The Four Seasons and the Archangels. Lecture 4 of 5.
Rudolf Steiner, October 12, 1923:
If
now we go forward from Easter, the spring festival, we shall need to penetrate
much more spiritually into the subject than we had to do in considering the
previous seasons of the year. This may sound like a contradiction, but it is not
so. In thinking of the Christmas season, we had to start from the way in which
earthly mineral limestone is gradually transformed, and we carried this thought
over to the time of Easter. In general, we have been turning our eyes on the
active working of the spiritual in the material realm. Now in summer, high
summer, man is really bound up with the being of Nature. From spring onwards
into summer, Nature becomes constantly more active, more satisfied inwardly, and
man with his whole being is woven into this mood of Nature. We can indeed say
that in high summer man experiences a kind of Nature-consciousness. During
spring, if he has the perception and feeling for it, he becomes one with all
that is growing and sprouting. He blossoms with the flower, germinates with the
plant, fruits with the plant, enters into everything that lives and has its
being in the world outside. In this way he spreads out his own being over the
being of Nature, and a kind of Nature-consciousness arises in him. Then, since
in autumn Nature dies away and thus bears death within itself, man too, if he
participates in what autumn — the time of Michaelmas — means for Nature, must
experience in himself this dying away; but with his own self he must not take
part in it. He must raise himself above it. In place precisely of a
Nature-consciousness, a strengthening of his self-consciousness must occur. But
in the glow of summer, just because a Nature-consciousness is then at its height
in man, it is all the more necessary for the cosmos that — if only man is
willing — the cosmos should bring the spiritual to meet him.
Hence
we can say: In summer man is bound up with Nature, but, if he has the right
feeling and perception for it, objective spirituality comes towards him from out
of Nature's interweaving life. And so, to find the essential human being during
the St. John's time, at midsummer, we must turn to the objective spirituality in
the outer world, and this is present everywhere in Nature. Only in outward
appearance is Nature the sprouting, budding — one might say the sleeping — being
which calls forth from the powers of sleep the forces of vegetative growth, in
which a kind of sleeping Nature-life is given form. But in this sleeping Nature,
if only man has the perception for it, the spiritual which animates and weaves
through everything in Nature is revealed.
So it
is that if we follow Nature in high summer with deepened spiritual insight and
with perceptive eyes, we find our gaze directed to the depths of the Earth
itself. We find that the minerals down there send their inner crystal-forming
process towards us more vividly than at any other time of the year. If we look
with Imaginative perception into the depths of the Earth at St. John's-tide, we
really have the impression that down there are the crystalline forms in which
the hard earth consolidates itself — the very crystalline forms which gain their
full beauty at the height of summer. At midsummer everything down below the
earth shapes itself into lines, angles and surfaces. If we are to have an
impression of it as a whole, we must picture this crystallising process as an
interweaving activity, coloured throughout with deep blue.
 Plate V |
I
will try to show it on the blackboard, though of course I can do so only in a
quite sketchy way (see Plate V). So we can say: On
looking downwards, we have an impression of line-like forms, suffused with blue,
and everywhere the blue is shot through with lines which sparkle like silver, so
that everywhere within the silver-sparkling blue the crystallising process
(white) can be discerned. It is as though Nature wishes to present her formative
power in a wonderful plastic design, but a design that cannot be seen in the way
we see with ordinary eyes. It is seen in such a way that one really feels
oneself dissolved into the plastic design, and feels every silver-gleaming line
down there to be within oneself, part of oneself. One feels that as a human form
one has grown out of the blue depths of the earth's crust, and one feels oneself
inwardly permeated with force by the silver-gleaming crystal lines. All this one
feels as part of one's own being. And if one comes to oneself and asks — How is
it that these silver-sparkling crystal lines and waves are working within
myself? What is it that lives and works there, silver-gleaming in the blue of
the Earth? — then one knows: That is cosmic Will. And one has the feeling of
standing upon cosmic Will.
So it
is when one looks down into the depths of the Earth. And if one looks up to the
heights, how is it then? The impression one has is of out-spreading cosmic
Intelligence. Human intelligence — as I have often said — is not of much value
at its present stage. But the heavens at midsummer give one the feeling that
cosmic Intelligence is alive everywhere — the intelligence not of single beings
but of many beings who live together and within one another. Thus we have up
there the out-spreading Intelligence woven through with light; the living
Intelligence shining forth (yellow) as the polaric opposite of the Will. And
while down below we feel — in that blue darkness everything is experienced only
as forces, up above we feel — everything is such that in perceiving it we are
illumined, permeated, with a feeling of intelligence.
