in the past in the way of spiritual impulses, has been exhausted. It is gradually living itself out and can bring nothing new into the evolution of humanity. What would have to come if only the old impulses were to continue to work would be something that is perhaps still undreamt of today: not only an overwhelming, externally overwhelming, but numbing domination of mere outward technique, but also a perishing because all religious, scientific, philosophical, artistic and also, in the higher sense, ethical interest is moving out of the human soul. People would become a kind of living automaton if new spiritual impulses did not come. This is how we must feel when we think of Theosophy, as those whom their karma has brought to know that humanity needs new impulses.

We may well ask ourselves: What can we, each one of us, do according to our particular qualities and abilities, in the face of this general sense of responsibility? The way in which Theosophy has come into the world in recent times, and how it has developed over the last few decades into our days, is instructive for answering this question of the heart and soul, perhaps especially for you, my dear friends. We must never forget that the way the word Theosophy has entered the world in modern times is something of a spiritual miracle of civilization. This spiritual miracle of civilization is linked to a personality who, as a personality, is indeed close to you, my dear friends, since she drew her spiritual roots from your national heritage in a certain way. I am talking about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. And for Western Europeans it is undeniable, in every respect undeniable, that the body in which the individuality, who in this incarnation was called Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, was enclosed, could only have come from the environment of Eastern Europe, from Russia. For she had all the Russian characteristics. But Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was taken from you by very special circumstances; Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was transferred to the West by the special karmic conditions of the present time. Now, let us consider what a strange cultural miracle actually took place.

Take this personality of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She was a personality who, basically, remained a child throughout her entire life in many, many ways, a real child; a personality who, throughout her entire life, did not learn to think logically; a personality who, throughout her entire life, has not learned to control her passions, urges and desires to any extent, and was always able to fall into extremes; a personality who basically had very little scientific education. Through this personality, it is revealed to the world, one might say, as it could not be otherwise, through the medium of such a personality, in a chaotic, mixed-up, colorful way, a sum of the very greatest eternal wisdom of mankind. And anyone who is well-versed in these matters will find in Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's works wisdom, truths, and insights of humanity that could not have been understood by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's intellect and soul, not even remotely. There is nothing clearer, if one only approaches all the facts impartially, than that for everything that was in the work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the outer soul, the outer intellectuality of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was only a detour, only a means by which significant, great spiritual powers could communicate with humanity. And there is nothing clearer than that in the way it was to happen at the beginning of the last third of the 19th century, it could not have happened to anyone in Western Europe. It took the very special, on the one hand selfless, almost des-ensouled, and on the other hand again radically selfish, egoistic nature of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, to allow what happened to happen through higher spiritual powers. The selfless nature for the reason that every Western European mind would have brought into its own forms of thinking, into its own intellect, what had been revealed. And it needed the completely selfish, egotistical kind, because in the coarse, materialistic way of life in Western Europe at that time, there was no possibility of doing otherwise than to make, one might say, iron fists out of such a radical state of mind, out of such delicate hands, which had to cultivate and care for the occultism of modern times. It is a peculiar phenomenon. But, my dear friends, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky went to the West, went to that cultural center which, in all its idiosyncrasy, in its entire structure and configuration in all fields, except America, is the most materialistic cultural area of our time, a cultural area that lives in its language, in its thinking, absolutely in materialistic thoughts and in materialistic feelings. It would be going too far here to discuss the power that led Helena Petrovna Blavatsky to England in particular. And so we see that the sum of occultism, which expresses itself in a culturally idiosyncratic way in a medium – I do not mean this in a spiritualistic sense – initially strives for the western part of Europe.

Within this European West, the fate of this occultism was initially sealed in a certain direction, because there was no way around the fulfillment of a significant karma in this materialistic European West with the founding of the Theosophical Society. This karma was also fulfilled. This Western Europe has a heavy karmic debt; it cannot penetrate the secrets of existence without this karmic debt asserting itself in a certain way. When occultism is involved somewhere, karma immediately deepens, and forces are brought to the surface that would otherwise remain hidden. And not to criticize anything in particular, but to characterize, it is said what is to be said: The European West, in carrying out something that is historically necessary, has perpetrated countless injustices against the bearer of ancient spiritual culture, against the bearer of ancient occult secrets, in whose life, although spiritual things have become rigid and no longer exist for the present, they live at the bottom of the soul. — For that is the truth in India, in South Asia. The moment occult impulses came to Western Europe, a reaction immediately set in against the spiritual forces at work in the depths of Indian culture, and it became impossible – it was already impossible in the time of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky – to retain what was indeed intended by certain spiritual powers as the actual spiritual movement necessary in our present time. It was impossible to hold on to that. The intention was to give humanity a body of occult teachings that could fit all people, all hearts, that everyone could go along with. But because of certain necessities, the impulse was transplanted to Western Europe, and an egoistic reaction asserted itself. Those spiritual powers that wanted to give the world a new impulse without distinction of any human differences were pushed back, and India, once suppressed in its occultism, took revenge karmically by infiltrating its own national egoistic occultism at the first opportunity when occultism appeared in the West. And that happened in the days of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. This was already happening when Helena Petrovna Blavatsky summarized the great truths and wisdoms of her “The Secret Doctrine”. Her first work, “Isis Unveiled”, shows only the very chaotic and illogical and passionate and confused nature of her being, but shows everywhere that behind her there are watching powers that want to guide her towards the general human. In the “Secret Doctrine,” alongside the self-evident greatest good, there is everywhere a human special interest, such an interest that emanates from certain occult centers that do not have the general human interest in mind today, but a partial, a special interest. Tibetan, Indian, and also Egyptian initiations today everywhere have only a partial human interest in mind, and want only to avenge the suppressed Eastern occultism in the Western world, to avenge the fact that the Western world has triumphed over the Eastern world through materialistic factors. It has triumphed over the Eastern world through materialistic factors; it has triumphed in so far as Christianity has been adopted into the actual progressive culture of human development, into the progressive life of human development. Christianity has not gone east of Asia, nor south of Asia; Christianity has gone west.

Now you might say, my dear theosophical friends: So it is good. Then the West accepted Christianity, and since Christianity is a stage in the onward progress of humanity, it is natural that the West should have triumphed over the East. — Yes, if that were so! If it were so, it would be self-evident. But it is not so. Christianity, which was prepared for centuries and millennia and which came into the world, has not yet triumphed anywhere on earth. And anyone today who would believe that they could truly and genuinely represent the Christ principle and the Christ impulse in the present would have fallen prey to an indescribable arrogance. What has happened so far? Nothing more than that the Western nations have adopted certain externalities of Christianity, have occupied the name of Christ and have clothed their old cultures, which had been established in Europe before Christianity, with the name of Christianity. Does the Christ reign within Christian Europe? No follower of occult movements will ever admit that the Christ reigns within Christian Europe, but will say: You speak of the “Christ”, but you still mean the same as the ancient Central European peoples meant when they spoke of their god Saxnot. — The symbolum of the Crucifixus stands over the European peoples. In a certain respect, however, the traditions of the god Saxnot prevail, whose symbol is the former short Saxon sword, which was there for the expansion of only material interests, because that was the occupation of the European peoples. Therefore, this occupation has also produced the noblest flower of materialistic culture, an appearance that is noble in the realm of materialistic culture: chivalry. Where in any culture can we find anything similar to the knighthood of Western culture? It does not exist anywhere else. No one would think of comparing the heroes of the Trojan War with the medieval knights. The Christ still lives little in people. People only speak of the Christ. When Westerners speak of Christ, Eastern peoples feel that they, the Eastern peoples, are far, far ahead in terms of their spiritual understanding of the world, in terms of what these peoples know of the secrets of existence. These Eastern peoples know this.

Even ordinary people can explain to you that, in a certain way, Eastern peoples can already appreciate their spiritual advantages. What do the Western peoples still do today in their masses, in their majority, when the secrets of existence are revealed? Well, we still sit together in quite small groups when we speak, we speak of something like what was spoken about last night, of the ruling spiritual powers and secrets that surround us everywhere. To the average Western European, this is folly or madness, for he still cannot understand Paul's words: “What wisdom is with God is often folly with men, and what is folly with men is wisdom with God.” And only those who have been infected by Westerners in the East would dare to question even the slightest of the profound truths about the spiritual secrets of the cosmos, as we try to reveal them when they hear them, because such things, as they were said yesterday, for example, are taken for granted by those who are immersed in the Eastern spiritual life. Therefore, let us not be surprised that it often seemed to these eastern peoples as if the Europeans had attacked them, as it seems to a group of people when a herd of wild animals approaches them, against which they defend themselves, which they do not resent for what they do, but which they regard as something inferior. We Westerners are, for the reasons indicated – whether this is justified today or not is not the point here – and according to the traditions of the East, naturally regarded as inferior by every member of the Brahmanical caste, for example.

