The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I. Instruction Class, Berlin, April 15, 1908

Based on John, chapter 11.

Easter is not only celebrated at this time because it is the beginning of spring; it has a much deeper significance. In ancient times, the group ego, the tribal ego, lived in people. In the initiated (Moses, Hermes, Buddha, Krishna, Zarathustra), the consciousness of the entire tribe was reflected. When they were initiated, they were out of the physical body with their etheric body and saw the essence of the entire tribe. On their return, they then laid this down in the law that they gave to their people. As a result, they became responsible for the sins committed against this law and had to reincarnate among their people until the people's karma was paid off. This was the case for all initiates before Christ, who received the revelation from within in the initiation sleep. Solomon, who was of the Abel-Seth people, belonged to this type of initiate. With these ancient initiates, the group soul of the people united with their etheric body during the initiation. It also lived in them afterwards. Therefore, they all had to undergo many incarnations.

Those who were not initiates in ancient times and did not belong to a people who received the revelations through such initiates - who lived scattered, who had to gather knowledge even from the physical world, were the Cain sons. One such was Hiram Abiff, who had gathered knowledge through life in the physical body and elevated it to wisdom. He expressed his wisdom in the building of temples. It was not the God within who revealed the wisdom to him, as it did to the descendants of the Abel-Seth sons, but it was the knowledge gained in physical existence. The Abel-Seth initiates were under the influence of Jehovah. In the twilight of their consciousness they were given the higher knowledge under the influence of the moon deity (Yahweh).

At that time, Hiram Abiff reached the limit of initiation. But he was only initiated later. For this, the spiritual sun had to come down to earth. This descended into the physical plane in the Christ. Only He could initiate Hiram Abiff. The clear [spiritual] Sun had to shine upon him at the initiation. He was Lazarus, who after the resurrection was called John. He was initiated by the Christ Jesus. That which Hiram Abiff had acquired through his life in the physical had to remain. Not the life of the group, but each individual incarnation should now become important. Every single incarnation was to add a leaf to the Book of Life, a leaf whose content was taken over into the spiritual, something that remained, that could no longer pass away, but was to remain until all future times. This is what Hiram Abiff represents.

Emphasis is placed not on an inner experience, in which the tribal nature is manifested, but on the one incarnation that has significance for all of the future.

Before this initiation of Hiram Abiff by Christ Jesus could take place, the spiritual sun, the sun, had to appear in spring and the old principle had to recede. The sun had to shine first with its light on the full moon, only then could the day of resurrection take place. Christ brought the new principle in place of the old Jehovah principle, that is why the Pharisees hated him, the representatives of the old principle. And when they realized that He represented this new teaching and brought the new initiation, they sought to kill Him after the resurrection of Lazarus. (“This man performs many signs and wonders.”)

In Christ Jesus, the soul of all mankind united with the Jesus bodies. The Christ was only once incarnated in the flesh. He will come again, but no longer in the flesh, only when humanity will recognize him in his etheric body.¹

Note: The folk spirit that united with Moses at the initiation and then lived in him was Michael.

II. Instruction lesson Berlin, April 15, 1908 (notes from another hand)

1. The resurrection of Lazarus

2. Why did the Pharisees want to seize and kill Christ afterwards?

3. Why does Easter fall on the first Sunday after the moon has become full after the spring equinox, March 21?

The resurrection of Lazarus is a kind of climax of the Gospel of John. It is an initiation, the course of which is told here - but a very special, very unique initiation. The initiations that had been carried out in the depths of the mystery centers in the pre-Christian era were of a completely different nature. In these pre-Christian times there were great, high initiates and also lesser ones. The greatest initiates: Moses, Hermes, Zoroaster – also Buddha and Krishna, who were also the lawgivers of their people, had undergone their initiation in such a way that the etheric body was taken out of the physical body for a period of three and a half days, and during this time the person to be initiated experienced the spiritual worlds in his etheric body.

In the past, the common bond of love was based on shared blood: People who belonged to the same tribe loved each other. The I of the tribe went through many generations; the individual human being had no validity. Everyone looked up to the patriarch - the Jew, for example, to his patriarch Abraham. One felt that one belonged to him as a Jew, one said: I am nothing - I and Father Abraham are one. This sense of belonging went from the individual member of the tribe to the patriarch like a ray of light. The initiate saw this ray of light, he saw the whole nation as embedded in its spiritual essence, which was expressed in the peculiarities of the nation and emanated from the patriarch. He saw all this clearly before him as he lay in the sleep of death. Yes, even more: the group soul of his people entered into him. He was now the group soul of the people. Thus, during his initiation, Moses was united with Michael. The laws that such an initiate then gave to his people were born out of the soul of the people themselves. And in formulating them, in setting them forth, the initiate became responsible for them. He had to incarnate again and again within his people. And the sins of his people against the law were his sins. He was karmically linked to them. The sins of the people lay on his karma. These great initiates who took this on were fully aware of this.

All these ancient initiates belonged to the Abel-Seth line. That is to say, they received enlightenment from above. The enlightenment came to them from the lunar forces. It was the forces of Yahweh that they received. And they received them not in the bright light of the sun, but in the darkness. Their etheric body received these Yahweh forces from the spiritual world, while the physical body lay as if in a sleep of death.

This was now to change. The people of the Cain current, those who had worked their way up from below through the work of their hands, had come so far that they could elevate the science they had gained for themselves to wisdom, that is, they could be initiated. The physical body had imprinted its impressions on their etheric bodies. Through their own labor they had purified, ennobled, spiritualized their physical bodies and their souls. These children of Cain were scattered throughout the world, and Hiram Abiff is named as the first of these scattered children of Cain in the world who had worked his way up so far. Hiram Abiff, the lonely hermit, stood before initiation. In his next incarnation he received it. Then he was called “Lazarus” - for in his previous incarnation, Lazarus was Hiram Abiff.

And this initiation of Lazarus was different from all previous ones. Until then, the initiates had received the lunar-Yahweh forces, that is, the forces concerning the mystery of birth and procreation, and each had received the forces of the people to which he belonged. But now the lunar force was no longer to be effective. Now the time had come when the all-embracing power of the sun, the Christ power, which is the power of all humanity, was to be bestowed upon humanity. This power of all humanity was to initiate Lazarus. The lunar forces were to be defeated by the more comprehensive solar power, which shines for all people. No longer should only blood count, flowing through the tribe, the people. From now on, only that which each individual human being works for in his soul should count. Every single human being within his incarnation should from now on have value, the individual incarnation should be consecrated to the striving for sanctification, spiritualization, no matter what name a person is called. This is the deepest idea of Christianity.

From now on, each incarnation should be like a leaf on which the eternal values of the struggling, striving human soul can be recorded. And at the end of such an incarnation, such a leaf should be placed in the Book of Eternity, which should contain ever greater values, ever deeper meanings, ever greater enrichments for each individual human being. These are the fruits of life that each individual human being should work for in his or her individuality, alone in constant striving. And then he should deposit these fruits of life in the bosom of all humanity, so that they can be integrated into the progress of all humanity.

The Christ is the great divine individuality who once appeared on earth in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth, and once lived an incarnation that all striving, seeking human souls can look to as the great model and ideal for their individual striving. The Christ appeared in the flesh only once! But he will appear on earth again! He will reappear in a spiritual body, and those people who, through the striving of their souls, have spiritualized themselves to such an extent, will recognize him in his spiritual body and will be able to live with him.

This Christ, the high sun spirit, initiated Lazarus, the reincarnated Hiram-Abiff.

This meant, however, a radical break with the previous initiation principle. This was fully recognized by the Pharisees, who were also initiates, and this filled them with fear and terror. They recognized what was going on, but they also saw that from now on, if this new principle were to prevail, their own power would be over. From that time forth, they sought to destroy the bearer of the new principle of initiation, and it is they who finally made it possible for the Christ to be led to his death.

It is said of Lazarus that he was the disciple whom the Lord loved. And later it is said that John was the one who rested on the Lord's breast. There is a profound secret of soul development hidden behind these two statements, which we find in the Gospel of John.

Now we also understand why Easter falls at the time of each year when the young spring sun looks the moon full at the spring equinox in the face. She is said to be victorious over the lunar forces. Christ, the Sun-God, conquers the Moon-God! Therefore, in spring, when the sun has regained its full strength, the moon must look the sun full in the face before it is conquered by it. Thus Easter is a festival that reminds us that the human soul rises from the sleep of death within matter, looking up to the Christ-Sun, living in its light, striving in its love, can receive the new life, the resurrection life.

III. Instruction lesson without place or date given with the heading “The mission of man on earth”

When a person begins to ask himself who he actually is, how he can feel this way inside, it must gradually become clear to him that he feels like an ego-entity, and that everything he experiences in terms of joys and pains, everything that drives him to act, is grouped around this center and receives its true impulse from there. Separated from other beings, different from them, is the human being in his sense of self; and yet it is only through this sense of self that it is possible for him to consciously connect with his environment. With regard to the physical body, which visibly, perceptibly represents to the outside world what the human being feels inside as being on one's own, as if he were a being separated from the environment, it becomes clear to him that the heart is the actual center. The heart animates the other organs, in that the invigorating blood is sent from there to the smallest parts of the physical body.

Just as the I is the inner center from which all impulses for the revelation of the human being flow out into the environment, and to which all sensations from the outside world return, being absorbed and processed there, so the invigorating blood flows from the heart through the whole body and then returns to this center. The heart represents an expression of the I-effectiveness in the physical body.

There are two kinds of activity in both the human ego and the physical heart: outward sending and inward receiving and reworking. Just as the returning blue blood is transformed back into red living blood with the help of the breathing process through the lungs, so the experiences that the human ego absorbs from the environment must pass through the feelings and sensations of the astral body and thereby become stimuli for new activity. The human heart accomplishes its effect according to a certain tempo; a short while, a period of time, passes between the successive heartbeats. Thus, the human ego also needs a certain period of time between the arising of the impulse to act and the processing of the sensations, which thereby react from the outside world onto the ego. This tempo will be different for each person, depending on their individual disposition and level of development.

But if a person wants to gradually penetrate to the knowledge of their own being, they must try to understand their own appropriate tempo, listen to their own heartbeat and get to know the inner life of their being. He must be able to see his own being as if it did not belong to him. He must learn to observe it as something external to him, and only then can he gradually descend into it. Just as he previously sent his impulses out into the world around him, he will then transform his powers and turn them inwards instead of outwards. In this way, the inner world becomes the outer world for him.

What man finds when descending into his own interior, first into his three bodily sheaths, is beautifully described in the legend of the temple handed down to mankind from ancient times, in which is symbolically laid the whole course of the evolution of the earth in relation to the building of the temple of the human body - and the evolution of the human ego.

It is told how the great master builder Hiram Abiff wanted to enter the temple once more to see his work. When he wanted to leave the temple again, the first of the three treacherous journeymen met him at the first gate and struck him on the left temple so that the blood flowed down onto his shoulder. Then the Master turned to the other gate, where the second of the treacherous companions struck him and gave him a blow to the right temple, so that the blood flowed down. Then the Master turned to the last of the gates, where the third of the treacherous companions struck him with a blow to the forehead, so that the Master fell dead to the ground.

