Rudolf Steiner: "In Greek times, when schooling and education were not yet oppressed with that stuffy atmosphere of pedantry which deters one nowadays from making any reference to education . . ."
Source: 9/18/24 GA 282
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Life Is Death & Death Is Life
Rudolf Steiner: "All that we have here on Earth as feeling of reality, all that we should describe as the reality — the real existence — of human beings whom we meet here, is in its intensity like the reality of a dream compared to the immensely strong reality which we experience in the decades immediately after death and which the clairvoyant observer can experiene with us. For there, everything seems to us more real. The earthly life seems like a dream. It is as though the soul were only then awakening into the real intensity of life.... How weak is the reality of earthly life compared with that intensest life which meets us when we follow a man after his death!"
Source: Karmic Relationships, vol. 8, lecture 7. September 18, 1924. p. 106
A Greek Tragedy: The spiritual path as a constant catharsis
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My guru, Swamiji |
Rudolf Steiner: "In the description he gives of tragedy, Aristotle plainly refers us to the ancient Mysteries, for he speaks there of ‘catharsis’. Catharsis, the purification of the human soul, where the transition is made from the kind of feeling that is experienced in the physical to a feeling that belongs in the realm of soul and spirit, was a goal that was set before the Mystery pupils in the olden days. And now look how Aristotle, in characterizing tragedy, sees in its gradual unfoldment a reflection of this process that took place in the Mysteries for the ensouling of man. Note that I say, a reflection; we must not of course confuse the two. Aristotle asks : What should tragedy do; what is its function? Tragedy, he declares, should awaken fear and compassion. In the ancient Mysteries they would have put it differently. They would have said: Tragedy has to pass from the u mood into the i mood — in order then to find its solution in the a or o mood. That is how you would have heard it expressed in very ancient times. Aristotle then goes on to say that this fear and compassion are to be aroused in the spectator in order that he may thereby undergo purification. Catharsis, he tells us, will follow from the experience of these emotions."
"I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." — Galatians 2:19-21
Wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.
The goal of anthroposophy is to become Anthroposophia
Rudolf Steiner:
But now let us weigh the consequences this implies for an anthroposophically oriented person. He cannot just cut himself loose from external life and practice. He has taken flight into the Anthroposophical Society, but life's outer needs continue on, and he cannot get away from them in a single step or with one stroke. So his soul is caught and divided between his continuing outer life and the ideal life and knowledge that he has embraced in concept as a member of the Anthroposophical Society. A cleavage of this sort can be a painful and even tragic experience, and it becomes such to a degree determined by the depth or superficiality of the individual. But this very pain, this tragedy, contains the most precious seeds of the new, constructive life that has to be built up in the midst of our decaying culture. For the truth is that everything in life that flowers and bears fruit is an outgrowth of pain and suffering. It is perhaps just those individuals with the deepest sense of the Society's mission who have to have the most personal experience of pain and suffering as they take on that mission, though it is also true that real human strength can only be developed by rising above suffering and making it a living force, the source of one's power to overcome.
The path that leads into the Society consists firstly, then, in changing the direction of one's will; secondly, in experiencing super-sensible knowledge; lastly, in participating in the destiny of one's time to a point where it becomes one's personal destiny. One feels oneself sharing mankind's evolution in the act of reversing one's will and experiencing the super-sensible nature of all truth. Sharing the experience of the time's true significance is what gives us our first real feeling for the fact of our humanness. The term “Anthroposophy” should really be understood as synonymous with “Sophia,” meaning the content of consciousness, the soul attitude and experience that make a man a full-fledged human being. The right interpretation of “Anthroposophy” is not “the wisdom of man,” but rather “the consciousness of one's humanity.” In other words, the reversing of the will, the experiencing of knowledge, and one's participation in the time's destiny, should all aim at giving the soul a certain direction of consciousness, a “Sophia.”
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Source: September 18, 1924 GA 282
Source: February 13, 1923 Living Anthroposophically
The soul moods of the seven colors of the rainbow
Rudolf Steiner:
The rainbow! ... I feel within me a mood of prayer: that is how the rainbow begins, in the intensest violet, that goes shimmering out and out into immeasurable distances. The violet goes over into blue — the restful, quiet mood of the soul. That again goes over into green. When we look up to the green arc of the rainbow, it is as though our soul were poured out over all the sprouting and blossoming of Nature's world. It is as though, in passing from violet and blue into green, we had come away from the Gods to whom we were praying, and now in the green were finding ourselves in a world that opens the door to wonder, opens the door to a sensitive sympathy and antipathy with all that is around us. If you have really drunk in the green of the rainbow, you are already on the way to understanding all the beings and things of the world. Then you pass on to yellow, and in yellow you feel firmly established in yourself, you feel you have the power to be man in the midst of Nature — that is, to be something more than the rest of Nature around you. And when you go over to orange, then you feel your own warmth, the warmth that you carry within you; and at the same time you are made sensible of many a shortcoming in your character, and of good points too. Going on then to red, where the other edge of the rainbow passes once again into the vast distances of Nature, your soul will overflow with joy and exultation, with ardent devotion, and with love to all mankind.
How true it is that men see but the body of the rainbow! The way they look at it is as though you might have an artificial figure of a man in front of you, made of papier-mâché, and were quite content with this completely soulless human form. Even so do men look up at the rainbow, with no eyes or feeling for anything more than that.
Related: First Class lesson 17
Source: September 18, 1924. GA 282
Karmic Relationships. Volume 4, Lecture 7
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, September 18, 1924
[100 years ago today]
In the lectures today and tomorrow I wish to give certain indications which will throw light not only on the working of karma, but on the wider importance of karmic knowledge for our general knowledge of the history of evolution, especially in the domain of the spiritual life. We cannot understand the real working of karma if we merely consider the successive earthly lives of any one individuality. Certain it is that within this earthly life, being strongly impressed by the earthly career and history of one man or another, or maybe even of ourselves, we are most keen to know: How do the results of former earthly lives reach over into a later one? But the ways of the working of karma would never become clear to us if we stopped short at the earthly lives themselves. For between one earthly life and another man spends the life between death and a new birth, and it is there that karma is elaborated from what has happened in a former earthly life. There it is elaborated in co-operation with other karmically connected human souls who are also in their life between death and a new birth, and with the Spirits of higher and lower Hierarchies. And this elaboration of karma can only be understood if we can look to the world of stars beyond the earth. For we know that the realm of the stars as it appears to physical sight, reveals only its external aspect.
Again and again we must repeat that the physicist would be in the highest degree astonished if he arrived at the places of the stars which he observes through his telescope, whose constitution and substances he analyses with his spectroscope. The physicist, if he were to go to the places where the stars are, would be astonished to see something totally different from what he would expect. For what the star shows to earthly observation is in reality only an outward semblance, comparatively unessential to its own true being. What the star really contains is of a spiritual nature, or, if physical it appears as the remnant, so to say, of something spiritual.
We can best explain this in the following way. Imagine that an inhabitant of some other star were to observe the Earth in the way our astronomers and astro-physicists observe other stars. He would describe a luminous disc shining far out into the cosmos. On it he would find perhaps darker and lighter spots which he would somehow interpret. Probably the interpretation would altogether disagree with what we who inhabit the globe know amongst ourselves. Or perhaps, if Vesuvius were erupting and such a being could observe it, he would theorise that a comet was colliding with the Earth, and so forth. At any rate, what such a being described would have very little to do with the real essence of our Earth.
For what is the essence of our Earth? You must remember that this Earth has proceeded from the Saturn-existence as I described it in my Occult Science. In Saturn there was as yet no air, no gas, no liquid, no solid earth-constituent. There were only varied differentiations of warmth. But in those warmth-conditions, everything that afterwards became the mineral, plant and animal, and human kingdoms was contained germinally. We human beings, too, were in the warmth of ancient Saturn.