And if we disregard Brahmanism and look, for example, at the cultures of Central Asia, at Tibetan or Chinese culture, which in the near future will gain in importance for the world in a way that people today would never dream of Nevertheless, we are only a short time away from this, when we see and become aware of how the souls of many Zarathustra disciples are still embodied in these cultures, then we will be tempted to take these things very seriously. We will also be able to understand that the Indian, Tibetan and Egyptian occultists could have been tempted to channel their own wisdom out of her soul into that which Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was able to give, but that which is her own belongs to a past human development process. And we must recognize the character of the past of these oriental wisdom teachings, which are contained in the Blavatsky teachings. We do not need to misjudge the value of such a matter, we do not need to misjudge that when Chinese culture, which one might say has broken its fetters, now floods over the Western world, then a spirituality comes with it that is truly the successor, in many respects still the unadulterated successor, of the old Atlantean culture. It will have the effect of something bursting open that has been held together, and which can spread to all the world; so it will pour out – on a small scale, ancient Indian culture has poured out at the first opportunity.

Therefore, my dear Theosophical friends, it was possible that from that time on, everything that was referred to in all occultism came to pass, and that from then on, the Theosophical movement was no longer a suitable instrument for the advancement of European culture. Every occultist is well aware of the saying that goes: the guiding powers of occultism or those who are in any way occultly active must never allow any special interest to prevail over the general interest of humanity. There is no possibility of working occult favorably when a special interest outweighs the general human interest. The moment a special interest takes precedence over the general human interest in occultism, the possibilities for real error are given. That is why every possible error has been able to enter the theosophical movement since that time. Due to the way in which England is connected to India karmically in the world context, there was simply the possibility that those exalted powers, which are at the starting point of the theosophical movement, were falsified. For it is a common occurrence in occultism for powers that want to pursue their special interest to take on the form of those who have given the actual impulses before. From a certain point in the theosophical movement, there was no longer any possibility of simply accepting everything that lay within this theosophical movement, and karma has willed that this has become less and less possible. And so, when the call came to us to unite with this Theosophical movement, nothing else could be done but to go back to the original sources, to those sources which, in contrast to the specific ones, we can call the general human ones. And so you have perhaps seen in Central Europe that we are trying to get at the occult sources in such a way that you will not notice in all that you are encountering that some special interest is connected with it. You may try to compare everything that can be found in Central Europe in the way of special interests with the kind of Theosophy that is practiced among us: The two things really cannot be brought together. You can take this Theosophy and probably find nothing German in it, except that, because it has to be written in a language, the books by myself are written in German. You will find nothing German in Theosophy, nothing that is somehow connected with the external traditions of Central Europe. And wherever a tendency to connect Theosophy with a special interest arises, it is immediately recognized as an impossibility.

This has now been the special task of Central Europe, to free Theosophy from the special peculiarities that it has acquired in Western Europe. It was our mission to purify Theosophy, to completely detach it from all special interests. And the more you go into the matter, the more you will find that I myself was able to detach everything that I was allowed to bring theosophically from any special interest. This is a symbolic indication, my dear Theosophical friends, but symbolically speaking – I only needed to be guided by what was present as an immediate impulse in the present incarnation, do not misunderstand, it only reflects a fact – those who were the external bearers, for example, of the blood from which I descend, they came from German areas of Austria; I could not be born there. I myself was born in a Slavic region, in a region that was completely foreign to the whole milieu and the whole idiosyncrasy from which my ancestors came. Thus it was that at the starting point of my present incarnation, I was symbolically impelled to detach myself from all special interests, so that in Central Europe, Theosophy really stands before us in Central Europe as a goddess, as something divinely detached from all humanity, that has as much to do with the person who lives there as with the person who lives there, and that will always have to remain.

The ideal we have, my dear Theosophical friends, as simple as it is expressed, will always have to stand before us because it is harder to fulfill than to express. It will have to stand before us as our ideal, the truth and sincerity, the unadulterated divine truth. Perhaps just when we strive for it, we will find the way, not for us, but for what was impersonal in Central Europe after the whole mission of Europe, for this divine theosophy to the East. And there, if I may now describe the way in which Theosophy has taken hold in the West, is passing through Europe and is to come to the East, I would again like to emphasize the word here: the word 'responsibility'. The cultures of the world develop in such a way that, as it were, one culture develops with another in a spiritual shell. One culture connects to another. The fact that Theosophy had to be so impersonal in Central Europe has given it a certain character of spirituality, of spirituality detached from all interests. This Theosophy has, my dear Theosophical friends, something brittle about it; it has the brittleness that comes from being untouched by special interests; it will therefore not appeal to those who cannot open their hearts to that which does not serve any particular interest.

But the spiritual content, this theosophy, can be found by the soul that thirsts for this spiritual content, that longs for this spiritual content. And here I must say, my dear theosophical friends, that I myself have met a soul from the spiritual world that longs for the spirit that expresses itself through theosophy. I have met this soul in the purely spiritual world. If we go up in the order of the hierarchies to the individual spirits of nations and speak within the individual spirits of nations of the national souls, then we also come across the Russian national soul, which is still young, so to speak, and which still has to develop further, as every being must develop. I know that this Russian national soul longs for the spirit that is expressed in Theosophy. It longs with all the strength it can develop. I speak of the sense of responsibility because you, my dear Theosophical friends, are children of this Russian national soul. It rules and works in you and you have a responsibility to it. The responsibility is to understand it! Don't be offended; this Russian national soul could often tell me many, many things. Most tragically, what this Russian national soul could tell me became clear to me around the year 1900. It became most tragically apparent at that time because one could notice something that I myself could only interpret in the right way long afterwards, because one could notice how little this Russian national soul is actually understood today. We in Western Europe have become acquainted with much, much from Russia, and much, much from Russia has made a great, powerful impression on us. We have become acquainted with the great impulses of Tolstoy, we have become acquainted with the psychology of Dostoyevsky, which has so deeply moved Western Europe, and finally we have become acquainted with a mind like Solovyov's, a mind that, when you let it take effect on you, makes the impression everywhere: that is how he is, as he has written. And what he has written only becomes truly clear when you stand behind him and feel the Russian national soul. And this Russian national soul has much more to say than even Solowjow knows how to say, because there is still much too much that comes from Western Europe before our hearts. Think, my dear friends, of the word sense of responsibility, think of the fact that you have this task of showing yourselves worthy of the Russian national soul, and that you should get to know the longing of the Russian national soul for impersonal theosophy. When you get to know Theosophy in terms of its innermost impulse, then, my dear friends, you will have all kinds of questions that can only come from a Russian soul: questions of the soul about the spiritual issues of Theosophy. I have found that so much noble, glorious, beautiful feeling has come to me from Eastern Europe: so much genuine, true human love and kindness, human compassion, overflowing feeling, subtle, intimate observation of what is in the world, and intense personal connection to the powers of existence. And from such loving, beautiful and noble feelings, many, many questions have been put to me by members of the Russian people, many questions – questions that must be asked one day because they are questions that humanity will not be able to live with in the future without answering. Questions that can only come from the east of Europe; so far only the Russian national soul has put them to me, the Russian national soul on the higher planes. I have often thought that the children of this national soul still have a long way to go to understand their national soul, to understand what this national soul actually longs for and how much still separates them, these children of the national soul, from the national soul itself. Therefore, do not be afraid to seek the path you can find, if you want, to your national soul. From your national soul you will find the questions without whose answers the humanity of the future will not be able to exist. But do not be afraid to go beyond personal interest, for be mindful of the great sense of responsibility that you should have towards the Russian national soul, be mindful of this feeling, for in the future the national souls will need their children, the people, to achieve their goals. And do not forget one thing. That which can carry you the highest, which can take you to the most beautiful, most luminous heights in the world, is most exposed to the danger of falling into error. You, my dear Theosophical friends, are to infuse the soul into the spiritual. You are to find the soul to the spirit. You can do it because the Russian national soul has immeasurable depths and possibilities for the future. But it is necessary that you are aware that the soul, which can rise to the spirit, has to inspire the spirit itself, and that you face the great danger of losing yourselves and getting stuck in the personal, in the individually personal, losing yourselves in the personal as such. Then the personal becomes strong when it comes from the soul.

