The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anyone walking down the street today among the Christmas trees that have been put up might easily be led to believe that the Christmas tree itself is something very old. But it is precisely the Christmas tree that allows you to see the change in people's customs and traditions, because the Christmas tree, which is now found in almost every home, is not even a hundred years old. A century ago, you would not have been able to walk down streets occupied by Christmas trees. You would also look in vain in the poetry of a hundred or a hundred and twenty years ago for a song, for a poem that sings of the Christmas tree. But that should be a striking phenomenon for you, because the Christmas tree is something that has been sung about by poets in the time when it was once there. It is a very new phenomenon, something that only became common in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Christmas tree as a symbol of Christmas only appeared around 1800, but Christmas itself is ancient, not just Christian. It was celebrated in the same way in all times of which we can have historical knowledge.

In Christianity itself, Christmas has only been taken as a symbol of the birth of the Christian Redeemer since the fourth century AD. In no way was December 25 celebrated as the birthday of the founder of Christianity in the first centuries of Christianity; it was only in the fourth century that it was understood as such. But a festival was celebrated in the Roman Empire during this time, a festival was also celebrated at the same time by the ancient Celtic and Germanic peoples and with a similar idea already in ancient Egypt and in many other areas. What was celebrated there was something else; it was only in the fourth century of our era that it was linked to the birthday of the founder of Christianity.

Now one could conclude from this that the Christian church would have done something that would historically go against all tradition, and would have wanted to correct something with it, so to speak. But that is not the case. Anyone who truly understands the meaning of Christmas recognizes the ancient wisdom that lies hidden in such a festival. Festivals such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are nothing more than dates, dates inscribed in time by our ancestors, with whom they showed us, their descendants, how they understood the relationship between the world and man and the great mysteries of existence. Whoever knows how to decipher the writing that has been laid down for us in the great festivals, whoever knows how to decipher the hieroglyphs that time itself presents to us, will glimpse into the deep and meaningful mysteries of all human becoming. I said – and we will see in a moment in which sense this applies – that Christmas has been celebrated since the time when we have history. The times about which we know historical documents go back to the third sub-race of the fifth root race. The times of our own sub-race, in which physical science and physical culture have developed, go back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. This was preceded by another race, and this goes back to the ninth or eighth century BC, to the times when Homer was singing his poems to the Greeks. This period tells us about the feelings and deeds of the fourth sub-race that preceded us.

Then we come back to the even older times, but these already lead us back to the gray antiquity, to the time of ancient Babylon and Assyria, to the ancient times of the Jewish people, to the times when the Egyptian priests preserved their wisdom and only brought it to the people in an exoteric way. Then the historical tradition ceases. What has been handed down to us from Persian history was only recorded much later. What is communicated to us as the sublime religion of ancient India, what is recorded in the Vedas and in the Vedanta philosophy, these are late records compared to the times in which the great thoughts of the ancient Indian Rishis, which they received directly from the divine spirits themselves, flowed through them to humanity. Thus we look back from the time in which we ourselves live, and which will last for a long time yet, to the Greco-Roman epoch, which is transformed into Christianity, and then to the epoch in which the Egyptian priests were active. But then the paths become lost. Only those who can follow history in other ways can know anything about ancient Persia. We are led even further back into the times that only the occultist can see.

Now, if you want to understand the Christian festival, you have to look back in time to the point where a new wisdom was taught to newly emerging humanity for the first time. We have come back to the time when the ancient Atlantean civilization disappeared due to the tremendous flooding of a large continent and a new human civilization - to which the epochs I have already enumerated belong - was established. A completely new way of thinking and feeling has emerged with this new humanity. Nothing of the actual culture of the Atlanteans, let alone of the even older culture of the Lemurian peoples, who once lived in ancient times and perished in a fire, has been preserved directly. However, what humanity has once gone through must be gone through again briefly when a new turning point in development has been reached. Thus the first sub-races of the fifth root race were destined to briefly repeat three important epochs in the development of humanity.

In ancient India, the wise Rishis looked back to those times when humanity was still at a very different stage, to those times when there was not yet a male and a female

sex, when man was still a unity. Then they looked back to that great unity in the human race, to that primeval man Adam, who is also called Adam Kadmon in various secret teachings, who was man and woman at the same time. They expressed that primal unity of humanity in a spiritual way by hinting at the supreme world being with the indefinite sacred name Brahman. Brahman is originally that out of which, as out of the All, out of the divine ground of unity, all manifoldness has emerged. On the earth itself, this unity was only present for man in a certain way in the times when there was not yet male and female, in the times when the diversity that we have now did not yet exist. What we are confronted with here is a reflection from the spirit of the great Indian Rishis: the divine Primordial Unity of man, the pre-human Adam Kadmon, in whom there was still peace, spirit, clarity and harmony; he speaks from the Vedic word as it flowed from the lips of the Indian Rishis. This was the first epoch of our human race after the great flood. It was not yet the case that there was talk on our earth of a trinity, of a threefold divine person. People only spoke of a primal unity, of Brahman, in which everything is contained, from which everything originates.

Then there came a time when the Persian Zarathustra priests, the wise men of the Parsees, looked back to that epoch when man, of both sexes, was born out of fire, when that man was born who represents a dual, a twofold. And with the birth of man out of the fire, something came into our earthly world that had not been there before; only then did evil come into the world. Evil did not exist in the human sense before the origin of the sexes. These originated in the middle of the Lemurian period. And good and evil have only existed since that time. Good and evil filled the last Lemurian period and the first Atlantean period.

It is interesting to research, according to the spiritual documents called the ‹Akashic Records›, how these two forms of humanity express themselves. In the next issue of the magazine “Lucifer - Gnosis” you will find an explanation of how the duality in man unfolds, how, when man really appeared in two sexes, man's soul and man's physical willpower were initially distributed among the sexes. Even those who today, as occultists, decipher the wonderful records that have been preserved for us in the Akasha Chronicle may be amazed at how fundamentally different the masculine and feminine appeared on our Earth in those early times, because it is so different from our present-day conception. Woman initially developed the soul, under the guidance of the wise leaders of humanity; man developed the will element. This is how a duality of will and soul arises. They face each other in the Atlantic epoch in the two sexes of humanity. Because soul came into the physical body and thereby into humanity, evil came into humanity. And because our humanity had to repeat that epoch, which is characterized by the difference between good and evil, the fire religion, the Parsee religion, the doctrine of Ormuzd and Ahriman emerged. This precedes our history as a Persian cultural period.

The concept of “good and evil” lived on in the religion of Zarathustra. At that time, there was no talk of a trinity. This came only later, at about the time when our historical documents begin. The Akasha Chronicle does not report a trinity in prehistoric times. It was only when people knew how to distinguish between good and evil that they were forced to look to a third party. And so we see the mediator, in the form of the mediator, in the form that most clearly presents itself to us in the so-called Mithras mysteries, which spread from Persia across the whole world. We see the mediator, the reconciler, the redeemer of humanity from evil, the guide from evil to good.

In these ancient times, one must always see in the earthly an image of the divine, an image of what has taken place in the great vault of heaven. If you look at the zodiac, you will see that in this zodiac the signs of Cancer, Gemini, Taurus and Aries or Lamb follow one another. According to certain laws, the sun, or rather the sun's vernal point, advances, so that in ancient times the sun rose in spring in the sign of Cancer, later in the sign of Gemini, still later in the sign of Taurus, and still later in the sign of Aries or the Lamb. Around the time of the eighth century before the birth of Christ, the sun had reached the constellation of Aries or the Lamb in the celestial vault. Now, in our cultural era, it enters the constellation of Pisces.

Depending on what happens in the spiritual realm, what happens on earth takes shape. You are familiar with the sign of Cancer, but its true significance is not always known. This sign of Cancer must be understood; then one will also understand how it points to the dawning of a completely new era. They are two intertwined spirals or two intertwined vortices. When something important happens in the world, when one stage of development is replaced by another, when something completely new enters the world, then two such vortex movements intertwine. In this one vortex you have the end of the Atlantean culture, and in the other you have the beginning of the Aryan culture. Our ancestors saw the outer sign for the rise of the new Aryan culture in the sky above. Then, in later times, the sun entered the sign of Gemini. Gemini is a sign for good and evil; Gemini is the sign of the zodiac that dominated Persian thinking. Then the sun enters the sign of Taurus. This brings us to the third sub-race; it has the worship of the bull, the Egyptian Apis, in Babylonia the service of the bull, and finally in what was later to become Persia the bull sacrifice, the service of Mithras. Man brought the bull sacrifice down from heaven because it was marked there.

The fourth sub-race, which saw the rise of Christianity, begins with the sun entering Aries. An important saga – the bringing of the ram skin by the Greek hero Jason – indicates this important turning point in history. And a further important turning-point is indicated by the sacrifice of the mystic Lamb on the cross. This is the historical expression of the mystery that is indicated by the fact that the Sun, the ruler of the world, has reached the point in the vault of heaven that is signified by the Lamb or the Ram.

But now we have to understand this whole development in the right way. After the duality of good and evil, the trinity appears in human consciousness. This occurs in various religions. We only need to get to know it in what we know in the different countries around the Mediterranean as the Mithras mysteries. Let us look at one of these mystery temples. For those who only participate in the lesser mysteries, a symbolic act takes place. For those who are allowed to participate in the greater mysteries, the same thing takes place as a fact in the astral realm. I can only speak about the lesser mysteries of the Mithras service. The symbolic bull becomes visible. The mediator, the god, rides on it. He then holds the bull's nostrils shut and plunges his sword into its side. A snake comes, a scorpion; above the head of Mithras one sees a bird, and above the whole group, on one side, one sees the genius with a lowered torch and, on the other side, with a raised torch, which symbolizes the sun on its course through the vault of heaven.

Human life, as it was experienced in the consciousness of that time, is thus presented to us. Man had come to seek redemption within himself, the third divine principle, which leads him away from evil and can reconcile evil with good. Evil is the passions, that which pulls man down to earth, all the way to what is symbolized by the bull. But what can lead man up to the higher self, what appears as the immortal, is the mediator who has killed the lower being when he symbolically thrusts the sword into the bull's loins. Thus, as mediator between good and evil, that is, in the third sub-race, a trinity in the divine appears, and with that, humanity has grasped what is called Atman-Budhi-Manas in theosophy. The moment the mediator appears, the mystical secret is fulfilled: the trinity in the consciousness of man awakens.

Thus man was led through the human realization of unity, duality and trinity to Atman, Budhi, Manas. Atman or the spirit is the unity that man is able to perceive within himself when he has developed to it. Budhi or the spirit of life will express itself in man in that evil will be overcome by good, that duality will on the one hand purify the lower instincts or desire and on the other hand reconcile the higher so-called fire instincts or love, in that all evil will be consumed in the fire of love. Manas or the spirit self is the spiritual principle that already governs human development. Just as the Messiah, the redeemer, creates unity in the world, leading from disharmony to harmony, so duality dissolves through the trinity, in which evil is overcome by good.

Thus the human race had come so far that it saw its entire destiny in the trinity. But it sees fate in this trinity as imposed on people as an eternal world order. Man looks up to the threefold aspect of the Godhead, beholds a divine trinity in the world and sees himself as dependent on this divine trinity. He truly experienced that this divine Trinity descended directly to him in a human brother. This was the great event at the beginning of our era. For human consciousness, the Trinity has become something completely new as a result.

But we can only understand the deeper meaning of Christmas if we understand the mediator in the right way. From unity, duality has developed, from duality, chaos, from which harmony is to develop again. This harmony can only develop if the mediator creates this harmony. This harmony can only find expression in an eternal lawfulness, and this eternal lawfulness found its symbolic expression - in the time when the Mithras service originated - in the fact that an image was seen in man himself, this creating the eternal world harmonies of the world law.

In the same mysteries that I have already mentioned here, in the secrets of the Persian religion, you will find a sevenfold initiation for those who were admitted to the sacred secrets. The first degree included those who learned about the very first secrets: this was the degree of the “ravens”, as the symbolic name indicates. The second degree was that of the Occultists. The third degree was that of the fighters or for sacred truth. The fourth degree was that of the so-called Lions, and the fifth degree was that of the Persians. Only the latter was regarded as a full Persian, in whom the consciousness of the highest spiritual in man had awakened, which we call Manas. He in whom this had awakened could be called a fifth-degree initiate, and he was called a Persian. He was a member of a nation in the truest sense of the word. He represented the destiny of his people. And if he was initiated one degree higher, he no longer represented the personality of his people, but that of all mankind. He then represented not the karma of a people, but of all mankind, insofar as it had developed from the middle of the Lemurian race and further into the fifth root race. Then such an initiate was called a sun runner or a “sun hero.” All those whom you find in the books as solar heroes are none other than such initiates of the sixth degree. Then came the “Father”; he was connected with the evolution of the future of humanity.

What does the name Sunrunner mean? If you could look back into the primeval times of our solar system, you would see that this solar system emerged from the struggle of thermal chaos, and that harmony itself has established itself in our world of disharmony, that peace and the laws have developed out of discord and disharmony. But how did they come about? They came about like this: The sun has such a regulated course that we cannot even imagine that the sun could deviate from its path for a moment; our world is so firmly grounded in harmony that the sun is firmly determined in its direction by its path through the world, that nothing can bring it out of this direction. In this course of the sun across the vault of heaven, the ancient Persian initiate saw his own inner destiny in the sixth degree. The sun of his own inner being, the sun of his spirit, had to shine so firmly for him that he could not deviate from the path of good and wisdom any more than the sun could deviate from its path. A person who had reached the sixth degree of initiation had to be so imbued with this lawfulness that he could not possibly deviate from his path; then he was a solar hero, a sun-runner.

All the earlier degrees of initiation had no other purpose than to give the human being this inner security, this inner sun-likeness. Thus, the person who knew something of these mysteries saw a deep harmony between human destiny and the path of the sun across the vault of heaven. The sun – so he said – causes the days to grow shorter and shorter, nature to die towards autumn, everything to withdraw into the interior. And when we approach the time that is celebrated today as Christmas, a new turn occurs: the light emerges, the days become longer in nature, nature can awaken again. The birth of the light – that was the moment celebrated since the times when it was said that the light is the symbol of revelation in the world and in man. So that in the East all peoples of our root race regarded the light as the garment for the wise ordering of the world. In the light they saw the garment for world wisdom. When we direct our eyes into the universe, light appears, harmoniously and firmly imprinted, in the stars outside. In reality, the spirits of wisdom reveal themselves through the light that the ancient religions saw as the garment of wisdom in the world.

Thus the trinity appeared to the ancient religions, that they first celebrated unity, primordial wisdom, then duality, light and darkness, and finally, as a trinity, also the enlightened man, the teacher and mediator, Mithras.

But mankind could not attain salvation in the sense of this consciousness until the consciousness of this universal harmony was born out of human hearts themselves. That which lives outside in the world as light, as the birth of light, must at the point in time we are now approaching arise in the human heart itself. The external mystical fact that has taken place is the founding of Christianity. In Christ, that which has been present on our earth from the very beginning, but which has remained hidden from humanity throughout the ages we have just spoken of, has appeared. During this time, humanity has gradually repeated those three stages. But now a new point of view, a new high point can be reached: the light can be reborn. Just as after the light grows weaker and weaker as we approach autumn, and then, when we come to the winter solstice, the light is reborn, so too was the savior, the Christ, born to humanity in the fourth sub-race. He is the new solar hero who was not only initiated in the depths of the mystery temples but appeared before the world, so that even those who do not see can be blessed by believing! It was therefore a natural consequence that when it was realized that the Divine can descend to the level of personality, one could at that moment replace the birth festival of the Light with the birth festival of the solar hero of the fourth post-Atlantean race.

This happened in the fourth century of our fourth sub-race. What had never been there before was now there, namely, the possibility that man could give birth to the light within himself. He could do so because the light principle had been incarnated in a human being for the first time. With this happening, the winter solstice festival was necessarily associated with Christmas. The entire significance of the preceding sub-races is determined and established with the transfer of the celebration of the birth of Christ to the winter solstice festival. At first, wisdom and light appeared to people from outside, but now the light was to be brought forth from within the human heart. Christ was to be born within man himself. Therefore, the event also had to take place in Palestine, a mystical event and an historical fact.

We are therefore dealing with a historical event, and that is precisely the great mystery that is so little understood: that what happened in Palestine happened literally as it is described in the Gospel of John, and that at the same time it is a mystical fact. Those who do not understand the event in this way do not yet understand it at all. But if you understand it that way, then you will also understand why from this moment on God is to be imagined as a personality, and that the Trinity, which had been imagined differently before, is to be imagined in the form of three divine persons. Christ had now become a person, and with that the proof was delivered that the divine can be realized in man. With that a firstling had appeared on earth, in whom the divine once dwelt. And this could henceforth become a lasting, an undestroyable ideal for mankind.

All the earlier great teachers of wisdom - the Egyptian Hermes, the ancient Indian Rishis, the Chinese Confucius, the Persian Zarathustra - they spoke the word of the divine, they were the great teachers. With Jesus, who was the Christ, the divine itself walked on earth in a living form for the first time. Before that, we only had the way and the truth on earth. Now we have the Way, the Truth, and the Life. That is the great difference between the earlier religions and Christianity, that the latter is the fulfillment of the former, that in the case of Christ we are not dealing with a teacher of wisdom – for teachers of wisdom are also present in all other religions – but with a human personality who must at the same time be venerated as a divine personality. This is why the disciples' message is so important: “We have laid our hands in his wounds, we have heard his message.” This is also why they relied on appearances, on direct sensory impressions; that one should not just listen to the word, but also look at the personality. And this is also the reason for the conviction that he was the world solar hero in a completely unique way. If we grasp this, we also understand that the old festival of the winter solstice used to mean something different from today's Christmas. In Egypt we find Horus, Isis and Osiris, the archetype of what also lives in Christianity. In ancient India we have the birth of Krishna from the Holy Virgin. Everywhere we find echoes of this myth. But what is important about Christianity is what I have just mentioned: the fact that not only the trinity, but the tetrad has become sacred, that the sacred has descended to the personality. Before that, the sacred was divine and enthroned at an inaccessible height above human beings. The old teachers of wisdom, the holy Rishis, revered it as the indefinite, unutterable Brahman; the old Zarathustra disciples saw it in the duality of good and evil; in Egypt, as already mentioned, it is the triad of Isis, Osiris and Horus. But that the Divine dwelt among men, that it became personality, that was the secret of the fourth sub-race. This is the most important event of our human epoch, that Christmas, which has always represented the birth of an initiate, now represents the birth of the greatest solar hero, the Christ Himself. Thus we see the necessity of these two things resonating in the course of the world. If we look at the fourth sub-race and compare it with the point in time at which we ourselves stand, then we see the divine having moved down even further. And it has taken on a peculiar form in our present time, a form that one must understand if one wants to fully decipher the Christmas festival. Go back to the fourth sub-era, to the twelfth or thirteenth century: everywhere you will find full understanding of the real personality of Christ among those who know it; this personality of Christ is so comprehensively described that, for example, in the poetry of 'Heliand', German conditions are transferred to the Christ. The Christ stands so firmly within humanity that the conditions of other countries can be related to his redemptive deed. He is so firmly rooted in humanity as a whole as a personality. But then a different mood sets in. There is a certain shaking of faith in this archetype of humanity. Something occurs that is a step forward on the one hand, but on the other hand a much larger circle of humanity enters into the further evolution of Christianity. But in return, people cease to understand that the center of his thinking, feeling and willing can lie in the individual personality of Christ. There are fewer and fewer people who dare to say that it is not the doctrine but the personality of Christ that is at issue. Finally, it dissolves altogether into the worship of the abstract ideal, which one thinks only spiritually and towards which man strives. In the time of the first sub-race it was Brahman, in the time of the second it was light and darkness, in the time of the third it was the Trinity. Then, in the time of the fourth sub-race, this Trinity had descended and become a person. The personal aspect descended even further, to the level of mere intellect, which has dissolved the human personality and is only worshipped as an abstract ideal.

In our fifth sub-race, however, the moment that must still come is already approaching, and it must bring us faith in the new initiates, in the 'Fathers'. Those initiated in the seventh degree are called the Fathers, and in the spiritual scientific world view we speak of the realization of the Masters, because it is not just one, but because it will be the Masters to whom man will look in gratitude and adoration as the great leaders of humanity. Thus the fifth sub-race connects us with our future. And so this fourth sub-race appears to be placed right in the middle of the great process we are going through, the process of Advent, that is, of the three preceding races, of which the three-week Advent is a reflection, because in a short time people will once again go through the process of how, in earlier times, the light dawned at Christmas time. Then comes the life in the light. That is why Christmas is not something temporary for Christians either, not a commemoration of what has passed; because the Christmas antiphon is not: Christ was born, or Christ was born, but it says: Today Christ was born. Today is always spoken of. That is important and significant. Today is spoken of in the sense that Christ Himself spoke: 'I am with you until the end of days'. This is something that stands before us anew every year and reveals to us the connection between man and heaven. It shows us that what has taken place in heaven must also take place in man. And just as the sun could not deviate from its orbit by a single inch without causing confusion, so too must man keep to his path. He must achieve that inner harmony, that inner rhythm, which is given to him by Christ, who was incarnated in Jesus and who will work in the Fathers, whose guidance man must follow in the times of the future.

This is the connection between man and heaven: the sun should not only move unerringly in the sky and gain new strength at the winter solstice, it should also bring about a birth of light from deep within in man, a resurrection, a solar heroism of the fifth root race. Hence the Christmas saying: “Gloria in excelsis deo et in terra pax”, “Peace on earth to those of good will”. Inner peace will also bring humanity's evolution into a rhythmic process, just as the sun has brought its own process into a regular rhythm. In the sun we have an image of the eternal cycle of the cosmos. It has overcome chaos within itself and brought it to peace. In this sense, Christmas is a festival of peace, from which the mood of peace and harmony should also radiate. Then it is celebrated in the right way, when the power of peace and harmony radiates from this festival. With the Christmas bells, not only the sounds of the Church resound, but the sounds of all striving humanity, which is working and has worked on present-day culture and its further development, ever since the Earth with its spirituality rose again from the great frost.