When the human ego descends into its three sheaths, it first encounters the astral body. It senses this astral body as it truly is. As if by a blow, the ego becomes aware and recognizes itself in this astral sheath. It encounters doubt in everything and in itself. Through this, it is attacked. This is the first of the treacherous companions.

Next, the person then encounters his etheric body, into which he descends. And again he comes to know himself as he is in this body, as if it is suddenly brought to his attention. Then superstition confronts him: all beliefs, all opinions that have been acquired through education. This is the second of the treacherous companions.

Then the person descends into his physical body and gets to know the illusion of the personal self. This is the third of the treacherous companions. When he encounters this, the possibility of feeling himself in his own self as separate from the outside world or his environment is taken away from him in one fell swoop. He learns to recognize appearance and truth, and he steps out of his narrow limitation. No longer enclosed by the three sheaths, the human being steps freely out of himself into the environment and recognizes himself as a microcosm in the macrocosm.

When man is symbolically represented as the pentagram, he must be regarded as encompassing the three lower kingdoms on earth. The mineral kingdom has only the physical body on earth, and can be indicated symbolically by a single line. The plant kingdom has in addition a second principle, the etheric body, and this must therefore be indicated by two lines touching one another. The animal kingdom has a third principle, the astral body. This can be indicated by three lines: (X with line connecting the upper edges) p 414

The etheric body contains the principle of growth. In the plant form, leaf would always appear after leaf if it were not for the astral body coming from above, which causes the flower to emerge. The etheric principle, which in plants would cause continuous growth, is partially transformed in animals, so that it exercises its powers more internally as a receiver of the astral body. The straight line of the etheric is closed and bent by a new line, which symbolically represents the astral principle, and this new line then bends the physical principle again on the other side. Hence the physical form, which in plants represents a vertical line, is bent and has become horizontal in animals. The animal can therefore be symbolically indicated with the three lines; in man, the I is added to the three principles. This I can be symbolically represented as a point above the three lines X, which pours its power into the etheric body and the physical body through two lines that pass through the astral, acting on the one hand through light and on the other through warmth. Through this influence of the I, the human form is raised to an upright line again, and so the symbol of the pentagram arises.

If man is the pentagram himself and lives entirely within it, he will not be able to see himself as such. He will only be able to consciously survey that part of his being that is below his ego, that which he has outgrown. These are the three lines that represent the symbol for the animal. That is why man only sees that part of his physical body that is below the shoulders from the front.

But if he really wants to know himself as an ego, then he must step out of himself, so that he also gets to know the upper part of the pentagram. He must create for himself a new center of perception, which lies outside the pentagram; he must be able to take a superhuman standpoint, which lies outside the ego and yet is a center of consciousness.

The Temple Legend tells how the Master received the first blow on the left temple, the second blow on the right temple, so that the blood ran down upon the shoulder, and the third blow on the forehead. Then physical death sets in. This indicates the upper part of the pentagram. With physical death, the human being steps out of his personal self and experiences himself in the macrocosm. The Temple Legend tells us how the Master's body was buried by the three companions, how the Master himself, reborn in the cosmos, experienced the developmental states of the earth as the old moon, as the sun with the seven planets and as Saturn with the twelve signs of the zodiac. When man has emerged from his three shells and experiences himself in the cosmos, as if newly born, the first thing he feels is the essence of the great mother, the earth mother, from whom he has grown out. He experiences earlier developmental states in which he was more dependent and intimately connected to the earth. He experiences this as the moon state, sun state and Saturn state.

What the great master builder Hiram Abiff could not experience at that time, because – as the temple legend says – he lived before the Christ event on earth, was the light and warmth of the Christ-being in the earth aura. For this being had not yet connected with the earth at that time. It could be seen in the sun, as Zarathustra had once seen it as Ahura Mazdao, the great aura, as the cosmic heart, when it was revealed to him that this sun being would one day live on earth in a human body. His great mission became clear to him, to work through many incarnations and in various ways to prepare such a human body that was capable of carrying the spirit of the sun within itself. He should tune his own individual pace of his ego so that it was in harmony with this higher ego of humanity. The sound and rhythm of his heartbeat should coincide with the sound and rhythm of the great cosmic heart, only then could the sublime sun being live in a human body.

When the great Master Builder, Hiram Abiff, lived on earth, this mighty fact had not yet been accomplished. But the individuality of Hiram Abiff lived on and was reborn on earth at the time when the Christ-being, the great Sun Spirit, lived in Jesus of Nazareth. Once the great master builder, Hiram Abiff, was led to his ancestor in order to receive the new hammer with which he was to continue his work. He was led to him through the fire. At that time, the human ego had to rise through the blood of the generations to the ancestors in order to attain higher wisdom. But now that the great spirit of the Sun had descended to Earth and lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ Jesus Himself placed the seed of the new life in the heart of the reborn Hiram Abiff. Through Him, he was raised to spiritual life; he was born again in the disciple whom the Lord loved. The human ego was quickened by the divine ego and raised to a higher existence. Thereafter this disciple could become the writer of the Gospel which has as its starting point the human and the divine ego. And it was revealed to him how the development of this human ego through the post-Atlantean cultural periods extended into the future, until the end of the days on earth, as he portrayed it in the Apocalypse. And in his Gospel it is said how Christ Jesus, with his last words from the cross, handed this disciple over to his mother, who was not his natural mother. As a son he gives the human ego to the Earth Mother, after he has quickened it with his powers, so that she may guard and care for it. As mother, He gives the Earth to this I, so that the son may give his powers to the mother. The human I shall redeem the Earth, uplift it with its powers into spiritual regions, with the full consciousness that without this Earth it could not develop into what it is and is to become.

With the event at Golgotha, when the blood flowed from the wounds of the great redeemer, when the cosmic heart's blood permeated the earth and its powers poured into the center, the earth became radiant, radiating light out into its surroundings from within. Then the possibility was also given for every human individuality to experience this light within itself. When the Earth became the body of the great Sun Spirit by permeating it with his spiritual powers, all beings on Earth were also endowed with these powers. The seed for the reunification of the Sun and the Earth had been sown. The physical body of Jesus of Nazareth was the mediator through which the cosmic powers united with the Earth aura. And when the blood flowed from this body on Golgotha, the Earth was again absorbed into the power of the Sun. Since then, this Christ power radiates from its center into the surrounding area, and from the Sun the Christ power radiates into the Earth. Man can experience this power and this light in himself as an earthly human being when he recognizes himself as a part of the earth, which, as the physical body of Christ, is permeated by His Being. Then the white light shines from within him, as it radiates from the center of the earth.

A person can also experience the power and light of Christ as it radiates from the outside and permeates him with higher life. Then it surrounds and permeates him, just as it passes through the earth, radiating from the sun. Then the human being feels united in spirit with this solar power; he feels himself growing together with the great cosmic heart from the depth of his heart. As a higher being, living in this spiritual sun, he recognizes his true self, as connected to it as he, as an earthly human being, is connected to the earth itself. And just as the sun's forces permeate and give life to the earth, so this higher being permeates and lives through the earthly human being with his powers.

In the temple of the human body there is a holiest of the holy. Many people live in the temple without knowing it. But those who have an inkling of it receive the strength to purify themselves to such an extent that they may enter this Holy of Holies. There is the sacred vessel, which has been prepared throughout the ages so that when the time came, it could be capable of containing the blood of Christ, the Christ-life. When man has entered, he has also found the way to the Holy of Holies in the great temple of the earth. There are many on earth who live without knowing it, but when man has found himself in his innermost sanctuary, he will also be allowed to enter there and find the Holy Grail. The vessel will at first appear to him as if it were cut out of wonderfully sparkling crystals, forming symbols and letters, until he gradually senses the sacred contents, so that it shines for him in a golden splendor. A human being enters the sanctuary of his own heart, then a divine being emerges from this sanctuary and unites with the God outside, with the Christ-being. He lives in the spiritual light that radiates into the vessel and thereby sanctifies it.

Because man lives as a twofold being, he can pour the spiritual power of the sun into the earth and be a connecting link between the sun and the earth. Just as from the center of life, the heart, the invigorating blood flows and pours through the entire physical organism into the bone system, which - as an external solidification and congealing in the organism - can be seen as the opposite of the living, ever active heart, so each human individuality must become a channel for the blood flowing from the cosmic center of life, permeating the solidified earth with life. The earth can be thought of as a cosmic skeletal system. It would be completely ossified and dried up if the cosmic heart had not poured out its life blood through a human body, thereby reviving it anew.

Once upon a time, the great spirit of the sun lived in a human body as an example for humanity, and every human being is meant to follow suit. Through Him the possibility for this has been given. To be imbued with the Christ-spirit, to know oneself as a center, to live in this spirit, through which spiritual light, spiritual power and spiritual warmth can stream into the earth, that is the mission of the individual human being and of all humanity, for in this way will they be able to redeem the earth and uplift it to spiritual regions.

IV Authentic information handed down.

Lazarus, the favorite disciple of Jesus Christ, who later became the author of the Gospel of John, is the re-embodied Hiram Abiff.

Adam-Eva -> Cain

Abel Seth -> Lamech, Hiram Abiff

Solomon -> Lazarus-John.¹

The individuality, which had been re-embodied as Hiram Abiff and Lazarus-Johannes, was initiated anew in its embodiments in the 13th and 14th centuries and has since borne the name Christian Rosenkreutz. ²

From the instruction session in Berlin, February 10, 1913 for the 3rd

The legend, the seven-step ladder ² And each of us should keep these things in mind during the day. Then, as a consequence, if the things we do here are done right, we will feel that the right forces are flowing in.

During the night, the human being can then come close to Hiram Abiff or Adoniram, Lazarus, who was initiated by the Lord Himself. Meditation is given for this purpose: “I am not only in the world for myself, but to become similar to my archetype.

This striving is a duty, not selfishness. These things are given in the first scenes of “Examination of the Soul” and “The Guardian of the Threshold”, as in the three dramas in general, much, much meditation material is given.

You should not forget that the spiritual powers are counting on you in the leadership of mankind.

Every person is a citizen of the spiritual world, but you should be aware of it! At night, you are always in a spiritual world, interacting with beings and judging. This can suddenly come to a person's awareness when waking up or at other times during the day: “I have to educate myself to become a revealer of the divine archetype within me.”

Meditate on death; this is a very important matter.

• 1. See the detailed descriptions in the volume 'The Event of the Appearance of the Christ in the Ethereal World', CW 118.
• 1. Record by Rudolf Steiner for Helene Röchling as a supplement to the temple legend.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner's message conveyed by Marie Steiner in the context of the Knowledge Cult; see the appendix to this section on page 423ff.
• 2. The so-called Jacob's ladder. Schauberg (“Comparative Handbook of the Symbolism of Freemasonry...”) II. Band S. 402f.): “The Persian symbol of the entrance of the soul of the deceased into heaven through the seven planetary spheres is said to have been a staircase or ladder leading to seven different doors. (...) According to Origen, the Egyptians used a similar symbol to represent the descent of heavenly souls in the Milky Way through the seven planetary spheres, namely a ladder that reached from heaven to earth and was divided into seven steps, each with a gate. (...) The ladder that Jacob saw in the famous dream and that also reached from earth to heaven was probably this Egyptian ladder that led the souls of men from heaven to earth and from there back to heaven again, which thus had not just three steps, as is generally the case. 2

by Hella Wiesberger

The information contained in the section 'Notes on the Temple Legend' about the re-embodiments of Hiram Abiff as Lazarus-Johannes and as Christian Rosenkreutz needs to be supplemented, since it only forms part of what can be called Rudolf Steiner's research on Hiram and Johannes in the field of reincarnation. For it is not only concerned with the individuality of Lazarus-Johannes, the evangelist and apocalypticist, but also with that of John the Baptist, as well as the mysterious connection between the two.