Then evolution went forward. Out of the warmth, air was precipitated, water was precipitated, and at length the solid element. All these are remnants, precipitated, cast out by humanity in order that it might attain its further evolution. The whole solid mineral world belongs to us. It is but a relic that has remained behind. So, too, the watery and airy elements. Thus the real essence of our Earth is not what we have in the kingdoms of Nature, and not even what we carry in our bones and muscles (for these too are composed of what we have thus cast out and afterwards absorbed again). Our own souls are the real essence, and everything else is in reality more or less a semblance, a remnant, a waste product, or the like.
The only true description of the Earth would be to describe it as the colony of the souls of man in cosmic space.
Thus are all the stars colonies of spiritual Beings in cosmic space, colonies which we can learn to know as such. And having passed through the gate of death, our own soul lives and moves among these starry colonies. It goes on its further journey, evolving towards a new birth in community with other human souls that are there, and with the Beings of higher or even of lower Hierarchies. And when a man's karma is elaborated and he is ripe to take on an earthly body once again, his soul starts on the returning journey.
To understand karma, therefore, we must return once more to a wisdom of the stars. We must discover spiritually the paths of man between death and a new birth in connection with the Beings of the stars.
Now until the beginning of the age of Michael there have been the greatest difficulties for the men of modern time to approach a real wisdom of the stars. And Anthroposophy, having nevertheless found its way to such a wisdom, must be deeply thankful for the fact that the dominion of Michael really did enter the life of Earth-humanity with the last third of the 19th century. For among many things that we owe to the dominion of Michael there is this too: we have gained once more unhindered access to discover what must be investigated in the worlds of the stars if we would understand karma and the forming of karma in the sphere of humanity.
To introduce you gradually into the extremely difficult questions that arise in the investigation of karma, I will give you an example to-day. It will show you by an illustration how much must be achieved before we can speak of the working of karma as we are doing in these lectures.
It is true enough, is it not, that if we were to speak popularly or in public of the content of these lectures nowadays, these things which are truly an outcome of exact research would be treated as an absurdity. Nevertheless it is a most exact research and you must make yourselves acquainted with all the responsibilities of which one becomes aware in the course of it. You must learn to know all the obstacles and difficulties one meets in such research—the thorny hedges, as it were, which one must pass. For all these things are necessary in order that at length a number of human beings, united karmically in the community of Michael, can learn to know the things of karma. You must know that these are questions of the most earnest spiritual research, far removed from what is imagined by the layman who stands outside this Anthroposophical Movement.
Most of you will remember a character who occurs again and again in my Mystery Plays—the character of Strader. I have already to some extent spoken of these things. The character of Strader is partly drawn from life, in so far as that is possible in a poetic work. I had a kind of pattern for the personality of Strader. It was a man who lived through the developments of the last third of the 19th century and came to a kind of rationalistic Christianity. After an extremely difficult period of youth (as is suggested in the description of Strader) this man became a Capuchin monk, but he could not bear it in the Church, and at length became a professor.
Having been driven from theology into philosophy, he wrote and spoke with great enthusiasm of Lessing's “free-thinking religion” if one may so describe it. Having come into an inner conflict with official Christianity, he then wanted to found a sort of rationalistic Christianity on a basis of reason and in a quite conscious way. The soul-conflicts of Strader as described in my Mystery Plays did indeed take place in the real life of this man, though of course with certain variations.
Now you know that in the last Mystery Play, Strader dies. I myself, if I now look back and see how I wove the character of Strader into the plot of the four Mystery Plays, must see that though there was no external difficulty in letting him live on just like the other characters, he dies out of an inner necessity at a certain moment. One may well feel his death as a surprise when reading through the plays. But I had the strong inner feeling that I could no longer continue the character of Strader in the plays.
Why was it so? You see, in the meantime the original, the model, if I may call him so, had died. Now having based the character of Strader on him, you may well imagine how deeply interested I was in the original, in his further course of evolution. He continued to interest me when he had passed through the gate of death.
Now it is a peculiar thing when we wish to follow the life of a human being clairvoyantly through the time directly after death, through the period that lasts about a third of the physical life on earth. The earthly life, as we know, is in a certain way gone through again backward, at a threefold speed. Now what is the human being really experiencing in these decades that immediately follow his earthly life?
Imagine a human life here upon earth. We know how it falls into day and night—alternating conditions of waking and sleeping. Already in the periods of sleep man experiences reminiscences of the day-waking life pictorially, but he is not conscious. Ordinarily when we look back upon our life we remember only the day-waking states. Nor do we bear in mind what the chain of memories is really like, for in reality we should say: I remember that day from morning till evening, then there is a break, then again from morning till evening, then again a break and so on. But, as the nights are an empty void in our memory, we draw the line continuously through and thus falsify the chain of memory by placing one day directly after another. After death it is different, for then we must live with intense reality through all the experiences that were present in the nights of our life, comprising about a third of the length of our life. We live through it backwards. Now this is the peculiar thing—we have, as you know, a certain sense of reality, a certain feeling of real existence with regard to the things we meet with here in the physical world. If we had not this sense of reality we could consider as a dream all the things we meet with, even in the daytime. Thus we undoubtedly have a sense of the reality of things. We know that they are real; they hit us if we knock against them; they send us light and sound. In short, there are many things that give us our sense of reality here in this earthly life between birth and death.
Now all that we have here on earth as feeling of reality, all that we should describe as the reality—the real existence—of human beings whom we meet here, is in its intensity like the reality of a dream compared to the immensely strong reality which we experience in the decades immediately after death and which the clairvoyant observer can experience with us. For there, everything seems to us more real. The earthly life seems like a dream. It is as though the soul were only then awakening into the real intensity of life.—That is the peculiar thing.
Now as I followed the image of Strader (or of his counterpart) after his passage through the gate of death, the real individuality living after death naturally interested me far more than the reminiscence of his earthly life. For the earthly seems like a dream compared to what emerges after death. Faced with the strong impressions of the dead I could no longer have evolved sufficient interest in the living man to describe his life. In this case I speak out of my own experience. How weak is the reality of earthly life compared with that intensest life which meets us when we follow a man after his death!
When our interest has been kindled on the earth and we try to follow the life of a man in his further course after death, we begin to realise the tremendous difficulties and hindrances. For if we observe rightly and penetratingly, we see, already in that backward course which takes about a third of the time of the past earthly life, how the dead man begins to approach and prepare for the forming of his karma. In a reverse and backward life, he sees all that he underwent during his life on earth. If he offended another man he experiences the event again. If I die at the age of seventy-three, and at the age of sixty I offended someone, I experience it again on the backward journey. But this time I experience, not the feelings which I had in giving the offence, but the feelings of the other man. I live right over into him. Thus I with my own experience live in those who were touched in a good or in a bad sense by these my experiences in life. And thus the tendency is prepared and grows in me myself, to create the karmic balance.
Now my interest in the earthly archetype of Strader who now appeared before me as an individuality in higher worlds—my interest in him had been kindled especially by his desire to take hold of Christianity in a very penetrating, in a very brilliant, but rationalistic way. In his case we cannot but admire the thinker, and yet in the books he wrote, in his rationalistic description of Christianity, we see again and again how the thread of rationalism, the thread of abstract concepts breaks at the critical moment, and in the last resort appalling abstractions are the outcome. He cannot really enter a spiritual conception of Christianity. He builds up a religion of abstract philosophical concepts for himself. In short, the whole workings of modern intellectualism find expression in him.
This again appeared in a peculiar way as one followed his path of life after his death. Ordinarily, when there are no special difficulties, we find the human being living gradually into the sphere of the Moon, for that is the first station of the life after death. When we arrive after death in the Moon-region, we find all those whom we might call the “Registrars” of our destiny, who in primeval time were the wise Teachers of humanity. How often we have spoken of them here! As the Moon separated physically from the Earth, and, having been a part of earthly substance, became a heavenly body by itself, so the primeval Teachers of mankind afterwards followed the Moon, and we to-day, when as dead men we pass the region of the Moon, find the great primeval Teachers of mankind. They were not here in physical bodies, but they founded the primeval wisdom of which the traditions of sacred literature are but an echo.