You will not experience the obstacles that so many people in Western and Central Europe face. You are less born to skepticism; skepticism can only come to you from the West through indoctrination. You will learn to distinguish truth from untruth and dishonesty through a certain feeling in the field of occultism, where charlatanry and truth stand so close together. Not skepticism, but cynicism will be your danger. Your danger will be that the soul-spiritual, the powerful of your personalities, can spread clouds around you, astral clouds through which you then cannot penetrate to the objective-spiritual. Powerful of your personalities can spread clouds around you, astral clouds, through which you then cannot get through to the objective spiritual. Your fire, your warmth, they can spread around you like a cloudy aura, not letting the spiritual through, because you think you are enthusiastic about the spirit, but because of your enthusiasm you prevent the spirit from finding its way to you. So try to realize that you have a great advantage – now in the ideal spiritual sense – of being able to have a special interest because you are predestined, that is, your national soul, to receive the special interest of the Russian people to receive theosophy, which in Central Europe still had to be taken entirely as a divine power exalted above all human things, as something that you can receive as your own, as something that you can cherish and cultivate as your very own. For by your predestination you are endowed to breathe soul into the spirit. This has often been said in our ranks, but it is up to you to seize the opportunity as soon as possible, not to miss it, not just to develop feeling and will, but above all to develop energy and perseverance, less - if a word is to be said about the practical — to speak a word with regard to the practical side — talk about the way in which Theosophy must be in the West and in Russia and so on, and what is good for the one and the other, but first take in Theosophy, take it in, unite with the soul, with the heart. The rest will follow; it will follow for sure.

This, my dear friends, is something I wanted to talk to you about, wanted to talk about because wherever I am to speak directly to people, I have to face the sense of responsibility that we have towards people of the present day with regard to Theosophy. In the West, people should feel that they are sinning against humanity if they can have something of Theosophy and do not want it, reject it – sin against humanity! Sometimes it is quite difficult to grasp, because one must have an almost transcendental sense of duty, my dear friends, if one is to have such an obligation, such a sense of responsibility towards humanity. Your national soul tells you that it, this national soul itself, is indebted to you. The national soul has already assumed this obligation to humanity for you. You need only find this national soul. You need only let it speak through your thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, and when you feel the responsibility to the national soul, you will at the same time fulfill the duty to humanity. Therefore, you are also placed in a geographical position between the European West, which must have Theosophy, but for which it cannot become a personal matter to the same extent as for you, and the Asian East, which has had occultism and spiritual culture since time immemorial. You are placed in the middle. You would perhaps never manage to fulfill your task towards the spiritual culture of humanity in this geographically difficult situation, I would say, if you only had to think of your obligation to humanity. Because the temptations will be tremendously great when, on the one hand, not only the European West is at work, which has basically made many of the children of your national soul unfaithful to itself. In the face of a great deal of what is written by Russians and brought to us in the West, we have the feeling that it has nothing to do with the Russian national soul, but is a reflection of all kinds of Western things. The second temptation will come from the East, when the power of spiritual culture arises. There it will be our duty to know that, however great the spiritual culture of the East may be, the man of the present must say to himself: It is not the past that we have to carry into the future, but new impulses. It is not just any old spiritual impulse from the East that we have to take up, but to cultivate what the West can bring forth from its own spiritual sources. Then the time will come when Europe, if you also fulfill your duties towards your national soul, will begin to understand a little of what the Christ impulse actually is in the spiritual development of humanity. Seek, my dear friends, to understand everything that I have tried to express with and in these words, and above all seek in these words that which can become an impulse within you, not just to feel and sense that Theosophy is something something significant and great, but above all seek to take Theosophy into your soul and to organize your life and your deeds out of it.

The following lecture was formerly in GA 136 entitled, The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature, published in German as, Die Geistige Wesenheiten in den Himmelskoerpern und Naturreichen. In Bn/GA 158, it is the 2nd of 12 lectures in the series, The Human's Connection with the Elemental World, published in German as, Der Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der Elementarischen Welt. Kalewala. Olaf Asteson. Das russische Volkstum. Die Welt als Ergebnis von Gleichgewichtswirkungen.

First of all I must apologise to you that I cannot give my lecture in the language of this country. The fact of this lecture being given is in response to the wish of the friends of our Theosophical Society, by whom I have been summoned hither to give a series of lectures lasting a fortnight, and who had the idea of making it possible within that time of adding the two announced public lectures. Hence I must crave your pardon if many of the names and designations which are borrowed from the national epic of the Finns are not rightly pronounced by me who have no language. Only in the lecture of next Friday shall we touch upon Occult Science or Theosophy; the consideration of this evening will rather have to do with a sort of neighbouring realm which in the profoundest sense of the word belongs to the most interesting of human historical considerations, of human historical thought.

The National Epics! We need only to think of some of the well-known national epics, of the epics of Homer, which have become the epics of Greece; of the legends of the Niebelungen in Central Europe; and finally of the Kalevala, and immediately the fact shines forth, that by means of these national epics we are led more deeply into the soul of humanity and the striving of humanity than by any other historical investigation; we are so led into the soul of humanity and the striving of humanity that ancient times are brought powerfully before our souls, as vividly as the present time, but in such a way that they affect us in the immediate present just as the fate aid life of the present day humanity living around us. How uncertain and dim from the historical point of view are the descriptions of the ancient people of Greece of whom the Epics of Homer tell us, and how, when we let the contents of the Iliad—of the Odyssey work upon us, do we look into the souls of those people who are far beyond the grasp of ordinary historical observation! No Wonder that the study of the National Epics is somewhat of a puzzle to those who are occupied with the scientific or literary aspect of them! We need only point to one fact with regard to the Greek Epics, to a fact which has been repeatedly expressed by an enlightened observer of the Iliad in a very beautiful book on Homer's Iliad which appeared only a few years ago,—I mean Hermann Grimm, the nephew of the great philologist of German myths and legends, Jacob Grimm. By letting the figures and facts of the Iliad work upon him, Hermann Grimm is again and again obliged to say: “Oh! this Homer!” We do not need to-day to go into the question of the personality of Homer; When he describes anything which is borrowed from a handicraft, from an art, it is as though he were an expert in that handicraft, in that art. If he describes a battle, a contest, he seems to be perfectly acquainted with all the strategic and military principles which come into consideration in the conduct of war. And rightly does Hermann Grimm point out that a stern judge in such matters, namely Napoleon, was an admirer of the reality of the description of battles in Homer; and he was a man who without doubt was qualified to give an opinion whether or not the military point of view is presented before our souls in a directly expert and vivid way. From the general human standpoint we know how plastically the figures are presented to our soul by Homer as if they were immediately in front of our physical eyes. And how does such a national epic as this continue to manifest itself through the various periods? For truly, he who observes dispassionately will not receive the impression that human artific or pedagogic cult could have maintained all through the centuries up to our own days, interest in the Iliad and the Odyssey,—for this interest is self-evident and universally human. Yet these epics set us in a certain sense a task; directly we study them they present to us a very definite—even an interesting task. They must be taken quite accurately in all their details. We at once feel that there is something obscure in such national epics if we try to read them as we read any modern work of art, a modern novel, or such-like. We feel even at the first lines of the Iliad that Homer speaks with exactitude. What does he describe to us? He tells us even at the beginning what he is describing. Much is known from other descriptions not contained in the Iliad, of events which form the connecting link with the facts of the Iliad. Homer wishes only to describe to us that which he states so pregnantly in the first lines,—the wrath of Achilles. And when we go through the whole of the Iliad and consider it impartially, we have to say to ourselves:—In very deed it contains nothing but what can be shown to be the result of the wrath of Achilles. Further, another peculiar fact appears at the very beginning of the Iliad; Homer does not begin simply with facts, he does not even begin with any personal opinion, but he begins with something which in modern times would perhaps be taken as mere words; he begins by saying:—Sing to me, Oh Muse, of the wrath of Achilles:—And the more deeply we penetrate into this national epic, the more clear does it become to us that we cannot at all understand the sense, and spirit, and meaning of it all unless we take these words at the beginning quite seriously But then we have to ask ourselves:—What do they actually mean?