These reincarnation research findings, which encompass both John figures equally, occupy a prominent position in the biography of his work because they stand at the beginning and end of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual scientific lecturing activity and also run like a “red thread” through his entire work (Marie Steiner).

The first of these research results can be found at the beginning of Steiner's spiritual scientific lectures (1901/02) in connection with the threefold approach to justifying Christianity as a mystical fact and as the central event of human history: the lecture cycle “From Buddha to Christ” in the Berlin literary avant-garde circle “Die Kommenden”; the lecture series on Egyptian and Greek mystery religions and Christianity in the circle of Berlin theosophists; and the essay “Christianity as Mystical Fact”. All three presentations culminated in the interpretation of the Gospel of John, beginning with the raising of Lazarus as an initiation performed by Christ Jesus and in the conclusion that the raised Lazarus was the author of the Gospel of John. The cycle 'From Buddha to Christ', of which there are no transcripts, ended, according to Rudolf Steiner's statement in his lecture Dornach, June 11, 1923, with this motif; in the transcripts of the lecture series to the Theosophists, it is found under the date of March 15, 1902. In the writing 'Christianity as a Mystical Fact' does not state directly that Lazarus is the author of the Gospel of John, but it follows from the whole presentation.¹

Immediately after the attempt to justify Christianity, Rudolf Steiner also began to introduce the teachings of reincarnation and karma into European intellectual life, since all spiritual scientific research is based on them. ² This applies particularly to those on history; after all, history is brought about by the re-embodied human souls, in that they carry over the results of their lives in one epoch into their lives in other epochs. And because this also applies to the spiritual guides of humanity, an essential chapter is devoted to their impulses in the various ages in the wide-ranging subject of history and reincarnation. The two John figures are given a great deal of space in it.

The first communications from earlier lives on earth of these two Christian leaders were made by Rudolf Steiner in 1904, beginning with John the Baptist. In the public lecture on Christianity and Reincarnation held in Berlin on January 4, 1904, it is stated that reincarnation was taught in the mysteries at all times, including by Christ, who, as it is already stated in the Gospel, pointed out to his trusted disciples that John the Baptist was the reincarnated prophet Elijah. Further messages followed at the turn of the year 1908/09. The background to this is described by Marie Steiner in an essay written after Rudolf Steiner's death:

"It was at the time when Rudolf Steiner encouraged me to come forward more and more with the recitation. At the time, I was trying to work my way through to Novalis. I told him that it was not easy for me, that I had not yet found the key to Novalis. He advised me to put myself in the place of the holy nuns. The nuns did not help me. On the contrary. I didn't really know what to do with them. Then suddenly it brightened up: Raphael's figures surrounded me. The child, with his deep, profound eyes, shone in his mother's arms. “I see you in a thousand images, Maria, sweetly expressed...” A resounding ocean all around, harmonies of color. I said to Rudolf Steiner: The nuns did not do it. But someone else helped: Raphael. Now Novalis is completely transparent to me. A glow passed over Rudolf Steiner's mild countenance. A few days later, he revealed the secret of Novalis, Raphael and John Elias to us for the first time.3 From “On the Eve of Michaelmas Day” in “What is happening in the Anthroposophical Society. News for its members”, 2nd year 1925.

This “a few days later” cannot be dated exactly.⁴ The first fixed date is handed down through the recollections of a Novalis event that took place in Munich on January 6, 1909, and which is described as follows: “I saw and heard Marie von Sivers for the first time under the Christmas tree in the Munich branch's room, when she, surrounded by colorful afterimages of Raphael's paintings, recited verses by Novalis. It was around New Year 1908/09. The whole room was lined with rose-red satin, a rose cross – at that time still with twelve red roses – hung in the middle above the lectern, from where we have just heard through Rudolf Steiner about the being that was incarnated as Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis.” ⁵

It must therefore have been a very solemn event. The same applies to a half-year later event, when, in the middle of the lecture cycle on the Gospel of John in relation to the three other Gospels, a Novalis matinee took place again in Kassel (Kassel, July 4, 1909). Again, we have only the later written memory of a participant: “After a musical introduction, Rudolf Steiner announced that Marie von Sivers would recite some poems by Novalis. With deep empathy, Marie von Sivers spoke in the speech formation that was already her own. After that, Rudolf Steiner began his lecture, in which he presented the incarnations of Elijah-John the Baptist-Raphael-Novalis as a sequence of lives of the same individuality. ... Rudolf Steiner spoke in accordance with the mood of this recitation, in an extremely warm, insistent, even solemn manner. The lecture had an almost sacred character. ... And so at the end of the lecture - the only subject of which was this series of re-embodiments - there was a deep sense of emotion among the audience and many a eye shimmered with restrained tears among the men and welling tears among the women.6From Rudolf Toepel's memoirs for the Rudolf Steiner estate administration archive.

The fact that the process of re-embodiment is not as simple as one might imagine has already been pointed out:

"People, even theosophists, usually have far too simple a mental image of the secrets of reincarnation. One must not imagine that any soul that is embodied today in its three bodies simply embodied itself in a previous incarnation and then again in a previous incarnation, which was then preceded by another one, always according to the same pattern. The secrets are much more complicated. (...) We often cannot fit a historical figure into such a scheme if we want to understand them correctly. We have to approach it in a much more complicated way.” (Leipzig, September 12, 1908)

This was, so to speak, the announcement of what was then begun at the end of 1908 as a higher chapter of the doctrine of re-embodiment. Using concrete examples of historical figures, it was shown how, due to the law of spiritual economy for the preservation of what is valuable in spiritual terms, not only the human ego but also other aspects of the being can be re-embodied, and in other individualities. The descriptions of such interpenetrating embodiments in great spiritual teachers, the highest of whom are the so-called bodhisattvas, were one of the main themes of the years 1909 to 1914.⁷

Among the figures presented in this way, John the Baptist appears again and again. In particular, in the lecture cycle “The Gospel of Mark” (September 1912), not only is he given a great deal of space, but there is also a reference to an incarnation that predates the time of Elijah. Since then, five incarnations in spiritual history have been recognized: Phinehas (in the time of Moses), Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis. It is therefore all the more surprising that in the lectures on the “Fifth Gospel” (1913/14), delivered a year later, the following remark is made with reference to John the Baptist: “I am not saying this now from the Fifth Gospel” - by which he meant the results of the Akasha research on the figures of the Gospels - ‘because, with regard to the Fifth Gospel, it has not yet reached the figure of John the Baptist; but I am saying it from what might otherwise arise.’ (Berlin, January 13, 1914). In view of the amount of research that had already been done on John the Baptist, this remark can only refer to the research into the interpenetration of the embodied beings, as it had already been researched and presented for other figures in the Gospels. The reason why this research on John the Baptist could only be carried out years later is explained by the tradition that Rudolf Steiner was once asked during the war of 1914-1918 whether the reflections on the Fifth Gospel could not be continued and that he replied that the spiritual atmosphere was much too unsettled for such research as a result of the war; and when the question was repeated after the war, the answer was that other tasks were now more urgent.⁸The fact that a possibility must have arisen later is shown by Rudolf Steiner's last address, given on September 28, 1924.

Five incarnations of spiritual-historical significance had also been communicated over the years, also starting in 1904, by the other John figure, Lazarus John: Hiram Abiff, Lazarus John, Christian Rosenkreutz in the 13th and 14th centuries, and the Count of St. Germain in the 18th century. ⁹ In the Berlin lecture of November 4, 1904, it was stated that the Count of St. Germain was a re-embodiment of Christian Rosenkreutz, and the connection of this incarnation with Hiram Abiff is evident from the general tenor of the entire lecture, even if it is not explicitly stated. The reincarnation of Hiram as Lazarus-Johannes was probably first mentioned in the context of the work of the Erkenntnis cult in the time of Austria in 1908; in the two lectures of September 27 and 28, 1911, in Neuchâtel, the two incarnations of Christian Rosenkreutz in the 13th and 14th centuries were described. It is not possible to say exactly when the connection between the incarnations of Lazarus and Johannes and Christian Rosenkreutz was first mentioned, because it was passed on orally without a precise date.¹⁰

Even before Lazarus was spoken of as the reincarnation of Hiram Abiff in the Erkenntniskultischer working group at Easter 1908, the Lazarus-Johannes research had been documented in a special way by the initiation experiences of Lazarus-Johannes from his apocalypse being designed into images of occult seals and columns for the Munich Whitsun Congress in 1907, which at the same time formed the basic elements of the new building idea. Furthermore, it was manifested in word and picture that the path of schooling that is decisive for the West is the Christian-Rosicrucian one founded by Christian Rosenkreutz.¹¹

The extent to which the individuality of John the Baptist can also be seen in connection with the building idea can be seen from the following events. When the laying of the foundation stone for the building originally planned in Munich was scheduled for May 16, 1912, Rudolf Steiner spoke again and repeatedly on his journey there about the already known four incarnations: Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis; last in Munich, on the same day that the laying of the foundation stone should have taken place there. Due to difficulties caused by the authorities, the laying of the foundation stone did not take place. However, in the summer, the artistic-dramatic realization of the idea behind the building - to create a modern, and that means public, mystery center - was embodied in the first great scene of the new mystery drama “The Guardian of the Threshold”. This scene takes place in the anteroom to the rooms of a mystery society, where several people have been summoned to be informed that a major scientific work that has just been published has created the necessary condition for people who were previously not allowed to do so because they had not been initiated to now be able to appear at the place of initiation. The Grand Master of the Mystical Union explains this in a speech about the continuity of the spiritual leadership of humanity, which is given according to a stage direction by Rudolf Steiner in front of the four portraits of Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis, and begins with the words:

In the name of that spirit which

---

in our place of worship, we appear at this moment before people who have not yet been allowed to hear the word that sounds here mysteriously...

And when, eight years later, in the fall of 1920, the building that had since been erected on the Dornach hill near Basel was put into operation, Rudolf Steiner reworked this same speech for the first building event in the first person, which appears extremely rarely in his poetry, and had Marie Steiner read it into the two domed rooms from the organ gallery at the festive opening ceremony:

In the name of that spirit which

---

in our striving proclaims itself,

---

I appear at this moment

---

before people who from now on want to hear

---

the word that sounds so earnestly here for the souls...

Through texts taken from the “Chymischen Hochzeit Christiani Rosenkreutz anno 145% the other Johannes individuality, Lazarus-Johannes, was also included in this first building event.