What the preceding races longed for as their future was born into the fourth post-Atlantean sub-race. And what the three following races must strive for, that resounds from the Christmas sounds. The harmonies of the heavens truly speak to us when we understand what Christmas expresses. Every festival of the year is so firmly grounded in ancient wisdom.

It is no coincidence that these festivals have been set, they have not sprung from arbitrariness, but are drawn from the deepest wisdom of the world, and those who can truly understand and celebrate them with full understanding will find in them the scriptural characters of ancient wisdom for what has happened from the beginning and will happen in the future. In this way the festivals take on a new meaning; they cease to have the conventional significance that they have for many people. To read the great truths of the world is to celebrate the great world festivals in the right spirit. With the heart, with the mind, with the soul you read the primal truths of heaven when you celebrate the great world festivals. Then they are truly celebrated out of the spirit, then they are something for humanity again.

Spiritual science is not mere abstract thought, not a tangle of dogmas. It has a great task and a world mission to revive what humanity has forgotten, to strike the fire out of what has been given to us by our ancestors. Then human selfishness will also cease. They will learn to live in the unified spirit of the world. This is the wisdom that, among many other things, emanates from spiritual science, and it is practical in a good sense; it gives us inner support and secure hope. And that is why the spirit of peace and spiritual confidence that emanates from the Christmas festival can inspire those who strive for spiritual knowledge in their innermost being.

The exalted spiritual leaders of humanity once prescribed this festival for us in primeval times. Let us visualize this as genuine Christmas wisdom at the end of this hour: Advanced human brothers are the leaders of the spiritual movement, advanced human brothers who were already present at the beginning of the fifth root race when the great world festivals were established, and who, as the great teachers of humanity, are still revealing such truths to us today. They do not give us the wisdom teachings out of speculation, out of their own opinion, but because they were there when the things were revealed. They have prepared the peace that shall one day flow over humanity, and they have composed the holy scriptures in the festivals, from which we shall read the message of peace, the message of inner soul bliss, which we shall regain through spiritual science. If we live in the spirit of the masters of harmony, then we live more and more towards the great ideal that they themselves exemplify to us. Spiritual science reminds us of those exalted leaders of humanity when we are seized by the Christmas spirit, which speaks to us of peace and of the sacrifices of the great masters. This peace flows into the future of humanity. We see it completely surrounded by the splendor of this spiritual light and the harmony of feelings. In this glory in which they appear to us, we recognize them as the fathers who lead us towards the future. We follow in their footsteps, and out of our own soul is born a life that is immersed in peace, in harmony and unity - in that harmony that is an image of the sun's path around the world.

The birth of peace at Christmas time is a reflection of the sun's passage around the celestial vault. This is taught by the wise magicians, the great masters, and spoken by those who not only have blind faith in these masters, but who also know and say out of their full knowledge: the masters they are, and the spiritual world movement under the guidance of the masters is the great and lofty peace movement that leads people to that world harmony in which human souls will live with the same harmonious regularity and imperturbability with which the sun moves through the worlds, showing us the way to the radiant beauty of the spiritual sun.

You will remember that I have spoken of the meaning of the Christmas Festival in its connection with the evolution of races, or, better said, the epochs of civilisation, and indeed the significance of the Festival lies in this very connection both in respect of the past and of the future.

I want to speak to-day about a Festival to which in modern times less importance is attached than to the Christmas Festival itself, namely, the Festival of the Three Kings, of the Magi who came from the East to greet the newly born Jesus. This Festival of the Epiphany (celebrated on the 6th of January) will assume greater and greater significance when its symbolism is understood.

It will be obvious to you that very profound symbolism is contained in the Festival of the Three Magi from the East. Until the 15th century, this symbolism was kept very secret and no definite indications were available. But since that century some light has been thrown on the Festival of the Magi by exoteric presentations. One of the Three Kings—Caspar—is portrayed as a Moor, an inhabitant of Africa; one as a white man, a European—Melchior; and one—Balthasar—as an Asiatic; the colour of his skin is that of an inhabitant of India. They bring Myrrh, Gold and Frankincense as offerings to the Child Jesus in Bethlehem.

These three offerings are full of meaning and in keeping with the whole symbolism of the Festival celebrated on the 6th of January. Exoterically, the date itself throws some light; esoterically, the Festival is pregnant with meaning. The 6th of January is the same date as that on which, in ancient Egypt, the Festival of Osiris was celebrated, the Festival of the re-finding of Osiris. As you know, Osiris was overcome by his enemy Typhon: Isis seeks and eventually finds him. This re-finding of Osiris, the Son of God, is represented in the Festival of the 6th of January. The Festival of the Three Kings is the same Festival, but in its Christian form. This Festival was also celebrated among the Assyrians, the Armenians and the Phoenicians. Everywhere it is a Festival connected with a kind of universal baptism—a rebirth from out of the water. This in itself points to the connection with the re-finding of Osiris.

What does the disappearance of Osiris signify? It signifies the transition from the epoch before the middle of the Lemurian race to the epoch after the middle of that race. Before the middle of the Lemurian race, no human being was endowed with Manas. It was not until the middle of the race that Manas came down as a fertile seed into men. Manas (Spirit-Self) was now disseminated among men and in each single individual a grave was created for Manas—for the dismembered Osiris. The Divine Manas was disseminated and thereafter dwelt in men. In the Egyptian Mystery-language, the bodies of men were called the ‘graves of Osiris’ Manas was fettered until it was freed by the new revelation of Love.

What is the new revelation, the new manifestation of Love? The descent of Manas somewhere around the middle of the Lemurian epoch, was accompanied by the penetration into mankind of the principle of desire, or passion. Before that time there had been no desire-principle in the real sense. The animals of the preceding epochs were cold-blooded; even man himself at that time, had no warm blood. In the Old Moon period and, correspondingly, in the Third Earth-Round, men may be likened to fishes, in the sense that their own warmth and the warmth of their environment were equal in degree. Of this epoch the Bible says: ‘The Spirit of God brooded over the waters.’ The principle of Love was not within the beings, but outside, manifesting as earthly Kama (that is to say, earthly passion or desire). Kama is egotistic love. The first bringer of Love free of all egoism is Christ Who appeared in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

Who are the Magi? They represent the Initiates of the three preceding races or epochs of culture, the Initiates of mankind up to the time of the coming of Christ, the Bringer of the Love that is free of egoism—the resurrected Osiris. The Initiates—and so too the Three Magi—were endowed with Manas. They bring gold, frankincense and myrrh as their offerings. And why are their skins of three colours: white, yellow and black? One is European—his skin is white; one is Indian—his skin is yellow; one is African—his skin is black. This indicates the connection with the so-called Root Races. The remaining survivors of the Lemurian race are black; those of the Atlantean race are yellow; and the representatives of the Fifth Root Race, the Post-Atlantean or Aryan race, are white.

Thus the Three Kings or Magi are representatives of the Lemurians, the Atlanteans and the Aryans. They bring the three offerings. The European (Melchior) brings gold, the symbol of wisdom, of intelligence which comes to expression paramountly in the Fifth Root Race. The offering of the Initiate representing the Fourth Root Race (Balthasar) is frankincense, connected with what was intrinsically characteristic of the Atlanteans. They were united more directly with the Godhead, a union which took effect as a suggestive influence, a kind of universal hypnosis. This union with the Godhead is betokened by the offering. Feeling must be sublimated in order that God may fertilise it. This is expressed symbolically by the frankincense, which is the universal symbol for an offering that has something to do with Intuition.

In the language of esotericism, myrrh is the symbol of dying, of death. What is the meaning of dying and of resurrection, as exemplified in the resurrected Osiris? I refer you here to words of Goethe: “So long as thou hast it not, this dying and becoming, thou'rt but a dull guest on the dark earth.” Jacob Boehme expresses the same thought in the words: “He who dies not ere he dies, perishes when he dies.” Myrrh is the symbol of the dying of the lower life and the resurrection of the higher life. It is offered by the Initiate representing the Third Root Race (Lemurian). A deep meaning lies in this. Jesus of Nazareth is a very highly developed individuality. In the thirtieth year of his life he gives up his own life to the descending Christ, the descending Logos. All this the Magi foresaw. The great sacrifice made by Jesus of Nazareth is that he gave up his ‘ I ’ to make way for the Second Logos. There is a definite reason for this sacrifice. Not until the Sixth Root Race will it become possible, and then only gradually, for the human body to receive into itself the Christ Principle from childhood onwards. Only then, in the Sixth Root Race, will mankind have reached such maturity that the body will not need years of preparation but will be able from the beginning, to receive the Christ Principle. In the fourth sub-race of the Fifth Root Race it was necessary for a body to be prepared for thirty years. (In the Northern regions we find something similar, in that the personality of Sig was so prepared that he could place his body at the disposal of a higher Being, and, in fact, did so). In the Sixth Root Race it will be possible for a man to place his body at the disposal of a sublime Being, as did Jesus of Nazareth when Christianity was founded. At the time of the founding of Christianity it was still necessary for an advanced individuality to sacrifice his own ‘ I ’ and send it into the astral realm, in order that the Logos might dwell in the body. This is an act upon which light is shed by the last words on the Cross. What other meaning could these words contain: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” These words give expression to the mystical fact then consummated. At the moment of Christ's death, the Divine Being had departed from the body, and it is the body of Jesus of Nazareth that utters these words—a body so highly developed that it could voice the reality. And so these words give expression to an event of untold significance. All this is represented by the myrrh. Myrrh is the symbol of sacrifice, of death, the sacrifice of the earthly in order that the Higher may come to life. In the middle of the Lemurian epoch, Osiris came to his grave; Manas drew into human beings. Men were educated under the guidance of the Initiates until the principle of Love (Budhi) could shine forth in Christ Jesus. Budhi is the heavenly Love. The lower, sexual principle is ennobled through the Christ Love. Kama is purified in the fire of the Divine Love.

Melchior is the representative of the principle of wisdom, of intelligence—the task of the Fifth Root Race. This is symbolised by his offering—gold.

The principle of sacramental offering is represented by the frankincense. This offering symbolises the principle that was dominant in the Fourth Root Race, the Atlantean. The task of Christianity is fulfilled in the Sixth Root Race, when material existence will be fraught with sacramentalism and sacramental deeds. Sacraments have very largely lost their meaning to-day; the feeling of their significance has disappeared. But this feeling will be kindled to life again when the higher man is born. It is this that is symbolised by the frankincense.

In the Lemurian Race, Osiris meets his death, in the Sixth Root Race, Osiris is resurrected.

Thus the offerings made by the Three Kings indicate the connection of the Festival with the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Root Races. By what are the Three Holy Kings guided, and whither are they led? They are guided by a Star to a grotto, a cave in Bethlehem. This is something that can be understood only by one who has knowledge of the so-called lower, or astral mysteries. To be led by a Star means nothing else than to see the soul itself as a Star. But when is the soul seen as a Star? When a man can behold the soul as a radiant aura. But what kind of aura is so radiant that it can be a guide? There is the aura that glimmers with only a feeble light; such an aura cannot guide. There is a higher aura, that of the intelligence, which has, it is true, a flowing, up-surging light, but is not yet able to guide. But the bright aura, aglow with Budhi, is in very truth a Star, is a radiant guide. In Christ, the Star of Budhi lights up—the Star which accompanies the evolution of mankind. The Light that shines before the Magi is the soul of Christ Himself. The Second Logos Himself shines before the Magi and over the cave in Bethlehem.

The grotto or cave is the body wherein dwells the soul. The seer beholds the body from within. In astral vision, everything is reversed—for example, 365 instead of 563. The human body is seen as a cave, a hollow. In the body of Jesus shines the Christ Star, the soul of Christ. This must be conceived as a reality, taking place in the astral world. It is an enactment of the Lesser Mysteries. There, in very truth, the Christ Soul shines as an auric Star, and it is by this Star that the Initiates of the three Root Races are led to Jesus in Bethlehem.

The Festival of the Three Kings is celebrated every year on the 6th of January, and its significance will steadily increase. Men will understand more and more what a Magi is, and what the great Magi, the Masters, are. And then understanding of Christianity will lead to understanding of spiritual science.

How many people are there to-day who, as they walk through the streets at this season and see all the preparations made for the Christmas Festival, have any clear or profound idea of what it means? How seldom do we find evidence of any clear ideas of this Festival, and even when they exist, how far removed they are from the intentions of those who once inaugurated the great Festivals as tokens of what is eternal and imperishable in the world! A glance at the ‘Christmas Reflections’ as they are called, in the newspapers, is quite sufficient proof of this. Surely there can be nothing more dreary and at the same time more estranged from the subject than the thoughts sent out into the world on printed pages in this way.

To-day we shall try to bring before our minds a kind of summary of the knowledge revealed to us by Spiritual Science. I do not, of course, mean any kind of pedantic summary; I mean a gathering-together of all that the Christmas Festival can bring home to our hearts if we regard Spiritual Science not as a dull, grey theory, not as an outer confession, not as a philosophy, but as a real and vital stream of life pulsating through and through us.

The man of to-day confronts Nature around him as a stranger. He is far more of a stranger to Nature than he thinks, far more even than he was in the time of Goethe. Is there anyone who still feels the depth of words spoken by Goethe at the beginning of the Weimar period of his life? He addressed a Hymn, a kind of prayer to Nature with all her mysterious powers:

“Nature!—we are surrounded and embraced by her; we cannot draw back from her, nor can we penetrate more deeply into her being. She lifts us unasked and unwarned into the gyrations of her dance and whirls us away until we fall exhausted from her arms ... All men are within her and she in all men ... We are obedient to her laws even when we would fain oppose them ... She (Nature) is all in all. She alone praises and she alone punishes—herself, Let her do with me what she will; she will not cherish hatred for her created work. It was not I who spoke of her, Nay, it was she who spoke it all, true and false. Hers is the blame for all things, hers is the credit ...”

Verily, we are all Nature's children. And when we think we are least of all obedient to her, it may be that just then we are acting most strictly in accordance with the great laws which pervade the realm of Nature and stream into our own being. Again, there are so few who really feel the depth of other pregnant words of Goethe in which he tries to express the feeling of communion with the hidden forces common to Nature and to the human being. I refer to that passage in Faust where Goethe addresses Nature, not as the dead, lifeless being conceived of by materialistic thinkers of to-day, but as a living Spirit:

“Spirit sublime, Thou gav'st me, gav'st me all
For which I prayed. Not unto me in vain
Hast thou thy countenance revealed in fire.
Thou gav'st me Nature as a kingdom grand,
With power to feel and to endure it. Thou
Not only cold, amazed acquaintance yield'st,
But grantest, that in her profoundest breast
I gaze, as in the bosom of a friend.

The ranks of living creatures thou dost lead
Before me, teaching me to know my brothers
In air and water and the silent wood.
And when the storm in forests roars and grinds,
The giant firs, in falling, neighbour bough
And neighbour trunks with crushing weight bear down,
And falling, fill the hills with hollow thunders,—
Then to the cave secure thou leadest me,
Then show'st me mine own self, and in my breast
The deep, mysterious miracles unfold.”

Translation by BAYARD TAYLOR

This was the mood of soul which Goethe's knowledge and feeling for Nature awakened in him and these words were an attempt to bring to life again a mood which filled men's hearts in an age when wisdom itself was still organically united by living ties to Nature. And it was as tokens of this ‘feeling at one’ with Nature and the universe that the great Festivals were inaugurated.

The Festivals have become abstractions, matters of indifference to modern people. The word as a medium of strife and blasphemy often means more than the Word conceived as the power by which the world itself was created. Yet the alphabetical word ought to be the representative, the symbol of the Word Creative in Nature around us, in the great universe and within us too when self-knowledge awakens, and of which all mankind can be made conscious by those who truly understand the course of Nature. It was for this that the Festivals were instituted and with the knowledge we have gleaned from Spiritual Science we will try to understand what it was that the wise men of old set out to express in the Christmas Festival.

Christmas is not a Festival of Christendom only. In ancient Egypt, in the regions we ourselves inhabit, and in Asia thousands and thousands of years before the Christian era we find that a Festival was celebrated on the days now dedicated to the celebration of the birth of Christ.

Now what was the character of this Festival which since time immemorial has been celebrated all over the world on the same days of the year? Wonderful Fire Festivals in the northern and central regions of Europe in ancient times were celebrated among the Celts in Scandinavia, Scotland and England by their priests, the Druids. What were they celebrating? They were celebrating the time when winter draws to its close and spring begins. It is quite true that Christmas falls while it is still winter, but Nature is already heralding a victory which can be a token of hope in anticipation of the victory that will come in spring—a token of confidence, of hope, of faith—to use words which are connected in nearly every language with the Festival of Christmas. There is confidence that the Sun, again in the ascendant, will be victorious over the opposing powers of Nature. The days draw in and draw in, and this shortening of the days seems to us to be an expression of the dying, or rather of the falling asleep of the Nature-forces. The days grow shorter and shorter up to the time when we celebrate the Christmas Festival and when our forefathers also celebrated it, in another form. Then the days begin to draw out again and the light of the Sun celebrates its victory over the darkness. In our age of materialistic thinking this is an event to which we no longer give much consideration.

In olden times it seemed to men in whom living feeling was united with wisdom, to be an expression of an experience of the Godhead Himself, the Godhead by Whom their lives were guided. The solstice was a personal experience of a higher being—as personal an experience as when some momentous event forces a man to come to a vital decision. And it was even more than this. The waxing and waning of the days was not only an expression of an event in the life of a higher Being, but a token of something greater still, of something momentous and unique.

This brings us to the true meaning of Christmas as a Festival of the very highest order in cosmic and human life. In the days when genuine occult teaching was not disowned as it is today by materialistic thought but was the very wellspring of the life of the peoples, the Christmas Festival was a kind of memorial, a token of remembrance of a great happening on the Earth. At the hour of midnight the priests gathered around them their truest disciples, those who were the teachers of the people, and spoke to them of a great Mystery. (I am not telling you anything that has been cleverly thought out or discovered by a process of abstract deduction but was actually experienced in the Mysteries, in the secret Sanctuaries of those remote times). This Mystery was connected with the victory of the Sun over the darkness. There was a time on the Earth when the light triumphed over the darkness. And it happened thus: in that epoch, all physical, all bodily life on Earth had reached the stage of animality only. The highest kingdom upon the Earth had only reached a stage at which it was preparing to receive something higher. And then there came that great moment in evolution when the immortal, imperishable soul of man descended. Life had so far developed that the human body was able to receive into itself the imperishable soul. These ancestors of the human race stood higher in the scale of evolution than modern scientists believe, but the higher part of their being, the divine ‘spark’ was not yet within them. The divine spark descended from a higher planetary sphere to our Earth which was now to become the scene of its activity, the dwelling-place of the soul which henceforward can never be lost to us.

We call these remote ancestors of humanity the Lemurian race. Then came the Atlantean race and the Atlantean race was followed by our own—the Aryan race. Into the bodies of the Lemurian race the human soul descended. This descent of the divine ‘Sons of the Spirit,’ this great moment in the evolution of mankind was celebrated by the sages of all times as the victory of the light over the darkness. Since then the human soul has been working in the body and bringing it to higher stages of development but not at all in the way that materialistic science imagines. At the time when the human soul was quickened by the Spirit, something happened in the universe, something that is one of the most decisive events in the evolution of mankind.

In those remote ages—and this is contrary to what modern science teaches—certain constellation of Earth, Moon and Sun was in existence. It was not until then that the Sun assumed the significance it now has in the process of man's growth and life upon the Earth and of the other creatures belonging to the Earth—the plants and animals. Before that time, the beings on Earth were adapted to the conditions then obtaining upon the planetary body. Only those who are able to form a clear idea of the process of the development of the Earth and of mankind will understand the connection of Sun, Moon and Earth with the human being as he lives upon the Earth. There was a time when the Earth was still united with Sun and Moon, when Sun, Moon and Earth were still one body, The beings who dwelt upon this planet were different in appearance from those who inhabit the Earth to-day; they lived in forms which were suited to the conditions of existence as they were on the planetary body consisting of Sun, Moon and Earth.

The form and essential being of everything that lives upon our Earth is determined by the fact that first the Sun and then, later, the Moon separated from the Earth. The forces and influences of these two heavenly bodies henceforward played down upon the Earth from outside. This is the basis of the mysterious connection of the Spirit of man with the Spirit of the universe, with the Logos in Whom Sun, Moon and Earth are all contained. In this Logos we live and move and have our being. Just as the Earth was born from a planetary body in which the Sun and Moon were also contained, so is man born of a Spirit, of a Soul which belongs alike to Sun, Moon and Earth. And so when a man looks up to the Sun, or to the Moon, he should not only see external bodies in the heavens, but in Sun, Moon and Earth he should see the bodies of Spiritual Beings.

This truth is utterly lost to the materialism of the age. Those who do not see in Sun and Moon the bodies of Spiritual Beings cannot recognise the human body as the body of the Spirit. Just as truly as the heavenly bodies are the bodies of Spiritual Beings, so is the human body the bearer of the Spirit. And man is connected with these Spiritual Beings. Just as his body is separate from the forces of the Sun and Moon and yet contains forces which are active in the Sun and Moon, so the same spirituality which reigns in Sun and Moon is contained within his soul. Man has evolved on Earth into the being he is, and he is dependent upon the Sun as the heavenly body from which the Earth receives her light.