And now to consider the manner of representation; the whole way in which the events are brought before our souls! For many, not only professional students, but even for artistic spirits like Hermann Grimm, there was a question in those words “Sing to me, oh muse, of the wrath of Achilles,” a question which penetrated deeply into the heart. How in this Iliad, as well as in the Niebelungen or in the Kalevala, are the deeds of spiritual-divine Beings—in Homer's poems chiefly the deeds and purposes and passions of the Olympic Gods—enacted in unison with the deeds, purposes and passions of men, men who like Achilles are far removed in a certain sense from ordinary humanity, and again with the passions, purposes and deeds of men who are nearer to ordinary humanity like Odysseus, or Agamennon? When Achilles appears before our souls, he appears to us to stand alone among the human beings with whom he lives; as the Iliad continues, we very soon feel that in Achilles we have before us a personality who feels himself unable to discuss his inner life with the other heroes. Homer also brings before us how Achilles has to settle his real affairs of the heart with divine spiritual beings who do not belong to the human kingdom; how the whole way through the Iliad he stands alone with regard to the human kingdom, and on the other hand stands close to super-sensible, superhuman powers. On the other hand how strange it is, that when we focus all our human feelings in the form and manner of thinking and perceiving we have acquired in the process of civilisation, and then direct our gaze towards this Achilles, he often appears such that we are obliged to say: How egotistical! How self-centred! A being in whose soul divine-spiritual impulses are at work acts, absolutely from personal motives for a long time, so important a war for the Greeks as the Trojan war of legend, was only carried on, only produced the special episodes which are described in the Iliad because Achilles fought out for himself what he personally had to fight out with Agamemnon. And we continually see superhuman powers taking part; we see Zeus, Apollo, Athene imparting the impulses, allotting to the people, so to speak, their places. It was always remarkable to me before I took up the task of approaching these matters from the standpoint of Occult Science or Theosophy, how a very intellectual man such as Hermann Grimm with whom I had often the pleasure of personally discussing this matter, should look at these things as he did. Not only in his writings but often in personal conversation, and then much more exactly expressed he used to say: “If we only take into consideration what historical powers and impulses perform in the evolution of humanity, we do not succeed in getting at what lives and creates there, especially in the great national epics.” Hence, for Hermann Grimm, the intellectual student of the Iliad and the national poems, there was something which transcends the ordinary powers of human consciousness, the intellectual, reasoning sense-perception, the ordinary feelings; something which was for him a real power as creative as the other historical impulses. Hermann Grimm spoke of an actual creative imagination permeating human evolution just as one speaks of a being, of a reality, of something which governs man and could say more to him at the beginning of the ages which we are able to observe, which could say more to him during the development and growth of the individual races that what the ordinary soul-forces mean to man. Thus Hermann Grimm always spoke of the creative imagination as the glimmering of a world which does not expend itself in the ordinary human soul-forces; an imagination which to him in some way fulfilled the role of a co-creator in the process of human development. It is strange however, that when we consider this field of battle in the Iliad, when we consider this description of the wrath of Achilles with all the interaction of the super-sensible, divine spiritual powers, we do not arrive at such an opinion as Hermann Grimm has; and in his book on the Iliad itself we find many a word of resignation which shows us that the ordinary point of view which is taken to-day in a literary or scientific way is not reconcilable with these matters. What does Hermann Grimm arrive at with regard to the Iliad and the Niebelungen saga? He ends by assuming that the historical dynasties, the races of rulers were preceded by other such races; this is literally what he thinks. Thus he considers that probably Zeus and his whole circle represent a sort of race of rulers which had preceded the race of rulers to which Agamemnon belonged. Thus he considers that there is a certain uniformity in the history of humanity, so to speak; he considers that in the Iliad or Niebelungen saga are represented Gods or Heroes of primeval humanity whom later humanity only attempted to represent by clothing their deeds, their characters, in the dress of superhuman myths. There is much that one cannot reconcile if one takes as a basis such an hypothesis, above all the special form of the intervention of the Gods in Homer. Let us take one case. How do Thetis the mother of Achilles, Athene, and other figures of the Gods intervene in the events in Troy? They so intervene by taking the forms of mortal men, inspiring them as it were, leading them on to their deeds. Thus they do not appear themselves, but permeate living men. Living men were not only their representatives but sheaths permeated by invisible powers which could not appear in their own form, in their own being on the field of battle. Yet it would be strange to admit that primeval men of the ordinary kind should be so represented that they had to take representative men of the race of mortals as a sheath. This is only an intimation which can prove to us all that in this way we shall not arrive at a true understanding of the ancient national epics. Just as little shall we succeed if we take the figures in the Niebelungen saga, Siegfried of Xanten on the lower Rhine who was removed to the Burgundian court at Worms, who then wooed Kriemhilde the sister of Gunther, but who by virtue of his special qualities can alone woo Brunnhilde. And in what a remarkable way are described such figures as Brunnhilde of Iceland, and Siegfried: Siegfried is described as having conquered the so-called family of the Niebelungen, as having acquired, won, the treasure of the Niebelungen, By means of what he has acquired through his victory over the Niebelungen, he gains special qualities which are expressed in the epic when it is said that he can make himself invisible, that he is invulnerable in a certain respect, that he has, moreover, forces which the ordinary Gunther has not! For the latter cannot win Brunnhilde who is not to be conquered by an ordinary mortal. By means of his special powers which he has as the possessor of the treasure of the Niebelungen Siegfried conquers Brunnhilde, and on the other hand, because he can conceal the powers which he has developed, he is in a position to lead Brunnhilde to Gunther his brother-in-law. And then we find how Kriemhilde and Brunnhilde whom we meet at the same time at the Burgundian court are two very different characters—characters in whom obviously forces are at work which are not to be explained by the ordinary soul forces. Therefore they quarrelled, and therefore also it came about that Brunnhilde was able to seduce the faithful servant Hagen to kill Siegfried. That again shows us a feature which appears so remarkably in the Sagas of Central Europe. Siegfried has higher superhuman forces; these superhuman forces he has through the possession of the treasures of the Niebelungen. Finally they make of him not an absolutely victorious figure, but a figure which stands before us as a tragedy. The powers which Siegfried possesses through the treasures of the Niebelungen are at the same time a fatality. Still more remarkable do things become if we take in addition the Northern Saga of Sigurd, the slayer of the dragon, but this is enlightening. In this, Sigurd, who is none other than Siegfried, appears as the conqueror of the dragon; as he who thereby wins from an ancient race of dwarfs the treasures of the Niebelunger. And Brunnhilde meets us as a figure of a superhuman nature, as a Valkyrie figure.

Thus we see that there existed in Europe two ways of representing these things; the one which directly connects everything with the divine-super-sensible, which shows us that in Brunnhilde is meant something which belongs directly to the super-sensible world; and the other way which represents the sagas in a human form. But we recognise even here, how the Divine resounds through everything.

And now from these sagas, these national epics, let us glance into that realm of which I really ought to speak only as one who can look at things from outside; only in such a way as one can understand them if one does not speak the language in question. I beg you to take into consideration that with regard to everything which in the Kalevala has to do with Western Europe, I can only speak as one who fixes his eyes on the spiritual contents—the great, mighty figures, and whose observation of course the undoubted fineness of the epic which can only appear when one has mastered the language in which it was written, must escape. But even in such a consideration how characteristically do we encounter the Trinity in the three—it is difficult to use a name for them; one can not say Gods, one cannot say Heroes, so we will say—in the three beings whom we encounter:—Väinemöinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkäinen. These figures utter a remarkable language when we compare them in character with one another; a language in which we recognise that the things which are to be said to us surpass what can be accomplished with the ordinary soul-forces. If we only consider these three forms externally, how they increase till they become monstrous! And yet it is peculiar that while they increase to the point of monstrosity, every individual feature stands before our eyes, so that in nowise have we any feeling that the monstrosity is grotesque, or a paradox; everywhere we have the feeling that of course that which has to be said must appear in superhuman size, in superhuman significance. And then what enigmas in the contents! Something which spurs on our souls to think of all that is must human, but which on the other hand, surpasses all that the ordinary powers of the soul can grasp. Ilmarinen, whom one often calls the Smith, the clever, artistic smith, forges for a region in which dwell the—so to speak elder brothers of humanity, or at least more primitive humanity than the Finns, forges for a strange region at the instigation of Väinemöinen, the Sampo. And we next see this remarkable thing, namely, that far from the field of action on which the facts take place of which we are speaking, many things are happening; we see how time goes by; and we see how after a definite time, Väinemöinen and Ilmarinen are induced to fetch back that which has remained in the strange land—the Sampo. He who lets the peculiar spiritual language work upon him which speaks in the forging of the Sampo, in the removal of it, and the regaining of it, has directly the impression—I must beg you to consider that I am speaking as a stranger, and as such can only speak of the impression—that the most essential thing in this magnificent poem is the forging, the removal, and the later recovery of the Sampo. And what affects me very specially and remarkably in the Kalevala is the ending. I have heard that there are people who believe that this ending is perhaps, a later addition. I feel that this ending of Mariata and her son, this entry as it were, of a very remarkable Christianity into the epic—I say expressly a very remarkable form of Christianity—belongs to the whole; and because this ending is there, the Kalevala gains a very special “nuance”, a colouring, which can so to speak, make the whale matter comprehensible to us. I may say that to my idea, such a delicate, impersonal representation of Christianity is nowhere to be found as in the ending of the Kalevala. The Christian principle is detached from anything local, the coming of Mariata to Herod, who is called Rotus in Kalevala, is expressed so impersonally that one is scarcely reminded of any locality or personality in Palestine. Indeed one might say, one is not once reminded of the historical Christ Jesus. As a most intimate concern of the heart of humanity, we find delicately indicated at the end of Kalevala the penetration of the most precious pearl of civilisation into the civilisation of Finland. And with it is connected the tragic touch which can work so deeply upon our souls, that at the moment when Christianity enters, when the Son of Mariata is baptised, Väinemöinen bids farewell to his people in order to go to an undefined locality, leaving to his people only the purport and power of that, which as a bard he had been enabled to relate of the primeval events which were included in the history of this people. This withdrawal of Väinemöinen before the Son of Mariata seems to me so significant that one might see therein the living cooperation of all that which fundamentally governed the Finnish race, the Nation-soul of the Finns, from primeval times up to the moment when Christianity found admittance into Finland; and this primeval force relates itself tom Christianity in such a way-that everything which was then enacted in the soul can be felt with wonderful intimacy. That I state as something of the objectivity of which I am conscious, something which I could never state to give pleasure in the way of flattery. We in the West of Europe have in these national epics one of the most wonderful examples of how the members of a race actually live before us in the immediate present, with their complete souls; so that through Kalevala, Western Europe learns to know the soul of Finland in such a way as to become perfectly familiar with it.