Unhindered, if there are no special hindrances, we find our way after death into that region of the Moon. Now with the human being who was the archetype of Strader, something peculiar occurred. It was as though he was simply unable to approach the Moon-region unhindered and undergo that life of soul which follows directly after death. There were perpetual hindrances, as though the Moon-region simply would not let this individuality approach it.
Then if one followed the real events and causes in pictorial Imagination, the following appeared.—It was as though the Spirits, the primeval Teachers of mankind who had once brought to humanity the original and spiritual wisdom, called out again and again to this human being, the archetype of Strader: “Thou canst not come to us, for owing to thy special qualities as man thou mayst not know anything as yet about the stars. Thou must wait, and first repeat and recapitulate many things that thou didst undergo not only in thy last, but in thy former incarnations. Thou mayst not know anything at all of the stars and their real being, till thou hast thus prepared thyself.”—It was a strange scene. One had before one an individuality who simply could not grow out towards the spiritual of the world of stars—or could only do so with the greatest difficulty. And in this case I made the strange discovery that these modern individualities of the rationalistic, intellectualistic mind, find the great hindrance in the shaping of their karma, inasmuch as they cannot approach unhindered the spiritual being of the stars.
On further investigation it appeared that this personality had drawn all the forces of his rationalism from the time that still preceded the dawn of the Age of Michael. He was not yet really touched by the dominion of Michael.
In this case I felt strongly called upon to follow the individual karma farther into the past. It was a real challenge. For I said to myself: something is here, which, working from the results of former lives on earth, has prepared this human being karmically, so that the karma works itself out not only in this earthly life, but extends even into the life after his death. It is indeed a strange phenomenon.
Then the following appeared. The earthly life which I have indicated in bare outline, which is reflected in the character of Strader, this earthly life of the individuality was preceded by a life in spiritual worlds which I can only describe as a sore and grievous trial. It was a trial in the spiritual worlds: “What shall I do with Christianity?” It was like a slow preparation of the influences which then made him insecure in earthly life in his conception of Christianity. This too shines through in the figure of Strader. He is in no way certain. He rejects the super-sensible in a way; he tries only to take hold of it with intellect, and yet after all he wants to see. Call to mind the character of Strader, and you will find it so. Thus the real life of the archetype of Strader grew out of his former karma. In effect, in his passage through the life between death and a new birth, before his earthly life at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, he had passed through the world of the stars in a very dim and darkened consciousness. His consciousness was darkened as he went through that life between death and a new birth. And as a reaction, in his life on earth he conceived concepts the more clear and sharply outlined for the bluntness of the conceptual pictures he had experienced between death and a new birth.
We go backward still—beyond these phenomena which seemed to show the starry worlds as though in a perpetual fog—backward to his former life on earth, and there we find the most remarkable thing of all. We are led to begin with, or at least I was led, to the Battle of the Minstrels in the Wartburg, A.D. 1206. It was the very time of which I told you how the old Platonists from the School of Chartres, for instance, had gone up into the spiritual worlds and the others had not yet descended. It was the time when a kind of heavenly conference took place between the two groups of souls as to the further progress of the activities of Michael. In that time there took place the Battle of the Minstrels in the Wartburg.
It is ever interesting to observe: What is happening here on earth and what is happening yonder? Thus we have an event on earth in the Battle of the Minstrels on the Wartburg, not directly connected with the continued stream of Michael.
Now who was there in the Battle of the Minstrels? The greatest German poets were there together, vying one with another in their song. The story is well known—how the Minstrels fought for the fame of princes and for their own repute: Walther von der Vogelweide, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Reinmar von Zweter, and how there was one who stood against all the others—Heinrich von Ofterdingen.
In this Heinrich von Ofterdingen I found the individuality that underlay the archetype of Strader.
Thus it was Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Now we must concentrate on this: Why did Heinrich von Ofterdingen meet with such difficulties when he had passed through the gate of death? Why did he have to go through the world of stars, as it were, darkened and befogged?
To answer this we must return to the story of the Battle of the Minstrels. Heinrich von Ofterdingen takes up the fight against the others. They have already called the hangman. He is to be hanged if he loses. He manages to withdraw; but, hoping to bring about a renewed contest, he summons the magician Klingsor from the land of Hungary. He did, in effect, bring the magician Klingsor from Hungary to Eisenach. A new Battle of the Wartburg ensues and Klingsor enters the lists for Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Klingsor himself sings against the others, but it is quite evident that he is not battling alone. He causes spiritual beings to battle with him. For instance, in order to do so, he makes a youth become possessed by a spiritual being—and then compels the youth to sing in his place. He calls still stronger spiritual forces into play in the Wartburg.
Over against all that comes from Klingsor's side stands Wolfram von Eschenbach. One of Klingsor's practices is to make one of his spiritual beings put Wolfram to the test, as to whether he is really a learned man. For Klingsor finds himself driven into a corner by Wolfram. In effect, Wolfram von Eschenbach, observing that some spiritual influence is at work, sings of the Holy Communion, the Transubstantiation, the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the spirit is obliged to depart, for he cannot bear it. There are indeed “real realities” underlying these things, if I may use the tautology.
Klingsor puts Wolfram to the test, and succeeds indeed, with the help of the spiritual being, in proving that Wolfram (though indeed he has a star-less Christianity, a Christianity that no longer reckons with the cosmos) is quite unlearned in all cosmic wisdom. This now is the point. Klingsor has proved that the Minstrel of the Holy Grail, even in his time, knows only that Christianity which has eliminated the Cosmic Christianity. Klingsor himself, on the other hand, is only able to appear with the support of spiritual beings, inasmuch as he possesses a wisdom of the stars. But we recognise, from the way he uses his wisdom, that what is called “Black Magic” is indeed mingled in his arts.
In a word, we see Wolfram von Eschenbach, who is a stranger to the stars, encountered by a wisdom of the stars unrighteously applied.
This was in the 13th century, immediately preceding the appearance of those Dominicans of whom I told you. It was at the very time when Christianity, just where it was greatest, had divested itself of all insight into the world of stars. Indeed at that time the wisdom of the stars only existed in quarters that were inwardly estranged from Christianity, as was the case with Klingsor of Hungary.
Now it was Heinrich von Ofterdingen who had summoned Klingsor. Heinrich von Ofterdingen, therefore, had allied himself with an unchristian wisdom of the stars. And thus Heinrich remained united in a certain way, not merely with the personality of Klingsor (who in fact afterwards vanished from Heinrich's life in the super-sensible) but with the unchristian cosmology of the Middle Ages. In this way he lived on between death and a new birth, and was reborn as I described it to you. He came into an uncertainty of Christianity.
But the most important thing is this.—He dies again and enters on the returning journey of his life. And in the world of souls, at every step he stands face to face with the necessity, if ever he is to approach the world of stars again, to pass through the grievous battle which Michael had to wage in the last third of the 19th century when he claimed his dominion especially against those demonic powers which were connected with the unchristian cosmology of the Middle Ages.
To complete the picture, I will add that it is clearly possible to see among those who fought hard against the dominion of Michael, and against whom the spirits of Michael had to proceed—it is clearly possible to see among them to this day, the very spirit-beings whom Klingsor conjured up in the Wartburg long ago against Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Thus we see a man whose other results of past karma even led him for a time into the services of the Capuchin Order, unable to come near to real Christianity. He could not come to it because he bore within him the antagonism to Christianity which he had raised in his past life,when he summoned Klingsor to his aid from the land of Hungary, against Wolfram von Eschenbach, the singer of Parsifal. Darkly in the unconscious life of this man the unchristian cosmology still showed itself, but in his ordinary consciousness he evolved a rationalistic Christianity which is not even very interesting. For the interest attaches more to the great conflict of his life, when with a Christian rationalism he tried to found a kind of rationalistic religion.