And so in days of old, our forefathers felt themselves to be spiritual children of the great universe and they said: “We have become men through the Sun Spirit, through the Sun Spirit from Whom the Spirit within us proceeded. The victory of the Sun over the darkness commemorates the victory of the Sun when it shone down upon the Earth for the first time. The immortal soul has been victorious over the forces of the animal nature.” It was verily a victory of the Sun when, long, long ago, the immortal soul entered into the physical body and penetrated into the dark world of desires, impulses and passions. Darkness preceded the victory of the Sun and this darkness had followed a previous Sun Age. So it is with the human soul. The soul proceeds from the Divine but it must sink for a time into the darkness, in order, out of this darkness, to build up the vehicle for the human soul. By slow degrees the human soul itself built up the lower nature of man in order then to take up its abode in the dwelling-place of its own construction. You have a correct simile for the entry of the immortal soul of man into the human body if you imagine an architect devoting all his powers to the building of a house in which he then lives. But in those remote ages the soul could only work unconsciously on its dwelling-place. The descent is expressed by the darkness; the awakening to consciousness, the lighting-up of the conscious human soul is expressed in this simile as a victory of the Sun. And so to those who were still aware of man's living connection with the universe, the victory of the Sun signified the great moment when they had received the impulse which was all-essential for their earthly existence. And this great moment was perpetuated in the Christmas Festival.

And now try to think of the course of human life in connection with the harmony of the universe. Man seems to become more and more akin to the great rhythms of Nature. If we think of all that encompasses the life of the soul, of the course of the Sun and everything that is connected with it, we are struck by something that closely concerns us, namely, the rhythm and the marvellous harmony in contrast to the chaos and lack of harmony in the human soul. We all know how rhythmically and with what regularity the Sun appears and disappears. And we can picture what a stupendous upheaval there would be in the universe if for a fraction of a second only the Sun were to be diverted from its course. It is only because of this inviolable harmony in the course of the Sun that our universe can exist at all, and it is upon this harmony that the rhythmic life-process of all beings depends. Think of the annual course of the Sun.—Picture to yourselves that it is the Sun which charms forth the plants in spring time and then think how difficult it is to make the violet or some other plant flower out of due season. Seed-time and harvest, everything, even the very life of animals is dependent upon the rhythmic course of the Sun. And in the being of man himself everything that is not connected with his feelings, his desires and his passions, or with his ordinary thinking, is rhythmic and harmonious. Think of the pulse, of the process of digestion and you will feel the mighty rhythm and marvel at the wisdom implicit in the whole of Nature. Compare with this the irregularity, the chaos of man's passions and desires, especially of his ideas and thoughts. Think of the regularity of your pulse, your breathing, and then of the irregularity, the erratic nature of your thinking, feeling and willing. With what wisdom the powers of life are governed where the prevailing rhythmic forces meet the challenge of the chaotic! And how greatly the rhythms of the human body are outraged by man's passions and cravings! Those who have studied anatomy know how marvellously the heart is constructed and regulated and how wonderfully it is able to stand the strain put upon it by the drinking of tea, coffee and spirits.

There is wisdom in every part of the divine, rhythmic Nature to which our forefathers looked up with such veneration and the very soul of which is the Sun with its regular, rhythmic course. And as the wise men of old looked upwards to the Sun, they said to their disciples: ‘Thou art the image of what the soul born within thee has yet to become and what it will become.’ The divine cosmic Order was revealed in all its glory to the sages of old. And again, in the Christian religion we have the ‘Gloria in excelsis.’ The meaning of ‘gloria’ is revelation, not ‘glory’ in the sense of ‘honour.’ Therefore we should not say: ‘Glory (honour) to God in the highest,’ but rather: ‘To-day is the revelation of the Divine in the heavens!’ The birth of the Redeemer makes us aware of the ‘Glory’ streaming through the wide universe.

In earlier times this cosmic harmony was placed as a great Ideal before those who were to be leaders among their fellow-men. Therefore in all ages and wherever there was consciousness of these things, men spoke of Sun Heroes. In the temples and sanctuaries of the Mysteries there were seven degrees of Initiation. I will speak of them as they were known in ancient Persia.

The first stage is attained when a man's ordinary feeling and thinking is raised to a higher level, where knowledge of the Spirit is attained. Such a man received the name of ‘Raven.’ It is the ‘Ravens’ who inform the Initiates in the temples what is happening in the world outside. When medieval poetic wisdom desired to depict in the person of a great Ruler an Initiate who amid the treasures of wisdom contained in the Earth must await the great moment when newly revealed depths of Christianity rejuvenate mankind—when this poetic wisdom of the Middle Ages created the figure of Barbarossa, ravens were his heralds. The Old Testament, too, speaks of the ravens in the story of Elijah.

Those who had reached the second stage of Initiation were known as ‘Occultists’; at the third stage they were ‘Warriors,’ at the fourth, ‘Lions.’ At the fifth stage of Initiation a man was called by the name of his own people: he was a ‘Persian,’ ‘Indian,’ or whatever it might be. For that man alone who had reached the fifth degree of Initiation was regarded as a true representative of his people. At the sixth stage a man was a ‘Sun Hero’ or one who ‘runs in the paths of the Sun.’ And at the seventh stage he was a ‘Father.’

Why was an Initiate of the sixth degree known as a Sun Hero? To reach this level on the ladder of spiritual knowledge a man must have developed an inner life in harmony with the divine rhythms pulsating through the cosmos. His life of feeling and of thinking must have rid itself of chaos, of all disharmony, and his inner life of soul must beat in perfect accord with the rhythm of the Sun in the heavens. Such was the demand made upon men at the sixth degree of Initiation. They were looked upon as holy men, as Ideals, and it was said that if a Sun Hero were to deviate from the divine path of this spiritual harmony, it would be as great a calamity as if the Sun were to deviate from its course. A man whose spiritual life had found a path as sure as that of the Sun in the heavens was called a ‘Sun Hero,’ and there were Sun Heroes among all the peoples.

Our scholars know remarkably little about these things. They are aware that Sun myths are connected with the lives of all the great Founders of religions, but what they do not know is that at the Initiation Ceremony it was the custom for the leading figures to be made into Sun Heroes. It is not really so surprising that materialistic research should rediscover these things. Sun myths have been sought for and found in connection with Buddha and with the Christ.

The Sun-Soul was the great example for the way in which a man's life must be ordered. How did the ancients conceive of the soul of a Sun Hero who had reached this inner harmony? They pictured to themselves that no longer did a single individual human soul live within him, but that forces of the cosmic Soul were streaming into him. This cosmic Soul was known in Greece as Chrestos, in the sublime wisdom of the East as Budhi. When a man no longer feels himself a single being, as the bearer of an individual soul, but experiences something of the universal Soul, he has created within himself an image of the union of the Sun-Soul with the human body and he has attained something of the very greatest significance in the evolution of mankind.

If we think of these men with all their nobility of soul, we shall be able to some extent to visualise the future of the human race and the relation of the future to the ideal of mankind generally. As humanity is to-day, decisions are arrived at by individuals who amid quarrelling and strife finally reach a measure of unity in majority-resolutions. When such resolutions are still regarded as the ideal, this is evidence that men have not realised what truth really is. Where in us does truth exist? Truth lives in that realm of our being where we think logically. It would be nonsense to decide by a majority vote that 2 x 2 = 4, or that 3 x 4 = 12. When man has once realised what is true, millions may come and tell him it is not so, that it is this or it is that, but he will still have his own inner certainty.

We have reached this point in the realm of scientific thinking, of thinking upon which human passions, impulses and instincts no longer impinge. Wherever passions and instincts mingle with thinking, men still find themselves involved in strife and dispute, in wild confusion, for the life of instincts and impulses is itself a seething chaos. When, however, impulses, instincts and passions have been purged and transmuted into what is known as Budhi or Chrestos, when they have developed to the level at which logical, dispassionate thinking stands to-day, then the ideal of the ancient wisdom, the ideal of Christianity, the ideal of Anthroposophy will be realised. It will then be as unnecessary to vote about what is held to be good, ideal and right as it is to vote about what has been recognised as logically right or logically wrong.

This ideal can stand before the soul of every human being and then he has before him the ideal of the Sun Hero, the ideal to which every aspirant at the sixth stage of Initiation has attained. The German Mystics of the Middle Ages felt this and expressed it in the word ‘Vergöttung’—deification. This word existed in all the wisdom-religions, What does it signify? Let me try to express it in the following way.—There was a time when those whom we look upon to-day as the ruling Spirits of the universe also passed through a stage at which mankind as a whole now stands -the stage of chaos. These ruling Spirits have wrestled through to the divine heights from which their forces stream through the harmonies of the universe. The regularity with which the Sun moves through the seasons, the regularity manifested in the growth of plants and in the life of animals—this regularity was once chaos. Harmony has been attained at the cost of great travail. Humanity stands to-day within the same kind of chaos but out of the chaos there will arise a harmony modelled in the likeness of the harmony in the universe.

When this thought takes root in our souls, not as a theory, not as a doctrine, but as living insight, then we shall understand what Christmas signifies in the light of anthroposophical teaching. If the glory, the revelation of the divine harmony in the heavenly heights is a real experience within us, and if we know that this harmony will one day resound from our own souls, then we can also feel what will be brought about in humanity itself by this harmony: peace among men of good-will. These are the two thoughts or, better, the two feelings which arise at Christmastide. When with this great vista of the divine ordering of the world, of the revelation, the glory of the heavens, we think of the future lying before mankind, we have a premonition even now of that harmony which in the future will reign in those who know that the more abundantly the harmony of the Cosmos fills the soul, the more peace and concord there will be upon the Earth. The great ideal of Peace stands there before us when at Christmas we contemplate the course of the Sun. And when we think about the victory of the Sun over the darkness during these days of Festival there is born in us an unshakable conviction which makes our own evolving soul akin to the harmony of the cosmos—light over the darkness had always been commemorated.¹ And so Christianity is in harmony with all the great world-religions. When the Christmas bells ring out, they are a reminder to us that this Festival was celebrated all over the world, wherever human beings knew what it signified, wherever they understood the great truth that the soul of man is involved in a process of development and progress on this Earth, wherever in the truest sense man strove to reach self-knowledge.

We have been speaking to-day, not of an undefined, abstract feeling for Nature but of a feeling that is full of life and spirituality. And if we think of what has been said in connection with Goethe's words: “Nature! we are surrounded and embraced by thee ...” it is quite obvious that we are not speaking here in any materialistic sense, but that we see in Nature the outward expression, the countenance of the Divine Spirit of the Cosmos. Just as the physical is born out of the physical, so are the soul and the Spirit born out of the Divine Soul and the Divine Spirit. The body is connected with purely material forces and the soul and Spirit with forces akin to their own nature. The great Festivals exist as tokens that these things must be understood in their connection with the whole universe; our powers of thinking must be used in such a way that we realise our oneness with the whole universe. When this insight lives within us, the Festivals will change their present character and become living realities in our hearts and souls. They will be points of focus in the year uniting us with the all-pervading Spirit of the universe.

Throughout the year we fulfil the common tasks and duties of daily life, and at these times of Festival we turn our attention to the links which bind us with eternity. And although daily life is fraught with many a struggle, at these times a feeling awakens within us that above all the strife and turmoil there is peace and harmony.

Festivals are the commemoration of great Ideals, and Christmas is the birth feast of the very greatest Ideal before mankind, of that Ideal which man must strain every nerve to attain if he is to fulfil his mission. The birth festival of all that man can feel, perceive and will—such is Christmas when it is truly understood.

The aim of Spiritual Science is to stimulate a true and deep understanding of the Christmas Festival. We do not want to promulgate a dogma or a doctrine, or a philosophy. Our aim is that everything we say and teach, everything that is contained in our writings, in our science, shall pass over into life itself.

When in all that pertains to his daily life man applies spiritual wisdom, life will be filled with it and from all pulpits, far and wide, godlike wisdom, the living wisdom of the Spirit will resound in the words that are spoken to the ‘faithful.’ It will then be unnecessary to utter the actual words ‘Spiritual Science’ at all. When in Courts of Law the deeds of human beings are viewed with the eyes of spiritual perception, when at the bed of sickness the doctor spiritually perceives and spiritually heals, when in the schools the teacher brings spiritual knowledge to the growing child, when in the very streets men think and feel and act spiritually, then we shall have reached our Ideal, for Spiritual Science will have become common knowledge. Then too there will be a spiritual understanding of the great turning-points of the year and the everyday experiences of man will be truly linked with the spiritual world. The Immortal and the Eternal, the spiritual Sun will flood the soul with light at the great Festivals which will remind man of the divine Self within him. The divine Self, in essence like the Sun, and radiant with light, will prevail over darkness and chaos and will give to his soul a peace by which all the strife, all the war and all the discord in the world will be quelled.

• 1. We cannot here enter into the details of the wisdom-teachings of Christianity itself which will form the subject of a later lecture. But this much shall be said to-day: that nothing could be more correct than to place at this time the Birth Festival of that divine Individuality Who is to the Christian a guarantee and an assurance that his divine soul will ultimately prevail over the darkness in the outer world.

When the candles are lit on the Christmas Tree, the human soul feels as though the symbol of an eternal reality were standing there, and that this must always have been the symbol of the Christmas Festival, even in a far distant past. For in the autumn, when outer Nature fades, when the sun's creations fall as it were into slumber and man's organs of outer perception must turn away from the phenomena of the physical world, the soul has the opportunity—nay not only the opportunity but the urge—to withdraw into its innermost depths, in order to feel and to experience: Now, when the light of the outer sun is faintest and its warmth feeblest, now is the time when the soul withdraws into the darkness but can find within itself the inner, spiritual Light. The lights on the Christmas Tree stand there before us as a symbol of the inner, spiritual Light that is kindled in the outer darkness. And because what we feel to be the spirit-light of the soul shining into the darkness of Nature seems to be an eternal reality, we imagine that the lighted fir-tree shining out to us on Christmas Night must have been shining ever since our earthly incarnations began.

And yet it is not so. It is only one or at most two centuries ago that the Christmas Tree became a symbol of the thoughts and feelings which arise in man at the Christmas season. The Christmas Tree is a recent symbol but each year anew it reveals to man a great, eternal truth. That is why we imagine that it must always have existed, even in the remote past. It is as if from the Christmas Tree itself there resounded the proclamation of the Divine in the cosmic expanse, in the heavenly heights. The human being can feel this to be the unfailing source of those forces of peace in his soul which spring from good-will. And thus, according to the Christmas Legend, did the proclamation also resound when the shepherds visited the birthplace of the Child whose festival we celebrate on Christmas Day. To the shepherds there rang forth from the clouds: From the cosmic expanse, from the heavenly heights, the Divine Powers are revealing themselves, bringing peace to the human soul that is filled with good-will.

For centuries and centuries men could not bring themselves to believe that the symbol presented to the world in the Christmas Festival ever had a beginning. They felt in it the hallmark of eternity. Christian ritual has for this reason clothed the intimation of eternity in what takes place symbolically on Christmas Night, in the words: ‘To us Christ is born anew!’ It is as though every year the soul is called upon to feel anew a reality of which it is thought that it could happen once and once only. The eternity of this symbolic happening is brought home to us with infinite power if we have the true conception of the symbol itself. Yet as late as 353 A.D., 353 years after Christ Jesus had appeared on earth, the birth of Jesus was not celebrated, even in Rome. The Festival of Jesus' birth was celebrated for the first time in Rome in the year A.D. 354. Before then this Festival was not celebrated between the 24th and 25th December; the day of supreme commemoration for those who understood something of the deep wisdom relating to the Mystery of Golgotha, was the 6th of January. The Epiphany was celebrated as a kind of Birth-Festival of the Christ during the first three centuries of our era. It was the Festival which was meant to revive in human souls the remembrance of the descent of the Christ Spirit into the body of Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism by John in the Jordan. Until the year A.D. 353 the happening which men conceived to have taken place at the Baptism was commemorated on the 6th of January as the Festival of Christ's birth. For during the first centuries of Christendom an inkling still survived of the mystery that is of all mysteries the most difficult for mankind to grasp, namely, the descent of the Christ Being into the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

What were the feelings of men who had some inkling of the secrets of Christianity during those early centuries? They said to themselves: The Christ Spirit weaves through the world that is revealed through the senses and through the human spirit. In the far distant past this Christ Spirit revealed Himself to Moses. The secret of the human ‘ I ’ resounded to Moses as it resounds to us from the symbol on the Christmas Tree from the sounds I A O—the Alpha and the Omega, preceded by the I. This was what resounded in the soul of Moses when the Christ Spirit appeared to him in the burning bush. And this same Christ Spirit led Moses to the place where He was to recognise Him in His true being. This is described in the Old Testament where it is said that the Lord led Moses to Mount Nebo ‘over against Jericho’ and showed him what must still come to pass before the Christ Spirit could incarnate in the body of a man. To Moses on Mount Nebo, this Spirit said: But thou to whom I revealed myself in advance, mayest not bear what thou hast in thy soul into the evolution of thy people; for they have first to prepare what is to come to pass when the time is fulfilled.

And when, through many centuries, the evolutionary preparation had been completed, the same Spirit by Whom Moses had been held back, did indeed reveal Himself—by becoming Flesh, by taking on a human body, the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Therewith mankind as a whole was led from the stage of Initiation signified by the word ‘Jericho’ to that indicated by the crossing of the Jordan.

The hearts and minds of those who in the early centuries of our era understood the true import of Christianity turned to the Baptism in the Jordan of Jesus of Nazareth into whom Christ descended, Christ the Sun-Earth-Spirit. It was this—the birth of Christ—that was celebrated as a Mystery in the early Christian centuries. The insight for which we prepare ourselves to-day through Anthroposophy, through the wisdom belonging to the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation, flashed up in the form of vision from the vestiges of ancient clairvoyance still surviving during the age when the Mystery of Golgotha took place; it flashed up in the Gnostics, those remarkable, enlightened men who lived at the turning-point of the old and the new eras, whose conception of the Christ Mystery differed in respect of form but not in respect of content, from our own. What the Gnostics were able to teach trickled through into the world and although what had actually come to pass in the event indicated symbolically by the Baptism in the Jordan was not widely understood, there was nevertheless an inkling that the Sun Spirit had been born at that time as the Spirit of the Earth, that a cosmic Power had dwelt in the body of a man of earth. And so in the early centuries of Christendom the festival of the birth of Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the festival of Christ's Epiphany, was celebrated on the 6th of January.

But insight, even dim, uncertain insight into this deep Mystery faded away more and more as time went by. The age came when men could no longer comprehend that the Being called Christ had been present in a physical human body for three years only. More and more it will be realised that what was accomplished for the whole of earth-evolution during those three years in the physical body of a man is one of the very deepest and most difficult Mysteries to understand. From the fourth century onwards, with the approach of the materialistic age, the powers of the human soul—then still at the stage of preparation—were not strong enough to grasp the deep Mystery which from our time on will be understood in ever greater measure. And so it came about that to the same extent to which the outer power of Christianity increased, inner understanding of the Christ Mystery decreased and the festival of the 6th of January ceased to have any essential meaning. The birth of Christ was placed thirteen days earlier and envisaged as coincident with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. But in this very fact we are confronted by something that must always be a source of inspiration and thanksgiving. Actually, the 24th/25th of December was fixed as the day of Christ's Nativity because a great truth had been lost, as we have heard. And yet ... although the error would seem to point to the loss of a great truth, such profound meaning lay behind it that—although the men responsible knew nothing of it—we cannot but marvel at the subconscious wisdom with which the festival of Christmas Day was instituted.

Verily, the working of Divine wisdom can be seen in the fixing of this festival. Just as Divine wisdom can be perceived in outer nature if we know how to decipher what reveals itself there, so we can perceive Divine wisdom working in the unconscious soul of man when the following is borne in mind. In the Calendar, the 24th of December is the day dedicated to Adam and Eve, the following day being the Festival of Christ's Nativity. Thus the loss of an ancient truth caused the date of Christ's birth to be placed thirteen days earlier and to be identified with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth—but in a most wonderful way the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was linked with the thought of man's origin in earth-evolution, his origin in Adam and Eve. All the dim feelings and experiences connected with this festival of Jesus' birth which were alive in the human soul—although in their upper consciousness, men had no knowledge of what lay behind—all these feelings that were astir in the depths of the soul speak a wondrous language.

When understanding was lost of what had streamed from cosmic worlds in the event which would rightly have been celebrated on the 6th of January, forces working in hidden depths of the soul caused the picture to be presented of man as a being of soul-and-spirit before physical embodiment, at the starting-point of evolution as a physical human being. The picture is of the new-born child whose soul is as yet untouched by the effects of contact with the physical body, of the child at the beginning of physical evolution on earth. But this is not a human child in the ordinary sense; it is the child who was there before human beings had reached the point of the first physical embodiment in earth-evolution. This is the being known in the Kabbala as Adam Kadmon—Man who descended from divine-spiritual heights, with all that he had acquired during the periods of Saturn, Sun and Moon. The human being in his spiritual state at the very beginning of earth-evolution, born in the Jesus Child—this was presented to mankind by a Divine wisdom in the festival of Jesus' birth. At a time when it was no longer possible to understand what had descended from cosmic worlds, from heavenly spheres, to the earth, remembrance of their origin, of their state before the advent of the Luciferic forces in earth-evolution was engraved into the souls of men. And when it was no longer realised that in the highest and truest sense it could be said of the Baptism by John in the Jordan: From cosmic worlds there has come into human souls the power of the self-revealed Godhead, in order that peace may reign among men who are of goodwill—when understanding of how this picture could be presented as a sacred festival was lost, another affirmation was presented in its place, the affirmation that at the beginning of earth revolution, before the Luciferic forces began their work, man had a nature, an entelechy that can inspire him with undying hope.

The Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke—not the Jesus described in the Gospel of St. Matthew—is the Child before whom the shepherds worship. To them the proclamation rang forth: Now is the Divine revealed from the heavenly heights, bringing peace to the souls of men who are of good-will. And so for the centuries when the higher reality was beyond man's grasp, the festival was instituted which every year brings to his remembrance: Although you cannot gaze into the heavenly heights and there recognise the great Sun-Spirit, you bear within you, from the time of your earthly beginning, the Child-Soul in its state of purity, unsullied by the effects of physical incarnation; and the forces of this Child-Soul can give you the firm confidence that you can be victorious over the lower nature which clings to you as the result of Lucifer's temptation. The linking of the festival of Jesus' birth with remembrance of Adam and Eve gave emphasis to the thought that at the place visited by the shepherds a human soul had been born in the state of innocence in which the soul existed before the first incarnation on earth.

