The Cycle of the Year as Breathing Process of the Earth. Lecture 5 of 5.
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, April 4, 1923:
I should like
to carry to a still wider horizon the reflections I have already made here
concerning the relationship between man and the cycle of Nature which was formed
in ancient times under the influence of the Mysteries, and to go into what was
believed in those times with regard to all that one as man received from the
cosmos through this cycle of Nature. You may have gathered from yesterday's
lecture as well perhaps as from the recollection of much that I could still say
about such matters during the past Christmas season, in the Goetheanum which has
now been taken from us — you may have gathered that the cycle of the year in its
phenomena was perceived, and indeed today can still be perceived, as a result of
life, as something which in its external events is just as much the expression
of a living being standing behind it as the actions of the human organism are
the manifestations of a being, of the human soul itself.
Let us remind
ourselves how, in midsummer, the time we know as St. John's, the people became
aware under this ancient Mystery-influence of a certain relationship to their
ego, an ego which they did not yet consider as exclusively their own, but which
they viewed as resting still in the bosom of the divine-spiritual.
These people
believed that by means of the ceremonies I have described, they approached their
“I” at midsummer, although throughout the rest of the year it was hidden from
them. Of course they thought of themselves as dwelling in their beings
altogether in the bosom of the divine-spiritual; but they thought that during
the other three-quarters of the year nothing was revealed to them of what
belonged to them as their ego. Only in this one quarter, which reached its high
point at St. John's, did the essential being of their own ego manifest itself to
them as through a window opening out of the divine-spiritual world.
Now, this
essence of the individual ego within the divine-spiritual world in which it
revealed itself was by no means regarded in such a neutral, indifferent — one
may even say phlegmatic — way as is the case today. When the “I” is spoken of
today, a person is hardly likely to think of it as having any special connection
either with this world or any other. Rather, he thinks of his “I” as a kind of
point; what he does rays out from it and what he perceives rays
in. But the feeling a person has today in regard to his “I” is of an altogether
phlegmatic nature. We cannot really say that modern man even feels the “egoity”
of his “I” — in spite of the fact that it is his ego; for anyone who wants to be
honest cannot really claim that he is fond of his “I.” He is fond of his body;
he is fond of his instincts; he may be fond of this or that experience. But the
“I” is just a tiny word which is felt as a point in which all that has been
indicated is more or less condensed. But in that period in which, after long
preparations had been made, the approach to this “I” was undertaken
ceremonially, each man was enabled in a certain sense to meet his “I” in the
universe. Following this meeting, then, the “I” was perceived to be once more
gradually withdrawing and leaving the human being alone with his bodily and soul
nature, or as we would say today, with his physical-etheric-astral being. In
that period man felt the “I” perceptively as having a real connection with the
entire cosmos, with the whole world.
But what was
felt above all else with regard to the relationship of this “I” to the world was
not something “naturalistic,” to use the modern term; it was not something
received as an external phenomenon. Rather, it was something which was deemed to
be the very center of the most ancient moral conception of the world. Men did
not expect great secrets of Nature to be revealed to them at this season. To be
sure, such Nature secrets were spoken of, but man did not direct his attention
primarily to them. Rather, he perceived through his feeling that above all he
was to absorb into himself as moral impulse what is revealed at this time of
midsummer when light and warmth reach their highest point.
This was the
season man perceived as the time of divine-moral enlightenment. And what he
wanted above all to obtain from the heavens as “answer” to the performances of
music, poetry, and dancing that were carried on at this season, what he waited
for, was that there should be revealed out of the heavens in all seriousness what
they required of him morally.
And when all
the ceremonies had been carried out that I described yesterday as belonging to
the celebration of these festivals during the time of the Sun's sultry heat — if
it sometimes happened that a powerful storm broke forth with thunder and
lightning, then just in this outbreak of thunder and lightning men felt the
moral admonition of the heavens to earthly humanity.
