Human love is the nourishment of the gods

For God so loved the world

Rudolf Steiner:

This power of love, of relationships between people, is what the Divine used to express itself at the beginning of Earth evolution. The gods receive the love that pulses through human beings and live from it, just as animals live from the oxygen provided by plants. The love that lives in the human race is the nourishment of the gods. In the beginning everything was built on this love. Blood ties connected people; tribes, groups, and peoples were based on it. At the outset of human evolution all the power of the gods was based on this love, which weaves between the sexes.
     Before the two sexes came into existence, love existed as a completely conscious love. When human beings became either male or female, the consciousness of love was darkened. It became a blind drive, a sensuality that is not filled with transparent clarity but rather is lived out as a dark force. The gods above reigned in the consciousness of love, but human beings below practiced love as a blind instinct. The gods were nourished by this blind instinct of human love, which for them became a bright light. A clairvoyance is possible that allows everything that lives in the human being as blind instinct to become perceptible. The gods had this vision at the beginning of human evolution, but human beings lacked it. They were filled with passions, flooded with what drives the two sexes together. The gods, who lived in the astral light, saw these drives and lived from them.








Source: The Christian Mystery: lecture of March 30, 1906; from Love and Its Meaning in the World, p. 33