At this time of festival, therefore, since the birth of the God was no longer understood, the birth of a human being was commemorated. For however greatly man's forces threaten to decline and his sufferings to take the upper hand, there are two unfailing sources of peace, harmony and strength. We are led to the first source when we look out into cosmic space, knowing it to be pervaded by the weaving lift, movement and warmth of the Divine Spirit. And if we hold fast to the conviction that this Divine-Spiritual Power weaving through the universe can permeate our being provided only that our forces do not flag—there we have the Easter thought, equally a source of hope and confidence flowing from the cosmic spheres. And the second source can spring from the dim inkling that as a being of soul-and-spirit, before he became the prey of the Luciferic forces at the beginning of his earthly evolution, man was still part of the same Spirit now awaited from cosmic worlds as in the Easter thought. Turning to the source to be found in man's own, original being, before the onset of the Luciferic influence, we can say to ourselves: Whatever may befall you, whatever may torment you and draw you down from the shining spheres of the spirit, your divine origin is an eternal reality, hidden though it be in the depths of the soul. Recognition of this innermost power of the soul will give birth to the firm assurance that the heights are within your reach. And if you conjure before your soul all that is innocent, childlike, free from life's temptations, free from all that has already befallen human souls through the many incarnations since the beginning of earthly evolution, then you will have a picture of the human soul as it was before these earthly incarnations began.

But one soul—one soul only—remained in this condition, namely the soul of the Jesus Child described in the Gospel of St. Luke. This soul was kept back in the spiritual life when the other human souls began to pass through their incarnations on the earth. This soul remained in the guardianship of the holiest Mysteries through the Atlantean and Post-Atlantean epochs until the time of the events in Palestine. Then it was sent forth into the body predestined to receive it and became one of the two Jesus children—the Child described in the Gospel of St. Luke.

Thus did the festival of Christ's Nativity become the festival of the Birth of Jesus.

If we rightly understand this festival we must say: That which we believe to be born anew symbolically every Christmas Night, is the human soul in its original nature, the childhood-spirit of man as it was at the beginning of earth-evolution; then it descended as a revelation from the heavenly heights. And when the human heart can become conscious of this reality, the soul is filled with the unshakable peace that can bear us to our lofty goals, if we are of goodwill. Mighty indeed is the word that can resound to us on Christmas Night, do we but understand its import.

Why was it that the festival of Christ's birth was set back thirteen days and became the festival of the birth of Jesus? To understand this we must penetrate into deep mysteries of human existence. Of outer nature, man believes, because he sees it with his eyes, that what the rays of the sun charm forth from the depths of the earth, unfolding into beauty through the spring and summer, withdraws into those same depths at the time when the outer sun-sphere is darkest, and that what will spring forth again the following year is being prepared in the seeds within the depths of the earth. Because his eyes bear witness, man believes that the seed of the plant passes through a yearly cycle, that it must go down into the earth's depths in order to unfold again under the warmth and light of the sun in spring. But to begin with, man has no notion that the human soul too passes through such a cycle. Nor is this revealed until he is initiated into the great mysteries of existence. Just as the force contained in the seed of every plant is bound up with the physical forces of the earth, so is the inmost being of the human soul bound up with the spiritual forces of the earth. And just as the seed of the plant sinks into the depths of the earth at the time we know as Christmas, so does the soul of man descend at that time into deep, deep spirit-realms, drawing strength from these depths as does the seed of the plant for its blossoming in spring. What the soul undergoes in these spirit-depths of the earth is entirely hidden from the ordinary consciousness. But for one whose eyes of spirit are opened the Thirteen Days and Thirteen Nights between the 24th of December and the 6th of January are a time of deep spiritual experience.

Parallel with the experience of the plant-seed in the depths of the natural earth, there is a spiritual experience in the earth's spirit-depths—verily a parallel experience. And the seer for whom this experience is possible either as the result of training or through inherited clairvoyant faculties, can feel himself penetrating into these spiritual depths. During this period of the Thirteen Days and Nights, the seer can behold what must come upon man because he has passed through incarnations which have been under the influence of the forces of Lucifer since the beginning of earthly evolution. The sufferings in Kamaloca that man must endure in the spiritual world because Lucifer has been at his side since he began to incarnate on the earth—the dearest vision of all this is presented in the mighty Imaginations which can come before the soul during the Thirteen Days and Nights between the Christmas Festival and the Festival of the 6th of January, the Epiphany. At the time when the seed of the plant is passing through its most crucial period in the depths below, the human soul is passing through its deepest experiences. The soul gazes at a vista of all that man must experience in the spiritual worlds because, under Lucifer's influence, he alienated himself from the Powers by whom the world was created. This vision is clearest to the soul during these Thirteen Days and Nights. Hence there is no better preparation for the revelation of that Imagination which may be called the Christ Imagination and which makes us aware that by gaining the victory over Lucifer, Christ Himself becomes the Judge of the deeds of men during the incarnations affected by Lucifer's influence. The soul of the seer lives on from the festival of Jesus' birth to that of the Epiphany in such a way that the Christ Mystery is revealed. It is during these Thirteen Holy Days and Nights that the soul can grasp most deeply of all, the import and meaning of the Baptism by John in the Jordan.

It is remarkable that during the centuries of Christendom, wherever powers of spiritual sight developed in the right way, it was known to seers that vision penetrated most deeply during the period of the Thirteen Holy Nights at the time of the winter solstice. Many a seer—either schooled in the mysteries of the modern age or possessing inherited powers of clairvoyance—makes it evident to us that at the darkest point of the winter solstice the soul can have vision of all that man must undergo because of his alienation from the Christ Spirit, how adjustment and catharsis were made possible through the Mystery enacted in the Baptism by John in the Jordan and then through the Mystery of Golgotha, and how the visions during the Thirteen Nights are crowned on the 6th of January by the Christ Imagination. Thus it is correct to name the 6th of January as the day of Christ's birth and these Thirteen Nights as the time during which the powers of seership in the human soul discern and perceive what man must undergo through his life in the incarnations from Adam and Eve to the Mystery of Golgotha.

During my visit to Christiania last year¹ it was interesting to me to find the thought which in rather different words has been expressed in so many lectures on the Christ Mystery, embodied in a beautiful saga known as ‘The Dream Legend.’ Strange to say, it has come to the fore in Norway during the last ten to fifteen years and has become familiar to the people, although its origin is, of course, very much earlier. It is the legend which in a wonderfully beautiful way relates how Olaf Åsteson is initiated, as it were by natural forces, in that he falls asleep on Christmas Eve, sleeps through the Thirteen Days and Nights until the 6th of January, and lives through all the terrors which the human being must experience through the incarnations from the earth's beginning until the Mystery of Golgotha. And it relates how when the 6th of January has come, Olaf Åsteson has the vision of the intervention of the Christ Spirit in humanity, the Michael-Spirit being His forerunner. I hope that on some other occasion we shall be able to present this poem in its entirety, for then you will realise that consciousness of vision during the Thirteen Days and Nights survives even to-day, and is in fact, being revivified. A few characteristic lines only will now be quoted. The poem begins:

Come listen to me and hear my song
The song of a wonderful youth,
I'll sing you of Olaf Åsteson
Who slept many days—'tis the truth.

'Twas Christmas Eve when down he lay
And slept so long all unknowing,
He never woke till the thirteenth day
When to Church the people were going.
Yes, it was Olaf Åsteson
Who lay so long a-sleeping.

(Translated from a German version
of The Dream Legend, by E.C.M.)

And so the poem goes on, relating how in his dream during the Thirteen Days and Nights, Olaf Åsteson is led through all that man must experience on account of Lucifer's temptation. A vivid picture is given of Olaf Åsteson's journey through the spheres where human beings have the experiences so often described in connection with Kamaloca, and of how the Christ Spirit, preceded by Michael, streams into this vision.

Thus with the coming of Christ in the Spirit, it will become more and more possible for men to know how the spiritual forces weave and hold sway and that the festivals have not been instituted by arbitrary opinions but by the cosmic wisdom which so often lies beyond the reach of men's consciousness yet works and reigns throughout history. This cosmic wisdom has placed the festival of the birth of Jesus at the beginning of the Thirteen Days. While the Easter Festival can always be a reminder that contemplation of the cosmic worlds will help us to find within ourselves the strength to conquer all that is lower, the Christmas thought—if we understand the festival which commemorates man's divine origin and the symbol before us on Christmas Day in the form of the Jesus Child—says to us ever and again that the powers which bring peace to the soul can be found within ourselves. True peace of soul is present only when that peace has sure foundations, that is to say, when it is a force enabling man to know: In thee lives something which, if truly brought to birth, can, nay must, lead thee to divine Heights, to divine Powers.—The lights on this tree are symbols of the light which shines in our own souls when we grasp the reality of what is proclaimed to us symbolically on Christmas Night by the Jesus Child in its state of innocence: the inmost being of the human soul itself, strong, innocent, tranquil, leading us along our life's path to the highest goals of existence. May these lights on the Christmas Tree say to us: If ever thy soul is weak, if ever thou believest that the goals of earth-existence are beyond thy reach, think of man's divine origin and become aware of those forces within thee which are also the forces of supreme Love. Become inwardly conscious of the forces which give thee confidence and certainty in all thy works, through all thy life, now and in all ages of time to come.

• 1. 7th-17th June, 1910, when the Lecture Course on The Mission of the Folk-Souls was given.

"Were Christ born a thousand times in Bethlehem, and not in thee, thou art lost eternally."

There are two aspects of this beautiful saying of the great Mystic Angelus Silesius. The one is the declaration that the true Christmas must be celebrated in man's inmost heart, that any outward celebration of Christmas must quicken the impulse whereby in the Holy Night of winter, the very deepest forces of the soul are drawn forth from the darkness prevailing within as the darkness of winter prevails without. These deep forces of the soul are aware of their union with the Being Who pervades all earthly evolution, giving it meaning and purpose. Within us we find some thing with which Christ is united if with conscious devotion to the Spiritual Powers working in the world we penetrate deeply enough into our life of soul.

And the other aspect of the words of Angelus Silesius is that the human being in earthly evolution to-day can become conscious of the fact that true manhood, assurance of true manhood, depends upon the soul feeling inwardly united with the essence and substantiality of Christ Jesus.

In the course of years our studies have brought it home to us that as earthly evolution proceeds, consciousness of Christ deepens, that human beings passing from incarnation to incarnation attain greater and greater understanding of the real nature of Christ. And we have tried to intensify this knowledge by drawing upon a source which enables us to celebrate the Holy Night of Christmas, the Festival of the Birth of Jesus, in a deeper and more worthy way.

What this implies will become clear from the lecture to-day.

A famous modern historian was once asked by a man interested in world events, why no mention is made in his writings of happenings which are the outcome of the Mystery of Golgotha, nor of the influences of Christ Jesus in the course of human history. The historian was asked why his books speak of the influences exercised upon history by popes, monarchs, military campaigns, governments, even by happenings in nature, but have no single word to say about the forces that have poured into mankind from the Mystery of Golgotha and since then have been at work in all human life and human affairs. After a long pause and deep deliberation, the historian answered: The method I have adopted for the exposition of history must remain as it is; for the Christ-forces that stream through happenings in the world belong to a primordial realm into which the human mind is incapable of gazing. The effects and influences of the Mystery of Golgotha—yes, certainly they can be discerned; but to describe the intrinsic, essential nature of these deeds of Christ is not possible in the writing of history.

This is only one of the many examples that could be given in proof of the fact that the most distinguished and enlightened minds of modern times cannot claim to celebrate the Christmas Festival in an inner sense. For in the soul of this historian, Christ Jesus as a living Figure, a living Being, had not become such intense reality that he could feel His presence in all human evolution from year to year, from week to week, even from hour to hour. It is possible for a really learned scholar to-day to survey the whole course of history without perceiving that since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Power of Christ has been working everywhere. There are many causes to account for the fact that the Festival of the Holy Night, the Festival of the Christmas Mystery, is not yet celebrated in the souls of the vast majority of human beings.

A certain illumination is given by one who has spoken of these things out of a deep and true feeling for the Christian Mystery. This was Goethe, who so beautifully recounts the life and travels of Wilhelm Meister. Wilhelm Meister comes to a stately building and is conducted around it by its owner. He is shown the gallery which contains a series of paintings of the most important historical occurrences among various peoples of antiquity—notably among the early Hebrews—from the time of Paradise, the Fall, and on through the later epochs. History is portrayed in impressive scenes, ending with the destruction of Jerusalem ... but there is no single picture of a scene from the life of Christ Jesus, although the series continues beyond the Crucifixion as far as the destruction of Jerusalem. Wilhelm Meister asks: Why does nothing in this picture-gallery portray the life of the divine Man who has brought such blessing into the evolution of humanity?—These are his words:¹ "In your historical series I find a chasm. The Temple of Jerusalem is destroyed and the people dispersed, yet you have not introduced the divine Man who taught there shortly before; to whom, shortly before, they would give no ear." The answer made to Wilhelm Meister is: "To have done this, as you require it, would have been an error. The life of that divine Man whom you allude to, stands in no connection with the general history of the world in his time. It was a private life; his teaching was a teaching for individuals. What has publicly befallen vast masses of people and the minor parts which compose them, belongs to the general history of the world, to the general religion of the world, the religion we have named the First. What inwardly befalls individuals, belongs to the Second religion, the Philosophical: such a religion was it that Christ taught and practised, so long as He went about on earth."

These are deeply moving words. Every human being on the earth is related individually to the Christ. Folk-history, as it may be called, is woven by the affairs of the several peoples, for it is concerned with human affairs in general, within the orbit of general human destiny. But what Christ Jesus has brought into the world penetrates deeply and inwardly into the experiences of every human heart, every human soul—belonging to no matter what part of earthly evolution—in so far as it feels itself truly Man. We must realise that this ‘feeling of oneself as man’ arose for the first time from what came into human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha.

And now to continue. The owner of the palace leads Wilhelm Meister to another gallery that has been kept closed, where the events of the New Testament are portrayed. Wilhelm Meister is therefore not permitted to see the events of the New Testament in a place where external happenings and actions in the world are presented, but only in an esoteric sanctuary, for the sight of which the soul must have been prepared, have withdrawn from things pertaining to the worldly history of the peoples. The basis of the soul's activity must now be esoteric and individual: then it may cross the Threshold leading to the pictures of scenes from the New Testament. Here again the pictures go no farther than the Last Supper. Wilhelm Meister asks: "As you have set up the life of the divine Man for a pattern and example, have you likewise selected his sufferings, his death?" The answer he receives is full of significance; it is an answer which indicates what reverent awe accompanies the experience of the mystery fulfilled on the earth by the Being dwelling in the body whose birth is celebrated in the Holy Night of winter. Wilhelm Meister has been conducted as it were to the first level of esoteric truth, where he witnesses the delineation of scenes as far as the Last Supper; but then comes the most esoteric portion of all, referred to with deep and holy awe: "We draw a veil over these sufferings, because we reverence them so highly. We hold it a damnable audacity to exhibit that torturing Cross and the Holy One who suffers on it, exposing them to the light of the sun." (Travels of Wilhelm Meister. Part II.)

This is an example of the feeling for esotericism to be found in the 18th century. The feeling was sound and true, for we ourselves shall readily agree that pictorial representations of Christ's sufferings, unless they are from the hand of a supreme artist, drag down the Mystery of Golgotha to the human level. And we can understand that one who in the 18th century had a deep, deep feeling for the Mystery of Golgotha was averse from looking at the many distorted portrayals of this sacred Mystery, preferring to draw a veil over these things, because he felt that only the inmost forces of the soul can be united, supersensibly, with what is connected with and follows the Last Supper.

But what is it that underlies these esoteric feelings and experiences? The hearts of men were yearning for a vista, a conception of the Christ Mystery greater than any that was possible at that time. With all humility, with a humility deeper than that with which we approach any other matter presented by spiritual science, it may truly be said that for long ages the best human souls have been yearning, pining for the knowledge of Christ that can be imparted by occult science. And to-day we may be assured that when the time is ripe, the souls of men will behold as reality, what hitherto could only be known in a different form.

The consciousness that such knowledge will one day be within the reach of the human heart, and the longing for it, has been one of life's great riddles to the best souls. Men have been reaching out for an understanding of Christ that will enable them to grasp the import of the mighty Deed accomplished on Golgotha which can be revealed to the eye of soul when the veil is lifted. In the lecture yesterday I explained why a knowledge of Christ once enriched by the old clairvoyance was bound to recede, how it was received in the earliest periods of Christendom but then gradually waned and faded away. I will read, again to-day, an ancient Gnostic hymn from which it is clear that in the old, clairvoyant form of knowledge the consciousness was alive that the Christ Who came into the world through the Child born at Christmastime, is a Cosmic Being, increasing in majesty and greatness, the higher the soul's vision soars into the realms of spirit—for through these realms He descended. It was inevitable that in later times, when the springs of this knowledge had run dry, a veil should be drawn over the great Event, because men were no longer able to explain that in the secret represented by the Child, the highest wisdom is enshrined. In this Child was born a Being Who traversed the heavenly worlds before His appearance on earth.—

Behold, O Father, how, distant from Thy Breath,
This being upon earth
(this ‘being’ is the human soul)
Wanders, the target and victim of all ill,
Lost and perplexed, it flees the deadly chaos—
How shall it find its way?

In converse with the Father God, Jesus is speaking of the descent through the cosmic spheres, of how his eyes turn to the human soul to whom he would fain bring salvation, wandering in chaos but yet longing for Christ.—

Therefore send me, O Father,
Descending, I bear the seal of heaven,
Traversing all the Aeons ...

The spiritual worlds are ranged one above the other in the heavenly spheres and the higher we ascend the more do we find that the older worlds are still living realities, the most ancient being present to this day in the highest spheres of all. What was once connected with the Saturn evolution is to be found in the very highest spiritual spheres, and these successive spheres, related to the flow of time, are called ‘Aeons.’

Traversing all the Aeons,
Teaching all sacred knowledge;
Thus may God's image be made manifest;
And thus to you I give
The deeply hidden knowledge of the sacred way:
‘Gnosis’ it shall be for you.

Mankind has very largely lost consciousness of the Christ as a Cosmic Being. This loss was inevitable, for the old clairvoyance had to disappear and an intervening period—an Aeon devoid of spirit—to come, in order that eventually a new form of clairvoyant vision may arise. But this new vision must again be directed to the spiritual worlds, must not characterise in forms such as are presented to men's outward sight, the Being Who in the Holy Night entered into the evolution of humanity. This new vision must reveal how the Christ Being descended from heavenly sphere to heavenly sphere and thence to the earth, giving the earth meaning and purpose.

Behold, O Father, how, distant from Thy Breath,
This being upon earth
Wanders, the target and victim of all ill,
Lost and perplexed it flees the deadly chaos—
How shall it find its way?
Therefore send me, O Father,
Descending I bear the seal of heaven,
Traversing all the Aeons,
Teaching all sacred knowledge;
Thus may God's image be made manifest;
And thus to you I give
The deeply hidden knowledge of the sacred way:
‘Gnosis’ it shall be for you.

What, in reality, is the earth that surrounds us, when we perceive its essential being? If the corpse of one whose soul already dwells in spiritual worlds lies before you, will you ever say: This is a man? Will you ever say: This is still, in the full sense of the word, a man? The higher members of human nature are no longer in the corpse from which the soul has departed. But since the middle of the Atlantean epoch the earth has been gradually becoming a corpse devoid of soul. The earth around us, despite its manifold beauties, has been approaching the state of a corpse since the middle of Atlantean times and is becoming more and more corpselike. Standing before the huge rocks, one can say no truer thing than that here is the skeleton which the earth has been in process of becoming ever since that time! In the rock-strewn earth we perceive the dying part of the earth-organism, which was a living organism only until the middle of the Atlantean epoch. Geology itself realises that when we walk over the earth or guide the plough through the soil, we are walking over the corpse of the earth, guiding the plough through the corpse of the earth. Geologists have acknowledged this and external science itself, when it begins really to think, cannot do otherwise. And so, inasmuch as we are surrounded by the earth, we confront death; we are spectators of the gradual dying of our earthly globe.

And now let us imagine that the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, that the Cosmic Being Whom we call Christ had not entered through the two Jesus boys into earth-evolution.² Earth-evolution would then be no more, would already by to-day have been overcome by death. But through the two Jesus boys the Christ did enter earthly evolution and then, living in the one for three years, consummated the Mystery of Golgotha, whereby a new seed of life was imparted to the earth. Therefore when the time is fulfilled, the earth will not remain a corpse in cosmic space—the soul having become the prey of Ahriman and Lucifer! No—that is what would have happened had Christ not come into the earth as a living, fertile seed. Because He has come, the earth will not fall into dust, the soul will not be in the sole possession of Lucifer and Ahriman, for the Christ Seed has infused new life into earth-evolution! Just as the earth once separated from the sun and has become a child of the sun, so will earth-evolution, imbued with a new impulse, be fraught with the meaning and purpose imparted by Christ.

Thus spiritual science turns our eyes with awe and reverence to the Mystery of Golgotha and because it points to realms beyond the range of material vision, we feel that it is for us to lift the veil ... since we are resolved to see behind this veil not only what comes before the eyes of an age destined to grow into materialism. Therefore it is again beginning to be possible for those in whom the impulses of spiritual science have come to life, to look up to the Christ as a Cosmic Being. Again and again let it be repeated that the infinite devotion we can feel towards the Child born in the Holy Night of Christmas is not thereby diminished. Rather is this devotion deepened when we can feel the reality of Christ as did Christian Morgenstern when there sprang from his soul a poem which seems like a resurrection of ancient and holy Gnostic thoughts pervaded alike by the Christ-Love and cosmic wisdom. And so a new Christmas is celebrated when in the dark night of materialism, voices ring out that are not the voices of the Gnostics of olden times but are quickened and enriched by dedication to the Living Being of the Cosmic Christ.