And
now within this radiant activity there appears — I cannot put it otherwise — a
Form. When we were speaking of autumn, I had to name Michael as the most
significant figure who rises before our souls out of the weaving of Nature. As
to how Gabriel — to use the old name — enters into the time of Christmas, we
shall have more to say. In the last lecture I showed you how at Easter, the
season of spring, the figure of Raphael comes before us. He comes in dramatic
guise, as the mediator who arouses in us the rightful approach, through
reverence and worship, to what the Easter Imagination, the cosmic Easter
Imagination, is. And now, for the St. John's time, there comes before us — to
describe it in human terms, which are of course bound to be only approximate —
an extraordinarily earnest countenance, which arises glowing warmly out of the
pervading radiant Intelligence (red head in the yellow, Plate
V). We have the impression that this figure forms its body of light out of
the radiant Intelligence. And for this to happen at the height of summer,
something I have already described must come in: the elemental spirits of the
Earth must soar upwards. As they do so, they weave themselves into the shining
Intelligence up above, and the shining Intelligence receives them into itself.
And out of that gleaming radiance the figure I have just mentioned takes
form.
This
form was divined by the old instinctive clairvoyance, and we can give it the
same name by which it was known then. We can say: In summer, Uriel appears in
the midst of the shining Intelligence.
Autumn
|
Michael
|
Winter
|
Gabriel
|
Spring
|
Raphael
|
Summer
|
Uriel
|
It is
with great earnestness that this representative of the weaving cosmic forces,
seeking to embody himself in a vesture of light, appears in the time of summer.
There are further things we can observe as the deeds accomplished by Uriel in
the radiant light — Uriel, whose own intelligence arises fundamentally from the
working together of the planetary forces of our planetary system, supported by
the working of the fixed stars of the Zodiac; Uriel, who in his thoughts
preserves the thoughts of the cosmos. And so, quite directly, the feeling comes:
You clouds of summer, radiant with Intelligence, in which are reflected up above
the blue crystal-formations of the earth below, just as these blue
crystal-formations mirror in turn the shining Intelligence of the summer clouds
— out of your shining there appears in high summer, with earnest countenance, a
concentrated Imagination of Cosmic Understanding.
Now
the deeds of this embodied cosmic Understanding, this cosmic Intelligence, are
woven in light. Through the power of attraction residing in the concentrated
cosmic Intelligence of Uriel, the silver forces (white) are drawn upwards, and
in the light of this inwardly shining Intelligence, as seen from the Earth, they
appear as radiant sunlight, densifying into a glory of gold. One has the
immediate feeling that the gleaming silver, streaming up from below, is received
by the sunlit radiance above. And the earth-silver — the phrase is quite correct
— is changed by cosmic alchemy into the cosmic gold which lives and weaves in
the heights.
If we
follow these happenings further, on through August, we gain an impression of
something that completes the form of Michael, already described. I told you what
the sword of Michael is made of, and whence the dragon draws his coiling life.
But now, in the radiant beauty which appears spiritually out of the cosmic
weaving at the height of summer, we ask ourselves: Whence does Michael, who
leads us over to the autumn time of Michaelmas, derive his characteristic
raiment — the raiment which first lights up in golden sunshine and then shines
forth inwardly as a silver-sparkling radiance within the golden folds? Where
does Michael acquire this gold-woven, silver-sparkling raiment? It comes from
that which is formed in the heights through the upward-raying silver and the
gold that flows to meet it; from the transmutation by the sun's power of the
silver sparkling up from the Earth. As autumn approaches we see how the silver
given by the Earth to the cosmos returns as gold, and the power of this
transmuted silver is the source of that which goes on in the Earth during
winter, as I have described. The Sun-gold, formed in the heights, in the
dominion of Uriel, during high summer, passes down to weave and flow through the
depths of the Earth, where it animates the elements that in the midst of winter
are seeking to become the living growth of the following year.
So
you see that when we come to the time of sprouting, springing life, we can no
longer speak of matter permeated by spirit, as we speak of the Earth in winter.
We have to speak of spirit woven through with matter — that is, with silver and
gold.
Of
course you must not take all this in a crude sense; you must think of the silver
and gold as diluted beyond human measure. Then you will come to feel that all
this is a kind of background for the cosmic, light-filled deeds of Uriel, and a
clear impression of the countenance and gaze of Uriel will come before you.
We
feel a deep longing to understand this remarkable gaze, directed downwards, and
we have the impression that we must look around to find out what it signifies.