Then, with the end of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual scientific lectures in September 1924, exactly four years after the first building event (in September 1920), the importance of the research on John was once again forcefully expressed. For when, on Sunday, September 28, 1924, on the eve of Michaelmas, he struggled to his feet, already seriously ill, to speak once more to the members present, what was his concern? The two Johannes individualities! In a deeply moving way, he spoke about the four incarnations of Elias, Johannes, Raffael, Novalis, in order to then actually lead up to the new result of the Johannes research: the mysterious connection between the two in the resurrection of Lazarus. However, his strength was no longer sufficient to present this new research result. It was only hinted at by not always mentioning John the Baptist, but Lazarus-John as the re-embodied Elijah. However, because it could not be further explained, an understanding difficulty arose for the audience. Some friends who were still able to ask him about it have handed down what he replied as follows:

In answer to the further question of how this connection between two individualities is to be understood in terms of further incarnations, Marie Steiner pointed out:

Thus Rudolf Steiner's Hiram-Johannes research, with the mystery of the connection between the two Johannes individualities, as hinted at in the last address, has become a spiritual legacy that calls for constant efforts to understand it, not least because the question of the two Johanneses is one whose solution is of particular importance for the future. This is a statement by Rudolf Steiner from the very last period of his life.¹⁵

Now, a fully valid answer to the question raised by Marie Steiner regarding the distinction between the secrets of incarnation and incorporation will have to be left to future spiritual research. However, the available research results can shed some light on the question of what meaning must be associated with the secret of the interpenetration of the two John individualities. Thus, if one brings together the descriptions that Rudolf Steiner gave in different contexts, it can be seen that a decisive part of this meaning must lie in the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha as “the conquest of earthly death through the life of the spirit” (Berlin, October 23, 1908). What this means can be seen from the following fundamental clarification of the relationship between individuality and personality:

"Today, it is easy to confuse the concepts of individuality and personality. Individuality is the eternal element that runs through life on earth from one incarnation to the next. Personality is what a person acquires in the course of one lifetime. If we wish to study individuality, we must look into the depths of the human soul; if we wish to study personality, we must see how the essential core lives. The essential core is born into the people, into the occupation. All this determines the inner being, depersonalizes it. In a person who is still at a lower level of development, little will be seen of the work on his inner being. The way he speaks, the way he gestures, and so on, is simply as his people have it. But those are the advanced people who give themselves the way of speaking and gesturing from their inner being. The more a person's inner being can work on his outer being, the more he develops as a human being. One could now say that this is how individuality is expressed in personality. The one who has his own gestures, his own physiognomy, even in his actions and in relation to his surroundings, has a distinct personality. Does all this get lost at death for later? No, it is not. Christianity knows very well that this is not the case. What is meant by the resurrection of the flesh or of the personality is nothing other than the preservation of the personal into all subsequent incarnations. What a person has achieved as a personality remains with him, because it is incorporated into the individuality and this carries it forward into the following incarnations. If we have done something with our body that has a unique character, then this body, this power that has worked, rises again. As much as we have worked on ourselves, as much as we have made of ourselves, is not lost on us.” (Berlin, March 15, 1906)

The real consciousness of immortality is thus connected with the depersonalization of the individuality, the higher spiritual faculties of man. And the fact that this process also means the permeation of man with Christ is indicated by the following brief commentary on a passage from the so-called Gospel of the Egyptians:

“There is an old writing in which the greatest ideal for the development of the ego, Christ Jesus, is characterized in such a way that it says: When the two become one, when the outer becomes like the inner, then man has attained Christ-likeness within himself. That is the meaning of a certain passage in the Egyptian Gospel.” (Munich, December 4, 1909)

The interpretation that Rudolf Steiner gives of the Provençal saga of Flor and Blancheflor in his lecture Berlin, May 6, 1909, shows even more clearly what is meant by the union of the inner and the outer, of individuality and personality. This saga - which is closely related to the Hiram Johannes research because it is said that the soul celebrated in Flor reappeared in the 13th and 14th centuries in the founder of Rosicrucianism, for the founding of a new mystery school, which has to cultivate the Christ secret in a new way that corresponds to modern times. It tells of a couple who were born on the same day, at the same hour, in the same house, and were raised together and were devoted to each other from the beginning in great love. Separated from each other due to a lack of understanding on the part of others, Flor sets out to find Blancheflor. After severe, life-threatening dangers, they were finally reunited until they also died on the same day.

Rudolf Steiner interprets these images as follows: Flor means something like the flower with the red leaves or the rose, Blancheflor means the flower with the white leaves or the lily. Flor or Rose is “the symbol of the human soul that has taken up the personality, the I-impulse within itself, that lets the spiritual work out of its individuality, that has brought the I-impulse into the red blood. But in the lily, one saw the symbol of the soul that can only remain spiritual by keeping the ego outside of it, only reaching to the boundary. Thus rose and lily are two opposites. The rose has self-awareness entirely within itself, the lily entirely without itself. But the union of the soul within and the soul without, as the world spirit animating the world, has existed. Flor and Blancheflor express the finding of the world soul, of the world I, by the human soul, the human I. (...) In the union of the lily soul and the rose soul, that was seen which can find connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. (Berlin, May 6, 1909)

When it is said that the union of the soul within and the soul without, which as the world spirit animates the world, has taken place, it is certainly meant that the Christ principle, as the highest spiritual, has united with the personality, the earthly body, of Jesus of Nazareth. For only by these two becoming completely one, right down to the physical, could earthly death truly be conquered.

The extent to which the contrast between Rose Soul and Lily Soul also applies to the two individualities of John can be seen from the fact that Hiram Lazarus is always characterized as a representative of the forces of personality, while the Elijah Soul is often described as such a highly spiritual being that it is only loosely connected from the outside with its earthly vehicles, including John the Baptist. was only loosely connected from the outside.¹⁶ If the union of Rose Soul and Lily Soul can lead to a connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, then, with regard to the union of the two John souls in the resurrection of Lazarus by Christ Jesus, it may be concluded that the disciple whom the Lord loved has become that being to whom the Christ-secret of the conquest of death has been transmitted and is carried forth by it, as is expressed in the saying about Christian Rosenkreutz: “With this individuality and its work since the 13th century” - in which it was allowed to experience a new initiation - ‘we connect everything that includes us, the continuation of the impulse that was given through the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth and through the accomplishment of the Mystery of Golgotha.’ (Berlin, December 22, 1912)

A further aspect arises when the words from the Gospel according to Egypt are added to the words: “When the two become one and the outside becomes like the inside” and the subsequent words: “and the male becomes like the female, so that there is neither male nor female”. This latter word indicates that there will be no more death if there is no more sexuality, since death and sexuality are mutually dependent. Hiram Abiff was already promised in the temple legend that a son would be born to him who, even if he could not see him himself, would bring forth a new race that, according to Rudolf Steiner, would no longer know death because reproduction would no longer take place through sexuality, which conditions death, but through the word connected with the heart, through speech (Berlin, October 23, 1905). Therefore, as stated in the lecture Cologne, December 2, 1906, the perfection of man will consist in the fact that the powers of reproduction will be raised from the heart to the heart and that “precisely the soul power of John” will cause the loving heart to send out “streams of spiritual love”. This is indicated in the Gospel by the fact that, in the description of the Last Supper, it is said that the disciple whom the Lord loved and who knew about this secret of development rose from the Lord's lap to his breast.

Seen in this light, all the documents the various incarnations of the Hiram-Lazarus-John individuality (the legend of the Temple, the Gospel of John, the saga of Flor and Blancheflor, the “Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in the year 1459”; also the cosmic deed of Christian Rosenkreutz at the beginning of the 17th century, was to make possible the overcoming of the Cain and Abel conflict both in the individual human being and in humanity as a whole.¹⁷ on the central Christian mystery of the overcoming of death.

Rudolf Steiner also saw the goal of his work in this line. This is evident from a statement he made when founding the Erkenntniskultischer (Cult of Knowledge) working group, when he spoke of the fact that the significance of the theorespekte or anthroposophical movement lies in the fact that, through its wisdom, which is neither purely male nor purely female, but transsexual, it is to prepare in the spiritual realm what will later happen on the physical plane: the reunion of the sexes (Berlin, October 23, 1905). This not only gives the full-fledged collaboration of men and women, which he practiced everywhere, including in the context of cultic work, but also the word spoken in the same lecture: “I have reserved for myself to achieve a unification between those of Abel's and those of Cain's sex” a very special biographical significance. And this in turn can help to explain why the Hiram-Johannes research is at the beginning and end of his spiritual scientific lecturing activities and runs like a “red thread” through his entire work.

• 1. This is indicated by Rudolf Steiner himself in his last address on September 28, 1924. In the lecture of July 25, 1904, it was stated that according to the Akasha Chronicle, the resurrected Lazarus was the writer of the Gospel of John, the same disciple whom the Lord loved and who stood beneath the cross.
• 2. See “Reincarnation and Karma”, GA 135.
• 4. The songs of Mary by Novalis were recited for the first time by Marie von Sivers at the Christmas celebration of the Berlin branch on December 22, 1908. Therefore, the “a few days later” could have been at the lecture on December 28, 1908, with which the theme was introduced, which was described as a higher chapter of spiritual science, but in which Rudolf Steiner had not allowed notes to be taken. The fact that it is unlikely that it was not spoken about in Berlin, the main place of activity at the time, also speaks for this date. For in Berlin lectures this series of incarnations is mentioned only much later and as already known. 4
• 5. Max Gümbel-Seiling in “Memorial Sheet for Marie Steiner-von Sivers”, Stuttgart 1949.
• 7. See “The Principle of Spiritual Economy in Connection with Questions of Re-embodiment” (1909), GA 109; “The Gospel of Luke” (1909), GA 114; “Esoteric Christianity and the Spiritual Guidance of Humanity” (1911/12), GA 130; “The Gospel of Mark” (1912), GA 139; “The Fifth Gospel” (1913/14), GA 148.
• 8. Friedrich Rittelmeyer in “Meine Lebensbegegnung mit Rudolf Steiner”, Stuttgart (1st edition 1928).
• 9. This name was also given to other people, “so that not everything that is said here or there about the Count of St. Germain in the outer world can also apply to the real Christian Rosenkreutz.” (Neuchâtel, September 27, 1911).
• 10. Marie Steiner told Günther Schubert personally, and he in turn told the editor of this volume. Later, in 1923, Rudolf Steiner spoke of it again in a small circle, cf. M. Kirchner-Bockholt in 'What is happening in the Anthroposophical Society. News for its members' 1963, nos. 48 and 49.
• 11. See “Images of Occult Seals and Columns. The Munich Congress Whitsun 1907 and its Effects», GA 284.

  In the lectures given at the congress and in the following lectures of 1907, there is repeated mention of this path of training and its founder, Christian Rosenkreutz, as the great spiritual leader of the West. It is said: «... he has always lived among us and is still with us today as a leader in spiritual life.” (Munich, June 1, 1907, esoteric lecture, in CW 264)

  The spiritual connection between this individuality and the new building idea, as manifested at the Munich Congress, shone forth again a few years later when Rudolf Steiner, also out of the building project,

  to found a mode of working that he said had as its direct starting point the individuality whom, “since Western times, we have known as Christian Rosenkreutz.” (Berlin, December 15, 1911, in GA 264). This founding attempt had already been solemnly proclaimed at a Knowledge Cult event in Stuttgart on November 27, 1911. Since nothing more is known about this event, we can only assume that the incarnation connection between Lazarus-Johannes and Christian Rosenkreutz was first communicated at that time - shortly after the two lectures on the life and work of Christian Rosenkreutz in the 13th and 14th centuries (September 1911).