But it is most significant of all to recognise this connection of abstract rationalism, abstractly clever thinking, with that which lives in the subconscious as darkened, veiled conceptions about the stars and relationships to the stars. Such things, living in the subconscious, rise into consciousness as abstract thoughts. We can study the karma of the cleverest men of the present day—cleverest in the materialist sense—and we find that as a rule in former earthly lives they had something to do with cosmological aberrations into the realms of black magic. This is a very significant connection. An instinctive feeling of it is preserved in the peasants and country folk, who feel a certain aversion from the outset when they find among them someone who is all too clever in a rationalistic sense. They do not like him. In their instinctive conception of him there is something which, if we follow it up, leads eventually to such connections.
Now I want you to consider all these things in relation to our main subject. Such human spirits one could meet with in the last third of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th. They are among the most interesting. A reborn Heinrich von Ofterdingen, who had to do with the blackest magician of his time, with Klingsor, proves indeed most interesting in his present-day rationalistic intellect.
We see here how great the difficulties are when one wishes to approach the wisdom of the stars rightly and righteously. Indeed the true approach to the wisdom of the stars, which we need to penetrate the facts of karma, is only possible in the light of a true insight into Michael's dominion. It is only possible at Michael's side.
I have shown you a single example to-day—the example of him who was the archetype of Strader. It will show you once more, how through the whole reality of modern time there has come forth a certain stream of spiritual life which makes it very difficult to approach with an open mind the science of the stars, and the science, too, of karma. But difficult as it is, it can be done. Despite the attacks that are possible from those quarters which I have described to-day, we can nevertheless go forward with assurance, and approach the wisdom of the stars and the real shaping of karma. As to how these things are possible, I will tell you more tomorrow.
Source: September 18, 1924
Thinking, Feeling, Willing. The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest. Lecture 14 of 18
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, September 18, 1924
[100 years ago today]
I will try to answer your prepared questions during the course of this lecture. Except that I would like to answer some of them in a special session with the arch-rulers even if they were asked by others. This could be done in the next few days, and the answers could then be passed on.
I would especially like to draw your attention to a seal in the Apocalypse which is an Imagination of the Apocalypticer and which has often been depicted by artists in connection with the Apocalypse. One cannot always say that these pictorial renderings of what is in the Apocalypse are very felicitous. However, one can hardly fail to recognize the individual parts of the seal that is involved here and which will be realized in our time, as we saw yesterday, for they come to meet one in the Apocalypse in a quite characteristic way. However, in order to understand this seal, we will have to discuss something which goes parallel with it, which is very important for our time, and has already been touched upon in an Anthroposophical connection and which we find illuminated in a particular way at this point in the Apocalyptic discussion.
If one looks at the development of man and notices how he becomes a being who is split into three parts, as his consciousness makes the transition from the physical, sensory world to a perception of the spiritual world, as I described in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, — if one looks at this one will say to oneself, a triad and a monad are united in men through the integration of these into the form of a physical being. This union is really quite obvious. One can see it if one studies the opinion about the division of the human being that is expressed in Anthroposophy.
Let's look at man and his spirit, soul and body. The way this division is related to the others that are given in Anthroposophy should be clear without further ado. Now, thoughts live in the spirit which man has today. These thoughts are like I the ones which I refer to in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, for instance, where one has pure thoughts that are freely created in man's consciousness, and not the kind that are permeated by sense perceptions. Here, thoughts are almost completely illusory from a qualitative viewpoint; they are a full reality to such a small extent that we don't have quite enough inner force because we don't have a mirror image, and so we can't quite, compare them with mirror images, and yet in a certain sense we can. The image that appears in a mirror doesn't unfold any forces along the directions of its lines, it is completely passive. Human thoughts have some force when they are developed, so that we can catch this force and we can permeate it with will — as I said yesterday in the esoteric class. But the ordinary thoughts that man has during his lifetime are really like mirror images in comparison with the universe's existence and its full content. So that although we hear spirit in our human being, it's a mirror image of the spirit.
What we bear within us there comes from a world which I called spiritland in my Theosophy. So when we think on earth we're really bringing the ingredients of the spiritland down to the earth as an illusory reflection. When we think we carry whatTheosophy calls devachan down into the earth sphere, even though this is only a faint reflection of it. We bear these contents in us on earth; we bear a faint reflection of heavenly splendors in us.
If we pass on to the soul element we mainly find feeling there. It exists as feeling during the waking state, and as pictorial dreams while we're asleep. The only difference between dreams and feelings is that one is the content of the soul during the waking state and the other is its content during sleep. What we experience in our feelings as men on earth between birth and death comes from another world that I described from a certain viewpoint in my Theosophy. It comes from the soul world which we experience in its real form after death. Cur feeling life is not a mirror image of this real form but an image of it which is maintained in our soul by creative elemental powers. We only dream of this soul world in our feelings and there is no reality in our image of it.
What constitutes men's bodies on earth today does not develop any consciousness of archetypes, but it contains the strongest realities of existence. We are real in our body, but we are only active in the physical, terrestrial world in it. Thus the three members of man's being belong to different worlds.
You must develop a correct view about these things, since you want to work upon the being of man, and therefore you must have something in your feelings that points to what exists in man's being. Quite good philosophers have failed to understand my division of man's being altogether. They have expressed one misunderstanding after another about it, which shows how difficult it is even for good thinkers of the present time to really get into Anthroposophy.
One philosopher spoke about this division of man as if it were an arbitrary one that had been made with the intellect and which amounted to a formal schematism. Of course one can also divide a table into legs, top, etc., even though the whole thing is made of wood. One could also divide it from left to right, but the division of the human being has nothing to do with such an arbitrary classification. One could put it like this: if one has real hydrogen and real oxygen and one combines them one gets water. They are realities and not just artificial schemata. Likewise, man's members are not separated in an arbitrary way; they are integrated into the reality of human nature, so that one can say that the spirit comes from spirit land, the soul from the soul world and the physical body from the physical world. These members of the human being come from three different worlds and they are integrated in man. And when man leaves the physical world with his consciousness, his inner elements split up, and the one becomes three. However, what happens in individual men in this way takes place in the whole of humanity throughout its various racial and national evolutions, although not everyone has to participate in it. One can say that the evolving humanity which is present in the sub-consciousness of every single human being and which doesn't become noticeable to ordinary consciousness, goes through stages of development that are similar to the ones individual men go through.
Something like a splitting into three and a crossing of the threshold by mankind is taking place in our time. In our consciousness age individual men have to acquire something which constitutes a going past' the Guardian of the Threshold, if they want to do it. However, mankind is going past the Guardian of the Threshold in our time, although, individual men are unaware of this. The whole of humanity is crossing the threshold. Whereas the physical body still gave something to men on earth up to the end of the 18th century because of the elemental beings which are living in it, men must now get their virtues and everything productive that they will find inwardly from the spiritual world; this is mankind as a whole, not individual human beings. So that a crossing of the threshold is occurring in the evolution of mankind as a whole, which appears to the Apocalypticer before he has his vision of the sun-illuminated woman with the dragon under her feet, because it actually precedes it in time. Here the Apocalypticer has another vision that clearly reflects what he wants to say: The time is coming when the whole of humanity, or at least its civilized parts will have to cross the threshold. And a triad appears which is the cosmic Imagination of what mankind is going through. There will be ever more men who will have the feeling: My thoughts want to run away from me, and my feet are being pulled down by the earth's gravity; this is in addition to other feelings that men can develop when these things become more pathological. Many people today have the strong feeling that their thoughts are running away from them and that their feet are being pulled down to the earth too much. Except that our present-day civilization talks people out of something like this, just as children are talked out of visions they have which are nevertheless based on a real foundation.