Licht ist Liebe ... Sonnen-Weben
Liebes-Strahlung einer Welt
schöpferischer Wesenheiten—

die durch unerhörtte Zeiten
uns an ihrem Herzen hält,
und die uns zuletzt gegeben

ihren höchsten Geist in eines
Menschen Hülle wahrend dreier
Jahre: da Er kam in seines

Vaters Erbteil—nun der Erde
innerlichstes Himmelsfeuer:
dass auch sie einst Sonne werde.

(Light is Love ... the rays of sunshine are the weaving radiance of a world of loving Creator-Spirits. Who, after hiding us in their heart through endless ages, at the last surrendered to us their sublimest One. Wrapped for three years in the body of a Man, He came then into possession of His Father's estate—and is now the innermost heavenly flame of Earth herself, that she too may one day be a Sun).

"Were Christ born a thousand times in Bethlehem, and not in thee, thou art lost eternally."

May there be celebrated in our souls an inner festival of the Holy Night; may our souls be filled with the realisation that a new knowledge of Christ must be born in our time. This new knowledge of Christ links the inmost core of man's being with primal innocence, links the state of childhood, not, as yet, that of mature life, with the very heights of cosmic being. When, in the Holy Night of winter our minds turn to the Christ Child, there is enacted before our souls the greatest of all festivals of consecration, the festival that rings through all the Aeons—and we know that the deepest realities of man's being and nature are indissolubly connected with all cosmic evolution.

Those whose hearts are kindled by spiritual science feel and know that victory over all death can be achieved when the soul is united with the Christ Being. I spoke of this to-day at the funeral of one taken from us so tragically by the war. Realisation of how the heights of cosmic being are connected with the inmost nature of man was impossible as long as the human mind was unable to conceive that the very quintessence of history lies in the Mystery of Bethlehem. But this insight will dawn in those who understand the secret of the two Jesus boys. In the one boy there was present the power of the wisest of all men in pre-Christian times, namely Zarathustra. This boy represents the flower of the previous stages of human evolution; the aura of the other boy was illumined by the forces of the great Buddha. The body of the one boy springs from the noblest blood of the ancient Hebrew peoples; the soul of the Jesus boy described in the Gospel of St. Luke leads back to the earth's beginning.³ The soul of this Jesus boy was kept back, when, in the age of Lemuria, man came to the earth; this soul was guarded by the Mysteries until it was sent into the body of the Jesus whose birth is described in the Gospel of St. Luke. It is said that immediately after birth, this Child uttered words intelligible only to the Mother, in a language unlike any other language, and which the Child himself forgot directly earthly consciousness awoke in him. A mystery was voiced immediately after birth ... And indeed, much of what we have to reveal concerning the Christ Mystery is an exposition of what was uttered by the Jesus boy of the Gospel of St. Luke directly after his birth.

And so spiritual science enables us to understand the Christ Impulse in the deeper aspect of human evolution—in the evolution of pre-Christian times too—for the differences disappear and the voice of the Initiates can still be heard. When once the magnitude of what poured into the evolution of humanity at the Mystery of Golgotha is grasped it will be possible for these forces to be brought to even greater fruition. But men must know Who the Christ was before they can speak truly of Him—in history, for example. If within our movement there are individuals—in greater and greater numbers—who resolve to kindle the light that can be kindled in those inner depths which since the Mystery of Golgotha have been within men's reach then the Christ Light will shine out in every single soul. This Christ Light becomes the Christmas Tree that will illumine all evolution in ages of time to come. The soul will behold an earth again made living, will find Christ everywhere within this new earth.

Those who have allied themselves with spiritual science can receive its tidings of Christ with such depth of feeling that the Christmas Festival will one day be celebrated in every individual soul. It is the Festival which represents the birth of that knowledge of Christ which comes from Christ Himself and is therefore a birth of Christ within us, True, indeed are the words: "Were Christ born a thousand times in Bethlehem, and not in thee, thou art lost eternally." But to this beautiful string of Angelus Silesius we can add: We are secure eternally if we seek the experience belonging to the Holy Night of winter, if we seek to bring Christ to birth in the depths of our souls!

• 1. The translation of the quotations from Wilhelm Meister is that of Thomas Carlyle.
• 2. See: The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind; also the Lecture-Courses on the Gospel of St. Luke and the Gospel of St. Matthew by Rudolf Steiner.
• 3. See Rudolf Steiner's Lecture-Courses on the Gospel of St. Matthew and the Gospel of St. Luke.

We will turn our thoughts to-day to the Festival which every year revives remembrance of the Mystery of Golgotha.

There are three such main Festivals in Christendom: at Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide. Each of these Festivals brings man's life of soul into a different relation with the great events from which the whole of earth-evolution receives purpose and meaning.

The Christmas Festival is connected more directly with man's life of feeling. In a certain sense it has the most popular appeal of all the Festivals, because when rightly understood it deepens the life of feeling and is always dear to the human heart.

The Easter Festival makes great demands upon man's powers of understanding, because here some measure of insight is essential into the Mystery of Golgotha itself, into how a super-sensible Being entered the stream of earthly evolution. Easter is a Festival which carries the faculty of human understanding to the highest level, a level which is, of course, ultimately accessible to everyone; but the appeal of the Easter Festival can never be as widespread as that of Christmas.

Through the Whitsuntide Festival, relationship is established between the will and the super-sensible world to which the Christ Being belongs. It is of the impulses of will which then take effect in the world that the Whitsuntide Festival makes men conscious when its meaning is rightly understood.

And so the great Christian Mystery is illustrated in a threefold way by these Festivals. There are many aspects of the Christmas Mystery and in the course of years we have studied them from different points of view at the time of the Festival. To-day we will think of an aspect brought graphically before us in the Gospels.

The Gospels tell of two proclamations of the birth of Christ Jesus. The one proclamation is made to the simple shepherds in the fields, to whom—in dream or in some kindred way—an Angel announces the birth. In this case, knowledge of the event was brought by inner soul-forces which were of a particular character in the shepherds living near the birthplace of Christ Jesus. And the Gospels tell of another proclamation made to the Three Kings, the Three Magi from the East who follow the voice of a star announcing to them that Christ Jesus has come into the world.

Here we have an indication of two ways in which higher knowledge came to men in earlier times. This is again a matter of which the modern mind has no understanding. The idea prevailing nowadays is that man's faculties of apprehension and thinking—that is to say, inner powers of the soul—have for thousands and thousands of years been fundamentally the same as they are to-day, except that in earlier times they were more primitive. But we know from spiritual science that the tenor and mood of the human soul has undergone great changes in the course of the ages. In times of antiquity, let us say about six or seven thousand years ago, man had a quite different conception not only of his own life but also of the universe around him. His attitude of soul underwent continual change until, in the modern world, it amounts simply to intellectual analysis and a purely physical conception of things in the outer world. This development proceeds from an instinctive clairvoyance in ancient times, through the phase of our present mood-of-soul, in order, in the future, to return to a form of clairvoyant vision of the world pervaded by full, clear consciousness.

At the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place on the earth, the old instinctive clairvoyance had already become dim. Although men's attitude of soul differed widely from that of to-day, they no longer possessed the powers of that ancient clairvoyance; neither were they able to apply the old forms of wisdom in seeking for intimate and exact knowledge of the world. The teachings of the ancient wisdom, as well as the faculties of instinctive clairvoyance, had lost their power when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. Nevertheless, echoes still survived, as the Gospels clearly indicate if we understand them aright. Echoes of the ancient wisdom survived here and there in certain exceptional individuals. These individuals might well have been the simple shepherds in the fields who with their great purity of heart possessed a certain power of clairvoyance which came over them like a dream. And there might also well have been individuals who had reached the heights of learning, like the Three Magi from the East, in whom the ancient faculty to gaze into the how of cosmic happenings had been preserved.

In a kind of dream-condition, the simple shepherds in the fields were able inwardly to realise what was drawing near in the event of the birth of Christ Jesus. On the other hand, the knowledge possessed by the three Magi from the East enabled them, by contemplating the phenomena of the heavens, to discern that an event of a significance far transcending that of the ordinary course of life was taking place on the earth.

Our attention is therefore directed to two definite but quite distinct forms of knowledge. We will think, first, of the knowledge possessed by the three Magi as a last remnant of an ancient wisdom. It is clearly indicated that these Magi were able to read the secrets of the movements of the stars. The story of the three Kings or Magi points to the existence of an ancient lore of the stars, an ancient knowledge of the secrets of the worlds of stars in which the secrets of happenings in the world of men were also revealed. This ancient lore of the stars was very different from our modern astronomical science—although in a certain respect it too is prophetic in that eclipses of the sun, of the moon, and the like, can be predicted. But it is a purely mathematical science, speaking only of conditions and relationships in space and time in so far as they can be expressed in terms of mathematics. What plays with a higher significance into man's inner life from beyond space and time, but into the world of space and time, was read by an ancient star-lore from the courses and movements of the stars, and it was this star-wisdom that formed the essential content of the science belonging to an earlier epoch. Men sought in the stars for explanations of what was happening on the earth. But to such men the world of stars was not the machinelike abstraction it has now come to be. Every planet was felt to have reality of being. In a kind of inner speech of the soul, these men of old conversed, as it were, with each planet, just as to-day we converse with one another in ordinary speech. They realised that what the movements of the stars bring about in the universe is reflected in man's inmost soul. This was a living, spirit-inwoven conception of the universe. And man felt that as a being of soul and spirit he himself had his place within this universe. The wisdom relating to cosmic happenings was also cultivated in Schools of the Mysteries where the pupils were prepared, carefully and intimately, to understand the movements of the stars in such a way that human life on earth became intelligible to them.

What form did these preparations take? These preparations for knowledge of the stars and their workings consisted in training the pupils, even in the times of instinctive clairvoyance, to unfold a more wide-awake consciousness than that prevailing in normal life. The masses of the people possessed faculties of instinctive clairvoyance which were natural in a life of soul less awake than our own. In ancient times the wide-awake thinking of to-day would not have been possible. Nor could mathematics or geometry be grasped in the way they are grasped by the modern mind. Man's whole life between birth and death was a kind of dreamlike existence, but on that very account he had a far more living awareness of the world around him than is possible in our fully wide-awake consciousness. And strange as it seems, in the age which lasted into the second millennium or even as late as the beginning of the first millennium B.C. (—it was to the last surviving remains of this age that men like the three Magi belonged—) individual pupils in the Mysteries were initiated into a kind of knowledge resembling our geometrical or mathematical sciences. It was Euclid¹ who first gave geometry to the world at large. The geometry presented to mankind by Euclid had already been cultivated for thousands of years in the Mysteries, but there it was communicated to chosen pupils only. Moreover it did not work in them in the same way as in men of later time. Paradoxical as it seems, it is nevertheless a fact that the geometry and arithmetic learnt by children to-day was taught in the Mysteries to individuals specially chosen from the masses on account of their particular gifts who were then received into the Mysteries.

One often hears it said to-day that the teachings given in the Mysteries were secret and veiled. In their abstract content however, these so-called ‘secret’ teachings were no different from what is now taught to children at school. The mystery does not lie in the fact that these things are unknown to-day but that they were imparted to human beings in a different way. For to teach the principles of geometry to children by calling upon the intellect in an age when from the moment of waking until that of falling asleep the human being has clear day-consciousness, is a very different matter from imparting them to pupils specially chosen because of their greater maturity of soul in the age of instinctive clairvoyance and dreamlike consciousness. A true conception of these things is rarely in evidence to-day.

In Eastern literature there is a Hymn to the God Varuna which says that Varuna is revealed in the air and in the winds blowing through the forests, in the thunder rolling from the clouds, in the human heart when it is kindled to acts of will, in the heavens when the sun passes across the sky, and is present on the hills in the soma juice. You will generally find it stated in books today that nobody knows what this soma-juice really is. Modern scholars assert that nobody knows what soma-juice is, although, as a matter of fact, there are people who drink it by the litre and from a certain point of view are quite familiar with it. But to know things from the vantage-point of the Mysteries is quite different from knowing them as a layman from the standpoint of the experiences of ordinary waking consciousness. You may read to-day about the ‘Philosopher's Stone’ for which men sought in an epoch when understanding of the nature of substances was very different from what it is today. And again, those who write about alchemy assert that nothing is known about the Philosopher's Stone. Here and there in my lectures I have said that this Philosopher's Stone is quite familiar to most people, only they do not know what it really is nor why it is so called. It is quite well known, because as a matter of fact it is used by the ton.

The modern mind with its tendency to abstraction and theory and its alienation from reality, is incapable of grasping these things. Nor is there any understanding of what is meant by saying that our geometrical and arithmetical sciences were once imparted to mature souls quite different in character from the souls of modern men, In my book Christianity as Mystical Fact I have indicated the special nature of the Mystery-teachings but these significant matters are not as a rule correctly understood; they are taken far too superficially. The way in which the subject-matter of the Mystery-teachings in ancient times was imparted—that is what needs to be understood.

Novalis was still aware of the human element, the element of feeling in mathematics which, in utter contrast to the vast majority to-day, he regarded as being akin to a great and wonderful Hymn.² It was to an understanding of the world imbued with feeling but expressed in mathematical forms that the pupil of the ancient Mysteries was led. And when this mathematical understanding of the universe had developed in such a pupil, he became one whose vision resembled that of the men described as the three Magi from the East. The mathematics of the universe which to us has become pure abstraction, then revealed reality of Being, because this knowledge was supplemented and enriched by something that came to meet it. And so the science and knowledge of the outer universe belonging to an ancient culture which in its last echoes survived in the Magi, was the origin of the one proclamation—the proclamation made by way of wisdom pertaining to the outer universe.

On the other side, inner feeling of the secrets of the evolution of humanity could arise in men of a disposition specially fitted for such experiences. Such men are represented by the shepherds in the fields. These inner forces must have reached a certain stage of development and then instinctive-imaginative perception became direct vision. And so, through their faculty of inner vision, the simple shepherds in the fields were made aware of the proclamation: ‘The God is revealing Himself in the heavenly Heights and through Him there can be peace among all men who are of good-will.’

Secrets of the cosmos were thus revealed to the hearts of the simple shepherds in the fields and to those who were the representatives of the highest wisdom attainable by the human mind at that time. This is the revelation made to the three Magi from the East. The great mystery of earth-existence was proclaimed from two sides.

What was it that came to the knowledge of the Magi? What kind of faculties developed in specially prepared pupils of the Mysteries through the mathematics imparted to them?

The philosopher Kant says of the truths of mathematical science that they are a priori. By this he means that they are determined before the acquisition of external, empirical knowledge.³ This is so much lip-wisdom. Kant's a priori really says nothing. The expression has meaning only when we realise from spiritual-scientific knowledge that mathematics comes from within ourselves, rises into consciousness from within our own being. And where does it originate? In the experiences through which we passed in the spiritual world before conception, before birth. We were living then in the great universe, experiencing what it was possible to experience before we possessed bodily eyes and bodily ears. Our experiences then were a priori—a form of cognition independent of earthly life. And this is the kind of experience that rises up, unconsciously to-day, from our inmost being. Man does not know—unless, like Novalis, he glimpses it intuitively—that the experiences of the life before birth or conception well up when he is engrossed in mathematical thought. For one who can truly apprehend these things, mathematical cognition is in itself a proof that before conception and birth he existed in a spiritual world. Of those to whom this is no proof of a life before birth, it must be said that they do not think deeply and fundamentally enough about the phenomena and manifestations of life and have not the faintest inkling of the real origin of mathematics.

The pupils of the ancient Mysteries who had absorbed the kind of wisdom which in its last echoes had survived in the three Magi from the East, had this clear impression: If as we contemplate the stars we see in them the expressions of mathematical, arithmetical progression, we spread over universal space the experiences through which we lived before birth. A pupil of the Mysteries said to himself: Living here on the earth, I gaze out into the universe, beholding all that is around me in space. Before my birth I lived within these manifestations of cosmic realities, lived with the mysteries of number connected with the stars, with all that I can now only mentally picture in terms of mathematics. In that other existence my own inner forces led me from star to star; I had my very life in what is now only a mental activity. Such contemplation made vividly real to these men what they had lived through before birth, and these experiences were sacred to them. They knew that this other world was a spiritual world—their home before they came down to the earth. The last echoing remains of this knowledge had survived in the Magi from the East and through it they recognised the signs of the coming of Christ.

Whence came the Christ Being? He came from the world in which we ourselves live between death and a new birth, and united Himself with the life that extends from birth to death. Knowledge of the world in which our existence is spent from death to a new birth can therefore shed light upon an event like the Mystery of Golgotha. And it was through this knowledge that the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christmas Mystery too, was announced to the Magi.

While man is living on the earth and unfolding the forces which bring knowledge of the world around him, while he is unfolding the impulses for his actions and social life, he is unconsciously experiencing something else as well. He has no knowledge of it, but just as he experiences the aftereffects of his life before birth, so does he also experience what finally passes through the gate of death to become the content of the life after death. These forces are already present in germ between birth and death but come to fruition only in the life after death. They worked with intense strength in the old, instinctive clairvoyance, and in their last echoes they were still working in the simple shepherds in the fields because of their purity of heart. We live within the play of these forces above all during sleep, when the soul is outside the body, within the outer universe. The soul is then living in the form of existence in which it will live consciously after death, when the physical body has been laid aside.

These forces from the world of sleep and dream which in certain conditions can penetrate into waking life, were very active in the old, instinctive clairvoyance, and they were working in the simple shepherds to whom the Mystery of Golgotha was proclaimed in a way other than to the three Magi.

What kind of knowledge is brought by the forces that are paramountly active between death and a new birth, if, as was the case with the Magi, they have been kindled during life between birth and death? It is a knowledge of happenings in the world beyond the earth. The human being is transported from the earth into the world of the stars in which he lives between death and a new birth. This was the world into which the three Magi from the East were transported—away from the earth into the heavens.

And what kind of knowledge is brought by the forces that well up from the inmost being of man, above all in the world of dream? These forces bring knowledge of what is coming to pass within the earth itself. In this kind of knowledge it is earthly forces that are most strongly at work, the forces we have through the body, through existence in the body. These are the forces which are particularly active between sleeping and waking. Then too we are within the outer universe, but the outer universe that is especially connected with the earth.

You will say: this contradicts the statement that during sleep we are outside the body. But in reality there is no contradiction. We perceive only what is outside us; we do not perceive that within which we actually live. Only those who lack real knowledge and are satisfied with phrases speak of such things in glib words to the effect that it is meaningless to base spiritual science upon knowledge acquired outside the human being, for what really matters is that knowledge of outer nature shall be gained through the forces within man. ‘Schools of Wisdom’ like the one in Darmstadt⁴ may be based on high-sounding principles of this kind, but a man can remain a phrasemonger in spite of being the founder of such a ‘School of Wisdom.’ We must understand the inner nature of the world before we can acquire super-sensible knowledge, and it is only then that we can penetrate into the nature of our own inmost being. Men like Keyserling speak of the need to view things from the vantage-point of the soul, but they do not penetrate into the inmost being of man; they simply pour out phrases.

The truth is that between sleeping and waking we look back, feel back, as it were, into our body. We become aware of how our body is connected with the earth—for the body is given by the earth. The revelation to the shepherds in the fields was the revelation given by the earth, proceeding from their bodily nature. In a state of dream the voice of the Angel made known to them what had come to pass.

And so the contrast is complete:

To the Magi: revelation through heavenly lore.
To the Shepherds: revelation given by the earth.

That the revelation should have been from two sides is entirely in keeping with the Mystery of Golgotha. For a heavenly Being, a Being Who until then had not belonged to the earth, was drawing near. And the coming of such a Being must be recognised through wisdom pertaining to the heavens, through wisdom that is able to reveal the descent of a Being from the heavens. The wisdom of the shepherds is knowledge proceeding from the earth; the weaving life of the earth becomes aware of the coming of the Being from heaven. It is the same proclamation, only from another side—a wonderful, twofold proclamation to mankind of a single Event.

The attitude with which the Event of Golgotha was received by mankind is to be explained by the fact that only vestiges of the ancient wisdom remained. In the first centuries of our era, certain Gnostic teachings were able to shed light upon the Mystery of Golgotha, but as time went on, men strove more and more to understand it through purely intellectual analysis and reason. And in the nineteenth century, naturalism invaded this domain of belief. There was no longer any understanding of the super-sensible reality of the Event of Golgotha. Christ became the ‘wise man of Nazareth’—in the naturalistic sense. What is necessary is a new, spiritual conception of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha as such must never be confused with the attitude adopted to it by the human mind.

The mood-of-soul prevailing in the shepherds and in the Magi was in its final phase at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Everything in the evolution of humanity undergoes constant change and metamorphosis. What has the wisdom possessed by the Magi from the East now become? It has become our mathematical astronomy. The Magi possessed super-earthly knowledge which was actually a glorious remembrance of life before birth. This knowledge has shrivelled away into our mathematical-mechanistic conception of the heavens, to the phenomena of which we apply only mathematical laws. What wells up from within us in our mathematical astronomy is the modern metamorphosis of the knowledge once possessed by the Magi.

Our outer, sense-given knowledge, conveyed as it is merely through eyes and ears, is the externalised form of the inner knowledge once possessed by men like the shepherds in the fields. The mood-of-soul in which the secrets of earth-existence were once revealed to the shepherds now induces us to look at the world with the cold detachment of scientific observation. This kind of observation is the child of the Shepherd-wisdom—but the child is very unlike the parent! And our mathematical astronomy is the child of the Magi-wisdom. It was necessary that humanity should pass through this phase. When our scientists are making their cold, dispassionate researches in laboratories and clinics, they have very little in common with the shepherds of old, but this attitude of soul is nevertheless a metamorphosis leading back directly to the wisdom of the shepherds. And our mathematicians are the successors of the Magi from the East. The outer has become inward—the inner, outward. In the process, understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha has been lost, and we must be fully conscious of this fact. Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha has vanished most completely of all, perhaps, in many of those who claim to be official ministers of Christianity to-day.