Why have I said all this? I have said it in order to characterise how in the national epics something speaks which cannot be explained through ordinary soul-forces, even if one speaks of imagination as a real power. And if, to many what is said sounds only like an hypothesis, so may that which Occult Science or Anthroposophy has to say with regard to the being of these national epics, so may the same perhaps be alleged with regard to this consideration of the national epics. Certainly I am conscious that what I have to say aims at something to which in our present day few can give their assent. Much of it will probably be regarded as fancy, as imagination; but some will at least accept it among other hypotheses which are brought forward with regard to the growth of humanity. But for those who penetrate into spiritual science as I shall permit myself to describe it in the next lecture, for them it is not an hypothesis, but an actual result of scientific investigation. The things sound strange which have to be said, because that scientific method which is to-day believed to stand quite firmly on the ground of facts, of truth, of the attainable, restricts itself to what is perceived by the external senses, to what the intellect connected with the senses and the brain can tell of things. And to-day it is simply regarded as unscientific if a method of investigation is spoken of which employs other forces of the soul, forces whereby it is possible to look into the super-sensible, at the interplay of the super-sensible with the sensible. By this method of investigation, by Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, one is led not merely to the abstract imaginings to which Hermann Grimm was led with regard to the national epics, but one is led to something which far surpasses imagination, which represents quite a different condition of soul or consciousness from that which man can have at the present point of time in his evolution. And thus by means of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, we are led back in quite a different way to human antiquity than by ordinary science. Ordinary science is accustomed to-day so to look retrospectively at the growth of humanity that what we call man to-day has gradually developed from lower, animal-like creations. Spiritual science does not at all pretend to combat this modern investigation, but acknowledges fully the magnitude and the power of the acquisitions of this natural science of the 19th century: it acknowledges the importance of the idea of a transformation of animal forms from the most imperfect to the perfect; and it acknowledge the connection between the external human form and the most perfect animal form; but it cannot at all remain at such a view of the growth of humanity, of the growth of the organism as would be presented if with an external material gaze one could view that which has been accomplished in the course of the earth's happenings in the organic world up to man. For spiritual science, the humanity of today stands beside the animal world. We look into the world which surrounds us, at the various animal forms; we look at the—in a certain way—uniform human race distributed over the earth; in spiritual science we too have unprejudiced views of the fact that in the external form everything tells in favour of the relationship of man with other organisms on the earth; but in spiritual science, when we trace the growth of humanity backwards, we cannot do so in such a way that in the grey antiquity we let the stream of humanity flow directly into the animal train of evolution. Indeed we find if we go back from the present to the past that nowhere can we directly rank the present human form, the present man, as arising out of any animal form which we know in the present. If we go back into the evolution of humanity, we find first of all—one might say—the soul-forces, the forces of intellect feeling and will, which we have in the present day developed in man in more and more primitive form. Then we get back to hoary antiquity of which ancient documents tells us so little. Even when we go back as far as the Egyptians, or the early Asiatic races, we are led back everywhere into a primeval humanity which—certainly in a more primitive but yet in a great and noble form—has the same forces, the forces of feeling, intellect and will, which of course have only found their present-day development towards the present time, but which we discover as the most powerful impulses of humanity, as the most powerful historic impulses so far as we can trace humanity backwards when we take the present-day soul into consideration. Nowhere do we find it possible to place even the most remote human race in a special relationship with the present-day animal forms. This, which spiritual science must assert is recognised to-day by thoughtful investigators of nature. But when we go further back, and consider how the human soul has changed, when we compare how a present-day man—let us say—thinks scientifically or otherwise, how he uses his intellect and his mental powers,—when we trace that back, we can trace it fairly accurately; it first teamed forth in humanity at a definite time—we might say that it shone forth in the sixth and seventh centuries before Christ. The collective configuration of the present-day feelings and thoughts does not actually reach back further than to that time which is recorded as the period of the first Greek natural philosophy.