• 12. A certain justification for this supposition could be seen in the triptych “Gral” by the painter Anna May, which, according to a statement by Marie Steiner, was created after the lectures in Neuchâtel. The central section shows the events of Golgotha and Joseph of Arimathea collecting the blood of Christ; on the left wing are the figures from the Temple Legend of King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba and Hiram Abiff; on the right wing is the 13th-century initiation of Christian Rosenkreutz, as first described by Rudolf Steiner in Neuchâtel. Rudolf Steiner is said to have given Anna May some information about this. See Margarete Hauschka in “Das Goetheanum” 1975, No. 24 with a black and white illustration of the painting.
• 13. See the last address of September 28, 1924 with the associated additions in “Esoteric Reflections on Karmic Connections” IV. See also the study by Adolf Arenson, “Elias-Johannes-Lazarus” in “Ergebnisse aus dem Studium der Geisteswissenschaft Rudolf Steiners”, Freiburg i.Br. 1980, as well as the article by M. Kirchner-Bockholt in “Was in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgeht. News for its Members, 1963, No. 48 and 49.
• 14. Cf. footnote 1 on page 425.
• 15. Related by Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz from his conversation with Rudolf Steiner on March 3, 1925.
• 16. See lecture Berlin, December 14, 1911, and “The Gospel of Mark,” GA 139.
• 17. See “Esoteric Christianity and the Spiritual Guidance of Humanity”, GA 130.

The way this armed conflict (of the First World War) was such that it cannot be compared with anything in history so far, it will be followed by a spiritual battle that will also be unlike anything in history. ... It will be seen that the whole earth will take part in this spiritual struggle, and that in this spiritual struggle Orient and Occident will stand in spiritual and soulful contrasts such as have never been seen before. (Stuttgart, June 15, 1919)

From the new approaches after the First World War to the reestablishment of the Esoteric School as the “Free University for Spiritual Science”

For Rudolf Steiner, the First World War was a blazing sign that completely new forms had to be found for a fruitful further development of general and esoteric social life. Far more than before the war, he must therefore have been under the strain of the tension that necessarily arose from the opposing efforts to maintain continuity with the hitherto valid hierarchical principle on the one hand, and to meet the demands of the new era on the other, that is, to introduce the democratic principle, i.e. publicness, into esoteric work. This is made clear by the following two statements. While one of them reads (it was made in the lecture Dornach, December 20, 1918, i.e. immediately after the end of the war): “In order to maintain the continuity of human development, it is still necessary today to take up ritual and symbolism, so to speak.” The other (it was said in connection with a description of Freemasonry in response to a question from workers on the Goetheanum construction site): ”In today's world, all such things are actually no longer appropriate. For, isn't it true that what we have to reject most of all in such things today is isolation? This soon leads to the emergence of a spiritual aristocracy, which should not exist. And the democratic principle, which must be given more and more scope, is completely opposed to both the freemasons' union and the closed priesthoods.

At the time of this latter utterance, Rudolf Steiner had already tackled the reorganization of the Society and the esoteric school, by means of which he evidently wanted to bring the contrast between the old hierarchical mode of working and the demand of the new time for democracy to a higher synthesis. The steps he took in this direction from the end of the war until his death were, broadly speaking, the following.

When he was asked several times immediately after the end of the war in the late fall of 1918 to resume esoteric teaching, he initially refused completely. This was partly due to the inappropriate behavior that had often occurred in the past, but also because the new forms necessary for the times had not yet been developed. But when, a year later, at the end of 1919, the question was put to him at the Stuttgart School as to whether a religious celebration could be arranged for the students of free religious education on Sundays, he replied that it would have to be a cult and added: If this cult could be given, it would at the same time be the first reconnection with the esotericism interrupted by the war.¹ - obviously insofar as it should again be a non-ecclesiastical cult.

Shortly after this ritual, the “Sunday ritual”, had been created and performed for the first time (February 1, 1920), ² - from the teachers' conference in Stuttgart on November 16, 1921, the sentence is handed down: “A cult is the most esoteric thing one can imagine.” - Rudolf Steiner now resumed the esoteric work within the Anthroposophical Society. Initially in Dornach with two esoteric lessons on February 9 and 17, 1920. Although it was intended, it was not continued because various members had again behaved inappropriately. At the teachers' conference on November 16, 1921, when the question of esoteric lessons was raised, he said that it would be very difficult to do so and that he had to refrain from doing so because everything esoteric had been “disgracefully abused” so far. Esotericism is a “painful” chapter in the anthroposophical movement. ³ Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, on December 4, 1921, in Norway, where lectures could be held again for the first time since the outbreak of the war in the summer of 1914, he gave an esoteric lecture. Furthermore, there was also a meeting with the members of the department of the cult of knowledge, at which - although two or three new members were admitted - the circle was solemnly dissolved (p. 451), just as it had been immediately after the outbreak of the war in the summer of 1914 (p. 114). But that does not mean that the old is dead – he explained in Kristiania – but will be resurrected in a metamorphosed form. In the course of 1922, two esoteric hours also took place in England (London), one during the April stay and the other during the November stay. Shortly before, in October, in connection with the pedagogical youth course that took place in Stuttgart, ⁴ young anthroposophists approached Rudolf Steiner with the request for esoteric teachings to strengthen and deepen their community. The so-called esoteric youth group was formed, and it also received esoteric lessons. In the course of 1923 and early 1924, the following esoteric lessons also took place: in Kristiania in May 1923; in Dornach on May 27, October 23, 1923 and January 3, 1924 for the circle named by Rudolf Steiner after its initiators, the “Wachsmuth-Lerchenfeld Group” ; in Stuttgart on July 13 and October 13 for the esoteric youth group; in Vienna on September 30, 1923 for a small group that had come together at the request of Polzer-Hoditz.

Of the notes handed down from these hours, only those that reveal a relationship in content to the earlier esoteric cult of knowledge have been included in the present volume. These are the two hours in Kristiania and the three in Dornach that are thought to be for the 'Wachsmuth-Lerchenfeld Group'.⁵

The metamorphosis of esoteric, especially of the cult of knowledge, which has become necessary due to the changed conditions of the times, as indicated in Kristiania in December 1921 on the occasion of the formal dissolution of the circle, can already be found addressed immediately after the end of the war in the Dornach lecture of December 20, 1918. It was already stated at that time that the progress of time requires that many things must be renewed. For from the present time on and in the future, ever more clearly, new revelations break through the veils of events into the spiritual and mental horizon of human beings. Since these new revelations are the expression of a new creative principle, borne by the spirits of personality, the future will be increasingly determined by the expression of the impulses of personality. In this context, the fundamental difference between old and new revelation was explained and the nature of symbols and rituals was characterized as a form of expression of the old revelation, through which man was formerly addressed. The old symbolism did not play a significant role in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. When reference was made to symbols, it was in the sense of “symbols of allegiance” to exemplify this or that or to demonstrate the “concordance” between “what is newly discovered, what can serve the new humanity, and what has been antiquated from ancient times.”

The style of this lecture, in which anthroposophical spiritual science is most emphatically described as a form of expression of the new revelation, was evidently influenced by the request of various friends to resume the esoteric work, especially the work of the cult of knowledge. The words seem to indicate this:

"There are a certain number of you who know that in our circles, too, those who seek have truly not been kept from the exposition of the symbolic and ritualistic traditions that have come down to us from ancient times, but always in a different spirit than is otherwise cultivated where symbols and ritual are valued in an antiquated sense. In order to maintain the continuity of human development, it is still necessary today to take up ritual and symbolism, so to speak. But in our circles, ritual and symbolism have never been presented as anything other than what is now supposed to lead to spiritual reality, to the direct integration of spiritual reality into contemporary values. Therefore, especially within anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, the explanation for many, actually for all ritual and symbolic aspects of the past. One can show how, on other paths, a wisdom that is antiquated today has been received by humanity, which has, so to speak, brought people into a state of bondage, but how today other paths of wisdom must be taken. ... It is extremely important to bear this in mind. To be able to be a human being in the innermost, deepest sense, connecting with what new revelations from the heavens want in terms of the evolution of the earth, that is what matters today.

Therefore, in the future it would no longer be acceptable to understand everyday life only as the poor, profane life and then to withdraw into the church or the mason temple, leaving these two worlds completely separate from each other.

Since then, Rudolf Steiner must have reflected on how esoteric work could be given a contemporary form, how the “old antiquated secret motif” could be replaced by something else (Dornach, December 20, 1918). Marie Steiner reports that at this time he often reflected on the nature that the new would have to take, that it would have to be “something binding, firm, overcoming lukewarmness and yet compatible with the freedom of each individual”: “He did not believe that one could still practice esotericism as in earlier times, in deepest seclusion, with strictly binding vows. These are no longer compatible with the sense of freedom of the individual. The soul must come before its own higher self and recognize what it owes to this self and to the spiritual world in reverent silence.“ ⁶

These considerations, which arose from the changed conditions of the time, the tragic loss of the Goetheanum building due to the fire on New Year's Eve 1922, the necessary but so difficult reorganization of the Society, led in the course of 1923 to the decision to found the Society anew at Christmas 1923, not only to constitute the Society as a completely public one, but also to give the esoteric school a form appropriate to the new consciousness of the times. It was anchored in the statutes of the Society as a “Free University for Spiritual Science”, which was to be built up in three classes and various scientific and artistic sections, and each member was granted the right to apply for admission after a certain period of belonging to the Society. In several essays Steiner characterized how he wanted this new esoteric school to be understood as a “Free University for Spiritual Science”. He stated that this university would not be like ordinary universities and would therefore not strive to compete with them or replace them. But what cannot be found at ordinary universities, the esoteric deepening that the soul seeks in its quest for knowledge, should be possible to obtain. The General Section should be there for those who want to seek the paths to the spiritual world in a general, human way; for those who seek an esoteric deepening in a specific scientific, artistic and so on direction, the other sections will endeavor to show the ways. In this way, every seeker will find at the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum what they need to strive for in their particular circumstances. The School should not be a purely scientific institution, but a completely human one that also fully meets the esoteric needs of scientists and artists. Steiner said that he would ensure that the School's work would always be known in the broadest sense. ⁷

Due to his immense overwork and his serious illness that began in the fall of 1924, only the first of the three classes could be established, along with a few scientific and artistic sections. We only have a hint of how the second and third classes would have been designed and that the cultic element should also figure in them. Much later, Marie Steiner once mentioned in a letter that he had told her that 'in Class II much of what he gave us in M.E. would flow pictorially into it and that in Class III this would have been transformed into moral power'. ⁸ And in her notes for an address at the celebration commemorating the anniversary of Rudolf Steiner's death on March 30, 1926, she wrote ⁹ :

"He left us before he was able to finish the work he had begun, before he was able to give us what he referred to as the second and third classes. In the second class, he wanted to give us the spiritual practice that would have corresponded to what the revelations that flowed forth in imaginations were of the supersensible school of Michael from... [end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century].” ¹⁰