With the forces of knowledge, feeling and belief possessed by modern men, the true reality of the Event of Golgotha can no longer be grasped. It must be discovered anew. The Magi-wisdom has become inward; it has become our abstract, mathematical science by which alone the heavens are studied. What has become inward in this way must again be filled with life, re-cast, re-shaped from within.

And now, from this point of view, try to understand what is contained in a book like my Outline of Occult Science.

The Magi gazed at the worlds of the stars; therein they beheld the Spiritual, for they could behold man's experiences in his life before birth. In our mathematics this has become pure abstraction. But the same forces that are unfolded in our mathematical thinking can again be filled with life, enriched and intensified in Imaginative perception. Then, from our own inner forces there will be born a world which, although we create it from within, can be seen as the outer universe, embracing Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. We then behold the heavens through inner perception, inner vision, as the Magi discerned the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha through outer perception. The outer has become inward, has become mathematical abstraction. Therefore what is now inward must be expanded into perception of the outer universe; inward perception must lead to a new astronomy, to an astronomy inwardly experienced.

It is only by striving for a new understanding of Christ that we can truly celebrate the Christmas Festival to-day. Can it be said that this Festival still has any real meaning for the majority of people? It has become a beautiful custom to take the Christmas Tree as the symbol of the Festival, although as a matter of fact this custom is hardly a century old. The Christmas Tree was not adopted as a symbol of the Festival until the nineteenth century. What is the Christmas Tree, in reality? When we endeavour to discover its meaning and know of the legend telling that it grew from the tiny branch carried in the arms of the boy Ruprecht on the 6th of December, when we follow its history, it dawns upon us that the Christmas Tree is directly connected with the Tree of Paradise. The mind turns to the Tree of Paradise, to Adam and Eve. This is one aspect of the way in which the Mystery of Golgotha can again be proclaimed in our time. The mind turns from the Mystery of Golgotha, back to the world's beginning. The meaning of world-redemption is not understood and the mind turns again to the Divine creation of the world. This comes to expression in the fact that the real symbol of Christmas—the Crib—so beautifully presented in the Christmas Plays of earlier centuries, is gradually being superseded by the Christmas Tree which is, in reality, the Tree of Paradise. The old Jahve religion usurped the place of Christianity and the Christmas Tree is the symbol of its recrudescence. But in its reappearance the Jahve religion has been split into multiple divisions. Jahve was worshipped, and rightly worshipped, as the one, undivided Godhead in an age when his people felt themselves to be a single, self-contained unity not looking beyond their own boundaries and full of the expectation that one day they would fill the whole earth. But in our time, although people speak of Christ Jesus, in reality they worship Jahve. In the various nations (this was all too evident in the war), men spoke of Christ but were really venerating the original Godhead who holds sway in heredity and in the world of nature—Jahve. Thus we have the Christmas Tree on the one side, and on the other, national Gods at a level inferior to that of the Christian reality. These were the principles by which men's comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha was diverted back again to the conceptions belonging to a much earlier epoch. The assertion of the principle of nationality, the claiming of national Gods, denotes a step backward into the old Jahve religion. Those who see fit to worship Christ as a national God—it is they who deny Him most deeply.

What must never be forgotten is that the proclamations to the Shepherds and to the Kings contained a message for all mankind—for the earth is common to all. In that the revelation to the shepherds was from the earth, it was a revelation that may not be differentiated according to nationality. And in that the Magi received the proclamation of the sun and the heavens, this too was a revelation destined for all mankind. For when the sun has shone upon the territory of one people, it shines upon the territory of another. The heavens are common to all; the earth is common to all. The impulse of the ‘human universal’ is in very truth quickened by Christianity. Such is the aspect of Christmas revealed by the twofold proclamation.

When we think of the Christmas Mystery, our minds must turn to a birth, to something that must be born anew in our time. For true Christianity must verily be born anew. We need a World-Christmas-Festival, and spiritual science would fain be a preparation for this World-Christmas-Festival among men.

• 1. About 300 B.C.
• 2. None really comprehend mathematics who do not undertake the study with reverence and devotion as a revelation from God." (From Thoughts on Physics).
• 3. "Mathematics and physics are the two theoretical sciences of reason which have to determine their objects a priori." (From the Preface to the 2nd ed. of The Critique of Pure Reason, 1787).
• 4. Founded in 1920 by Count Hermann Keyserling (1880-1946).

THE Festival of the Holy Night has for centuries been a great festival of remembrance in the whole of Christendom. And when we think of it as such we must be mindful of all that has been associated with this festival in the feelings and hearts of men. It must be remembered that the festival of the 25th of December did not become an institution in Christianity until the fourth century A.D. It was in the fourth century, for the first time actually in the year 354, in Rome, that the Festival of the Birth of Jesus was placed as it were before the Christian world as a great and memorable contribution to the times. It was out of the very deepest instincts of Christian evolution that such a contribution to the times was made in the fourth century of our era.

The peoples from the North were swarming down towards the South of Europe. Many pagan customs were still widespread in the southern regions of Europe, in Roman districts and in Greece; pagan customs were also rife in North Africa, in Asia Minor—in short, wherever Christian thought and Christian feeling were gradually beginning to spread. But by its very nature Christianity was not intended to be a sectarian teaching, destined for this or that circle of human beings. However many factors, both internal and external, have mitigated against its original purpose, Christianity was, as a matter of course, intended to nourish the souls and hearts of all men upon the earth.

In the religious consciousness of antiquity, Divine Powers were associated with the stars, and the mightiest Power of all with the sun. This consciousness was still alive in the pagan peoples both of the North and South of Europe, and within this pagan mind there lived the thought that the time when the earth has her darkest days, at the winter solstice, is also the time when the victorious power of the sun, working in all earthly fertility, begins again to unfold.

The feeling that at this season the earth is resting in her own being, shut off from the Divine Powers of the cosmos and living in loneliness within the universe, was superseded at the time of the winter solstice by the feeling of hope that once again the rays of light and love from the realm of the sun come to awaken the earth to fruitfulness. And a realisation of the nature of man's own soul-being was intimately associated with this other feeling.

In the life of the ancient pagan religions, man felt himself inwardly part of the earth, a limb or member of the earth. It was as though the very life of the earth were continued into his own body. And so in the days of summer when the earth receives the strongest forces of warmth and light from the heavenly sphere of the sun, man felt that his own being too was given over to that world whence the radiant, warmth-giving rays of the sun shine down upon the earth. During the time of midsummer he felt as if his whole being were given up to the wide cosmic spaces. At the time of the winter solstice man felt himself in intimate connection with the earth and with all the forces preserved in the earth from the warmth and radiance of the summer. Together with the earth he felt himself living in loneliness within the cosmos. And the return of the forces of the Divine-Spiritual cosmos to the earth at this time of the winter solstice was a deep and real experience in him.

And so into the thought of the Christmas Festival man laid all that his life of feeling, his life of soul and spirit brought home to him so intimately in connection with the universality of the cosmic Powers. This intimate experience at the festival of the winter solstice was closely connected with the Christian impulse and it was therefore quite natural that those who came into contact with Christianity should share in its most precious experience, namely, an experience connected with this festival of the winter solstice.

In line with the change that had taken place between the age described in the Old Testament and the age described in the New Testament, the most cherished experience of Christianity lay in the remembrance of the birth of Jesus. The peoples of the Old Testament expressed the great mystery of human life and death by saying: When the soul passes through the gate of death it enters upon the path which will unite it again with the Fathers. And what does this imply? It implies that in those times there was a longing to return to the Fathers, and this indeed was a cherished and intimate experience—an experience bound up with the conceptions expressed in the Old Testament.

In the course of the first four centuries of Christendom this longing for communion with the Fathers was replaced by something else. The souls of men were directed towards the birth of the Being Who is the centre around which Christendom coheres. The feeling that lived in the peoples of the Old Testament changed into a feeling connected with the events at Nazareth or Bethlehem, with the birth of the child Jesus.

And so, when it established the Christmas Festival in the fourth century, Christianity brought its contribution towards the union of men all over the earth. A cherished and intimate experience was bound up with the Christmas Festival. And if we think of the way in which this Christmas Festival was celebrated through the centuries, we find evidence everywhere that at the time of the approach of Christmas, the souls of men within Christianity were filled with loving devotion for the Jesus Child. And this loving devotion is the revelation of something of outstanding significance through the centuries which followed.

We must really have an inner understanding of what it signified when the Christmas Festival was instituted on the 25th of December, that is to say, more or less at the time of the winter solstice. For actually as late as the year A.D. 353, in Rome itself, this festival was not celebrated on the 25th of December, neither was it a commemoration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The festival was celebrated on the 6th of January as a commemoration of the Baptism in the Jordan. It was a festival of remembrance associated with the Christ Being. And this festival of remembrance included the thought that through the Baptism in Jordan, the Christ, Who was a Being belonging to a world beyond the earth, had come down from the heavens and united himself with human nature in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

It was the celebration of a birth that was not an ordinary birth. The festival was a celebration of the descent of the Christ Being, whereby new and quickening forces poured into earthly existence. The day was dedicated to the revelation of the Christ, to remembrance of the Mystery that a heavenly force had united with the earth, and that through this intervention of the heavens the evolution of humanity had received a new impulse. This Mystery of the descent of a heavenly Being into earthly existence was still understood in the age of the Event of Golgotha itself, and for some time afterwards. For at that time fragments were still present of an ancient wisdom that had been capable of understanding a truth only to be known in super-sensible experience. The old instinctive knowledge, the ancient wisdom which was poured into human beings born on earth as a gift of the Gods—this wisdom was gradually lost. It faded away little by little as the centuries went by. But at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, enough wisdom was still left to give man some insight into the mighty Event that had come to pass.

And so in the early centuries of Christendom the Mystery of Golgotha was understood by the light of wisdom. But by the time of the fourth century after Christ, this wisdom had almost completely disappeared. Men's minds were occupied with what was being brought to them on all sides by the pagan peoples, and understanding of the deep mystery connected with the union of the Christ with the man Jesus was no longer possible. The possibility of understanding the real nature of the Mystery of Golgotha was lost to the human soul. And so it remained, on through the subsequent centuries. The ancient wisdom was lost to humanity—and necessarily so, because out of this wisdom man could never have attained his freedom, his condition of self-dependence. It was necessary for man to enter for a while into the darkness in order, out of this darkness, to develop, in freedom, the primal forces of his being. But a true Christian instinct substituted another quality in place of the wisdom which the world of Christendom had brought to the Mystery of Golgotha—a wisdom which illumined the discussions that were held on the nature of this Mystery. Something else was substituted for the quality of wisdom.

Modern Christianity has very little knowledge or understanding of the profundity of the discussions that were carried on among the wise Church Fathers in the first centuries of Christendom as to the manner in which the two natures—the Divine and the Human—had been united in the personality of Jesus of Nazareth. In the early Christian centuries this was a Mystery which addressed itself to a living wisdom—a wisdom which then faded away into empty abstraction. Very little has remained in Western Christianity of the holy zeal with which men tried to understand how the Divine and the Human had been united in the Mystery of Golgotha.

But the Christian impulse is mighty and powerful. And it was the power of love which came to replace the wisdom with which the Mystery of Golgotha was greeted at the time when its radiance shone over the earth. In marvellous abundance, love has been poured out through the centuries from the minds and hearts of men to the Jesus Child in the manger. And it is really wonderful to find how strongly this power of love is reflected in the Christmas Plays which have come down to us from earlier centuries of Christendom. If we let these things work upon us, we shall realise how deeply the Christmas Festival is a festival of remembrance. We shall realise too that, just as the peoples of the Old Testament strove in wisdom to be gathered to the Fathers, so the peoples of the New Testament have striven in devotion and love to gather together at Christmas around the sinless Child in the manger.

But who will deny that the love poured out to the wellspring of Christendom by so many hearts has little by little become more or less a habit? Who will deny that in our age the Christmas Festival has lost the living power it once possessed? The men of the Old Testament longed to return to their origin, to be gathered to their Fathers, to return to their ancestors. The Christian turns his mind and heart to human nature in its primal purity when he celebrates the Festival of the birth of Jesus. And it was out of this same Christian instinct—an instinct which caused man to associate the Christmas Festival with his earthly origin—that the day before Christmas, the 24th of December, was dedicated to Adam and Eve. The day of Adam and Eve preceded the day of the birth of Jesus. And so it was out of a deep instinct that the Tree of Paradise came to be associated as a symbol with the Christmas Festival.

We turn our eyes first to the manger in Bethelehem, to the Child lying there among the animals who stand round the blessed Mother. It is a heavenly symbol of the primal origin of humanity. Our feelings and minds are carried back to the earthly origin of the human being, to the Tree of Paradise, and with this Tree of Paradise there is associated the crib, just as in the Holy Legend the origin of man on earth is associated with the Mystery of Golgotha. The Holy Legend tells that the wood of the Tree of Paradise was handed down in a miraculous way from generation to generation until the age of the Mystery of Golgotha, and that the Cross erected on Golgotha, the place of the skull—the Cross on which Christ Jesus hung—was made of the very wood of the Tree of Paradise. In other words, the heavenly origin of man is associated with his earthly origin.

In another sense too, the fundamental conception of Christendom tended to obliterate understanding of these things. Nobody in our days can fail to realise that men have very little insight into the truth that the Godhead may be venerated as the Father Principle but that the Godhead can also be conceived as the Son. Humanity in general, as well as our so-called enlightened theology, has more or less lost sight of the difference in nature between the Father God and the Son God. And because this insight had been lost, we find the most modern school of orthodox theology proclaiming the view that in reality the Gospels treat of God the Father, not of God the Son, that Jesus of Nazareth is simply to be regarded as a great Teacher, the messenger of the Father God.

When people of to-day speak of Christ, they still associate with His flame certain memories of the Holy Story, but they have no clearly defined feeling of the difference in the nature of the Son God on the one hand and of the Father God on the other. But at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled in the realm of earthly existence, this feeling was still quite living. Over in Asia, in a place of no great importance to Rome at the time, the Christ had appeared in Jesus of Nazareth. According to the early Christians, Christ was that Divine Nature Who had ensouled a human being in a way that had never before occurred on the earth, nor would occur thereafter. And so this one Event of Golgotha, this one ensouling of a human being by a Divine Nature, by the Christ, imparts meaning and purpose to the whole of earthly evolution. All previous evolution is to be thought of as preparatory to this Event of Golgotha, and all subsequent evolution as the fulfilment, the consequence of the Mystery of Golgotha.

The scene of this Event lay over yonder in Asia, and on the throne of Rome sat Augustus Caesar. People of to-day no longer realise that Caesar Augustus on the throne of Rome was regarded as a Divine Incarnation. The Roman Caesars were actually regarded as Gods in human form.

And so we have two different conceptions of a God. The one God upon the throne of Rome and the other on Golgotha—the place of a skull. There could be no greater contrast!

Think of the figure of Caesar Augustus, who, according to his subjects and according to Roman decree, was a God incarnate in a man. He was thought to be a Divine Being who had descended to the earth; the Divine forces had united with the birth-forces, with the blood; the Divine power, having come down into earthly existence, was pulsing in and through the blood. Such was the universal conception, although it took different forms, of the dwelling of the Godhead on earth. The people thought of the Godhead as bound up with the forces of the blood. They said: Ex Deo nascimur.—Out of God we are born. And even on lower levels of existence they felt themselves related to what lived, as the crown of humanity, in a personality like Caesar Augustus.

All that was thus honoured and revered was a Divine Father Principle. For it was a Principle living in the blood that is part of a human being when he is born into the world. But in the Mystery of Golgotha the Divine Christ Being had united Himself with the man Jesus of Nazareth—united Himself not, in this case, with the blood, but with the highest forces of the human soul. A God had here united with a human being, in such a way that mankind was saved from falling victim to the earthly forces of matter. The Father God lives in the blood. The Son lives in the soul and spirit of man. The Father God leads man into material life: Ex Deo nascimur.—Out of God we are born. But God the Son leads man again out of material existence. The Father God leads man out of the super-sensible into the material. God the Son leads man out of the material into the super-sensible. In Christo morimur.—In Christ we die.

Two distinctly different feelings were there. The feeling and perception of God the Son was added to the feeling associated with God the Father. Certain impulses underlying the process of evolution caused the loss of the faculty to differentiate between the Father God and God the Son. And to this day these impulses have remained in mankind in general and in Christianity too. Men who were possessed of the ancient, primordial wisdom knew from their own inner experiences that they had come down from Divine-Spiritual worlds into physical and material life. Pre-existence was a certain and universally accepted fact. Men looked back through birth and through conception, up into the Divine-Spiritual worlds, whence the soul descends at birth into physical existence.

In our language we have only the word ‘Immortality.’ We have no expression for the other side of Eternity, because our language does not include the word ‘Unborn-ness.’ But if the conception of Eternity is to be complete, the word ‘Unborn-ness’ must be there as well as the word ‘Immortality.’ Indeed all that the word ‘Unborn-ness’ can mean to us is of greater significance than what is implied by the word ‘Immortality.’

It is true that the human being passes through the gate of death into a life in the spiritual world, but it is no less true that an exceedingly egotistical conception of this life in the spiritual world is presented to man to-day. Human beings live here on the earth. They long for Immortality, for they do not want to sink into nothingness at death. And so, in speaking of Immortality, all that is necessary is to appeal to the instincts of egotism.

If you listen carefully to sermons you will realise how many of them count upon the egotistical impulses in human beings when they want to convey an idea of Immortality to the soul. But when it comes to the conception of Unborn-ness it is not possible to rely upon such impulses. Human beings are not so egotistical in their desire for existence in the spiritual world before birth and conception as they are in their desire for a life after death in the spiritual-world. If a life hereafter is assured them, then they are satisfied. Why, they say, should we trouble about whence we have come? Out of their egotism men want to know about a Hereafter. But when once again they unfold a wisdom untinged with egotism, Unborn-ness will be as important to them as Immortality is important to-day.

In olden times men knew that they had lived in Divine-Spiritual worlds, had descended through birth into material existence. They felt that the forces around them in a purely spiritual environment were united with the blood, were living on in the blood. And from this insight there arose the conception: Out of God we are born. The God Who lives in the blood, the God whom the man of flesh represents here on earth—he is the Father God.

The other pole of life—namely, death—demands a different impulse of the life of soul. There must be something in the human being that is not exhausted with death. The conception corresponding to this is of that God Who leads over the earthly and physical to the super-sensible and superphysical. It is the God connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. The Divine Father Principle has always been associated, and rightly so, with the transition from the super-sensible to the material, and through the Divine Son the transition is brought about from the sensible and material to the super-sensible. And that is why the Resurrection thought is essentially bound up with the Mystery of Golgotha. The words of St. Paul that Christ is what He is for humanity because He is the Risen One—these words are an integral part of Christianity.

In the course of the centuries, understanding of the Risen One, of the Conqueror of Death, has gradually been lost and modern theology concerns itself wholly with the man Jesus of Nazareth. But Jesus of Nazareth, the man, cannot be placed at the same level as the Father Principle. Jesus of Nazareth might be regarded as the messenger of the Father but he could not, according to the arguments of early Christianity, be placed beside the Father God. Co-equal and co-existent are the Divine Father and the Divine Son: the Father Who brings about the transition from the super-sensible to the material—‘Out of God we are born’—and the Son Who brings about the transition from the material to the super-sensible—‘In Christ we die.’ And transcending both birth and death there is a third Principle proceeding from and co-equal both with the Divine Father and the Divine Son—namely, the Spirit—the Holy Spirit. Within the being of man, therefore, we are to see the transition from the super-sensible to the material and from the material to the super-sensible. And the Principle which knows neither birth nor death is the Spirit into which and through which we are awakened: ‘Through the Holy Spirit we shall be re-awakened.’

For many centuries Christmas was a festival of remembrance. How much of the substance of this festival has been lost is proved by the fact that all that is left of the Being Christ Jesus is the man Jesus of Nazareth. But for us to-day Christmas must become a call and a summons to something new. A new reality must be born. Christianity needs an impulse of renewal, for inasmuch as Christianity no longer understands the Christ Being in Jesus of Nazareth, it has lost its meaning and purpose. The meaning and essence of Christianity must be found again. Humanity must learn again to realise that the Mystery of Golgotha can be comprehended only in the light of super-sensible knowledge.

Another factor, too, contributes to this lack of understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. We can look with love to the Babe in the manger, but we have no wisdom-filled understanding of the union of the Christ Being with the man Jesus of Nazareth. Nor can we look up into the heavenly heights with the same intensity of feeling which was there in men who lived at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. In those days men looked up to the starry worlds and saw in the courses and constellations of the stars something like a countenance of the Divine soul and spirit of the cosmos. And in the Christ Being they could see the spiritual Principle of the universe visibly manifested in the glories of the starry worlds. But for modern man the starry worlds and all the worlds of cosmic space have become little more than a product of calculation—a cosmic mechanism.