If we go back still further, and have a sufficiently unprejudiced view we find without reference to occult science, that not only does all present-day scientific thought cease, but we find that the human soul in general is in quite a different condition, in a much more-impersonal condition; and also in such a condition that we have to describe its powers as much more instinctive. Not indeed as if we meant to say that before this time men acted from such instincts as the present-day animals have, but that guidance by the reason and intellect as it exists to-day was not there then; instead of it there was a certain instinctive, direct certainty in man; he acted from direct elementary impulses, he was not then controlled by the intellect connected with the brain. And then of course we find that in the human soul those forces still ruled unalloyed which we have now detached as the forces of intellect on the one hand, and those forces which to-day we carefully separate from the forces leading to intellectuality and science, the forces namely, of imagination. Imagination, intellect and reason worked simultaneously in those old times. The further we go back, the more do we find that what then ruled in the soul of man, what then worked, was not separated into imagination and intellect; we ought no longer to describe it as we designate a soul-force to-day when we speak of imagination. We know quite well to-day that when we speak of imagination we are speaking of a soul-power whose expressions we cannot really make use of, to which we cannot ascribe reality. The modern man is careful in this matter; he takes care not to confuse what imagination gives him with what the logic of reason tells him. If we look at that which the spirit of man manifested in those pre-historic times, before imagination and intellect were separated, then we can perceive a primeval, elementary, instinctive force ruling in the soul. In its characteristics we can find the present-day imagination, but—if we may use the expression—what at that time gave imagination to the human soul had something to do with an actuality, a reality; imagination was not yet imagination; it was still—I must not shrink from using the expression directly—clairvoyant power, was still a special capacity of the soul, the gift of the soul whereby men saw things, facts, which to-day in his epoch of civilisation when intellect and reason are to be specially developed, are hidden. More deeply did those forces which were not imagination but clairvoyant powers, penetrate into the hidden forces of existence, into the forms of existence which lie behind the sense-world. It is to this that an unprejudiced consideration must lead us when we consider the evolution of humanity retrospectively. We have to say to ourselves:—Truly we must take the world evolution, development, seriously. That the humanity of the present day has come in the last hundreds and thousands of years to its present lofty powers of reason and intellect, is a result of evolution. These soul-forces have been developed out of others. And whilst these, our present soul-forces are limited to the impressions received from the external sense-world, a primeval humanity who laid no claim to science in the present-day sense, or to the use of the intellect in the present-day sense, a primeval human soul-power at the basis of every individual race saw into the background of existence, into a realm which as a super-sensible lies behind the sensible. In all peoples clairvoyant powers were once the property of the human soul, and out of these clairvoyant powers have been developed the present-day powers of human intellect and reason—the present manner of thinking and feeling. Those soul-forces which we have to describe as clairvoyant were such that man felt at the same time:—It is not I myself which thinks in me, feels in me. Man felt as if entirely subjected physically and spiritually to higher super-sensible powers which worked and lived within him. Man felt himself to be a vessel by means of which super-sensible powers expressed themselves. If one considers that, then one also grasps the meaning of the progressive evolution of humanity. Man would have remained a dependent being who would only have felt himself as a vessel, as the sheath of powers and beings had he not progressed to the proper use of intellect and reason. Man has become more independent by the use of intellect and reason, but at the same time has been cut off for a short period of his evolution, from the spiritual world in a certain respect, cut off from the super-sensible background of existence. In the future it will be different again. The further we go back, the further does the human soul by means of the clairvoyant forces see into the background of existence, see how, out of this background of existence those forces have also emerged which have worked on man himself in pre-historic times, up to a point of time in which all the relations of the earth were still quite different from what they are to-day, when they were such that the forms of living beings were much more changeable, much more subject to a sort of metamorphosis than they are now. Thus we must go back far beyond that which one at present calls the period of human civilisation, we must trace human development and animal development side by side. And lying much farther back than is usually believed to-day, is the separation of the animal forms from the human. The animal then became rigid, more immovable, at a time in which the human form was supple and flexible, and could be modeled and impressed by that which was experienced inwardly in the soul. Then indeed we come back to a period in the development of humanity which did not reach the consciousness of the present day, but in which another consciousness existed in the soul, which was in connection with the clairvoyant forces which have just been described. Such a consciousness which could survey the past, and which saw the development of humanity emerging from the past into complete separation from all animal life, this consciousness also saw how the human forces ruled, but still in active connection with the super-sensible forces which acted with them; it saw that which in the times, for instance, when Homer's epics arose, existed only as an ancient echo, and which in still earlier times existed in much greater measure. If we go back beyond Homer we find that men had clairvoyant consciousness, which as it were, recollected human pre-historic events, and in the recollection was able to relate the circumstances of human development. In Homer's time the circumstances were such that one felt that the ancient clairvoyant consciousness was disappearing; but one still felt that it existed. It was a period in which man did not speak from himself as an independent ego-being, but in which the Gods, super-sensible, spiritual powers, spoke out of him. Thus we must take it seriously as if Homer were not speaking of himself when he says “Sing to me oh Muse, of the wrath of Achilles”; “Let a higher being sing within me, who takes possession of me when I sing and speak.” This first line of Homer is a reality. Thus we are not referred to ancient dynasties of rulers who in the ordinary sense resemble present-day humanity, butt we are referred by Homer to the fact that in primeval times there was a different humanity, in whom the super-sensible lived. Achilles is absolutely a personality of the transition period from the ancient clairvoyant to that modern mode of vision which we find in Agamemnon, in Nestor and Odysseus, and which is then led on to a higher vision. We can only comprehend Achilles when we know that Homer wished to represent in him one belonging to the ancient humanity who lived in a time which lies between that period when man still reached directly up to the ancient Gods, and the present-day humanity which indeed begins with Agamemnon. Just in this same way we are referred to a human antiquity in the Niebelungen Saga of Central Europe. The whole representation of this epic shows us that in it we have not do with men of our present time, in a certain respect, but with such men of out present time who have still presented something from the period of ancient clairvoyance. All the qualities of which Siegfried had command, whereby he could make himself invisible, whereby he had the power to conquer Brunnhilde who could not be conquered by an ordinary mortal—side by side with the others of which we are informed in him, show us that in him we have a man who has brought over into present-day humanity as if in an inner human remembrance, the achievement of the ancient soul-powers which were connected with clairvoyance and the union with Nature. At what period of transition does Siegfried stand? That is shown to us in Brunnhilde's relation to Kriemhilde, the wife of Siegfried. What the two figures signify cannot be more clearly worked out here, but we shall understand all the sagas if in the forms which are brought before us, we see symbolical representations of inner clairvoyant, or remembered clairvoyant relations. Thus, in Siegfried's relation to Kriemhilde, we have to see his relation to his own soul forces which govern within him. His soul is in a certain measure a transitional soul, because with the treasures of the Niebelungen, that is, the clairvoyant secrets of the ancient times, Siegfried brought over into the new period something which at the same time made him quite unfit for his present time. The men of ancient time could thus live with these treasures of the Niebelungen, that is, with the ancient clairvoyant powers. The Earth has altered her conditions. Hence, Siegfried, who still carries within his soul an echo of the ancient ages, does not fit into the present time, hence he is a tragic figure. How can the present age stand in relation to what is still active in Siegfried? Something of the ancient clairvoyant powers are still active in him; for when he is overcome, Kriemhilde remains behind; the treasure of the Neibelunge is brought to her, she can make use of it. We learn how later, the treasure of the Niebelungen is taken from her by Hagen. We can see that Brunnhilde also is in a certain way capable of working with the old clairvoyant forces. Hence she stands in opposition to those human beings who are suited to the present time—Gunther and his brothers, Gunther above all, of whom Brunnhilde thinks nothing. Why is that? We know from the saga that Brunnhilde is a kind of Valkyrie figure, there we have something again in the human soul: and indeed that with which in ancient times the clairvoyant powers in man could still be united, but which has withdrawn from man, which has become unconscious, so that man as he lives in the present day in the age of intellect, can only be united with it after death. Hence the union with the Valkyrie at the moment of death. The Valkyrie is the personification of active soul-forces to which the ancient clairvoyant consciousness attained, but which present-day man only experiences when he passes through the gates of death. Only then is he united with this soul which is represented in Brunnhilde. Because Kriemhilde knew something from the ancient time of clairvoyance, and knew something of the powers which the soul receives through the old clairvoyance, she is a figure whose wrath is described as the wrath of Achilles is described in the Iliad. It is amply indicated that the men who in the ancient times were still gifted with clairvoyant powers were not controlled by the intellect, did not let the intellect rule, but worked directly from their most elementary, most intense impulses. Hence the personal element, the direct egoism of Kriemhilde, as of Achilles.

The whole matter of consideration of the national epics becomes specially interesting when we add the Kalevala to those already mentioned: We shall be able to show (to-day it can only be indicated owing to the shortness of time) that spiritual science in the present day can point to the ancient clairvoyant condition of humanity only because it is becoming possible again now—of course in a higher manner permeated by intellect, not as in a dream—to call forth the clairvoyant condition by means of spiritual education. The man of the present day is gradually growing again into an age in which from the depths of the human soul hidden forces which again point into the super-sensible,—of course henceforth guided by reason, not left uncontrolled by it—will grow up, when man will be guided into super-sensible regions; so that we shall again learn to know the region of which the ancient national epics speak to us from the dim consciousness of ancient times. Hence we can say:—One learns to know that it is possible to attain to a manifestation of the world not merely by means of the external senses, but by means of something super-sensible which lies behind the external physical human body. There are methods—of which we are to speak in the next lecture—by means of which man can make the spiritual, super-sensible inner being, that which is so often denied to-day, independent of the sensible, external body, so that man, when he is independent of his body lives not in an unconscious condition as in sleep, but perceives the spiritual world around him. Hence modern clairvoyance proves to man the possibility of living consciously in a higher super-sensible body which fills the ordinary body like a vessel. In spiritual science it is called the etheric or ether body. This etheric body lies within our sense body. By means of it we come even to-day, when we inwardly detach it from the physical sense body, into that condition of perception whereby we become aware of super-sensible facts. We become aware of two kinds of super-sensible facts. First of all, at the beginning of this clairvoyant condition we become aware of the super-sensible when we begin to know that we no longer see by means of our physical body, we no longer hear through our physical body, we no longer think by means of the brain connected with the physical body. Then we still know next to nothing of all the external world—I am telling you just the facts, the more exact proofs of which will only be possible in the next lecture—we know next to nothing of an external world. On the other hand, the first stage of clairvoyance leads us so much the more to a view of our own etheric body; we see a super-sensible body of human nature which underlies it, and we can only express it as something which works and creates like a sort of inner master-builder—which permeates our physical body in a living, active manner. And then we become aware of the following:—