Its meaning first dawns upon the mind when as human beings we learn to look with
spiritual eyes still more deeply into the blue, silver-gleaming depths of the
Earth in summer. And we see that weaving around these silver-gleaming
crystalline rays are shapes — disturbing shapes, I might almost call them —
which continually gather and dissolve, gather and dissolve again.
Then
we come to perceive — the vision will be different for everyone — that these
shapes are human errors which stand out against the natural order of regular
crystals here below. And it is on this contrast that Uriel directs his earnest
gaze. Here during the height of summer the imperfections of mankind, in contrast
to the regularity of the growing crystal forms, are searchingly surveyed. Here
it is that from the earnest gaze of Uriel we gain the impression of how the
moral is interwoven with the natural.
Here
the moral world-order does not exist only in ourselves as abstract impulses. For
whereas we habitually look at the realms of Nature and do not ask — is there
morality in the growth of plants, or in the process of crystallisation? — now we
see how at midsummer human errors are woven into the regular crystals which are
formed in the normal course of Nature.
On
the other hand, all that is in human virtue and human excellence rises up with
the silver-gleaming lines and is seen as the clouds that envelop Uriel (red). It
enters into the radiant Intelligence, transmuted into cloud-shaped works of
art.
It is
impossible to look towards the increasingly earnest gaze of Uriel, directed
towards the depths of the Earth, without also seeing there something like
wing-like arms, or arm-like wings, raised in earnest admonition, and this
gesture by Uriel has the effect of imparting to mankind what I might call the
historic conscience. Here at high summer appears the historic conscience, which
at the present time has become uncommonly feeble. It appears, as it were, in
Uriel's warning gesture.
Of
course, you must picture all this as an Imagination. These things are quite
real, but I cannot speak of them in the way a physicist speaks of positive and
negative, of potential energy and so on. I have to speak in pictures that will
come to life in your souls. But everything expressed in these living pictures is
reality; it is there.
And
now if we have gained the impression of the connection of human morality with
the crystalline element below and of human virtues with the shining beauty
above, and if we take these connections into our inward experience, the real St.
John Imagination will come to meet us. For the St. John Imagination is there,
just as we have the Michael Imagination, the Christmas Imagination, the Easter
Imagination.
So to
spiritual observation there appears, as a kind of culmination, this picture:
Above, illuminated as it were by the power of Uriel's eyes, the Dove (white).
The silver-sparkling blue below, arising from the depths of the Earth and bound
up with human weaknesses and error, is gathered into a picture of the
Earth-Mother (blue). Whether she is called Demeter or Mary, the picture is of
the Earth-Mother. So it is that in directing our gaze downwards, we cannot do
otherwise than bring together in Imagination all those secrets of the depths
which go to make up the material Mother of all existence; while in all that is
concentrated in the flowing form above we feel and experience the Spirit-Father
of everything around us. And now we behold the outcome of the working together
of Spirit-Father with Earth-Mother, bearing so beautifully within itself the
harmony of the earthly silver and the gold of the heights. Between the Father
and the Mother we behold the Son (see Plate V). Thus
arises this Imagination of the Trinity, which is really the St. John
Imagination. The background of it is Uriel, the creative, admonishing Uriel.
That
which the Trinity truly represents should not be placed dogmatically before the
soul, for then an impression is given that such an idea, or picture, of the
Trinity can be separated from the weaving of cosmic life. This is not so. At
midsummer the Trinity reveals itself out of the midst of cosmic life, cosmic
activity. It stands forth with inwardly convincing power, if — I might say — one
has first penetrated into the mysteries of Uriel.
If we
were to present St. John's-tide in this way, there would have to be an arched or
vaulted background, with the figure of Uriel and his gesture in the manner I
have described. And against this background a living picture of the Imagination
of the Trinity would have to emerge. Special arrangements would be necessary;
the effect would have to be that of painting done instantly, perhaps by making
artistic use of vaporous substances or the like. And if the true Imagination of
these things is to be called up for people to witness, it must be at St. John's
time. At Easter we have the complete picture only when we bring it into dramatic
form, with Raphael present as a teacher in the Mystery Play that would have then
to be presented; Raphael who leads man into the secrets of healing nature, of
the healing cosmos. In a similar way, at St. John's time, all that can then be
seen in weaving pictures would have to be transposed into powerful music, so
that the cosmic Mystery, as it can be experienced by man at this season of St.
John, would speak to our hearts.