There are
vestiges from this ancient time in conceptions such as that of Zeus as the god
of thunder, armed with a thunderbolt. Something similar is linked with the
German god Donar. This we have on one side. On the other side, man perceptively
felt Nature, I might say, as warm, luminous, satisfied in itself. And he felt
that this warming, luminous Nature as it was during the daytime remained also
into the night time. Only he made a distinction, saying to himself: “During the
day the air is filled with the warmth-element, with the light-element. In these
elements of warmth and light there weave and live spiritual messengers through
whom the higher divine beings want to make themselves known to men, want to
endow them with moral impulses. But at night, when the higher spiritual beings
withdraw, the messengers remain behind and reveal themselves in their own way.”
And thus it
was that especially at midsummer people perceived the ruling and weaving of
Nature in the summer nights, in the summer evenings. And what they felt then
seemed to them to be a kind of summer dream which they experienced in reality; a
summer dream through which they came especially near to the divine-spiritual; a
summer dream by which they were convinced that every phenomenon of Nature was at
the same time the moral utterance of the gods, but that all kinds of elemental
beings were also active there who revealed themselves to men in their own way.
All the
fanciful embellishment of the midsummer night's dream, of the St. John's night
dream, is what remained later of the wondrous forms conjured by human
imagination that wove through this midsummer time on the soul-spiritual level.
This then, in all particulars, was taken to be a divine-spiritual moral
revelation of the cosmos to man.
And so we may
say that the conception underlying this was: at midsummer the divine-spiritual
world revealed itself through moral impulses which were implanted in man as
Enlightenment (see diagram). And what was felt in a quite special way at
that time, what then worked upon man, was felt to be something super-human which
played into the human order of things.
From his inner
participation in the festivities celebrated in that time, man knew that he was
lifted up above himself as he then was into the super-human, and that the Deity
grasped the hand that man as it were reached toward him at this season.
Everything that man believed to be divine-spiritual within him he ascribed to
the revelations of this season of St. John's.
When the
summer came to an end and autumn approached, when the leaves were withered and
the seeds had ripened, when, that is, the full luxurious life of summer had
faded and the trees become bare, then, because the insights of the Mysteries had
flowed into all these perceptions, man felt: “The divine-spiritual world is
withdrawing again from man.” He notices how he is directed back to himself; he
is in a certain sense growing out of the spiritual into Nature.
Thus man felt
this “living-into” the autumn as a “living-out-from” the spiritual, as a living
into Nature. The tree leaves became mineralized; the seeds dried up and
mineralized. Everything inclined in a certain way toward the death of Nature's
year.
In being thus
interwoven with what was becoming mineral on the Earth and around the Earth, man
felt that he himself was becoming woven together with Nature. For in that period
man still stood closer in his inner experience to what was going on outside. And
he also thought,about, he pondered in his mind about, how he experienced his being
woven-together with Nature. His whole thinking took on this character. If we
want to express in our language today what man felt when autumn came, we should
have to say the following — I beg you, however, to realize that I am using
present-day words, and that in those days man would not have been able to speak
thus, for then everything rested on perceptive feeling and was not characterized
through thinking — but if we want to speak in modern terms we shall have to say:
With his particular trend of thinking, with his feeling way of perceiving, the
human being experienced the transition from summer to autumn in such a way that
he found in it a passing from spirit-knowledge to Nature-knowledge (see
diagram). Toward autumn man felt that he was no longer in a time of
spirit-knowledge but that autumn required of him that he should learn to know
Nature. Thus at the autumn equinox we have, instead of moral impulse,
knowledge of Nature, coming to know Nature.
The human
being began to reflect about Nature. At this time also he began to take into
account the fact that he was a creature, a being within the cosmos. In that time
it would have been considered folly to present Nature-knowledge in its existing
form to man during the summer. The purpose of summer is to bring man into
relation with the spiritual in the world. With the arrival of what we today call
the Michaelmas season, people said to themselves: “By everything that man
perceives about him in the woods, in the trees, in the plants, he is stimulated
to pursue nature-knowledge.” It was the season in which men were to occupy
themselves above all with acquiring knowledge, with reflection. And indeed it
was also the time when outer circumstances of life made this possible. Human
life thus proceeded from Enlightenment to Knowledge. It was the
right season for knowledge, for ever-increasing cognition.