We become aware that what we perceive in ourselves as the true activity of the etheric body is, on the one hand limited, modified by our physical body; that it is as it were, clothed on the physical side, the etheric body as it were filling and giving shape to eyes and ears, and to the physical brain; thereby be belong in a certain measure to the earthly element. In this way we perceive how the etheric body becomes a special, individual, egotistical human being sheathed in the physical body. But on the other hand we perceive how this our etheric body leads us into those regions where we encounter impersonally something higher, something super-sensible, something which is not us, but which is present in us at this very time, which works through us as spiritual, super-sensible power and force. Hence, according to the consideration of spiritual science, the inner soul life is divided for us into three principles which are as it were, enclosed in three external sheaths, filling them. In the first place, we live in such connection with our soul that in it we experience that which our eyes see, our ears hear, our senses can grasp, what our intellect can comprehend; we live with our souls in our physical body. In so far as our soul lives in the physical body, in occult science we call it the spiritual (or consciousness) soul, because only through a complete familiarity with the physical body has it become possible in the course of human development for man to advance onwards to the “I” consciousness. Then specially does the modern clairvoyant also learn to know the life of the soul in that which we have called the etheric body. The soul so lives in the etheric body that it certainly has its forces, but the soul forces so work there that we cannot say:—these are our personal forces; they are universal, human forces, they are forces through which we stand much closer to the collective hidden facts of Nature. In so far as the soul perceives these forces in an external sheath, in the etheric body, do we speak of the intellectual soul, or rational soul as the second soul principle. So that just as we have the consciousness soul enclosed in the sheath of the physical body, so have we the intellectual or rational soul enclosed in the etheric body. And then we have a still finer body, by means of which we reach up into the super-sensible world. Everything that we experience inwardly as our own original secrets, as well as that which to-day is concealed from the consciousness, and which in the time of the old clairvoyance was perceived as the growing forces in the process of human evolution, which was so perceived as if one could look back at the events of hoary antiquity,—all this we assign to the sentient soul, assign it to this, so that it is enclosed in the finest human body, in that which we call the astral body—please do not take offence at this expression, but accept it as a technical term .I t is that part of the being of man which as it were, in him connects the external, earthly part with that which works inspiringly in his inner being, that which he cannot perceive with his external sense, cannot even perceive when he looks through his own inner being into the etheric body, but which he can perceive when he is independent of himself, of the etheric body, and is connected with the forces of his origin. Thus we have the sentient soul in the astral body, the intellectual or rational soul in the etheric body, and the spiritual or consciousness soul in the physical body. In the times of the old clairvoyance these things were more or less instinctively known to man, for they looked into themselves, they saw this three-principled soul-being. Not that they had by the use of reason analysed the soul, but when they had clairvoyant consciousness, the three-principled soul stood before them; the sentient soul in the astral body the intellectual soul in the etheric body, and the consciousness soul in the physical body. And when they looked back, they saw how the external part of man, the outer form—when the animal forms had long before hardened—developed out of what we encounter to-day in its results as the three-fold soul forces. Then they perceived that this threefold organisation is born from super-sensible, creative powers; they perceived that the sentient soul is born from super-sensible, creative powers which gave the astral body to man, that body which he not only has like his etheric and physical bodies between birth and death, but which he takes with him when he passes through the gates of death, and which he already had before he entered into existence through birth. Thus the old clairvoyant saw the sentient soul connected with the astral body; and that which, so to speak works inspiringly on man from the spiritual worlds and creates his astral body, they saw as the first creative force which built up man from the Cosmic whole. And as a second creative force they saw that, the result of which we have to-day in the intellectual or rational soul, and which so created the etheric body that this etheric body transforms all external substance, all external matter, so that it, can permeate the physical human form, in the human, and not in the animal sense. The creative spirit for the etheric body which in its results appears in our intellectual soul, was seen by the old clairvoyants as a superhuman Cosmic Power, working in man somewhat like magnetism in physical matter. They looked up into the spiritual worlds, saw the divine, spiritual power which framed, forged the etheric body of man, so that this etheric body became the master-builder which transforms external matter, breaks it up, pulverises it, grinds it, so that what formerly existed as matter is organised into man, and man receives human capabilities. The old clairvoyant saw how this creative power remodelled all matter in an artistic way, so that it could become human matter. Then again, they looked upon the third, upon the spiritual or consciousness soul which really makes the ego-man, which is the transformation of the physical body, and they ascribed those powers which rule in the physical body solely to the line of heredity, to that which is derived from father and mother, from grandfather and grandmother and great-grandfather, in short, to that which is the result of the human powers of love, of the human powers of propagation. In that they saw the third creative power. The power of love works from generation to generation. The old clairvoyant looked up to three powers, to a creative being who ultimately calls forth the sentient soul, in that it fashions the astral body in man which man had before he became a physical being through conception, the body which man will have when he has passed through the gates of death. This structure of forces—we might rather say—this heavenly structure in man which lasts on when the etheric body and physical body pass away, was at the same time to the old clairvoyants their direct experience proved this—that which could bring all culture and civilisation into human life. Therefore in the producer of the astral body they saw that power which brings in the divine, which itself only consists of the permanent, and by means of which the Eternal rings and resounds into the world. And the old clairvoyants from whom—I say it without fear—the characters in Kalevala have sprung, have represented in Väinemöinen the active, plastic form of that creative power whose results we encounter in the sentient soul which inspires the divine in man, Väinemöinen is the creator of that principle of the human body which endures beyond birth and death, and which brings the divine into the earthly. And we look at the second figure in Kalevala, Ilmarinen; if we go back to the old clairvoyant consciousness, we find that Ilmarinen brings forth everything that is copy or image, in his active moulding of the etheric body, from out of the forces of the earth, and from that which does not belong to the material earth, but to its deeper forces. We see in Ilmarinen the producer of that which fashions and grinds matter. We see in him the forger of the human form. And we see in the Sampo, the human etheric body, forged by Ilmarinen out of the super-sensible world, whereby material matter is pulverised, and can then be tarried on from generation to generation, so that in the powers which are given by the third super-sensible divine being, through the powers of love continued from generation to generation, the human spiritual or consciousness soul works on further in the human physical body. We see this third super-sensible divine power in Lemminkäinen. And thus in the forging of the Sampo we see the profound mysteries of the origin of humanity. We see profound mysteries from the ancient clairvoyant consciousness at the back of Kalevala, and thus we look back into human antiquity of which we have to say; that was not the age when one could have analysed the phenomena of Nature by means of the intellect; everything was primitive; but in the primitive lived the perception of what stands behind the material. Now it was so that when these bodies of man were forged, especially when the etheric body of man—the Sampo, was forged that it had first to be wrought upon for a time; did not at once possess the forces which were prepared for him by the super-sensible powers. Whilst the etheric body was being forged, it had first to grow accustomed to itself inwardly; just as when a machine is being prepared it must first be made ready, them as it were, fully matured, in order to be made use of. In human development—this shown in all evolution—there had always to be an interval between the creation of the principle in question, and the using of it. Thus man's etheric body was fashioned in remote primitive times; then came an episode when this etheric body was being sent down into human nature. Only later did it shine out as the intellectual soul, and man learnt to use his powers as external powers of nature; he brought forth from his own nature the Sampo which had remained concealed. We see symbolically in a wonderful way this secret development in the forging of the Sampo, in the concealment of it, in the inefficiency of the Sampo, in the episode which lies between the forging, and the rediscovery of it. We see the Sampo first sunk into human nature, then brought forth to the external powers of civilisation, which appear first as primitive forces just as they are described in the second part of Kalevala. Thus everything in this great national epic gains a profound significance when we see in it clairvoyant descriptions of the ancient occurrences in human development, of the coming into being of human nature in its various principles. I can assure you that to me who only learnt to understand Kalevala long, long after these facts regarding the development of human nature stood clearly before my soul, it was a wonderful, amazing fact to find again in this epic that which I had been able to represent more or less theoretically in my “Theosophy”, which was written at a time when as yet I knew not a line of Kalevala.

And thus we see how the secrets of mankind appear in that which Väinemöinen gives, he who was the creator of super-sensible inspiration, the history namely, of the fashioning of the etheric body. But there is yet another secret concealed. Now mark, I understand nothing of Finnish, I can only speak from spiritual science. I should be able to express the word “Sampo” only by endeavouring to form a word which could be formed in the following way:—In the animals we see the etheric body so active that it becomes the master-builder of the most varied forms, from the most imperfect to the most perfect. Into the human etheric body was forged something which collected all these animal forms as in a unity, with the one exception only, that over the earth the etheric body, that is the Sampo, is fashioned according to climatic and other conditions, so that this etheric body has the special national character, the special national peculiarities in its forces, so that it forms one nation differently from another. The Sampo is, to every nation that which determines the special form of the etheric body; which so places this special nationality in life that its members have the same appearance as regards that which shines out through them, through life-being, and physical-being. Just as similarity of appearance in the human form is modeled from the etheric, so do the forces of the etheric body lie in the Sampo. Thus in the Sampo we have the symbol of the cohesion of the Finnish people; that which in the depths of human nature has made the Finnish nationality assume a definite form.