The world has become empty of the Gods. Out of this world which is void of the Gods, the world that is investigated to-day by astronomy and physics, the Christ Being could never have descended. In the light of the primeval wisdom possessed by humanity, this world was altogether different. It was the body of the Divine World-Soul and of the Divine World-Spirit. And out of this spiritual cosmos the Christ came down to earth and united Himself with a human being in Jesus of Nazareth. This truth is expressed in history itself in a profound way. All over the earth before the Mystery of Golgotha there were Mysteries, holy sanctuaries that were schools of learning and at the same time schools for the cultivation of the religious life. In these Mysteries, indications were given of what must come to pass in the future. It was revealed in the Mysteries that man bears within his being a power that is the conqueror of death, and this victory over death was an actual experience of the Initiates in the Mysteries. In deep and profound experience the candidate for Initiation knew with sure conviction: Thou has awakened within thyself the power that conquers death. The Initiate experienced in a picture the process that would operate fully in times still to come, in accordance with the great plan of world-history. In the Mysteries of all peoples, this sacred truth was proclaimed: Man can be victorious over death. But it was also indicated that what could be presented in the Mysteries in pictures only would one day become an actual and single event in world-history. The Mystery of Golgotha was proclaimed in advance by the Pagan Mysteries of antiquity; it was the fulfilment of what had everywhere been heralded in the sanctuaries and holy places of the Mysteries.

When the candidate had been prepared in the Mysteries, when he had performed the difficult training which brought him to the point of Initiation, when he had made his soul so free of the body that the soul could be united with and perceive the spiritual worlds, when he was convinced by his own knowledge that life is always victorious over death in human nature—then he confronted the very deepest experience that was associated with these ancient Mysteries. And this deepest experience was that the obstacle presented by the earth, the obstacle of matter, must be removed if that which is at the same time both spiritual and material, is to become visible—namely, the sun. It was to a mysterious phenomenon—although it was a phenomenon well-known to every Initiate—that the candidate was led. He beheld the sun at the midnight hour, saw the sun through the earth, at the other side of the earth.

Instinctive feeling of the most holy and most sacred things have, after all, remained through the course of history. Many of these feelings and perceptions have weakened, but to those who are willing to look with unprejudiced eyes, the old meaning is still discernible. And so we can read some thing from the fact that at midnight leading from the 24th to the 25th of December, the midnight Mass is supposed to be said in every Christian Church. We can read something from this fact when we know that the Mass is nothing more nor less than a synthesis of the rites and rituals of the Mysteries which led to initiation, to the beholding of the sun at midnight. This institution of the midnight Mass at Christmas is an echo of the Initiation which enabled the candidate, at the midnight hour, to see the sun at the other side of the earth and therewith to behold the universe as a spiritual universe. And at the same time the Cosmic Word resounded through the cosmos—the Cosmic Word which from the courses and constellations of the stars sounded forth the mysteries of World Being.

Blood sets human beings at variance with one another. Blood fetters to the earthly and material that element in man which descends from heavenly heights. In our century, especially, men have gravely sinned against the essence of Christianity, inasmuch as they have turned again to the principle of blood. But they must find the way to the Being Who was Christ Jesus, Who does not address Himself to the blood but Who poured out his blood and gave it to the earth. Christ Jesus is the Being Who speaks to the soul and to the spirit, Who unites and does not separate—so that Peace may arise among men on earth out of their understanding of the Cosmic Word.

By a new understanding of the Christmas Festival, super-sensible knowledge can transform the material universe into spirit before the eye of the soul, transform it in such a way that the sun at midnight becomes visible and is known in its spiritual nature. Such knowledge brings understanding of the super-earthly Christ Being, the Sun Being Who was united with the man Jesus of Nazareth. It can bring understanding, too, of the unifying peace that should hover over the peoples of the earth. The Divine Beings are revealed in the heights, and through this revelation peace rings forth from the hearts of men who are of good will.

Such is the word of Christmas. Peace on earth flows into unison with the Divine Light that is streaming upon the earth. We need something more than the mere remembrance of the day of the birth of Jesus. We need to understand and realise that a new Christmas Festival must arise, that a new Festival of Birth must lead on from the present into the immediate future. A new Christ Impulse must be born and a new knowledge of the nature of Christ. We need a new understanding of the truth that the Divine-Spiritual heavens and the physical world of earth are linked to one another and that the Mystery of Golgotha is the most significant token of this union. We must understand once again why it is that at the midnight hour of Christmas a warning resounds to us, bidding us be mindful of the Divine-Spiritual origin of man and of the fact that the revelation of the heavens is inseparable from peace on earth.

The Holy Night must become a reality. It is not enough to give each other presents at Christmas in accordance with ancient custom and habit. The warm feelings which for centuries inspired Christian men at the Christmas Festival have been lost. We need a new Christmas, a new Holy Night, reminding us not only of the Birth of Jesus of Nazareth, but bringing a new birth, the birth of a new Christ Impulse. Out of full consciousness we must learn to understand that in the Mystery of Golgotha a super-sensible Power was made manifest, was revealed in the material earth. We must understand with full consciousness what resounded instinctively in the Mysteries of old. We must receive this impulse consciously. Again we must learn to understand that when the Holy Night of Christmas becomes a reality to man he can experience the wonderful midnight union between the revelation of the heavens and the peace of earth.

This is the meaning of the words which will now be given and which are dedicated to Christmas. They synthesize what I wanted to bring to your souls and hearts to-night. They try to express, out of consciousness of the anthroposophical understanding of Christ, how we can come again to the wisdom that once lived in men instinctively and remained to this extent, that at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha there were still some who knew how to celebrate the revelation of the Christ Being. We, in our day, must achieve understanding of the Christ as a Cosmic Being—a Cosmic Being Who united Himself with the earth. The time at which this understanding is accessible, to the greater part of men on earth, is the time of the cosmic Holy Night whose approach we await. If we understand these things, then we can make alive within us the feelings which I have tried to express in the following verse:

Behold the Sun
At the midnight hour;
Build with stones in the lifeless ground,
Thus in decay and in the night of Death
Find the Creation's new beginning,
Young morning's strength;
Glory in the heights the eternal Word of Gods;
Shelter in the depths the Powers of Peace.
In darkness dwelling, create a Sun.
In matter weaving, know the joy of Spirit!

When we see the Christmas trees in the streets today, we might think that the custom of decorating a tree at Christmas is an ancient one. The custom itself, however, shows how the habits of men change. Christmas trees, which are to be found in almost every home today, represent a custom that did not exist a hundred years ago. A century ago you would not have found the streets bedecked with trees, nor would you have been able to find in the poetry and songs of that time any mention of them. The custom is a quite recent phenomenon that has been in vogue in Europe and America only since the second half of the nineteenth century. Trees first appeared as symbols of the Christmas festival around 1800. The festival itself, however, is ancient, even older than Christianity. Indeed, it was celebrated in all historical ages.

In Christianity the Christmas festival has been taken as a symbol for the birth of the Christian Redeemer only since the fourth century A.D. In the first Christian centuries, December 25th was by no means celebrated as the birthday of the Representative of Christianity. This has been so only since the fourth century. Nevertheless, in Roman times and among the Celts and Germanic peoples—even in ancient Egypt and other regions—a festival was celebrated at the same time of the year, but it was of a different character from the later Christian festival.

Now the conclusion could be drawn from this that the Christian Church, in establishing December 25th as the birthday of Jesus, did something that was against all historical tradition and constituted a kind of correction. This is not the case. To understand the significance of the Christmas festival, one must recognize the ancient wisdom hidden in it. Festivals such as Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide are nothing but dates inscribed in the times by our ancestors, and they show us, their descendants, how the relationship of world and man and the great mysteries of existence were understood in earlier times. The one who is able to decipher the script that is written in the great festivals, or is able to read the hieroglyphics that time itself presents to us, finds there deep and significant mysteries of human development.

I said, and we shall see presently in what sense it is meant, that the Christmas festival has been celebrated since the beginning of history. Recorded history dates back to the Egypto-Chaldean or third post-Atlantean period. Our own period, the fifth post-Atlantean, in which the science and culture of the physical world is being developed, began in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The preceding period, the Greco-Roman, goes back to the eighth and ninth centuries B.C. to the time when Homer sang his poems to the Greeks. This age has left a record of the feelings and deeds that occurred during the fourth post-Atlantean period. Then we reach back to a still more ancient time, the gray antiquity of the age of the Judaic people, and the time when the Egyptian priests preserved a lofty wisdom that they disseminated to the common people only in an esoteric form. Here recorded history ceases.

What we know today of Persian history was recorded much later than when it actually occurred. The sublime religion of ancient India that is recorded in the Vedas and the Vedanta philosophy is of much later date than the actual age in which the great thoughts of the Rishis of ancient India, which were received directly from the divine spirits themselves, flowed through to mankind. So we can look back from our own period, which will still last for a considerable time, to the Greco-Roman period when Christianity appeared, and still further back to the age of the Egyptian priests. Then the paths disappear and only one who is able to look at history with different means can gain knowledge of ancient Persia, and even older times.

To really understand Christmas one must look back to that turning point in time when mankind, newly risen, was taught a new wisdom. At that time a great flood deluged the continent of the ancient Atlantean culture and a new culture, to which the epochs I have enumerated belong, was founded. An entirely new mode of thought and feeling arose in this new mankind, but nothing has been preserved of the culture of the Atlanteans, nor of that even more ancient people, the Lemurians, who perished when Lemuria was destroyed by fire.

When mankind reaches a new turning point in its evolution, it must briefly recapitulate what it has previously passed through. Thus, the peoples of the first three post-Atlantean periods had briefly to recapitulate three important evolutionary epochs of mankind. In ancient India the wise Rishis looked back to a time when the sexes did not yet exist, to a time when man was sexually still a unity. They looked back to a primeval man, known in occult teachings as Adam Kadmon, who was both man and woman. The highest cosmic being expressing this primeval unity was indicated by the sacred name, Brahman. All manifoldness proceeded from Brahman, the Divine Unity. This unity was present for men on earth only as long as the male and female sexes did not exist. Thus, in the spirit of the great Indian Rishis there appears, like a mirrored image, the divine primeval unity of man, the pre-human Adam Kadmon, in whom lived peace, spirit, clarity and harmony. He it is who speaks in the Vedas that poured from the lips of the Indian Rishis. This occurred in the first period of human civilization after the great flood. At that time one did not yet speak of a trinity, of a threefold Divine Person, but solely of a primeval Unity, of Brahman, in whom everything was contained and in whom everything originated.

Then a time came when the Persian priests of Zarathustra, the wise Parsis, looked back to the epoch in which the two sexes were born out of fire, and man became a duality. With the birth of sexual man out of fire, evil, which had not previously existed, entered the world. Evil in the human sense did not exist before the division of the sexes that occurred in the middle of the Lemurian age. Good and evil have existed only since that time when they came to fill the last part of the Lemurian age and the first part of the Atlantean.

It is interesting to investigate in the spiritual accounts called the Akashic Record the way this twofold form of mankind expressed itself. Even the spiritual scientist, who is able to decipher these wondrous documents, is astonished to find how different the male and female elements of that time were as compared with what they are at present. Under the guidance of the wise leaders of mankind, woman developed the soul element, and man the element of will. In this way, the duality of will and soul arose and confronted each other in the two sexes in the Atlantean period. Through the fact that the soul entered the physical body, evil entered mankind, and because mankind had to recapitulate the epoch that is characterized by the difference between good and evil, the fire worship of the religion of the Parsis appeared, that is, the doctrine of Ormuzd and Ahriman. This, as the Persian period of culture, precedes recorded history.

The duality of good and evil was taught in the religion of Zarathustra. Men were not yet concerned with a trinity, which came later at about the time when the first historical documents appeared. The Akashic Record gives no information of a trinity existing in pre-historical times. It only became necessary for people to look up to a third power after they came to distinguish between good and evil. Thus the figure of the mediator appeared—the conciliator, the redeemer from evil, who led mankind from evil to good, and he was most clearly present in the Mysteries of Mithras that originated in Persia and spread finally over the whole world.

In those ancient times men saw earthly events as a reflection of the Divine and of what had occurred in the great celestial vault of the heavens. If you study the Zodiac, you will find there the signs of Cancer, Gemini, Taurus and Aries. The vernal point of the sun advances according to certain laws so that in ancient times the sun rose in spring in the sign of Cancer, later in the sign of Gemini, then in Taurus, and still later in the sign of Aries. At about the eighth century B.C. the sun had entered the sign of Aries, the Lamb. In our age it has entered the sign of Pisces.

Earthly events are determined by what occurs in spiritual realms. Take the sign of Cancer, for example. Its true significance is not always known, but this sign, which consists of two intertwining spirals, when rightly understood points to the dawn of a new age. Whenever an important event occurs in the world, whenever one stage of evolution is superseded by another thereby bringing something new into the world, two such spiral movements intertwine. One spiral of the sign of Cancer indicates the end of the Atlantean culture; the other, the beginning of the Aryan culture. Our ancestors thus perceived in the heavens the outward sign for the rise of the new Aryan culture. At a later time the sun entered the sign of Gemini, the Twins. This is the sign of good and evil, the sign that governed Persian thinking. Then the sun entered Taurus. Here we have the third post-Atlantean period with its veneration of the Bull in the Egyptian Apis cult, the Babylonian cult of the Bull and its sacrifice, and the Mithraic cult of ancient Persia. Man brought the sacrifice of the Bull down to earth from the heavens where it was inscribed.

The fourth post-Atlantean period, in which Christianity arose, began with the entrance of the sun into Aries. This important turning point in history is indicated by the story of the Greek hero, Jason, who captured the Golden Fleece. A further important turning point is indicated by the sacrifice of the Mystical Lamb upon the Cross.

Let us understand this whole course of evolution correctly. After the duality of good and evil had been comprehended in human consciousness, the concept of the trinity arose and appeared in various religions. We recognize it in the Mithraic Mysteries that existed in many Mediterranean countries. Let us look at one of these Mystery temples. Only a symbolic action was performed for those who participated in the lesser Mysteries, but for those who were permitted to participate in the greater Mysteries, the same events also took place as an event in the astral world. I can only describe the lesser Mysteries of the Mithraic cult now. The symbolic Bull became visible and the Mediator, the God, rode upon his back. He covered the Bull's nostrils, plunged a sword into his side and a snake and a scorpion appeared. Above the head of the God Mithras was a bird and over the whole group, on one side a being soared with a lowered torch, on the other a being with a raised torch, symbolizing the course of the sun across the heavens.

This description represents human life as it lived in the consciousness of the men of that time. Man had reached the point of looking within himself for redemption, for the third divine principle that could lead him beyond evil, reconciling evil with good. Evil here consisted of the passions that drag man down to earth, symbolized by the Bull. The Mediator who killed the lower nature by thrusting the sword into the side of the bull appeared as the immortal in man that can raise him to his higher self. Thus, during the time of the third post-Atlantean period a divine trinity appeared as mediator between good and evil, and mankind came to comprehend what is called in theosophy, atman, buddhi and manas. At the moment the mediator appeared, the mystical secret was accomplished; the trinity had been awakened in man's consciousness.

Through his recognition of the unity, the duality and the trinity, man was led to atman, buddhi and manas. Atman, or spirit-man, is the unity man comes to experience in himself when he has achieved that stage. Buddhi, or life-spirit, will find expression in man through the overcoming of evil by good. Duality will purify the lower instincts and desires, and all evil will be consumed in the fire of love. Manas, or spirit-self, is the spiritual principle that rules human development even now. As the Messiah, the Redeemer, created a unison in the world that leads from disharmony to harmony, so duality is redeemed through the trinity in which evil is conquered by good.

So the human race reached the point of perceiving its destiny, pre-ordained by the eternal world order, in the Trinity. Man looked up to the threefold aspect of the Godhead and perceived a divine Trinity in the world upon which he himself was dependent. In truth, however, he first had to experience the descent of the Trinity to the earth embodied as a human being, as his human brother. This was the great event that stands at the beginning of our era, and the Trinity thereby acquired an entirely new significance for human consciousness.

We can understand the deeper meaning of the Christmas festival only if we comprehend the Mediator in the right way. Out of unity, duality has developed, and out of duality, a chaos from which harmony is to be re-created—a re-creation that can only be brought about by the Mediator. This harmony can only find its expression in an eternal law that, in the time of the Mithraic cult, found its symbolical expression in the fact that in man himself people saw an image of the cosmic law that creates the everlasting harmonies of the world.

In the Mysteries of the Persian religion already mentioned you will find a sevenfold initiation of those permitted admission to the holy secrets. Those who had some knowledge of the most elementary secrets belonged to the first degree of initiation, and were given the symbolic name of the “Ravens.” The second degree was that of the “Occult Ones,” the third, that of the “Warriors” or “Fighters” for the sacred truth. The fourth degree was that of the “Lions,” and the fifth, the “Persians.” Only one in whom the consciousness of spirituality we call manas had awakened was considered to be a full “Persian,” an initiate of the fifth degree. A member of his people in the true sense of the word, he represented the destiny of his people. If he advanced to the next degree of initiation, he no longer represented the character of his people but that of all mankind in its development from the third phase of evolution, that is, the middle of the Lemurian epoch, into the fifth phase, the post-Atlantean. Such an initiate was called a “Sun Runner” or a “Sun Hero,” and all Sun Heroes mentioned in ancient books are initiates of the sixth degree. The last degree of initiation was that of the “Father,” which was connected with the future development of mankind.

What does the name “Sun Runner” signify? If you were to look back into the primeval ages of our solar system, you would find that it arose from out a battle of chaotic heat; you would find that harmony in our world emerged out of disharmony, and that peace and law developed from non-peace and disharmony. The course of the sun is so regular that we cannot imagine that it might deviate and turn from its path even momentarily. Our universe is so firmly and harmoniously grounded that nothing can throw the sun off its destined course. In the path of the sun across the sky the ancient Persian initiate of the sixth degree saw his own inner destiny. The sun of his inner life, the sun of his spirit, had to shine for him with the same certainty as the outer sun, making it impossible for him to deviate from the path of the good and the wise. The human being who had reached the sixth degree of initiation had to be so permeated by this lawfulness that it was impossible for him to stray from the path. He was a Sun Hero, a Sun Runner. The goal of all previous degrees of initiation was to give this inner certainty to man.

Men who knew something about the Mysteries saw a deep harmony between human destiny and the course of the sun across the sky. They said that the sun makes the days grow shorter as autumn approaches, that everything withdraws into the earth. When Christmas arrives, a turning point is reached. The light increases, days grow longer and nature reawakens. So the birth of the light at Christmas time has been celebrated since the times when the light became the symbol of revelation in the world and man. In the East all men of the post-Atlantean epoch saw in the light the garment of the wise world order, of world wisdom.

Gazing into cosmic space today, we see the light shining steadfastly and harmoniously from the stars. In reality, however, the Spirits of Wisdom reveal themselves through the light, which in ancient religions was conceived of as the garment of cosmic wisdom. It was at first celebrated as the unity, the primeval wisdom, then as the duality of light and darkness, and finally as the trinity, the illuminated human being, the teacher and mediator, Mithras. But mankind could be blessed by this cosmic harmony only when a consciousness of it arose from the human heart itself. The external light, the light that is born out there in the universe, must today be born also in the human heart.

Christianity stands as the external mystical fact for the birth of the light. Christ brought to the earth what had existed from the beginning, although it was hidden from mankind throughout the ages we have been speaking of. Now, however, a new climax was reached. Even as the light is born anew at the winter solstice, so in the fourth post-Atlantean period the Savior of Mankind, the Christ, was born. He is the new Sun Hero who was not only initiated in the depths of the Mystery temples, but who also appeared before all the world so that it could be said, “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). When it was recognized that the Divine could descend into a personality, the festival celebrating the birth of the Sun Hero, the Christ, came to replace the festival celebrating the birth of the light.

What formerly was impossible could now be attained. Man could now give birth to light in his own soul. He could do this because the principle of light had incarnated in a human being for the first time. In this way the festival of the winter solstice was of necessity brought together with the Christ festival. The whole significance of the preceding evolutionary periods is determined by the establishment of the festival of the birth of Christ at the time of the festival of the winter solstice. Wisdom and light first appeared to men externally, but now, after the Christ event, the light must be kindled in man's own heart. Christ Himself must be born in man. It was for that reason that the Event of Palestine—a mystical as well as an historical fact—had to occur.

Thus, we are faced with an historical event, a great mystery that is little understood. The event that occurred in Palestine took place literally as it is described in the Gospel of St. John, and it is also a mystical fact. To conceive of this event otherwise is to misunderstand it. But if it is comprehended in this way, it will also be understood why from this moment onward God can be thought of as a personality, and the Trinity, which previously was thought of differently, can now be understood in the form of three Divine Persons. Christ had now become a Person, thus proving that the Divine can be realized in man. He was the First on earth in Whom the Divine had dwelled, and henceforth this could become a constant, indestructible ideal for man.

All the great teachers of wisdom—the Egyptian Hermes, the ancient Indian Rishis, Confucius, the Persian Zarathustra—have spoken the Divine Word. In Jesus the Christ, however, the Divine Word Itself walked on earth in a living shape for the first time. Before this time there was on earth only the Path and the Truth. Now we have the Path, the Truth and the Life. The great difference between earlier religions and Christianity consists in the fact that Christianity is the fulfillment of the previous religions, that in Christ we are not concerned with a great teacher of wisdom—teachers of wisdom were present in all other religions—but with a human personality who at the same time must be revered as a Divine Personality. Herein is to be found the importance of the disciples' message, “We have laid our hand into His wounds, we have heard His message.” The emphasis is placed on the appearance, on the direct impression. It does not merely listen to the word but considers the personality. The conviction prevailed that Christ was, in a unique fashion, the Cosmic Sun Hero.

If we comprehend this, we also understand that the ancient festival of the winter solstice signified something different from the present Christmas festival. In Egypt we find Horus, Isis and Osiris, the archetypal image of what also lives in Christianity. In ancient India we have the birth of Krishna by the holy virgin. We find echoes of this myth everywhere, but what is important in Christianity is what I have just expressed. That is the fact that not only the Threefoldness, but the Fourfoldness has become sanctified, that Holiness has descended right down into the personality. Previously, Holiness was divine and dwelled in unattainable heights above men. The ancient Rishis revered it as the indefinable, unutterable Brahman; the ancient Zarathustrian pupils saw it in the duality of good and evil; in Egypt we have the triad of Isis, Osiris and Horus. The fact that the Divine has dwelled among men, that it has become Personality, however, was the secret of the fourth post-Atlantean period. The most important event for the men of this age is the fact that the Christmas festival, which always represented the birth of an initiate, now represents the birth of the greatest Sun Hero, of Christ Himself. Thus these two facts of necessity sound together in the world's course.