We
must imagine how all that I have described should find artistic expression, on
the one hand, in pictorial and plastic art. But what is experienced in this way
must be given life by the musical tones that embody the poetic motif which plays
through our souls when we feel our way into great Uriel, active in the light,
who calls up in us a powerful impression of the triune, the Trinity. The
silver-shining that rays up from below, and is revealed in the form-giving
beauty of the light above, must be expressed at St. John's-tide through
appropriate musical instruments. Thus we should find, through these musical
harmonies, our own inner harmony with the cosmos, for in them the secret of
man's living together with the cosmos at St. John's tide would have to sound
forth. All this would have to be given voice in the music, so that in looking up
to the heights we would be looking at the weaving gold of the cosmos, and would
see the glowing form of Uriel emerging from the light-filled gold and directing
his gaze and his gesture down to the Earth, as I have described it. All this
would have to be not in any fixed form, but in living movement. That would be
one motif, a heavenly motif through which a man can feel himself united, on one
side, with the shining Cosmic Intelligence.
On
the other side, down below, he feels himself united with the tendency to fixed
form; with that which is immersed in the bluish darkness from out of which the
silvery radiance streams forth. Down there he feels the material foundation of
active spiritual being. The Heights become Mysteries, the Depths become
Mysteries, and man himself becomes a Mystery within the Mysteries of the Cosmos.
Right into his bony system he feels the crystal-forming power. But he feels also
how this same power is in cosmic union with the living power of light in the
heavens above. He feels how all that comes about through mankind as morality in
these Mysteries of the Heights lives and weaves in these Mysteries of the
Depths, and in the conjunction between the two. He feels himself no longer
sundered from the world around him, but placed within it, united above with the
shining Intelligence, in which he experiences, as in the womb of worlds, his own
best thoughts. He feels himself united below, right into his bony system, with
the cosmic crystallising force — and again the two united with one another. He
feels his death united with the spirit-life of the universe; and he feels how
this spirit-life craves to awaken the crystal forces and the silver-gleaming
life in the midst of earthly death.
All
this, too, would have to sound forth in musical tones — tones which carry these
motifs on their wings and make them part of human experience. For these motifs
are there. They do not have to be sought out; they can be read from the cosmic
activity of Uriel. Here it is that Imagination passes over into Inspiration.
Man,
however, lives in a certain sense as an embodied Inspiration, as a being brought
into existence by Inspiration, in the Mysteries of the heights and depths and in
the Mysteries of their conjunction. He lives in the Mysteries to which the
Spirit-Father points upward; the Mysteries to which the Spirit-Mother points
downwards, the Mysteries which are united by the fact that the Christ, though
the working together of the Spirit-Father and the Spirit-Mother, stands directly
before the human soul as the sustaining Cosmic Spirit.
That
which is woven out of all these cosmic secrets I may put before you somewhat in
the following way. It is as though the human being, placed in the midst of all
that goes on in high summer, were to feel something like this. The first words
endeavour to represent how the gaze of Uriel concentrates itself into
Inspiration, united with the Spirit-tones of the whole choir:
Schaue unser Weben
Das leuchtende Erregen Das warmende Leben |
} | The Heights |
Lebe irdisch
Erhaltendes
Und atmend Gestaltetes — Als wesenhaft Waltendes |
} | The Depths |
Fühle dein
Menschengebeine
Mit himmlischen Scheine Im waltenden Weltenvereine |
} | The Midst The inner being of Man. |
Here
in these nine lines are the Mysteries of the Heights, the Mysteries of the
Depths, and the Mysteries of the Midst, which are also those of the inner being
of man. And then we have the whole gathered up as a cosmic statement of these
Mysteries of the Heights, the Depths and the Midst, sounding out as though with
organ and trumpet tones:
Es werden Stoffe
verdichtet
Es werden Fehler gerichtet Es werden Herzen gesichtet. |
Here you have that which can permeate the human being at midsummer, supporting him, exalting him, confirming him — the St. John Imagination filled with Inspiration, the St. John Inspiration filled with Imagination — in these words:
Schaue unser Weben
Das leuchtende Erregen Das warmende Leben |
} | The Heights |
Lebe irdisch
Erhaltendes
Und atmend Gestaltetes — Als wesenhaft Waltendes |
} | The Depths |
Fühle dein
Menschengebeine
Mit himmlischen Scheine Im waltenden Weltenvereine |
} | The Midst The inner being of Man. |
Es werden Stoffe
verdichtet
Es werden Fehler gerichtet Es werden Herzen gesichtet. Behold our weaving, the kindling radiance, the warming life. Live in the earth's sustaining, and in the form-giving breathing, with the power of true being. Feel the limbs of man, from the heavens illuminated, in the strength of worlds united. Substances are densified, errors are judged and rectified, hearts are sifted. | ||
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