When the
pupils of the Mysteries received their instruction from the teachers, they were
given certain mottoes, of which we find adaptations in the maxims of the Greek
sages. The “seven maxims” of the Seven Wise Men of Greece are, however, not
actually those which originated in the primeval Mysteries.
In the very
earliest Mysteries there was a saying associated with midsummer: “Receive the
Light” (see diagram). By “Light,” spiritual wisdom was meant. It designated
that within which the human being's own “I” shone.
For autumn
(see diagram), the motto imprinted in the Mysteries as an admonition
pointing to what should be carried on by the souls was: “Look around
thee.”
Now there
approached the next development of the year, and with it, what man felt within
himself to be connected of itself with this year. The season of winter
approached. We come to midwinter (see diagram), which includes our
Christmas time. Just as the human being in midsummer felt himself lifted out
above himself to the divine-spiritual existence of the cosmos, so he felt
himself in midwinter to be unfolding downward below himself. He felt as if the
forces of the Earth were washing around him and carrying him along. He felt as
though his will nature, his instincts and impulses, were infiltrated and
permeated by gravity, by the force of destruction and other forces that are in
the Earth. In these ancient times people did not feel winter as we feel it, that
it merely gets cold and we have to put on warm boots, for example, in order not
to get chilled. Rather, a man of that ancient time felt what was coming up out
of the Earth as something that united itself with his own being. In contrast to
the sultry, light-filled element, he felt what came up then in winter as a
frosty element. We feel the chilliness today, too, because it is connected with
the corporeality; but ancient man felt within his soul as a phenomenon
accompanying the cold: darkness and gloom. He felt somewhat as if all around
him, wherever he went, darkness rose up out of the Earth and enveloped him in a
kind of cloud — only up to the middle of his body, to be sure, but this is the
way he felt.
And he said to
himself — again I have to describe it in more modern words — man said to
himself: “During the height of summer I stand face to face with Enlightenment;
then the heavenly, the super-terrestrial, streams down into the earthly world.
But now the earthly is streaming upward.” — Man already perceived and
experienced something of the earthly during the autumnal equinox. But what he
perceived and felt then of earthly nature was in conformity in a certain sense
with his own nature; it was still connected with him. We might say: “At the time
of the autumn equinox man felt in his Gemuet, in his realm of feeling,
all that had to do with Nature. But now, in winter, he felt as though the Earth
were laying claim to him, as if he were ensnared in his will nature by the
forces of the Earth. He felt this to be the denial of the moral world order. He
felt that together with the blackness that enveloped him like a cloud, forces
opposed to the moral world order were ensnaring him. He felt the darkness rise
up out of the Earth like a serpent and wind him about. But at the same time he
was also aware of something quite different.”
Already during
autumn he had felt something stirring within him that we today call intellect.
Whereas in summer the intellect evaporates and there enters from outside a
wisdom-filled moral element, during autumn the intellect is consolidated.
The human being approaches evil but his intellect consolidates. Man felt an
actual serpent-like manifestation in midwinter, but at the same time the
solidification, the strengthening of shrewdness, of the reflective element, of
all that made him sly and cunning and incited him to follow the principle of
utility in life. All this he was aware of in this way. And just as in autumn the
knowledge of nature gradually emerged, so in midwinter the Temptation of Hell
approached the human being, the Temptation on the part of Evil. Thus he
was aware of this. So when we write here: “Moral impulse, Knowledge of Nature”
(see diagram), here (at midwinter) we must write “Temptation
through Evil.”
This was just
the time in which man had to develop what in any case was within him by way of
Nature: everything associated with the intellect, slyness, cunning, all that was
directed toward the utilitarian. This, man was to overcome through
Temperance (Besonnenheit).* This was the season then in which man had to
develop — not an open sense for wisdom, which in accordance with the ancient
Mystery wisdom had been required of him during the time of Enlightenment, but
something else. Just in that season in which evil revealed itself as we have
indicated, man could experience in a fitting way resistance to evil: he was to
become self-controlled (besonnen — see preceding footnote). Above all
else at the season of change which he passed through in moving on from
Enlightenment to Cognition, from Knowledge of Spirit to
Knowledge of Nature, he was to progress from Nature knowledge to the
contemplation of Evil (see diagram, arrow on left). This is the way it
was understood.