However, what lives strongly in our time appears before the clairvoyant eye of the Apocalypticer as a figure that forms out of the clouds, has a face like a sun, goes over into a rainbow, and has fiery feet, of which one is planted on the ocean and the other on the earth. One could say that this is really the most significant vision that the present-day human soul should look at. For the thoughts that belong to spirit land are in the face which is born out of the clouds above. The rainbow is the feeling world in man's soul which belongs to the soul world. What is contained in the bodies of men who belong to the physical world is in the fiery feet that get their strength from the power of the earth Which is covered by the ocean.
One could say that this points to a real cultural secret of the present, which is that there are three kinds of men, and not that each man is split into three parts. One can see this very clearly today. We have cloud men who can only think, whereas the two other parts — rainbow and fiery feet — remain stunted. We have rainbow men where the main development is in the feelings. They can only grasp Anthroposophy with their feelings and not with their minds. However, this type is also present in the outside world and not just in the Anthroposophical Society. They can only grasp the world with their feelings. These people's feelings are well developed but their thinking and will are stunted. Then there are people today who act as if they only had a hypertrophically developed will; their thinking and feeling are stunted; they charge like bulls and act in accordance with direct, outer impulses, — they're the fiery footed men.
The vision of John the Apocalypticer depicts these three kinds of men which we meet in life. We should become aware of this secret of our present-day civilization so that we can look at human beings in the right way. One can also discover them if one looks at larger world events.
Just look at what is, happening in Russia. We have the influence of the cloud man, of the man who mainly thinks, in whom feeling and will are neglected. They would like to surrender their will to a social mechanism, and their feelings are used by Ahrimanic powers because they don't have any control over them. They are thinkers, but since man on earth is organized in an Ahrimanic and Luciferic way, their thinking is like - - I will use an analogy that will seem like a perfectly natural one to anyone who knows spiritual science; it will only scare such people away who haven't worked their way into this kind of thing yet. If one takes the thoughts of Lenin and the others and one looks at these thoughts, that is, if one tries to imagine what the combined thoughts of Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharski, etc., looks like, if one imagines what is growling and raging in the heads of leading Russians today, one gets what one calls a system of forces in physics. If one was a gigantic elemental spirit one could form clouds and arouse thunder and lightning up in the sky over a large territory with these forces. But they don't belong on earth. This image might surprise you, but anyone who can look into the occult depths of existence must say that the same forces that weave and live in the heads of leading Russians are also in the lightning that is formed in the clouds over our heads and that they flash the lightning down to the earth and roll the thunders. This is where these forces belong. Their action in leading Bolsheviks is out of place.
So you see that the Apocalypticer clearly foresaw many things that are present in our time. And he knew that such an epochal period of time can be indicated with a number. I myself have indicated the approximate number of years which the development of the consciousness soul, intellectual or mind soul, etc., covers. I said that such a period lasts one twelfth of 25.920 years.
Now the place in the Apocalypse to which I'm referring gave me quite a bit of trouble for a while. For the Apocalypticer supposedly prophesies about things that will take one thousand two hundred and threescore days. They used to speak of days when they meant years. Anyway, the Apocalypticer mentions the number 1260. It took a lot of intensive research to discover that the 1260 days is really a printing error, as it were, in the Apocalypse that was handed down. It should say 2160 days. Then it agrees with what one can see today. It's quite possible that an un-clarity arose in some school where the things were handed down, because many numbers look like their mirror images to seers. However, this is something that is not too important when one feels one's way into the Apocalypse.
Now the people who stand within their race in such a way that they're really cloud men are confronted by others who are rainbow men. Their thinking is relatively inactive, they mainly like to use traditional thoughts and they are rather timid about approaching the spiritual world with their thoughts. One meets a large number of such rainbow men in central European regions.
Thinking and feeling get increasingly stunted the further we go west, where we find a pathological development of fiery footed men. One finds large numbers of such fiery footed human beings in the western part of Europe and presumably in America. So that we can divide the earth along these lines: In the east there are many cloud men, in the center many rainbow men, and in the west many fiery footed men.
If we take racial developments into account, one could say that something like a picture of the figure which we encounter here in the Apocalypticer is spread out over the earth, if one looks at it, spiritually from outside. One can't do this in a balloon or airplane, but if one would raise oneself up spiritually into the heights from a point in Westphalen and would look down at the earth, Asia would have a kind of a cloud form face with solar shapes, and one would see rainbow colors spread out over Europe, and further over would be the fiery feet, with one planted on the Andes in South America and the other in the Pacific Ocean. And then one has the earth underneath this image.
This is one of the most incisive prophecies that the Apocalypticer has for our time. This is something that is very important for priestly activities, for the great riddle of our time that developed with Napoleon consists of this. This striving of men into races and nations that has come to expression so incomprehensibly throúgh Wilsonianism today really only arose in a distinct way under the influence of Napoleonism, of the first Napoleon. The way that men are striving towards races and nations and the way that they basically want to bury all cosmopolitanism today is really quite terrible. But the reason for this is that this passage through the threshold, place is occurring.
Just as a human being splits up in the spiritual world when he develops further, so men on earth split up into regions that individual human beings remain unaware of, namely, into cloud men, rainbow men and fiery footed men. This splitting of men into three parts — which I described for individuals in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, has occurred for humanity on earth; it's here. The powerful sign which the Apocalypticer sketches is there in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. People cannot find the harmony between the three parts at first, and so they look for things in the split rather than in the union; which sometimes leads to rather strange results.
For instance, through this whole external way of thinking that takes hold of people, one can. see that people don't find their way together with inner understanding, that is, they often unite for superficial reasons. For instance, we can see that the Czechs whose land is between the Krusnehory and Fichtel mountains, the Bohemian Forest and down to the Morave River and over to Bratislava (formerly Pressburg), and up to the Ceskyles and Sumava Mountains as the southern boundary, — that these Czechs are cloud people in the most eminent sense of the word, who have only developed their thinking. They were welded together with the Slovaks in a way that shows a lack of inner understanding, for the Slovaks are definitely a rainbow people who are not the thinking type at all. On the other hand, we see that another quite external relationship which had been formed shortly before is dissolved. All. of these human, earthly activities are not very sensible, because they want to exclude the spirit.
We see that the whole of Slovakia was recently separated from Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, which is the territory which I just indicated. We see that all of this Slovakia was previously united with Magyar country and with real Magyars. You must distinguish the real Magyars from the immigrated ones, and you can do this just by looking at their names. A real Magyar has a name one can't even pronounce in the west, especially if he's an older type. But he's called Hirschfeld, if he's one of those agitative and screaming Magyars of today. One has to go back to the genuine Magyars who are all fiery-footed men, and they were briefly welded together with the rainbow Slovaks. The non-spirit in the world today throws the dice in such a way that the Slovaks are first thrown together with the Magyars and then with the Czechs.
That is the way the dice are being thrown in general today. This comes to expression in deeper symptoms, such as the fact that a really significant person like Masaryk who is standing at the helm in the Czechoslovakian Republic, is a Slovak, and not a Czech. Anyone who knows Masaryk knows that he is a rainbow man who can't think at all. If you read his books you will see that our age is speaking in them. He is a rainbow man, a real Slovak.
One has to be able to look at contemporary human beings in accordance with these categories in order to see the kind of crap game that is being played, although of course this is based on world karma. Here we must look at the age — which is really ours — which can say of itself that it is entering ever more into men's consciousness and into the consciousness soul. People previously saw the starry script written outside; they saw the contents of old traditions and old wisdom written outside. There is a kind of a memory of this man who is split into three in ancient books. Everything which the wise men proclaimed about the world in the mystery centers in Macedonia, Greece, Ephesus, Samothrace, Delphi and in other places in Asia Minor and elsewhere is the book which is preserved from ancient times, which is in the hand of the angel whose face is fashioned out of clouds, his chest out of a rainbow, and his feet out of fire, and he stands firmly in America with the rest of his body spread out over Europe and Asia. However, as consciousness men we can only keep this active and alive for ourselves if we have to look within ourselves for the source which enables us to learn how to see spiritual things. We must devour the book, which could previously only be brought from outside, and bring it into ourselves. This book which contains the world's secrets is sweet in the mouths of some people at first. People like to come to things which can give them spiritual views; so that they taste like honey to them. But as soon as one has to fulfill the exacting conditions in life which are connected with a spiritual comprehension of the world then what the Apocalypticer says is sweet as honey becomes a stomach ache, especially to the people who have become so materialistic today. These people find that the digestion of the spiritual nourishment that is so necessary for them is painful.
