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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 5971 through 5980 of 6552

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232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: Penetration Into The Inner Core Of Nature Through Thinking And Will 25 Nov 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

You may be deeply impressed if you turn again to the Mystery Plays and now, perhaps with greater understanding than before, read the passages about the appearance of the Spirit of Johannes’ Youth.1 It is an indubitable fact that a man’s own inner being can become vividly perceptible to him if with an active effort of will he relives his younger days.
In my own case it was vitally important for me a year or two ago, when I needed to strengthen my powers of spiritual understanding, to re-live a situation of my youth. I was eleven years old at the time and had just been given a new school-book.
In spring it gets longer, in autumn, shorter; it is longest in summer, shortest in winter. During the course of the year the day undergoes metamorphosis. This is caused by a stream running from West to East, countering the East-West stream (diagram).
232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: Man’s Connection With The Earth 30 Nov 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

But in his own being Man shared in the processes undergone by the Earth after its birth out of the Cosmos. In actual fact the same inner connection once existed between the Earth and the neighbouring Cosmos as that between an unborn child with the body of the mother.
Gazing at these beings in process of metamorphosis we should get the impression that the metamorphoses described by classical authors such as Ovid have something to do, though of course not directly, with experience of the communications make by the metals. Ovid was certainly not himself capable of understanding the language of the metals directly, nor indeed does his work Metamorphoses wholly convey the impression one gets, but what he says is derived from this source, and the underlying process is very definitely indicated.
Anyone familiar with the technique of acquiring knowledge is aware of how extraordinarily illuminating the simple words of a peasant engaged on the business of sowing and reaping can be. You will say that he does not understand what he is talking about, but what matters is that you who are listening should understand. Certainly it will be only very rarely that the speaker himself understands what he has said—it is a matter of instinct.
232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: Mineral, Plant And Animal Creation 01 Dec 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

But the Earth has not always been as it is today; it has undergone tremendous changes, and if we go back to the epochs I have just mentioned—perhaps only to the Lemurian epoch or a little earlier—we shall find an Earth very different from that of today.
But I await my redemption, for in time to come my essential being will again pervade the Universe.—When we learn to understand the speech of the metals in this way, gold tells us of the Sun, lead of Saturn, copper of Venus.
This release has been in process of preparation for a long time already. It is only a matter of understanding it and of understanding how the Earth, together with man, will evolve on into the future. 1. pp. 115-37 in the 1962/63 edition.
232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: The Ephesian Mysteries Of Artemis 02 Dec 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

And so it must seem to him that knowledge of the Mysteries of Ephesus will help him to understand the beginning of St. John’s Gospel. Prepared by what we have heard in the last two lectures, let us think of the Mysteries of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus as they were six or seven centuries before the birth of Christianity, or even earlier, and of what was done in this sanctuary that was held to be so holy by the men of that olden time.
It is the Logos, the Word of the World, that resounds in the arising and falling of the chalk. And when man is able to perceive and understand this language, he learns something else besides. What modern anatomy says about a human or an animal skeleton is dreadfully external.
The Fire-Akasha of New Year’s Eve speaks these and many other words very clearly. And it demands of us that we understand the Micrologos in the Microcosmos, so that man may gain understanding for that from which his own being proceeds, for the Macrocosmos through the Macrologos.
232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: The Mysteries Of Hibernia I 07 Dec 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

With the second statue the impression was received that it was entirely under the influence of the Moon-forces which permeate the organism and enable the head to emerge. These experiences made a most profound impression upon the pupils.
On the one hand the enigma itself lay in the fact that he was being compelled to undergo such experiences; and on the other hand there was the enigma of what was contained in the statues themselves, and in the question of his attitude towards them.
Indeed he had reached the point of feeling that he was incapable of conquering it. Because of all the experiences he had undergone, he was inwardly prepared to cling to this image with his whole soul, to live with the Cosmic Power symbolised by it, to surrender himself to it.
232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: The Mysteries Of Hibernia II 08 Dec 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

I described to you how these statues were constructed and also what feelings and inner experiences were undergone by the pupil while contemplating them. You will realise, of course, that the direct impression made by such majestic statues under the conditions I described had an infinitely more powerful inner effect than one received from mere descriptions.
And in this state the second experience he must undergo became clear to him. Born from the need felt by his soul, the realisation that came to him and of which he was intensely conscious, might be clothed in the following words: I bear within me something that my bodily nature demands in ordinary earthly life.
For if Man were not there—as I said, I am simply relating to you the experience inwardly undergone by the pupil during the Hibernian Initiation—if Man were not there, the processes revealed through the consciousness born from the feeling of frozen numbness would be an actual Cosmic Death, and no dream would follow, no Future would arise.
232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: The Great Mysteries of Hibernia 09 Dec 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

In that the pupil was led to intensify and deepen his consciousness of the experiences he had undergone, his soul was strengthened by the vision of pre-earthly and post-earthly life and of the perpetual dying and rebirth of Nature.
But he also learnt to know how the Macrocosm itself evolves, how it arises, undergoes metamorphoses and ultimately passes away. The Hibernian Mysteries were verily the Great Mysteries.
These tidings were accessible to man’s faculty of understanding which was now entirely dependent upon what we know today as the ordinary-level consciousness, based upon reason and the senses.
232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: The Chthonic and the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Transition from Plato to Aristotle 14 Dec 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

But after the various changes which the ancient form of the Earth underwent, the iron alone persisted in such strength and density that man could permeate his being with it.
The third picture, the female form who carried at her breast the Child, the Jacchos Child, had also to be understood; but it was said that what would bring the understanding of this third figure was still to come in the evolution of humanity.
It has not yet been fully understood, neither in the Madonnas of Raphael, nor in the Eastern Ikons. It still awaits understanding. Something of what is necessary to acquire such understanding will be spoken of in the lectures to be given here in the near future.
232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: The Secret Of Plants, Metals And Human Beings 15 Dec 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

In those times it was so that whenever one spoke in an authentic way about Nature, one did not understand by the word what the Natural Science of today understands— namely, the purely earthly phenomena, from which one then goes on to infer in an external manner the phenomena of the Heavens beyond the Earth.
And so in the Mystery teaching about Nature, we find that Nature was thought of as extending far out into the Cosmos, as far indeed as the Cosmos was in any way accessible to man through his relationship with it. Now you must understand that all teaching that was seriously undertaken in those olden times did not make appeal primarily to the intellect or to the faculty of observation.
He knew that he had undergone change during the Moon-existence, and again during the Earth-existence, but that what he attained to in the old Saturn time was his true and original condition.
232. Mystery Knowledge & Mystery Centres: The Mysteries of the Samothracian Kabiri 21 Dec 1923, Dornach
Translated by E. H. Goddard, Dorothy S. Osmond

And then, after what I may call a majestic impulse had been awakened in the pupil of the Mysteries of Northern Greece, in that his gaze was directed out to the planetary spheres—then this insight was deepened within him in such a way that the eye was, so to speak, taken hold of by the heart, so that he might see with the soul. Then the pupil understood why, on the altar facing him, three symbolically formed vessels had been placed. Here in Dornach we once introduced a portrayal of these vessels in a Eurythmy performance of Faust.
Mercury means every metal in so far as it stands under the influence of the whole Cosmos. For what would copper look like if the Cosmos alone, in its periphery, worked upon it?
The other metals—let us say, lead, copper, tin, iron—have progressed beyond the globular form. If the whole Earth were still under the influence of the spherical Cosmos all metals would be mercurial. They have progressed beyond the mercurial form.

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