But it is so with every national epic. National epics only arise when the culture is still enclosed in the forces of the Sampo, in the forces of the etheric body. As long as the culture depends upon the forces of the Sampo, so long does the nation bear the stamp of this Sampo. Hence this etheric body bears in all culture the national character, the nationality. When, in the course of the process of civilisation was it possible for a breach to occur in this nationality, this national character? It could occur when something entered into the process of civilisation which was not for one man, for one family, for one nation, but for the whole of humanity; which came froth from such depths of human nature, from such fine and intimate depths (and is then incorporated with the process of civilisation) that it influenced all mankind without distinction of nationality, of race, and so on. And that was given when those powers spoke to mankind which do not speak to a nation, but to the whole of humanity; those powers which are so impersonally alluded to even in the national sense, so finely and so delicately at the end of Kalevala, when the Christ is born in Mariata. When He is baptised, Väinemöinen leaves the land, for something has entered which connects the special national character with the universal-human. And here at this point where one of the most significant, most pregnant, most magnificent national epics ends in the description, the wholly impersonal—pardon the paradoxical expression—un-Palestine-like description of the Christ-impulse, then Kalevala becomes very specially significant. Here we are led specially into that which can be perceived when the benefits, the felicity of the Sampo are actively experienced as continuing to work through all human development, and at the same time in co-operation with the Christian idea, the Christian impulse. That is the infinite delicacy at the end of Kalevala, it is also that which explains to us clearly that what preceded this conclusion belongs to pre-Christian times. But as truly as universal humanity will only continue by preserving its individual character, so truly will the individual national civilisations which derive their being from the old clairvoyant conditions of the people, continue to live in the universal human; so truly will everything which is indicated at the end of Kalev as pertaining to the Christ, always be connected, keep up its special results through the endless working referred to in the inspirations of Väinemöinen. For Väinemöinen means something which belongs to that part of the human being which is raised above birth and death, which passes with man through the whole of human development. Thus, such epics as Kalevala represent something to us which is immortal, which can be permeated by the Christian conception, but which will make itself of value as something individual, and will always furnish the proof that the universal-human will continue to live in the many national civilisations just as the white light of the sun breaks up into many colours. And because this universal-human permeates the individual in the being of the national epic, and illuminates every man, therefore the individualities of the nations live so strongly in the spirit of their national epics. Therefore do the men of ancient times appear so vividly before our eyes, who, in their clairvoyance have looked upon the Beings of their own nationality as described in all the epics, and where it is still so wonderfully brought home to us in the conditions which surround humanity in its intimate life and nature as they exist in the Finnish nation; in the representation of that which lies in the depths of the soul, so that it can, as it were, be placed side by side with the latest revelations of spiritual science of the mysteries of humanity. At the same time, such national epics are in their very being a living protest against all materialism, against all derivation of man from merely external forms, material conditions, material beings. Such national epics, especially Kalevala, inform us that man has his origin and primitive state in the spiritual; therefore a renewal, a re-fructification of the old national epics in the most active sense of spiritual culture, can perform immeasurably great service. For as Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy to-day desires above all the renewal of human consciousness in the direction which roots humanity not in matter but in spirit, so an accurate consideration of such an epic as Kalevala shows us that the best which man has, the best that man is, is derived from the spirit-soul world. In this sense it was interesting to me that one of the Runic writings, the “Kantela,” raises a direct protest against interpreting the Kalevala in a materialistic sense. That instrument, that kind of harp, to which the ancient bards sang in olden times, is alluded to in the representation as if it were formed from the material of the physical world; but the ancient Runic writings protested in the sense of spiritual science, one might say, that the stringed instrument for Väinemöinen was not constructed of natural products which are visible to the senses. In reality, say the ancient Runic writings—the instrument upon which men played the melodies which came to him straight from the spiritual world, was derived from the spirit-soul world. In this sense the ancient Runic writings are to be explained in quite an occult sense as an active protest against the interpretation in a material sense, of what man may become; an indication that that which man possesses, that which is his being, and that which is only symbolically expressed in such an instrument as that ascribed to Väinemöinen that such an instrument is derived from spirit, and with it the whole being of man. The old Finnish Folk-Rune which is translated into German as follows, may serve us as a motto for the principles of occult science, and sums up in main outline and colouring what I was desirous of expounding in this lecture on the subject of the national epics.

“They certainly speak falsely and are in error, who believe that Väinemöinen fashioned the Kantela, our beautiful stringed instrument, from the jawbone of the like, and spun the strings from the tail of the Hiisi-horse; it was fashioned from sorrow, trouble bound its parts together, the tears of bitter longing and suffering wove its strings.”

Thus all being is not born of matter, but of spirit and soul; so says this Old Folk-Rune, so also says occult science which is to take its place in the active development of culture in our time.

German translation of Folk-Rune:—

“Falsches sagen die gewisslich and befinden sich in Irrtum die da glauben, Wainemoinen hab gezimmert die Kantele, unsere schönen Saitenspiele, aus den Kinnbacken des Hechtes, and dass Saiten er gesponne aus den Schweif des Hiisi-Rosses; sie ist aber aus der Not gezinmert, Kummer band dann ihre Teile, bittere Schmsuchstränen spannen and die Leiden ihre Saiten.”

An independent way of thinking has a purifying effect on the blood. Clear thoughts purify the lymph. Noble feelings purify the bile. Pure, honest intentions ennoble the streams in senses and nerves.

What we meditate on is less important than how we meditate. The further we get, the greater the danger is that bad spirits will try to make nests in us. There's an occult remedy for this. We must imagine a rod with one black and one white snake wound around it. Of course, it's not enough to just stare at this image, but we shouldn't speculate about it very long either, since that would bring us out of our meditation. When we get further, we, as it were, feel that we're divided up into a variety of beings who worked on us previously, but if we surrender ourselves to this feeling too early, it can become an obstacle. For hostile spirits interfere who want to draw out to them and we get into an illusory world instead of the spiritual one. An effective occult remedy for this is to imagine a black cross with seven red roses. New life springs from the dead cross.

It's better to read a book 25 times than to read 5 books 5 times. When we raise ourselves to the hierarchies we are taken hold of, and this leads to egotism if it's not offset by a love for all beings. If we don't develop courage and selflessness we lose our self when we're taken hold of by even the best higher beings. We can dare to make the leap over the abyss if we're filled and permeated by the Christ principle. Spiritual beings take hold of us and use us to work in the world, just as we use our eyes, etc.

When we think about the moon something contracts and hardens in us. We feel the spirit working in us when we look at the sun. Sunrays are the effects of high spirits' deeds.

We must imagine the higher I and get to the point where this I looks upon our ordinary ego like an object that confronts it.

One who begins to do esoteric exercises shouldn't expect visions to rise before him right away. It may happen, but it's not the usual or desired thing. The normal thing is that the esoteric's world of thoughts and feelings should be harmonized with the spiritual world; after the esoteric feels in harmony with the spiritual world's sea he sees luminescent things rising that form themselves into particular shapes.

But an esoteric may also experience visions right away. This may be the result of a previous life when he may have been an esoteric, or he may have been influenced by a religion's ceremony and cultus. Then his visions are atavistic and very dangerous, since they appear violently and overpower the esoteric, because they arose without his help, as it were. So it's better if they don't appear. Instead the esoteric should pay attention to the changes that take place in his soul life. As we mentioned last time, one of these changes is that the exercises make thoughts so much more powerful and could work on other people so much more that if they're not quite right and pure they're taken away from us by the Guardian of the Threshold and we lose consciousness so that we don't harm others and ourselves with them.

We'll now describe the effects that the exercises have in a somewhat different way. The first thing is that thoughts get looser, that is, whereas previously a particular thought followed a particular percept, and this thought was followed by other thoughts as if by itself—this no longer happens. An esoteric doesn't feel we as sure of himself or as certain of his judgments and thought connections anymore. What made judgments certain was what comes from education, social conditions and one's surroundings, that is, from the angels, archangels and spirits of personality who work in all cultural conditions. A man gradually becomes separate from them; his guiding angel no longer gives him thoughts and judgments as directly and as if unconsciously as before. But if this loosening of thought goes too far in someone, it could get dangerous for him. And so the Guardian of the Threshold intervenes and stops things. A way to prevent this is to acquire an absolute love of truth, so that one doesn't even permit oneself to think what might not be true.

The second thing concerns our feelings and will impulses. An esoteric sees that they change; he sees that he has less control over them than before. Whereas he may have been more careful before, he now senses that will impulses react immediately to things that concern him. This mustn't go too far; otherwise the Guardian of the Threshold will keep us from getting into the spiritual world for our own sakes.

The third thing is that the false sentiments that an esoteric can develop can not only take hold of this soul—they can work into his physical body. When wrong things continue to work unconsciously at the ground of the soul they become much more harmful than when they become manifest in a disease that then cured by physical means. In such a case, the Guardian of the Threshold lets us get a minor disease that we should look upon as a warning about what's working our soul. In a well directed esoteric development this mustn't become a major disease , for otherwise the esoteric would be attacked too much. In ancient times when souls were more robust and only people with a lot of inner strength and courage were accepted as esoteric pupils, these dangers were greater and often became extreme, that is, the loosening of thoughts led to insanity, the non-control of feelings and will impulses led to mad destruction, and the diseases led to death. This is what's described in the story from the Hebraic mysteries that was told to every esoteric as a warning. It's about the four rabbis who tried to get into the Garden of Maturity; the first one went mad, the second destroyed everything in a frenzy, the third died, and only the fourth was let through and went into the spiritual world.

A lot has to become different than it was before for us esoterics. We must begin to feel that we're living in a big ocean of soul-spiritual beings, and we must know that just as we're physically one with the surrounding world through the air that we inhale, so we spirits with souls are embedded in the spiritual world around us. On waking in the morn we inhale the spirit that we ourselves are in a long breath and we exhale it back to the spiritual world again on going to sleep. Everything around us becomes different. When we see sunlight as esoterics we no longer see it just physically—we know that without sunlight we couldn't feel ourselves as an I, that sunlight has ego-creating power in it. And when we look at the moon with its changing form we know that it's connected with the force that enables us to have descendants. The life that goes through the generations is connected with the moon. We can see this everywhere in symbols. We see the sun rise and set. And we see the moon's four changing shapes and encounter them in the symbol with four roses (or stars) that can be a symbol for the sun's ego-power and the moon's reproductive power. But for this we must be able to read so that we're not just staring at things any more. Then we see the messenger in Mercury and we know that our ego is

brought into connection with reproductive forces through its power, that the messenger, occult Mercury, is the connection. And so thinking of the sphere from which we come every morning and at every birth with reverence we can feel EDN resounding in us, and then we know that there's a third sun behind the physical and ego-creating ones, the Christ-force with which we can connect ourselves: ICM—and then we may let the PSSR follow full of hope.