Rudolf Steiner died a few months after making these suggestions. He had been exhausted for a long time and on March 30, 1925, he succumbed to the excessive efforts he had taken upon himself since Christmas 1923 as a result of his decision to to reshape society and the esoteric school in such a way that the abyss between the aristocratic nature of the spiritual and the ever-increasing demands of the new age for democracy, which he had spoken of in the esoteric hour of October 27, 1923 as a “heroic tragedy in the history of mankind,” could be bridged. Fate did not allow him to complete this large-scale work of the future. Nevertheless, it was “set up on earth as an example” in the sense of a word from his mystery dramas and “will continue to work spiritually in life, even if it does not persist in the sense being. A part of the power will be created in him that must ultimately lead to the marriage of spiritual goals and deeds of the senses.“¹¹

• 1. From one of the first two RE teachers, Herbert Hahn, handed down.
• 2. See “Conferences with the teachers of the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart from 1919 to 1924”, Volume I (Introduction), GA 300a-c
• 3. Desgl., Band II.
• 4. See “Geistige Wirkenskräfte im Zusammenleben von alter und junger Generation. Pedagogical Youth Course», GA 217.
• 5. The remaining notes handed down are planned for a later volume.
• 6. Marie Steiner in ‘Remembrance’ for the first edition of the lectures ”Esoteric Reflections on Karmic Connections. The karmic connections of the Anthroposophical Movement), Dornach 1926; reprinted in “Nachrichten der Rudolf Steiner-Nachlaßverwaltung” no. 23, Christmas 1968.
  6
• 7. See “The Constitution of the General Anthroposophical Society and the School of Spiritual Science - The Rebuilding of the Goetheanum”, CW 260a.
• 8. In a letter dated November 8, 1947, to Helga Geelmuyden in Norway.
• 9. In notebook archive number 133.
• 10. Cf. page 120f.
• 11. See ‘The Awakening of the Soul’ (Scene 1).

in Kristiania (Oslo), May 18 or 20, 1923

Undated later report by Helga Geelmuyden

During the doctor's visit to Oslo – his last – in May 1923, the doctor held an M.E. meeting.¹

In the meeting, he continued to tell the temple legend very impressively. And he went on to talk about how the sons of Abel had found their way to the sons of Cain, in that the theologians had asked him for the new cult. This aroused increased hostility on the part of the sons of Abel and the sons of Cain in the outer world. (The Jesuits and the occult brotherhoods were meant, at least that is how I understood it.)

And then he went on to say that in the same hall where the theologians were given the new cult, the fire that destroyed the Goetheanum was lit.

After the temple legend, it was said that it would be necessary to rebuild the Goetheanum. It was said, something like this: the Temple of Solomon would never have existed physically. But it would have to be on earth one day. (The doctor once told me that the sons of Abel could not be admitted to the Medical Section. This was said in relation to someone wanting to bring in a woman with atavistic clairvoyance.

The things the doctor said about the reconstruction of the Goetheanum made a strong impression on me. Later that summer, I was present at the Annual General Meeting of the Goetheanum Association [in Dornach], where the question of the reconstruction was discussed. I then asked the doctor if he would like to say what he told us in Norway. He shook his head and said briefly: quite impossible.

Now I must confess: the new Goetheanum has never been able to satisfy me against the background of this impressive memory. In particular, it is painful for me to see the Christ group completely isolated. In 1916, when I spoke to Dr. Itten in Berlin on my way to Dornach, he said to me: “Now, when you visit the building, you must visualize the group in its place all the time.” I did so, and a living movement arose through the entire row of columns and architraves, and the moving element was the Christ-I, as it presented itself in the group. The old Goetheanum died, as it were, without having fully embodied this I — it was still outside. In the new Goetheanum there is no possibility of an organic connection.

The union of the sons of Abel and the sons of Cain has also never been fully realized. ²

• 1. The term 'M.E. meeting' for the esoteric lesson is explained by its similarity to an M.E. instruction lesson.
• 2. An addition to this can be seen in the following statement by Rudolf Steiner (a typewritten diary entry by Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz, handed down through Paul Michaelis, of his last visit to Rudolf Steiner's sickbed on March 3, 1925):
  ”... But always bear in mind: The Jesuits have taken away the religiousness, the piety, the human being, and are completely identical with the Roman state authority. The fight, that is, the sin against the spirit, is their means of domination, the only sin of which Scripture says that it will not be forgiven. And yet the spirit cannot be completely eradicated, but only a few will carry it over into the future. This current can also be strongly felt within the Society, and he hopes to have paralyzed it through the Christmas Conference. (See GA Bibl. No. 260) For he did not seek to maintain a certain parity of female and male spirit within the Executive Council without reason, since the tendencies are perceptible, as the female spirit is to be eliminated from old contexts. I emphasized this from the very beginning when I talked about the temple legend. But it was probably not understood, and yet it is a significant undercurrent within society.

Munich (undated, ca. 1923)

The summer path is the path of the Christian Community in remembrance of a community (before birth) in the spiritual world. (Abel Way)

The winter path is the path of the anthroposophists through cold loneliness to knowledge. (Cain's Way)

Abel Way – Cain Way.

The difference between these two ways is concisely and clearly characterized by Jan K. Lagutt in his writing “Grundstein der Freimaurerei” (The Foundation Stone of Freemasonry), Zurich 1958, in the section “Das Wesen des Priestertums und das Wesen der Initiation” (The Nature of the Priesthood and the Nature of Initiation):

The priestly element of all religions [the Abel Way] is based on consecration. Through it, higher, non-personal forces are transferred to the bearer, the priest, which are regarded as an emanation of divine grace. Consecration has the effect that divine effects of grace can be carried into the physical world through the priest. Figuratively speaking, the

1) For explanations about the two columns, see the folder 'Images of Occult Seals and Columns. The Munich Congress at Whitsun 1907 and its Effects', CW 284; the lectures Nuremberg 25 and 26 June 1908 in 'The Apocalypse of John', CW 104; Berlin 20 June 1916 in ' Weltwesen und Ichheit», GA 169; Dornach 29 December 1918 in How can humanity find the Christ again? The threefold shadow existence of our time and the new Christ-light», GA 187; furthermore the pictorial design in the I-A-O motif in the great dome of the first Goetheanum in « Twelve Sketches for the Painting of the Great Dome of the First Goetheanum, an art portfolio Dornach 1930; also in Hilde Raske, Das Farbenwort, Stuttgart 1982. ordained priest becomes a channel through which divine effects flow into the earthly world.

Thus, theoretically at least, a priest of dubious personal morality could still evoke effects because they do not come from his personal sphere, but from a superhuman-divine one. This would make the priest a magician who, by virtue of his ordination and the use of certain sacred formulas, forces the deity to let its grace flow. Such an extreme conception of the priesthood, as it occasionally comes to light, certainly misses the truth. But it points to the very ancient origin of the priesthood, to a bygone era of humanity, which is referred to as the magical.

This description is not meant to be critical. It is solely a clarifying characterization.

The current that underlies Freemasonry, among other things, takes a different path [Cain's way). Here, there is no consecration in the sense of the transmission of higher powers, but rather an initiation, an induction or awakening. The essence of this is characterized by the fact that it invokes powers that are already inherent in man. The symbolic-cultic acts that are usually associated with initiation have the sole purpose of awakening these latent powers and putting them into action.

As in all great religions and cultures of antiquity, two currents coexist in Christianity: the priestly and the initiatory. It is as if in Jesus both currents, which are ancient, converge to flow out of him newly revitalized.

When Jesus sends out his disciples (Mark 6/7, Luke 9/1), he endows them with powers that lie entirely in the priestly line and do not come from the human-personal sphere of the disciples. It says: “...and gave them authority and power...

In the Gospel of John, Jesus clearly appears as the great initiator, as an initiate in the highest sense. This is already hinted at in the first chapter of the Gospel, where he calls Nathanael to discipleship. In the sense of the initiatory system, he addresses Nathanael in a special way, and the latter immediately recognizes him as a higher initiate. In all openness, Jesus appears as the great initiate, as a hierophant in the sense of the old mysteries, when he performs the resurrection of Lazarus (chapter 11). Jesus awakens anew the life of Lazarus, who has become frozen in the sleep of death. And in addition to the “external” awakening process, another profound process takes place in Lazarus, “whom the Lord loved”. In Lazarus, the eternal breaks through. And this eternal is the life of which Jesus says that He is the source. Wherever the spirit, the eternal, the higher self breaks through in a person, or, to put it another way, wherever a person, in his striving, approaches the source of his true being, he experiences the great awakening.

Is it any wonder that the Gospel of John occupies such a central position in the esoteric Christian tradition?

If true priesthood begins with grace of a superhuman nature, then true initiation should end in grace. If the priest is endowed with extra-personal powers of a higher nature through consecration, then it is up to him to prove himself worthy of them, to awaken to them and, as it were, to personalize them. Initiation, in so far as it is not an empty ceremony, calls upon the deeper, individual powers of the human being. And through them, the human being is to mature towards those spheres in which divine grace is at home.

The highest is thus the priest who becomes an initiate, an initiate. Conversely, the initiated person acquires the priestly dignity when the deeply human, which is divine, unfolds in him. Then he stands in grace.

Here the circle of apparent contradictions closes. One does not exclude the other. Both are paths on the great path of man to his true being. And this is God.

Held in Dornach on 27 May 1923, 23 October 1923, 3 January 1924 for the “Wachsmuth-Lerchenfeld Group” ¹

Text by Maria Röschl-Lehrs, “written down immediately afterwards from memory”.

I

n the introduction, it was explained why such a group is possible again now. A clear consciousness is necessary. In the past, people approached the institutions of anthroposophy with too little awareness, too little spiritual awareness.

If what had been given in those old esoteric contexts had been published, it would have given rise to many cults in the world. But because it was not published, hatred and betrayal of the cause arose.

These people here have not been summoned by him, they have gathered together themselves. He has refused to continue forming such groups himself in the face of the spiritual world. Don't be proud! There are more people who would be suitable, including those who are further along! Here are only those who have found each other. Through meditation. It is not just a personal matter, but has world significance. The Cosmos is interested in whether we do it or not.

Oh man...²

Legend [Temple Legend] new appendix two directions - in John the center. Recognizing what comes from the two directions. Fire, because both unite against the center. Hatred against the continuation of this center.

Wake up! Wake up to these two directions, but also in general. Wake up through right meditation! Goethe was fully awake, Schiller only half awake, Herder and Lessing slept completely.

In the face of the mystery of Golgotha, the words of an initiate were: Salem. Now the reversal: Melas... the circle is complete.

Addendum: Before that, Mach ben ach - son of the earth of suffering, or the physical body has separated from the soul and spirit.

Vocal exercise – pilgrimage to the self ³
O A J A O: I in the midst of light and space
A J O J A: Space for me and light
J O A O J: Light through space and me
I am

Now only that of the two directions and the fire.⁴

The Temple Legend

The wording of the temple legend from the esoteric hour of May 27, 1923, was reconstructed afterwards by various participants from memory and from texts from the earlier Erkenntnis cultic work context. The designation “New version, given in spring 1923”, under which this wording was passed on, actually applies only to the last conclusion (in the notes of Maria Lehrs-Röschl designated as “New Appendix”). In the first part, the legend text corresponds word for word to that of Rudolf Steiner's 1906 transcript (p. 365). The subsequent description of the casting of the brazen sea and Hiram's death, on the other hand, shows some variants compared to the earlier descriptions. The description in the 1923 version, which begins after the sentence from Rudolf Steiner's transcript (p. 367): “Hiram is only in possession of a real-human ego,” reads as follows:

From this point on, King Solomon is seized by violent jealousy against his master builder Hiram Abiff. The latter had three journeymen working on the temple construction who demanded the master's degree from him. However, they had shown their incompetence by cutting a mighty beam, which was irreplaceable for the construction of the temple, too short. Hiram had remedied the accident by stretching the beam to the correct length with his special powers. They are now Hiram Abiff's opponents because they had to be rejected by him when they demanded the master's degree and the master's word from him, for which they were not yet ready. The three treacherous companions have no difficulty in finding the ear of the king for the deed by which they want to corrupt Hiram Abiff.