* The
third of the cardinal or “Platonic” virtues, called in Greek Sophrosyne,
in English, Temperance or moderation, in German is Besonnenheit.
According to Steiner, Besonnenheit is “enfilling one's impulses with the
degree of consciousness possible.” “A man who rules his impulses through
reflective thinking, feeling, and perceiving is a man who is ‘besonnen.’”
(From Das Raetsel des Menschen, 6th August, 1916). See also Spiritual
Foundation of Morality by Steiner.
And in giving
instructions to the pupils of the Mysteries which could become mottoes, the
teachers said to them — just as at midsummer they had said: “Receive the Light,”
and in autumn “Look around you” — now in midwinter it was said: “Beware of
Evil.” And it was expected that through “Temperance,” through this guarding of
oneself against evil, men would come to a kind of self-knowledge which would
lead them to realize how they had deviated from the moral impulses in the course
of the year.
Deviation from
the moral impulses through the contemplation of evil, its overcoming through
moderation — this was to come to man's consciousness just in the time following
midwinter. Hence in this ancient wisdom all sorts of things were undertaken that
induced men to atone for what they recognized as deviations from the moral
impulses they had received through Enlightenment. With this, we approach spring,
the spring equinox (see diagram).
And just as
here (see diagram: midsummer, autumn, midwinter) we have Enlightenment,
Cognition, Temperance, so for the spring equinox we have what was
perceived as the activity of repentance. And in place of Cognition, and
correspondingly, Temptation through Evil, there now entered something which we
could call the Return — the reversion — to man's higher nature through
Repentance. Where we have written here (see diagram: midsummer, autumn,
winter): Enlightenment, Cognition, Temperance, here we must write: Return
to Human Nature.
If you look
back once more to what was in the depths of winter the Temptation by Evil, you
will have to say: At that time man felt as though he were lowered into the
abysmal deeps of the Earth; he felt himself entrapped by Earth's darkness. Just
as during the height of summer man was in a sense torn out of himself, his
soul-nature being then lifted up above him, so now, in order not to be ensnared
by Evil during the winter, his soul-being made itself inwardly free.
Through this
there existed, during the depths of winter, I might say a counter-image to what
was present during the height of summer. At midsummer the phenomena of Nature
spoke in a spiritual way. People sought especially in the thunder and the
lightning for what the heavens had to say. They looked at the phenomena of
Nature, but what they sought in these phenomena was a spiritual language. Even
in small things, they sought at St. John's-tide the spiritual message of the
elemental beings, but they looked for it outside themselves. They dreamed in a
certain sense outside the human being. During the depths of winter,
however, people sank into themselves and dreamed within their own being. To the
extent that they tore themselves loose from the entanglement of the Earth, that
is, whenever they could free their soul-element, they dreamed within
their own being. Of this there has remained what is connected with the visions,
with the inner beholding, of the Thirteen Nights following the winter solstice.
Everywhere recollections have remained of these ancient times. You can look on
the Norwegian Song of Olaf [Åsteson]* as a later development of what existed
quite extensively in ancient times.
* Because
of Rudolf Steiner's lectures referring to “The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson”
(December 26, 1911 and January 7, 1913), this unique poem of initiation
experience has been translated into English.
Then the
springtime drew near. In our time the situation has shifted somewhat; in those
days spring was closer to winter, and the whole year was viewed as being divided
into three periods. Things were compressed. Nevertheless what I am sharing with
you here was taught in its turn. Thus, just as at midsummer they said: “Receive
the light;” and in autumn, at Michaelmas: “Look around you”; just as at
midwinter, at the time that we celebrate Christmas, they said: “Beware of the
Evil,” so for the time of return they had a saying which was then thought to
have effect only at this time: “Know thyself” — placing it in exact
polarity to the Knowledge of Nature.