If we look at this, we have to admit that all of this dice throwing and confusion indicates that a force which can measure everything in a new way must come from the spiritual power that can be seen in threefold man. A reed, or really a measuring rod, is sent down from heaven, with which everything is to be measured in a new way. Just look at our time. Doesn't everything have to be measured anew? Shouldn't we add something like a cloud shape to that abstract Asian shape that we find on our maps, rainbow colors to Europe and fiery feet to the Americas? Don't we have to measure everything anew from the viewpoint of the spiritual life? After all, we're right m the midst of what the Apocalypse is showing us here.
If we grasp what we must stand in in a fully conscious way, we will get away from the layman's attitude that is often present in the depths of our sub-consciousness today and we will acquire a non-rationalistic grasp of the tasks of our time through what is to be a new priesthood. This is something that should be said in connection with this particular chapter of the Apocalypse. The things agree in every detail. We will have more to say about racial and individual evolution tomorrow.
Stage Décor: Its Stylisation in Colour and Light
Speech and Drama: Lecture 14
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, September 18, 1924
[100 years ago today]
My Dear Friends!
At the close of yesterday's lecture I began to show you how you can obtain guidance for the configuration of a drama by studying the sound-feelings that belong to it. For the form of the drama is contained within the cycle of the sound-feelings; and when we inscribe these on to a circle, we discover within their sequence the configuration, on the one hand, of tragedy, and on the other hand, of comedy.
Now, it is a fact that this sensitiveness to sound was present in man in the very early days when drama was first coming into being as an offspring of the plays in the Mysteries; and that can help to assure us that we have here come upon a law, a law in the realm of art. Even Aristotle when he speaks of drama gives evidence of a knowledge that came from the ancient Mystery wisdom. You will not, it is true, find in his writings explicit reference to the connection with sound; the heart of the matter is nevertheless there.
Not all Aristotle's writings have, as we know, come down to us. We can, however, gather from what is known as his Poetics how he regarded tragedy.
In the description he gives of tragedy, Aristotle plainly refers us to the ancient Mysteries, for he speaks there of ‘catharsis’. Catharsis, the purification of the human soul, where the transition is made from the kind of feeling that is experienced in the physical to a feeling that belongs in the realm of soul and spirit, was a goal that was set before the Mystery pupils in the olden days. And now look how Aristotle, in characterising tragedy, sees in its gradual unfoldment a reflection of this process that took place in the Mysteries for the ensouling of man. Note that I say, a reflection; we must not of course confuse the two. Aristotle asks : What should tragedy do; what is its function? Tragedy, he declares, should awaken fear and compassion. In the ancient Mysteries they would have put it differently. They would have said: Tragedy has to pass from the u mood into the i mood — in order then to find its solution in the a or o mood. That is how you would have heard it expressed in very ancient times. Aristotle then goes on to say that this fear and compassion are to be aroused in the spectator in order that he may thereby undergo purification. Catharsis, he tells us, will follow from the experience of these emotions.
In Greek times, when schooling and education were not yet oppressed with that stuffy atmosphere of pedantry which deters one nowadays from making any reference to education, it was possible to speak in this way of the meaning and intention of drama without being guilty of tedious moralising. It was possible to explain how the spectator, by repeatedly witnessing the drama, was meant to experience something like a faint reflection of the catharsis of the Mysteries. As he beheld the tragedy acted out before him, fear and compassion were to be artificially awakened in him, with the result that he would gradually be healed from giving himself up uncontrollably to these emotions in real life, healed from all that would undermine his self-possession — in a word, he would experience what was known as catharsis.
If we have to stage a drama and want to form it in right relation to the soul elements that go to the building of it, then we must find again the possibility to receive truths of this kind into the very lifestream of our blood. We must be able to sense the imponderable influences that play between stage and audience.
I reminded you just now that the writings of Aristotle have come down to us only imperfectly. If we had them entire, we should find in them also the other definition which would run somewhat as follows: Comedy is the representation on the stage of a complete and finished plot that is calculated to awaken in the spectator inquisitive interest and apprehensiveness, with the result that his interest in life grows and widens.
Not much is left today of what people were once able to receive through witnessing the performance of comedy. The interest of many people — I am not of course speaking now of people who have cultivated the finer aesthetic sensibilities — but the main interest of people at large is apt to be limited to the ‘him’ and the ‘her’. They are apprehensive as to whether ‘he’ and ‘she’ are going to get one another, and relieved and content when they do pair off after all. Even so, however, the comedy of today does still bear the semblance of what constitutes the essence of genuine comedy.
Now, it is a matter of no little importance that we should be able to take what we have thus seen to be the essential elements of tragedy and comedy, and unite them with our experience of sound in the way that I explained yesterday, that we may then bring them into our speech and gesture. For the art of acting is a real experience, born out of the human soul that has been embodied in speech and gesture.
I have spoken of this in an article which will appear in the Mitteilungsblatt tomorrow, in continuation of what I wrote there the previous week about the present course of lectures. The two articles taken together could indeed be regarded as a kind of ideal programme for those who are attending the course, particularly for those of you who, whether actors or no, take a real interest in dramatic art. As I have said there, the art of acting is an experience that arises from the soul's having embodied itself in speech and gesture. And it must again become that. But before it can do so, our eyes will have to be opened to perceive certain basic elements without the recognition of which we cannot hope to stage our plays aright. For on the stage there must be harmony throughout; nothing there but must be in tune.
Suppose a producer is considering how to build up a scene, giving it the décor that will make the right impression upon the eyes of the audience. If he is conscious at all of the need for style, that is to say, for art, and does not want mere naturalism — which is the reverse of art — he will have to do his utmost to bring style into his décor. But do we really understand what style in décor means?
Let us think first what it is we have to work with when we set out to make our décor, even if we are wanting to do it in a manner that inclines strongly in the direction of naturalism. We have to work almost entirely with the products of human civilisation — that is to say, with the sub-mineral world. (The crystal forms of the mineral world are more cosmic; they have far more affinity with the cosmos than have any of our aesthetically built houses!) We have to concern ourselves also with the mineral kingdom, and to some extent too with the plant kingdom. Pictures of lions and bears will very seldom be asked for, nor would they easily fit in with the action on the stage. If you were to paint in somewhere a dog sitting under a tree, that too would hardly appeal to one as a choice specimen of décor!
But now, is it possible to represent with style, with art, something that is of mineral nature? Can houses — can plants even — be shown with style? People try to do it; but their attempts only go to prove that it cannot be done. Imagine a stylised tree! The inner conditions that determine art make such a thing impossible. For we cannot, you know, do everything! We can do the things that are laid down in the inner laws of the universe — and only these.
It is different with the animal kingdom. There you can begin to sculpt and mould. A lion or a tiger you can mould artistically — a dog, a cow, or an ox. And going on then to man, you can develop your plastic art to the point of portraiture. But imagine you set out to sculpt a lily. The very idea is inartistic. You simply cannot mould plastically the forms of plants. Neither can the forms of the mineral kingdom be moulded and sculpted. Not until you reach the animal kingdom can you begin to represent in plastic art. Why is this so? How is it we cannot make a plastic representation of a flower, for example? The plastic arts are essentially the arts that idealise, that give style — using the word in its noblest sense. So much so that in the domains where style is possible, our works of art receive style in the degree to which we are able to mould them plastically.