The completion of the temple construction was to be crowned by a work in which Hiram Abiff sought to reconcile the tension and enmity between the Cain and Abel sons. It was the brazen sea, whose casting was to be made from the seven basic metals (lead, tin, iron, gold, copper, mercury and silver) and water, the metal of the earth, in such a way that the finished casting would be completely transparent. The thing was finished except for one very last step, which was to be carried out in front of the assembled court, including the Queen of Sheba, and which was to transform the still cloudy substance into one that was completely clear.

Now the three treacherous companions who had the task of adding the last ingredient mixed the water in the wrong proportion, and instead of becoming transparent, the casting sprayed in devastating flames. Hiram Abiff tried to calm the fire, but failed. The flames burst out on all sides.

But Hiram Abiff heard a voice from the flames and from the glowing mass: Plunge into the sea of fire, you are invulnerable. He plunged into the flames and realized that his path led to the center of the earth. Halfway there he met Tubal Cain, his ancestor. He led him to the center of the earth, where the great ancestor Cain was in the state he was in before the sin of killing Abel. He gave him the golden triangle with the master word. Halfway up, Tubal Cain gave him a hammer and instructed him to touch the casting of the brazen sea with it. There Hiram Abiff receives from Cain the explanation that the vigorous development of human powers on earth ultimately leads to the height of initiation, and that the initiation attained in this way must take the place of the old vision in the course of the world, that the latter will disappear. With the hammer, Hiram returns to the earth's surface; he touches the brazen sea with it, the casting is successful, and he was able to make it completely transparent.

Hiram wanted to see his work, the temple, for the last time and went there at night. There the false companions waylayed him. The first struck him on the left temple at one of the gates, so that the blood flowed down to the shoulder. Hiram Abiff turned to the second gate to leave the temple. There the second companion struck him on the right temple, so that the blood flowed down to the shoulder. He turned to the third gate. There the third journeyman struck him on the forehead, so that he collapsed. He still dragged himself out to a well, into which he sank the golden triangle. The three journeymen buried his body. Before his death, Hiram was still able to sink the golden triangle with the master word into a deep well. On his grave grew a cassia tree, an acacia. It was known to the initiated that a cassia tree grows out of the grave of an initiate. When his body was found, the new master word resounded: “Mach ben ach”.⁵ This means: The spiritual soul has separated from the physical body or: the otherness of the body.⁶ They then searched for the golden triangle and found it in the well. A cubic stone with the Ten Commandments was placed on the triangle and thus it was hidden and walled up in the temple.

With this symbolism, that which in meditation elevated the inner essence of human development on earth to imagination was given. The brazen sea can be seen as a symbol of what man would have become if the three treacherous forces had not found a place in the soul. These three treacherous forces are: doubt, superstition, and the illusion of personal self.

Hiram Abiff was reborn as Lazarus and was thus the one who was first initiated by Christ. With him began the (reconciliation of the differences) that stood between the Cain and Abel currents.

According to another record, the “new appendix” reads as follows:

Hiram Abiff was reborn as Lazarus and thus became the first to be initiated by Christ. With him began the current of the center, which stood between the Cain and Abel currents. Over time, the Cain current found its main representatives in the F. (Masonry current), while the Abel current found its expression in the priestly current of the (Catholic?) Church. Both currents of humanity remained strictly hostile to each other. Only once did they unite in harmony: in their hatred of the current of the center. The result of this harmonious union of two otherwise hostile directions was the destruction of the Johannesbau (Goetheanum).

II

First, the Indian mantram was given for the first time, the translation for the first time. After this Indian mantram, the regular invocation was made: “Brothers of the...”

True esotericism is initially incomprehensible. As an example, imagine a living person who expresses absolutely no spiritual life on the outside. His spiritual life is directed entirely inwards. Nevertheless, it is an intense inner life.

About the vowels: hierarchies are involved.
I A O Seraphim, Cherubim and partly Thrones are involved.
U Kyriotetes, Exusiai, Dynamis
E _ Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi.

The whole together means the ancient-holy word of Jahve in place of the I-am. To create this word of Jahve out of the hierarchies means an act. The execution of this act on earth: the butterfly meditation:

Catch the butterfly
Send it to the icy heights
Where the world's secrets prevail.
It will become a bird for you
Then you have done half the work
. Dip the bird
Into the depths of the sea - - - - - JAOUE
Where the will of the world is at work.
If the bird drowns,
Then you still have to do,
Purifying the bird's corpse
By burning it in the fire.
Then consume the ashes
And you are
The light in the darkness of the world.

The visualization of this butterfly meditation has an ethereal effect. Only a simple interpretation. Searching in memory with the three and a half years following the butterfly meditation. Its ethereal effect is connected with the fact that it causes one to occupy oneself with one's own will, and in the retrospective examination of one's own will, one can find a point in one's life where this will has had a very specific impulse towards certain tasks. It is often the case that when searching for such moments of volition, the non-fulfillment of which has caused dissatisfaction, one comes to a point about three and a half years ago. (Prevention by external circumstances, for example, threefolding.)

Once this point has been reached, the task is to cultivate the content of this longing, not to try to carry out the deed, but to cultivate the content as much as possible, in the highest way. Then, three and a half years after this point in time, there will be another opportunity for realization. And then the task will be to perform a selfless act that has nothing to do with the starting point of seven years ago. This can also be a very inconspicuous act outwardly.

Description of the times, the situation. The present lectures and this hour are, in comparison to the prevailing fanaticism at the height of democracy outside, just the opposite; they signify the height of aristocracy and hierarchy. An enormous abyss that evolution must leap across in order to overcome these contradictions. Descriptions of this abyss, over which some courageously leap, others are dragged, others are torn. The whole thing is a heroic tragedy in the history of mankind.

Falter-Meditation
Invocation
Indian Mantram

III

Brothers of the... Indian Mantram

Indication that the new society was founded without mentioning the esoteric reason. (He had previously said that the reasoning had esoteric reasons.) Esotericism does not tolerate playing around, everything so far has been playful [taken]. Now esotericism must be brought openly and seriously into life, from Dornach, as the center. But now we really must not play with esotericism anymore. For that, modesty is needed, above all modesty before the ego.

Therefore, wake up! Become aware that we are asleep! With each waking we enter into a new sphere of the world, for we live completely surrounded by spheres of the world, only we sleep and know nothing of them. So far, everything in man only happens in dreams. The importance of the Falter meditation (he had said last time that everything he said about the effect of this meditation and its connection with the two times three and a half years only applies to people over 28). Reading it out loud – J A O U E.

Something should be added to enhance the effect of this meditation by Falter:

4 stages of falling asleep: in thinking, feeling, willing, in the I
4 stages of waking up: in thinking, feeling, willing, in the I

Thinking:

The head is like a fruit, the heart like a glowing chalice. We should experience our head as self-illuminating right down to our heart. We should experience our thinking as an etheric organ that feels its way towards everything it is meant to grasp. The difference between the occultist and the non-occultist is that the occultist is aware that this organ radiates out into the etheric. We should experience ourselves as a snail stretching out its feelers. Thinking must become a feeling process! Help for this:

Awaken in thinking: you are in the spiritual light of the world.

Experience yourself as radiant, feeling the radiance.

Through such thinking, all of nature becomes radiant. Stone and plant shine forth in the earthly... as animal and human being... in the moral. Through the experience of thinking as touching, we develop something like a sense of touch: we see a dandelion blossom and experience it as sand; we see chicory and experience it as silk, a sunflower as a spiky animal...

Feeling:

This is still a deep dream. We should experience our heart as glowing, but in such a way that it absorbs light from our entire environment and reflects it back outwards like the moon. Through our awakening feeling, we must experience the world quite differently; the earth as a sentient being that laughs and cries. In the withering of autumn there is a kind of weeping in nature, but joy of the Ahrimanic beings in winter, joy of the luciferic beings in spring. Natural processes as deeds of spiritual beings! Trees - in winter they are only their physical body, the etheric is outside. One can come to see how the trees solve tasks in the etheric.

When one awakens in thinking, one expands into infinity. When one awakens in feeling, one sets oneself in motion, one leaves oneself.

Awaken in feeling: you are in the spiritual deeds of the world.

Experience yourself, feeling the spiritual deeds.

Wanting:

In this respect, the human being of the present is still in a state of deep sleep. But in the realm of the will, the human being is completely on his own. He has his thinking only in this embodiment, taking nothing of it with him into the afterlife. The gods need our thinking, but they do not need our feeling and willing. A person may be ingenious, but only because the gods need it that way. Geniuses are the lamps that the gods need. Our thinking abilities return to the gods after death.

Our will, on the other hand, goes with us through our embodiments; it is a result of our embodiments, we work on it through our earthly lives. In our cooperation in shaping the world, our will is what is essentially characteristic. The will is man's property, while man's thinking belongs to the gods. Envy of the gods! In our volition, we have a life of our own. But people are still asleep in their volition. They love their volition because they always believe that what they want is already the right thing. But with our volition, we are helping to shape the world. We wake up in our volition by becoming aware that we are not alone, but are responsible for the actions of others. For example, Kully: What he does, especially what upsets us the most, is our fault, we are actually participating; Goesch affair = Maya.⁷When we no longer feel ourselves as separate individual beings, but so connected in the general activity, then we awaken in the will, then we come to the living will, then we think the spiritual beings: Awaken in the will: you are in the spiritual beings of the world. The spiritual beings experience you thinking.

Awakening in the I:

We sleep in the I. We use the word “I” only because the gods once spoke it for us - our angeloi - and now, imitating them, we speak it. But we must awaken in the I! Imagination for this: altar, above it the sun. We approach the altar and experience ourselves entirely as shadows, entirely as insubstantial. So far we have said: I am. Now we consciously say: I am not. – Then a deity rises out of the sun above the altar and animates the shadow. We are like a bowl that receives the light of the deity rising out of the sun. – By grace we receive this deity, it gives itself to us. – Fichte experienced this, but only in a shadowy way. Therefore, what he says about it is completely abstract.

In the I awaken: you are in your own spiritual being.