“Beware of the
Evil” could also be expressed: “Beware, draw back from Earth's darkness.” But
this they did not say. Whereas during midsummer men accepted the external
natural phenomenon of light as Wisdom, that is, at midsummer they spoke in a
certain way in accordance with Nature, they would never have put the motto for
winter into the sentence: “Beware of the darkness” — for they expressed rather
the moral interpretation: “Beware of Evil.”
Echoes of
these festivals have persisted everywhere, so far as they have been understood.
Naturally everything was changed when the great Event of Golgotha entered in.
It was in the
season of the deepest human temptation, in winter, that the birth of Jesus
occurred. The birth of Jesus took place in the very time when man was in the
grip of the Earth powers, when he had plunged down, as it were, into the abysses
of the Earth. Among the legends associated with the birth of Jesus, you will
even find one which says that Jesus came into the world in a cave, thus hinting
at something that was perceived as wisdom in the most ancient Mysteries, namely,
that there the human being can find what he has to seek in spite of being held
fast by the dark element of the Earth, which at the same time holds the reason
for his falling prey to Evil.
It is in
accord with all of this, too, that the time of Repentance is ascribed to the
season when spring is approaching.
The
understanding for the midsummer festival has quite naturally disappeared to a
still greater extent than that for the other side of the year's course. For the
more materialism overtook mankind, the less people felt themselves drawn to
anything such as Enlightenment.
And what is of
quite special importance to present-day humanity is precisely that time which
leads on from Enlightenment, of which man still remains unconscious, toward the
season of autumn. Here lies the point where man, who indeed has to enter into
knowledge of nature, should grasp in the nature-knowledge a picture, a
reflection, of a knowledge of divine spirits. For this there is no better
festival of remembrance than Michaelmas.
If this is
celebrated in the right way, it must follow that mankind everywhere will take
hold of the question: How is spirit knowledge to be found in the glorified
nature-knowledge of the present? How can man transform nature-knowledge so that
out of what the human being possesses as the fruits of this nature-knowledge,
spirit knowledge will arise? In other words, how is that to be overcome which,
if it were to run its course on its own, would entrap man in the subhuman?
A turnaround
must take place. The Michael festival must take on a particular meaning. This
meaning emerges when one can perceive the following: Natural science has led man
to recognize one side of world evolution — for example, that out of lower animal
organisms higher, more perfect, ones have evolved in the course of time, right up
to man; or, to take another example, that during the development of the embryo
in the mother's body the human being passes through the animal forms one after
the other. That, however, is only one side. The other side is what comes before
our souls when we say to ourselves: “Man had to evolve out of his original
divine-human beginning.” If this (see drawing) indicates the original
human condition (lighter shading), then man had to evolve out of it to
his present state of unfoldment. First, he had gradually to push out of himself
the lower animals, then, stage by stage what exists as higher animal forms. He
overcame all this, separated it out, thrust it aside (darker shading). In
this way he has come to what was originally predestined for him.
It is the same
in his embryonic development. The human being rejects, each in its turn,
everything that he is not to be. We do not, however, derive the real import of
present-day nature-knowledge from this fact. What then is the import of modern
nature-knowledge? It lies in the sentence: You behold in what nature-knowledge
shows you that which you need to exclude from knowledge of man.
What does this
imply? It implies that man must study natural science. Why? When he looks into
a microscope he knows what is not spirit. When he looks through a telescope into
the far spaces of the universe, there is revealed to him what spirit is not.
When he makes some sort of experiment in the physics or chemistry laboratory,
what is not spirit is revealed to him. Everything that is not spirit is manifest
to him in its pure form.
In ancient
times when men beheld what is today nature, they still saw the spirit shining
through it. Today we have to study nature in order to be able to say: “All that
is not spirit.” It is all winter wisdom. What pertains to summer wisdom
must take a different form. In order that man may be spurred toward the spirit,
may get an impulse toward the spirit, he must learn to know the
unspiritual, the anti-spiritual. And man must be sensible of things that no one
as yet admits today. For example, everyone says today: “If I have some sort of
tiny living creature too small to be seen with the naked eye and I put it under
a microscope, it will be enlarged for me so that I can see it.” — Then, however,
one must conceive: “This size is illusory. I have increased the size of the
creature, and I no longer have it. I have a phantom. What I am seeing is not a
reality. I have put a lie in place of the truth!” — This is of course madness
from the present-day point of view, but it is precisely the truth.