We must not therefore imagine that if, for example, we have to paint a forest for the stage, we shall have to give it style. We must not think we have to paint there a haphazard collection of trees in some deliberate ‘style’. Our picture would only look odd. Stage décor is not landscape, it is not a ‘painting’ in the sense of a work of art. When we stand before a genuine painting, we are looking at something that is finished and complete. It must therefore show style; it must appeal to us as a finished work of art. But stage décor is not finished. It is only finished when it is illuminated by the stage-lighting. And not even then; it receives its final touch when we are looking at it together with what happens on the stage. Not until the play is being enacted is the stage décor complete. This means that it will have to depend for its style not on form and line, but on colour and lighting. If you want to plan your scene so that the whole décor adds just what the actor needs, giving him the exactly right surrounding for his art, then you will have to centre your attention on the play of light and colour.
For what is it that lives in colour? In colour, my dear friends, lives the whole human soul. When we have the power to behold with the eye of the spirit, we discover that the soul of man within lives in colours. Imagine you meet someone whose soul is at that moment bathed in joy, overflowing with mirth and happiness. It is not enough for him to laugh outwardly, he would like to laugh inside; he would like to laugh into the tips of his fingers, and is only sorry he has no tail and cannot show his delight by wagging it, as dogs do. (Oh yes, there are people who feel just like that!) What would you find if you could look right into that person's soul? You would see that that soul was living in red, in a red that positively shouts at you.
When we look at the colour red, we experience it from without. But if we were able to glide right into the jubilant red that we see in that painting there on the wall, and feel how the painter himself must have felt whilst he was painting it, then we would see, shining there in the red, the radiantly happy soul that I described just now. A soul that is imbued more with a feeling of contentment with what has taken place will live in a more tranquil red. A soul that is deep sunk in thought lives in green, experiences green within. A soul that is rapt in prayer lives in violet, and a soul that is brimming over with love experiences a pure and quiet red. A soul that is eaten up with egotism experiences streaks and splashes of yellow-green. And so on, and so on. Every possible experience without has its corresponding experience within.
But now I want you to understand that when I say something like I said just now and that made you laugh so much, about the dog wagging its tail, I do not mean it as a joke. It only sounded like one. Look at a dog that is running up to its master and wagging its tail furiously! That dog is shooting out behind it all the time the most wonderful sheaves of colour — bright red sheaves, blazing red. That is how a dog laughs! A dog's laugh cannot come to expression in its physiognomy; if it ever does so, the effect is not exactly beautiful. But you can see the laughter in the aura that envelops the dog's tail like a cloud. I was, you see, giving you a perfectly accurate description of a fact; I was not speaking in fun.
When we know how the human soul lives in colour, we shall in time begin to be able, by catching them at a particular moment in the play, to perceive the individual persons on the stage in colour. Thus I could, for instance, say: When I look at Danton in the drama of which we were speaking yesterday, then Danton appears to me in a colour where orange plays into a reddish tint. And I would also dress him accordingly.
Or again, if I look at Hebert, I would have to present him in a greenish colour splashed with red, some kind of blending of green and red. Turning now to Chaumette, I would dress him in a colour that, but for a tinge of grey in it, would resemble the deep scarlet worn by Cardinals. As for Robespierre, when I look at him in the play, I see that I must let him appear in a kind of light green, supplementing it, however, with as much red as possible — giving him a red cravat and so forth. That then is how we shall deal with costume — an item in stage décor that should not be obtrusive.
An important point to have in mind in this connection is that in order to have this lively perception of the colours that radiate from the souls of the different characters, the characters must be right there in front of you on the stage. If a cloud comes between you and the sun, the sun cannot shine directly upon you. No more can the persons on the stage shine upon you so long as the curtain is down. When the curtain rises, then the moment has come for them to send forth their rays and communicate to you their colours and tones. You should then be seeing there before you on the stage the inner soul experiences of the various characters. Then too will the décor receive at last its style. For that must be our aim in all stage décor: a style that owes its being not to form and line, but to colour. We shall do well to refrain from any attempt to give it style by way of form and line, and devote our whole attention to finding for it the fundamental colour-tone — one, namely, that will harmonise with the different light effects required in the course of the scene. If we succeed in this, we shall find that our play will awaken the desired response; it will get across to the audience.
We can approach the matter also from another side. Say we have there before us the stage, and we set out to plan the décor, suggesting as best we may, without any attempt at style, the surroundings the scene demands, by the use of certain fundamental colour-tones. In these last we shall not take into consideration the characters at all; our endeavours will be concentrated on finding the fundamental colour-tones that will harmonise with the general situation of the play as a whole. If a scene takes place in the evening, naturally we cannot have a décor that suggests early dawn; nor could we expect to call up the impression of midday on a background that was attuned to moonlight.
After having taken pains to discover in this way the décor that is right for your piece as regards its external situation, you will now have to turn your attention to all that has to come from the inner soul life of the characters, to what these have to contribute in the way of mood. And this is where the lighting comes in. For it is the stage-lighting, in its different shades of colour, that has to render the moods of your characters. Outer and inner will thus be working together on the stage. Your lighting will be planned to accord with the moods of the characters, and you will arrange all your outer décor to accord with the general situation.
All that we have been saying has reference of course to the modern stage in its usual form, and would not apply to anything in the way of an open-air theatre, for instance. As a matter of fact, there can be no inner truthfulness in attempts to return to more primitive times when theatres were out of doors. For, before we could stage our play, the older civilisations themselves would have to be resurrected to provide the necessary milieu, and we can't very well do that!
You must really consider what it involves if you set out to act without the appurtenances of the modern stage, and especially without the effects produced by stage-lighting. On an open-air stage you will certainly not want human countenances; you will be constrained to go back to the mask. The mask, and the mask alone, will unite happily with Nature's background. For the mask does not show man as he is, but makes him look rather like an elemental being; and elemental beings are at home in Nature. In order therefore to act in the open, we would have to return to times when man had as yet no desire to take his place on the stage as man.
While we are on the subject of stage décor, it is a real delight to carry one's mind back to Shakespeare's time. No refinements of stage-setting were possible then! They would place a chair on the stage and write on it: Here is an alehouse! — and leave the rest to the imagination of the audience. But this imagination is simply not there in our modern audiences.
Something else too has been lost. In a time when people's imagination was equal to a staging of this simple kind, the speaking was entirely different from what it is today. It had a style that cannot be given to our speaking today; the languages no longer allow of it. Particularly striking in the English language is the rapidity with which it changed after Shakespeare's time, so that today it is quite impossible to act and speak in true Shakespearian style. Impossible, I mean, for a present-day actor. Could Shakespeare himself be recalled to life, then we would soon see how little his speaking conformed to our modern décor!
I assume, then, that we are dealing with the modern stage, and that we want to take it as it is and endow it with form. We might one day explore the question of how some kind of open-air theatre could be planned for, under the conditions and with the material that our times can provide; but no speculating in that direction can have for us at present any practical value.
When making plans for the stage, we must be quite clear in our minds about this working together of inner and outer. The inner mood of the characters manifests in the lighting; outer décor has to be formed in accordance with what is given by Nature, by the environment. And then we have to bring the two into harmony. And that we can achieve by choosing the right colour-tone for the décor.
Suppose I have an evening scene to prepare. I shall not without further deliberation simply plan to use a colour that belongs specifically to the dusk of evening In all other respects — the representation of trees, and so forth — naturalism may be allowed to hold the field. For the naturalistic painting on the sets is for the stage designer very much what apples and carrots are for the painter of still life — merely the materials from which he composes his picture; and we know very well that apples and carrots do not lend themselves to idealisation. And it is the same for the stage designer; he has no call to stylise the properties that he collects for his scene; indeed he must not try to do so, for he could only make the picture of the scene look artificial if he tried to give it style in form and line. The general fundamental colouring — that is what is important.
To return then to our evening scene. It may be within doors, in a room, or it may be outside, perhaps in a garden. Whichever it is, the fundamental colouring will have to be chosen to blend with the various lighting effects that are needed to express the moods of the characters. We must find the shade that will blend with these to produce a harmonious whole.