Experience yourself as receiving from and giving to the gods.⁸

Then it was said:
The stones are mute...
Brothers of the...
Indian saying

• 1. Named by Rudolf Steiner (see page 466) because the initiative came from the two Wachsmuth brothers, Count Lerchenfeld and Harriet von Vacano. The following participants are known by name: Marie Steiner, Dr. Ita Wegman, Dr. Elisabeth Vreede, Albert Steffen, Dr. Günther Wachsmuth, Wolfgang Wachsmuth and his wife, Dr. Kurt Piper, Dr. Otto Palmer, Dr. von Baravalle, Dr. Maria Röschl, Count Lerchenfeld, Harriet von Vacano, Jürgen von Grone, Margarita Woloschin.
• 2. This mantram was later incorporated into the mantras of the first class of the School of Spiritual Science.
• 3. See original recording on page 473.
• 4. Regarding this, Maria Röschl-Lehrs' note: “Only very sparse notes here. The order is not clear.”
• 5. Here, according to the usual traditions, the intermediate link is missing: Solomon gave the order to search for Hiram's body. Since it was believed that the murderers had extorted the master word from Hiram, it was agreed that they would remain silent during the search. The first word that one of the masters spoke unintentionally while digging up the body was to be considered the new master word. When the body was found after a long search, the word “Mach ben ach” escaped from one of them at that moment. This was accepted as a new master word.
• 6. Another record has here: “Earth son of suffering”.
• 7. Kully and Goesch: two opponents actively appearing at the time.
• 8. Cf. the manuscript on page 477.

Rudolf Steiner's notebook entries, notebook archive number 281. Some of this may also have been given in the esoteric lesson in Kristiania (Oslo) on 18 or 20 May.

May 27, 1923, Dornach, the Wachsmuth-Lerchenfeld group:

First enjoyment of the Esot. Then forgetting the Esot.

1.) Examination of the seriousness =

2.) Hatred, ambition, denied love, astral light
3.) The legend
4.) The intentions<
today = one has lost the word and the
thoughts to the I.

Thought-feeling

Melas

speak rightly, s l m ch
so that the word Salem
works

“Lord
over thyself

”Brethren of the... (another version)

According to Rudolf Steiner's manuscript from notebook archive number 281

Divine Sculptors of the Universe
Feel the soul-sacrifice smoke
Which we in your light heights
Worshipping would like to let flow.

Divine thinkers of the universe
Take into your thinking the sacrificial word
That we entrust to the air circles
Which meet you when your forces
worlds through space.

Divine creators of the universe
Take into your being our own being
So that we may flourish under your protection
When you lift up from the depths of the earth
a world growing towards the heights of light.

Meditation from the esoteric hour Dornach, May 27, 1723

The Indian mantram

The wording has not been handed down. Among Rudolf Steiner's handwritten notes on these esoteric hours are two Indian mantras:

Yasmāt jātam jagat sarvam, yasminn eva praliyate
yenedam dhriyate caiva, tasmai jnānātmane namah.
From whom the whole world originates, to whom it
returns,
through whom it is securely supported,
To Him the Self who knows, be all honor.

The other Indian mantram is recorded in the notebook as follows:

Satyam gnanam anantam Brahma
ananda rupam amritam vibharti
Shantam Shivam advaitam
Shanti Shanti Shanti.

Wording of the two subsequent manuscripts by Rudolf Steiner

The two manuscripts, obviously written down together, come from the estate of the English sculptor Edith Maryon, who was Rudolf Steiner's colleague in the sculptural wood group and fell ill after the building fire. Rudolf Steiner, who visited her repeatedly during her illness, apparently told her about the esoteric lesson of May 27, 1923 and wrote down the two mantras for her.

Note sheet archive number 5852

J A O U E (preparation)

Catch the butterfly
Send it to the icy heights (3 1/2 years)
Where the world dreams (memory)
It becomes a bird for you
Then you have done half the work (-I now)
(Forgetting)
Dip the bird
In the depths of the sea
Where the will of the world is at work
The bird drowns
Then you still have to do
To burn the bird's corpse
Purifying in the fire
Then consume the ashes
And you are
The light in the darkness of the world. - (Tragedy)

(Above the vowels:)

J still within,
A one opens to the world that says a lot
O the angels come, give hands
U the second hierarchy comes, flows around one with light
E the first hierarchy comes and burns one in fire.

On the first anniversary of Rudolf Steiner's death, on 30 March 1926, Marie Steiner-von Sivers, who had not only taken a special position as co-founder and co-leader of the Erkenntniskultischer Arbeitskreis (a working group within the General Anthroposophical Society), but also through her inner competence in the same, had written¹ a memorial service with a symbolic-cultic character was held in the context of the first class of the School of Spiritual Science. On the stage of the carpentry hall at the Goetheanum, where all events in Dornach were held at the time, she had three altars set up, at the eastern altar of which she had always served at the side of Rudolf Steiner. The following drafts of her address express what Rudolf Steiner's life's work meant to her, namely, to have experienced the legend of the temple.

Marie Steiner

We have gathered here in memory of the one who left this earth a year ago, who worked for us here in this place, among us, who gave us guidelines for our work, the service at the altars of wisdom, beauty and strength, as a sign of which we have placed these altars, which symbolize his work for us. We have placed these tools on the altars as a symbol of his creative work. With them he shaped the new forms in the wood. They are his compass and his straightedge, his trowel and his hammer. They are still imbued with the fire of his hands, they speak to us and demand action.

In his memory and in memory of what we have to do, we light these candles:

1. The light that he has kindled in our hearts, may it shine brightly and become wisdom.

2. It may rise in purity to him, as pure as he has sunk it into our souls.

3. It strengthens us in our active work, so that our actions serve his spirit, our spirit grows stronger in its self-transcendence through Christ.

We stand in this room of mourning, remembering the great man who has left us. The three altars stand before us as a sign and seal of his work. The leader who stood at the helm of this turning point for humanity served at these altars continually. He was allowed to bring them out of the depths of the temple, where they had stood since the beginning of mystery religions, and hand them over to humanity. He gave them to us in images and in art, by incorporating them into his mystery dramas, at the stages of the spiritual student's progress. He gave them to us in His Word by placing at the center of His activity the ideals of wisdom, beauty and strength, constantly presenting them to our minds in their individual expression and in their interaction. He allowed the two most important poetical personalities among His disciples to present the legend to the world in words and pictures. You know them from their works.² We can only remember them insofar as they have been given to humanity artistically. And with the hammer blow with which Rudolf Steiner established the connection to eternal spiritual service at the laying of the foundation stone, he is now commemorated here.³ We take up the thread of his work and place ourselves under his protection to serve the powers to which he led us in his service.

Why was Rudolf Steiner allowed to do this, which signifies a turning point for humanity, even within esotericism, a new phase and a new path?

When the great is very close to us, we do not see it, the mountain wall towers above us, it crushes one, it hinders the view of the other. We do not see beyond it, we only feel: this is great.

It takes a long time before we reach the summit of the mountain and take in the full extent of the view; but now and then, during the arduous ascent, a glimpse of the big picture presents itself, and we grasp parts of the enormous context.

Our vision was made easy; we were able to experience it, but perhaps the light was too dazzling for us to see clearly.

We experienced the construction, we saw Rudolf Steiner raise his hammer to work and how his students flocked to serve the work; the temple had risen, noble and radiant, from the power of its spirit and the skill of its hands, and we were allowed to learn and work. But we too, in addition to our weaknesses and imperfections, had among us the three evil companions, who went as far as betrayal and a will to destroy. The seed of hatred bore its fruit. The building was in flames, just as the Sea of Steel was once in flames. Rudolf Steiner embodied the legend; he realized it in physical action; he became the legend. He proclaimed it to humanity through his life.

And Rudolf Steiner threw himself into the searing fire of the center. We were this searing fire for him, we, the children of Cain. He took our karma upon himself so that we would be freer to serve. But our karma was too hard and too heavy and broke his physical strength almost immediately after he had entered into the covenant. His last year of life was a mighty expiration of his spirit...

We are gathered here today because we are aware that we have experienced a moment in world history that was a turning point, not just a turning point. The spirit descended in currents never before imagined through a person who had made himself capable of receiving the spirit in mind, soul, and body. Today we want to do nothing else but let this spirit prevail among us in the words he left us, as a source of life and strength, the words and the music inspired by him in the space surrounded by black, which is the physical color of the spirit, at the three altars whose significance is known to you through the mystery plays, by the light of the three candles that are the chandeliers of these altars.

Our thoughts turn to the one who left us a year ago today, who poured his wisdom into our hearts with inexhaustible, never-ending gentleness and kindness, whose love embraced and carried the souls of us all, whose strength lifted our earth out of its Ahrimanic material snares, in which it threatened to suffocate, and carried it towards the spirit, on the wings of the ego-transcendence he lived and taught. “Christ in me” - that was his life, his work and his word.

In his words he created a structure of indestructible strength, clarity and beauty. May our thoughts, feelings and will strive to keep this word alive among us!

We have laid down on the altars of wisdom, beauty and strength, before which he has served, the tools with which he has worked, which are still imbued with the warming fire of his hands, which have grasped the future. With them he worked into the material until it became a spiritual revelation, thus opening up to us the most hidden laws of nature, which push towards revelation through the beautiful appearance. These are his compass, his measuring rod, his trowel, his hammer, his mallet, with which he created the forms of his sculpture: (3 hammer blows: long short short; long short short; long short short).

In his spirit we gather today, asking that he cover our weaknesses and our inadequacies with the splendor of his being. In his name we call upon the archangel, whose service he has consecrated to us, seeking to recognize the guardian who stands before the gate of the temple to the other realm: (3 hammer blows: long short short; long short short; long short short). We try to approach this Guardian in the sign of his love, which, emanating full of wisdom, became for us the bestowing virtue of his word, which, being transformed into action, became for us the pointing, active sword of Michael, his emanating life, which, in creating knowledge, led us back to our original state, and, overcoming space and time, became for us the future. We call upon them, the existing, active, ruling powers: He who created them anew: Anthroposophia, Him whom He bids us follow: Michael The all-embracing source that bears the future within itself: Jahveh-Adonai

Life – Love – Logos
Christ in me

Ex deo nascimur / In Christo morimur / Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus

(3 hammer blows: long short short; long short short; long short short).

• 1. A participant reported a related statement by Rudolf Steiner in the context of the work of the Knowledge Cult as follows: “At the top, as head of the school and as mediator of spiritual realities, was Rudolf Steiner; at his side as comrade and colleague was Marie von Sivers. ... During a higher-level activity, at which only a small number of participants were allowed to be present, we were informed by Rudolf Steiner himself that Marie von Sivers' collaboration was to be taken in a fully legitimate sense - not symbolically as with the rest of us. And in such a way that reference was made to a reality that goes beyond birth and death.” Adolf Arenson in a circular letter to the members of the Anthroposophical Society, October 1926.
• 2. Albert Steffen's drama “Hieram and Solomon” and the poetry of Kurt Piper, see “Further Reading” on page 498.
• 3. What is meant is the laying of the foundation stone for the education of the General Anthroposophical Society at Christmas 1923. Adolf Arenson reports: “Rudolf Steiner opened the Christmas Conference not with words but with symbolic blows, and in so doing he brought the law of continuity into effect. For everyone who belonged to the institution that Rudolf Steiner describes in the 36th chapter of his 'Life Course' said these blows: “The new that I want to give you, I hereby tie to the existing earlier, true to the law of esotericism. ... It hardly needs to be emphasized that this tying to the earlier includes the possibility of bringing a completely new, even a leaping new, as indeed the flower ties to the formation of leaves in the plant and yet is a completely new one.” Letter from Adolf Arenson to Albert Steffen, December 24, 1926.