If we will
only realize that natural science is needed in order from this counter-image of
the truth to receive the impulse toward the truth, then the force will be
developed which can be symbolically indicated in the overcoming of the Dragon
by Michael.
But something
else is connected with this which already stands in the annals in what I might
call a spiritual way. It stands there in such a form, however, that when man no
longer had any true feeling for what lives in the year's changing seasons, he
related the whole thing instead to the human being. What leads to
“Enlightenment” was replaced by the concept of “Wisdom” [called “Prudence” in
English practice]; then what leads to “Knowledge” was replaced by the concept of
“Courage” [“Fortitude”]; “Temperance” stayed the same; and what corresponded to “Repentance” was replaced by the
concept “Justice.”
Here you have
the four Platonic concepts of virtue: Wisdom [Prudence], Fortitude, Temperance,
Justice. What man had formerly received from the life of the year in its course
was now taken into man himself. It will come into consideration just in
connection with the Michaelmas festival, however, that there will have to be a
festival in honor of human courage, of the human manifestation of the courage of
Michael. For what is it that holds man back today from spirit-knowledge? — Lack
of soul courage, not to say soul cowardice. Man wants to receive everything
passively, wants to set himself down in front of the world as if it were a
movie, and wants to let the microscope and the telescope tell him everything. He
does not want to temper the instrument of his own spirit, of his own soul, by
activity. He does not care to be a follower of Michael. This requires inner
courage. This inner courage must have its festival in Michaelmas. Then from the
Festival of Courage, from the festival of the inwardly courageous human
soul, there will ray out what will give the other festivals of the year also the
right content.
We must in
fact continue the path further; we must take into human nature what was
formerly outside. Man is no longer in such a position that he could develop the
knowledge of Nature only in autumn. It is already so that in man today things
lie one within the other, for only in this way can he unfold his freedom. Yet it
nevertheless holds true that the celebrating of festivals, I might say in a
transformed sense, is again becoming necessary.
If the
festivals were formerly festivals of giving by the divine to the earthly,
if man at the festivals formerly received the gifts of the heavenly powers
directly, so today, when man has his capacities within himself, the
metamorphosis of the festival-thought consists in the festivals now being
festivals of remembrance or admonition.* In them man inscribes into his
soul what he is to consummate within himself.
*
Feste der Erinnerungen (a plural form). Erinnerung has two shades
of meaning. One is “recollection” or “remembrance”; the other “admonition” or
“reminder.” Both elements seem to apply in this passage.
And thus again
it will be best to have as the most strongly working festival of admonition and
remembrance this festival with which autumn begins, the Michaelmas festival, for
at the same time all Nature is speaking in meaningful cosmic language. The trees
are becoming bare; the leaves are withering. The creatures, which all summer
long have fluttered through the air, as butterflies, or have filled the air with
their hum, as beetles, begin to withdraw; many animals fall into their winter
sleep. Everything becomes paralyzed. Nature, which through her own activity has
helped man during spring and summer — Nature, which has worked in man during
spring and summer, herself withdraws. Man is referred back to himself. What must
now awaken when Nature forsakes him is courage of soul. Once more we are
shown how what we can conceive as a Michael festival must be a festival of
soul-courage, of soul-strength, of soul-activity.
This is what
will gradually give to the festival thought the character of remembrance or
admonition, qualities already suggested in a monumental saying by which it was
indicated that for all future time what previously had been festivals of gifts
will become, or should become, festivals of remembrance. These monumental words,
which must be the basis of all festival thoughts, also for those which will
arise again — this monumental saying is: “This do in remembrance of Me.” That
is the festival thought which is turned toward the memory-aspect.
Just as the
other thought that lies in the Christ-Impulse must work on livingly, must reform
itself and not be allowed simply to remain as a dead product toward which we
look back, so must this thought also work on further, kindling perceptive
feeling and thought, and we must understand that the festivals must continue in
spite of the fact that man is changing, but that because of this the festivals
also must go through metamorphoses.
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