It may be, I shall have many changing moods emanating from the souls of the characters; then each of these moods will need its particular lighting effect. But supposing I were to let a red light shine from the left-hand front corner of the stage (as seen from the auditorium) and this red were to fall on a light violet ground, I know very well that the result would be distinctly inharmonious. I shall have to take pains to avoid any such disharmony. For that is the key to the whole matter; in order to achieve style, we must endeavour to find for our décor the shade of colour which will harmonise with all the various colours that are called for by the moods of the persons on the stage.
Considerations of this kind are not at all easy to put before people of the present day. For there is no doubt about it, we are living in a time when art has completely vanished from the stage. This has been forcibly brought home to us in some actual instances that have come our way.
When we first set about staging our Mystery Plays, we were of course obliged to be guests in some theatre; thus we had occasion to inspect a whole variety of stages. As regards the more ordinary kind of stage the main point would naturally be whether it were large enough, and not too large, for our purpose. The décor we would presumably have to undertake ourselves. But now, in the course of our enquiries, we came upon some most strange — and at that time entirely novel — stages, which could really read one a lesson on the hopeless poverty of dramatic art. We were shown, for example, a stage that made me think: In heaven's name, where are the actors going to be? The stage opened wide to right and left, but had no depth, scarcely any depth at all, front to back. Afterwards, I witnessed a performance on this stage. I had to ask myself: Has it really come to this, that people are confusing painting with drama? For it all looked exactly as if it were a painted picture where, however, the figures were somehow made to move about. It was called a ‘relief’ stage.
When a blending of the two arts turns more in the direction of painting, I like it very well. When I was young we had books where what you saw at first was a collection of figures painted on the page; but little dramas were mysteriously stowed away there, waiting for the tabs below to be pulled, when the figures above would begin to move. I had one of these books of my own, in which there was a picture of a very pretty spot in the environs of Vienna. The picture was of course a little stiff and formal. But if one has a child's imagination and is moreover constantly pulling the tabs and setting the picture in motion, why, then the result is really delightful. But when we see something similar on the stage (for we would certainly have taken that relief stage for a painted scene, only that we were puzzled to understand why the figures were moving), then all I can say is that such a spectacle rings the death-knell of dramatic art.
One item we saw on this stage was particularly wanting in good taste. Special attention had obviously been given on this occasion to the matter of perspective and the way the audience can be deceived with it and then taken by surprise. I found myself looking straight at a certain point in the backdrop. There was at that point something that completely baffles description. Impossible to imagine what it could be, there in the middle of the wall, with some sort of continuation downwards! It looked more like a coconut than anything else, but as though a coconut with its fibrous bark were somehow running wild. That was really the impression one had. Then the play began. After a while, this object at the back of the stage gave one a frightful shock. All at once, it began to turn — slowly; and behold, on the other side of it was a human face. Suddenly, from out of the coconut, an actress made her appearance. Yes, that is how it is today! All feeling for ‘form’ on the stage has disappeared, and we have instead these grotesque barbarisms.
Our only hope is to go right back to the foundations of the art of drama. And one of the things you will need to understand, if you want to be a really able actor, is the close relation of colour to human feeling. We have veritably to see in colour human feeling caught and made visible. In the later lectures I shall be suggesting certain themes for you to work with in inward meditation, but I would like now at this point to give you one that is more in the way of a picture — and a picture that you can easily find for yourselves.
I can really tell you of nothing that will help you so well to develop a sensitive feeling for stage décor as will the rainbow. Give yourselves up in reverent devotion to the rainbow, and it will develop in you a remarkably true eye for stage-setting, and moreover the inner ability to compose it.
The rainbow! ... I feel within me a mood of prayer: that is how the rainbow begins, in the intensest violet, that goes shimmering out and out into immeasurable distances. The violet goes over into blue — the restful, quiet mood of the soul. That again goes over into green. When we look up to the green arc of the rainbow, it is as though our soul were poured out over all the sprouting and blossoming of Nature's world. It is as though, in passing from violet and blue into green, we had come away from the Gods to whom we were praying, and now in the green were finding ourselves in a world that opens the door to wonder, opens the door to a sensitive sympathy and antipathy with all that is around us. If you have really drunk in the green of the rainbow, you are already on the way to understanding all the beings and things of the world. Then you pass on to yellow, and in yellow you feel firmly established in yourself, you feel you have the power to be man in the midst of Nature — that is, to be something more than the rest of Nature around you. And when you go over to orange, then you feel your own warmth, the warmth that you carry within you; and at the same time you are made sensible of many a shortcoming in your character, and of good points too. Going on then to red, where the other edge of the rainbow passes once again into the vast distances of Nature, your soul will overflow with joy and exultation, with ardent devotion, and with love to all mankind.
How true it is that men see but the body of the rainbow! The way they look at it is as though you might have an artificial figure of a man in front of you, made of papier-mâché, and were quite content with this completely soulless human form. Even so do men look up at the rainbow, with no eyes or feeling for anything more than that.
When pupils of a dramatic school go for excursions, they should take every opportunity that offers for entering into this living experience of the rainbow. (Naturally, one cannot arrange for such things, but the opportunity comes more often than people imagine.) For it is like this. One who is training for the stage has to come to grips with the earth. In running, leaping, wrestling, in discus-throwing and in spear-throwing—in the practice of these he enters right into the life of the earth. He must, however, also find his way, through the heavenly miracle of the rainbow, into a deep inner soul experience of colour. Then he will have found the world on two sides, making contact with these two revelations of it. And a revelation of the world — that is what drama has to be!
When the student is running, leaping, wrestling, he isn't just executing a movement that he can see; he is within the running and the leaping with his will. And now, when with the eye of the soul he beholds the colours of the rainbow, he is not looking at Nature merely in her outer aspect, he is face to face with the soul-and-spirit that is in Nature — which is what we must also succeed in bringing on to the stage, for without it our décor will never be truly artistic. Beholding thus the soul-and-spirit that works and weaves in Nature, the student will verily be on the way to becoming a contemplator of the universe, he will be learning frankly and naïvely to contemplate, in soul and spirit, the great wide universe. And that will mean, he will find his way back again to the little children's verse that one used to hear so often in earlier days:
‘Kind, es kommt der liebe Gott gezogen
Auf einem schönem Regenbogen.’ 2
This mood of sublime devotion — we need it in dramatic art! The very best result that can follow from a renewal of the art will reveal itself in the fundamental attitude of soul of all those who take part in the work of the stage.
With the decline of the art of acting has come also a decline in the art of writing for the stage. When one sees the whole mood and manner in which authors like Schönthal, Kadelburg, and the rest, to say nothing of Oskar, set about writing their plays, often two or three composing a play between them, showing thus only too clearly that for them the art of the stage has no connection at all with men's souls, how is it ever to be expected that dramatic art should flourish! No wonder it degenerated into something very like routine. And then, after stage-routine had through the seventies pursued its ill-starred way, idealists began to come forward. They were, however, idealists who stood on their heads — instead of walking on their feet! They said: What we show on the stage must be true! And so, into stage-routine and stage-mechanism they brought naturalism. Art they had not, style they had not, so they introduced naturalism; that was the best they could do.
It is important, however, that we should have a clear picture in our minds of how these developments came about; for then we can understand that the idealists, despite the fact that they stood on their heads, did really accomplish something with their naturalism. It was at the time a genuine reform. Better a Brahm than a Blumenthal (his name was really Oskar) or a Lindau. In comparison with what the stage had become in the seventies and in the beginning of the eighties, naturalism was, when all is said, a change for the better. But it was not to last; for it is not art.
Art is what the stage must now rediscover. The art of the stage has become no art — though continuing to be so sought after; for, in spite of all, does not everyone love still to see a play? What we must learn to do is to bring art into our thinking, so that when we give our attention to any aspect whatever of the work of the stage we do so from the standpoint of art.
Source: September 18, 1924 GA 282
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