When we look at the fourth post-Atlantean period and compare it with the time in which we ourselves are living, we see that the Divine has descended still further. Today it has taken on a peculiar form, which must be understood if we wish fully to decipher the Christmas festival. Let us go back to the fourth post-Atlantean period, back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries A.D. You will find full comprehension of the real personality of Christ by those who knew this mystery. The personality of Christ is comprehensively described, for instance, in the poem, The Heliand, which puts Christ into a German setting. The Christ as personality is firmly implanted within mankind so that the conditions of other countries can be connected with His deed of redemption.

But another mood also arises. The belief in this archetypal image of mankind has been shaken. Something has appeared that in some ways signifies progress since a much larger part of humanity participates in the course of the further development of Christianity. But these people have ceased to grasp the fact that the center of their thinking, feeling and willing lies in the individual personality of Christ. Fewer and fewer men dare admit to themselves that it is not a question of doctrine, but rather of the Personality of Christ. This finally dissolves into a veneration of an abstract ideal that is conceived by the intellect and toward which men then come to strive.

Summing up, at the time of the first post-Atlantean period the Divinity was Brahman; during the second, it was the duality of light and darkness; in the third, it was the trinity. Then, during the time of the fourth post-Atlantean period, the trinity descended into a person on earth, and now this Personality has descended even further to the stage of mere intellect, which has dissolved it so that it is revered only as an abstract ideal.

In our own fifth post-Atlantean period the time is being prepared that must come, bringing with it a belief in the new initiates, the Fathers. The initiates of the seventh degree are called the Fathers, as we have said, and in spiritual science we speak of the knowledge of the Masters, because it will be to the Masters, as the great leaders of mankind, to whom mankind will look in gratitude and veneration. The fifth post-Atlantean period repeats the three preceding periods in the great process of Advent. The three weeks of Advent symbolize these earlier periods, and man must once again pass through briefly the way the birth of the light was experienced at Christmas.

The birth of the light will be followed by life in the light. Christians, therefore, should not see in the Christmas festival something that passes. It is not a memorial festival commemorating what has occurred in the past. The Christmas message does not say, “Christ has been born, Christ was born.” It says, “Today Christ is born.” Today is always emphasized. This is significant. The emphasis on today should be understood in the sense in which Christ has spoken, “I am with you always even unto the end of days.” This confronts us anew each year and reveals to us the connection between man and the heavens. It shows us that what has occurred in the heavens must also take place in man. Just as the course of the sun cannot be altered a fraction without causing chaos, so likewise man must keep to his path. He must attain to that inner harmony and rhythm that is exemplified in Christ, Who was incarnated in Jesus and Who will be active in the Fathers whose guidance man will follow in future ages.

This is the connection between man and the heavens. Not only is the sun to travel its unchanging course in the heavens, gaining new forces at the winter solstice. It will also bring about in man a birth of the light out of his deepest soul that will be a resurrection, a Sun Heroship of the fifth post-Atlantean period. For this reason do we have the Christmas saying, “Peace to men on earth who are of good will.” Inner peace will bring the evolution of mankind into a rhythmical course, just as the sun has acquired a regular rhythm in its course. In the course of the sun we see an image of the eternal circular course of the cosmos. It has overcome its chaos and has attained peace. In this sense, Christmas is a festival of peace, streaming forth a mood of peace and harmony. When this is brought about, it will be celebrated in the right sense. In the tolling of the Christmas bells we hear not only the sounds of the church, but also the striving of the whole of mankind as it works and has worked toward its further development since the time when the earth with its spirituality arose from the great cold.

What the preceding races have longed for as their future, has come to birth during the fourth post-Atlantean period. What the three subsequent ages must strive for resounds from the Christmas chimes because, if we truly understand what the Christmas festival expresses, the harmonies of the heavens speak to us. Every festival of the year is firmly based in primeval wisdom. They have not been arbitrarily established but have been created out of the deepest wisdom of the world. The one who can really understand them, celebrating them with full comprehension, finds in them the signs of ancient wisdom, of events that have taken place since the very beginning and that will continue into the future. In this way the festivals lose their conventional meanings and gain new significance. Thus, to read the great cosmic truths in this manner, means to celebrate the cosmic festivals correctly. When you come to read the primal truths of the heavens in this way, you celebrate the great cosmic festivals with your heart, your senses and your mind. Then they are celebrated genuinely out of the spirit and are of significance to mankind.

The anthroposophical science of the spirit is not mere abstract thoughts or a web of dogmas. It has a great task and world mission to accomplish in order to enliven again what mankind has forgotten, to strike fire again into what our ancestors have given us. Then human egotism will cease. Men will learn to live in the unitary spirit of the world, in a wisdom which, besides much else, streams from spiritual science. Spiritual science is practical in the best sense and gives us inner strength and certainty of hope. It makes possible the mood of peace and confidence of spirit that flow from the Christmas festival to permeate deeply the souls of those striving for spirit knowledge.

Exalted spiritual leaders of mankind have prescribed this festival for us in primeval ages. So at the end of this hour let us place before our souls the following as true Christmas wisdom.

Advanced human brothers are the leaders of the spiritual movement. They were already present at the beginning of the post-Atlantean age when the great cosmic festivals were established. Today, as the great teachers of mankind, they again reveal such truths to us. These teachings are not imparted to us out of speculation or as their own opinions, but because they were present when these things occurred. They have prepared the peace, which is to stream over mankind in the future, and they have created the holy script in these festivals. From this is to be read the message of peace, the message of inner soul bliss attainable through spiritual science. If we live in the way put forth by the Masters of Harmony, we will gradually approach the great ideal that they themselves live. Spiritual science reminds us of these exalted leaders when we are seized by the Christmas mood. It speaks of peace and of the sacrificial gifts of the great Masters—a peace that streams into the future of mankind. We see it surrounded by the radiance of spiritual light and concordance of feelings. In the glory in which the Fathers appear, we recognize those who lead us into the future. In our striving toward them, a life is born out of our own soul that is immersed in peace and harmony, which, as the birth of peace at Christmas, is an image of the course of the sun through the universe.

This is what the wise Magi, the great Masters, teach us. It is this that we are told by those human beings who speak, not out of mere blind faith in these Masters, but out of their full knowledge. The Masters are, and the spiritual world movement, under the guidance of the Masters, is the great, sublime movement of peace that leads man to the cosmic harmony in which human souls will live with the unerring regularity of the sun coursing through the universe, showing us the path to the radiant beauty of the Spirit Sun.

Just think how few people today are able to awaken in their souls a clearly pertinent understanding of all the preparations now being made everywhere for Christmas. Clear ideas about this festival are scarce, and most of them correspond only in small degree with the intentions of those who in the past established the great festivals as symbols of the Infinite and Imperishable in the world. The preparations being made for Christmas that are published in our newspapers convince us of this. There is hardly anything more hopeless and alien to a true understanding of Christmas than the material being published today.

Now let us summarize in our souls the whole range of spiritual science that has been offered in various lectures this autumn. Let us not make it the pedantic summary of a schoolmaster, however, but one that will arise in our hearts when, from the standpoint of spiritual science, we connect it with a Christmas festival imbued with a spiritual-scientific concept of life that is not gray theory or an outer confession and philosophy, but life itself pulsing through us. Modern man, more than he thinks, confronts nature as a stranger—certainly more so now than in the time of Goethe. Who today can still experience the great depths of the words spoken by Goethe at the beginning of the Weimar period of his life? At that time he addressed a hymn or prayer to nature with its mysterious forces:

“Nature! By her we are encompassed and enfolded, unable to withdraw from her, nor yet to penetrate her deeper. Unbid and unforewarned, into the gyrations of her dance she lifts us, whirling and swirling us onward, until exhausted from her arms we fall.

“Unceasingly she generates new forms; what exists was never here before, what was does not return—all is new yet always the old.

“We live in the midst of her and are strangers to her. She speaks with us unceasingly and does not divulge her secret to us. We affect her constantly and yet have no power over her.

“She seems to aim in everything toward individuality, and does not trouble about individuals. Now she builds and now destroys, and her workshop is inaccessible.

“She lives in countless children, and the mother, where is she? She is the only artist: from the simplest substance to the greatest contrasts, without seeming exertion to the greatest perfection, the most exact acuteness, always clothed with gentleness. Each of her works has its own being, each of her phenomena the most isolated concept, and yet all is one. She acts a show: whether she sees it herself we do not know, and yet she plays for us who are standing in the corner.

“An eternal living, growing and moving is in her, and yet she does not advance. She is forever changing and in her, nothing for a moment still. She has not concept of rest and has attached her curse to stagnation. She is firm. Her tread is measured, rare her exceptions, her laws immutable ...”

We are all children of nature and when we believe we are not acting in the least according to its laws, we are acting perhaps all the more in accordance with the great law flowing through it and streaming into us. Who can feel deeply today these other significant words of Goethe in which he tries to express how man can penetrate with his feelings into the hidden forces common to himself and nature? Here Goethe addresses nature not as a lifeless being, as modern materialistic thought would have it, but as a living spirit:

Spirit sublime, thou gav'st me all, gav'st me all
For which I prayed. Thou has not turned in vain
Thy countenance to me in fire and flame.
Thou gav'st me glorious nature as a royal realm,
The power to feel and to enjoy her.
Not Amazed, cold visits only thou allow'st;
Thou grantest me to look in her deep breast
Even as in the bosom of a friend.
Thou leadest past a series of the living
Before me, teaching me to know my brothers
In silent covert and in air and water.
And when the storm roars screeching through the forest,
When giant fir-tree plunges, sweeping down
And crushing neighboring branches, neighboring trunks,
And at its fall the hills, dull, hollow, thunder:
Then leadest thou me to the cavern safe,
Show'st me myself, and my own heart becomes
Aware of deep mysterious miracles.¹

Here is expressed the mood through which Goethe, out of his feeling for nature, endeavored to enliven what flowed out of feeling allied with knowledge. This is the mood of a time when wisdom was in league with nature and there were created those signs of feeling united with nature and the universe, which we in spiritual science recognize in the great festivals. Now they have become abstractions, and the soul and heart meet them almost with indifference. In many instances today, the word, which we can dispute or swear by, means more than what it originally represented. What has become an external, literal word was really intended to be the representative, the herald, the symbol of the great creative Word that lives in nature and the whole universe and that can again arise in us if we truly know ourselves. The intention, when the great festivals were established on the occasions provided throughout the course of nature, was to make men conscious of this Word. Let us use the knowledge acquired in the course of our spiritual-scientific lectures to understand what the ancient sages expressed in the Christmas festival.

The festival held at Christmas time is not only a Christian event. It has existed wherever religious feeling was expressed. If you direct your gaze back thousands of years before our era to ancient Egypt, Asia or other regions, you find a festival being celebrated at the same time of year that Christianity recognizes the birth of Christ.

What was the nature of this primeval festival that was celebrated all over the earth at this time of year? In answering this question, we shall restrict our considerations today to those marvelous fire festivals that were celebrated in ancient times in regions of Europe, Scandinavia, Scotland, and in England by the ancient Celtic priests, the Druids.

What was the nature of their celebration? They celebrated the end of the winter season and the approach of spring. Though, to be sure, winter deepens as we move toward Christmas, nevertheless, a victory proclaims itself in nature at this time that is the symbol of hope, confidence and trust for man. In this way the victory of the sun over the counter forces of nature was expressed in most languages. Today we have felt how the days have grown shorter, which is an expression of the withering and falling asleep of the forces of nature, and this will continue until the day we celebrate as Christmas, a day that was also celebrated by our ancestors. From this day on, the days begin to grow longer. The light of the sun celebrates its victory over darkness. Materialistic thought does not reflect much on this event, but for those endowed with vital feeling and knowledge, it was the living expression for a spiritual experience of the Godhead that guides our lives. As an important and decisive event is experienced in the individual personal life of a man, so the winter solstice was experienced as a decisive event in the life of a higher being—as the memorial of something uniquely sublime. We are thus led to the fundamental concept of the Christmas festival as a cosmic festival, a festival of the first order for humanity.

In those ages in which genuine esotericism was alive and active like the very life blood of people—a fact that is denied by the materialistic world view of today—one observed an event taking place in nature at Christmas time that was considered a monument, a memorial of a great event that once had taken place on earth. During those days the priests collected the faithful ones, the teachers of the people, around them at the midnight hour and endeavored to divulge a great secret. What they said to them was somewhat as follows. I am not relating something here that has been discovered and thought out by abstract science, but what has lived in the Mysteries, in the secret shrines, in those earlier times.

Today, so said the priests, we see the victory of the sun over darkness ushered in. This also once took place on earth in a larger sense when the sun celebrated its great victory over darkness. Up to that time, everything physical, all bodily life on earth had only reached the level of development of the animals. The highest kingdom on earth at that time, prepared itself for the reception of the immortal human soul. Then, in this primeval age, the great moment in the evolution of mankind arrived when the immortal soul descended from divine heights. The surging life had developed to the point where the human body was able to receive the imperishable soul. This human ancestor was at a higher stage than that imagined by materialistic naturalists, but even so the spiritual, immortal part did not live in him yet. The human soul descended to earth from a higher planet, and the earth was now to become its field of action, its dwelling place.

We call these human ancestors the Lemurians. They were followed by the Atlanteans, who preceded the present-day Aryans. The human bodies of the Lemurians were fructified by the higher human soul—a great moment in the evolution of man that spiritual science calls “the descent of the Divine Sons of the Spirit.” Ever since Lemurian times the human soul has worked in and formed the human body for its higher development. I can only give an indication of what I am now going to say, but I have spoken in detail about these things in other lectures. Those who are here for the first time should take this into consideration and not take what I say as mere fantasy.

At the time when the human body was first fructified by the imperishable soul, the situation was quite different from the way materialistic natural science conceives of it today. An event took place in the universe that belongs to the most important in the evolution of man. Gradually, the constellation of earth, moon and sun arose that made the descent of the souls possible. It was in that period that the sun gained its significance for the growth and prospering of man on earth, and also for his fellow creatures, the plants and animals. To grasp this connection of sun, moon and earth with earth-man in the right way, one must make spiritually clear to himself the whole development of man and earth. There was a time—so ancient wisdom taught—when the earth was united with the sun and moon, forming one body. At that time, the earth beings of today had different shapes and appearances that conformed with the consolidated cosmic body of sun, moon and earth. Every living thing on earth received its being through the fact that first the sun, and then the moon separated from the earth and formed an external relationship to it. The mystery of the union of the human spirit with the universal spirit is connected with this development. In spiritual science the universal spirit is called the Logos. It embraces the sun, moon and earth, and in it we live, weave and have our being.

Just as the earth was born from the body that also comprised the sun and moon, so is man born from a spirit or soul to which the sun, earth and moon belong. When man looks up to the sun or the moon, what he sees should not be limited only to these external physical bodies, but he should perceive them as the external bodies of spiritual beings. Modern materialism can no longer accomplish this. Yet, one who is unable to see the sun and moon as bodies of spirits, will be unable to recognize the human body as that of a spirit. As truly as the human body is the bearer of a spirit, so the celestial bodies are likewise bearers of spiritual beings. Man belongs to these spiritual beings. His body is separated from the forces that rule in sun and moon but his physical nature nevertheless harbors forces that are active in them. The same spirituality is active in his soul, however, that governs the sun and moon. By becoming an earth being, man became dependent upon the sun's activity as a separate body shining upon the earth.

Our ancestors felt themselves to be spiritual children of the whole universe and understood that we have become human beings through what the sun spirit had called forth as our spirit. For us, the victory of the sun over darkness signifies a memory of the victory for our soul when for the first time the sun shone down upon the earth as it does today. It was a sun victory when the immortal soul descended into the physical body and immersed itself in the darkness of instincts, desires and passions.

Let us visualize the life of the spirit. For early man, darkness, which followed upon a previous sun period, preceded the victory of the sun. But the human soul, which sprang from the Divinity, had to dip down into unconsciousness for a time in order to form there the lower nature of man. It was the human soul that gradually built up the lower nature of man so that later it could come to dwell in it. If you imagine an architect using the best forces in himself to build a dwelling into which he subsequently moves, you will have an adequate likeness of the entrance of the immortal human soul into the physical body. At that early time, however, the soul could work only unconsciously on its dwelling place, and it is this that is expressed in the picture of darkness. The lighting up of consciousness in the human soul is expressed, of course, in the picture of the sun victory.

For those who had a living feeling for the connection of man with the universe, the sun victory signified the moment in which they received what was of the greatest importance for their earth existence. It was this great moment that was commemorated in the festival celebrating this event at the winter solstice.

In all earlier times, man's course through his earth development was seen to resemble increasingly the regular rhythmical course of nature. When we look up from the soul of man to the course of the sun in the universe and all that is related to it, we experience the great rhythm and harmony existing there as contrasted with the chaos and disharmony of our own natures. How rhythmical is the path of the sun; how regular is the return of the phenomena of nature in the course of the year and day!

I have frequently mentioned the rhythmical nature of the development of the lower beings. Just imagine the sun leaving its orbit for a fraction of a second and the unbelievable, indescribable disorder that would result. Our universe is only made possible through the great, tremendous harmony of the sun's orbit. With this harmony are connected the rhythmical life processes of all the beings dependent upon the sun. Picture to yourself how the sun calls forth the beings of nature in spring. It is not possible to think the violet might bloom at a different time from the one we are accustomed to. Imagine seeds to be broadcast or harvests to be gathered at times different from the usual ones. Right up to animal life we see how everything is dependent upon the rhythmical course of the sun. Even in man everything is rhythmical, regular and harmonious insofar as it is not subject to human passions, instincts and the human intellect.

Observe the pulse or the processes of digestion and admire the great rhythm and infinite wisdom of nature flowing through them. Then compare them with the irregularity and chaos holding sway in human passions, instincts, desires and particularly in the human intellect. Visualize the regularity of the pulse and breath and contrast it with the irregularity of thinking, feeling and willing. They are will-o'-the-wisps in comparison. Imagine the wisdom with which the life forces are organized, or how the rhythmic system must struggle against rhythmless chaos. Just think how much human passion and the desire for enjoyment trespass against the rhythms of the body! I have often mentioned how marvelous it is for the person who, through an anatomical study of the heart, learns to know the beautiful construction of this organ. Such a person must then come to realize how miraculous it is that the heart still continues its harmoniously rhythmical pulsation in spite of the abuse that can be heaped upon it through the use of tea and coffee. But, like our ancestors, who were filled with admiration for nature with its soul, the sun, in rhythmical orbit, we, too, can acquire feelings for all of nature, permeated as it is by rhythm and wisdom.

In looking up to the sun, the sages and their followers said, “You are the image of what the soul born in me will become.” The divine world order revealed itself in its great glory to these wise men. This is also expressed in the Christian view when it says there shall be glory in divine heights. “Glory” means “revelation.” “Today God reveals Himself in the Heavens.” This is what “Glory to God in the Highest” means. It is the expression of the glory permeating the world. This world harmony was presented as the great ideal for those who, in earlier times, were to be leaders of mankind. In all times and wherever a consciousness of these things was alive, it was the Sun Hero who was spoken of.

There were seven degrees of initiation in the ancient Mystery Temples. I shall cite them for you with their Persian names. In the first degree, man went beyond everyday feeling and attained to a higher soul experience and cognition of the spirit. Such a man was designated a “Raven.” The Ravens were those who communicated to the initiates in the temples what happened in the outside world. This was the case in the medieval saga of the Emperor Barbarossa who, surrounded by the earth's treasures of wisdom, awaits inside the earth the great moment when mankind is to be rejuvenated by a newly deepened Christianity. Here also the Ravens are the messengers. Even the Old Testament speaks of the Ravens of Elijah.

Those initiated into the second degree were called the “Occult Ones,” those of the third, the “Warriors,” and those of the fourth, the “Lions.” The initiates of the fifth degree were called by the name of their people—Persian or Indian, for example—because only these initiates were true representatives of their peoples. The initiate of the sixth degree was called a “Sun Hero,” that of the seventh, bore the name “Father.”

Why was the initiate of the sixth degree called a Sun Hero? Such a one, who had climbed the ladder of spiritual knowledge to that stage, had so far developed his inner life that the pattern of its course followed the divine rhythm of the universe. His feeling and thinking no longer contained anything chaotic, unrhythmical or disharmonious, and his inner soul harmony was in accord with the external harmony of the sun. This level of development was demanded of the initiates of the sixth degree, and as a result, they were looked up to as holy men, as examples and ideals. Just as it would be a great disaster for the universe if the sun were to leave its path for only a quarter of a minute, similarly, it would have been just as great a disaster if it had been possible for a Sun Hero to stray only for a moment from his path of high morality, soul rhythm and spirit harmony. He who had found as sure a path in his spirit as the sun outside in the universe, was called a Sun Hero, and they were to be found among all peoples.

Our scientists know little about these things. To be sure, they see that sun myths are crystallized around the lives of all the great founders of religions. But they do not know that in the initiation ceremonies the leaders were raised to Sun Heroes, and it is not at all remarkable when materialistic research rediscovers these customs of the ancients. Sun myths connected with Buddha and even with Christ have been searched out and found. Here you have the reason why they could be found in these myths. They had been put into them in the first place because they represented a direct imprint of the sun rhythm and were the great examples that should be followed.

The soul of such a Sun Hero who had attained this inner harmony was no longer considered to be a single individual human soul, but one that had brought to birth in itself the universal soul streaming through the whole cosmos. This universal soul was called “Chrestos” in ancient Greece, and the sublime sages of the Orient knew it by the name, “Buddhi.” When one has ceased to feel himself to be only the bearer of his individual soul and comes to experience the universe within himself, then he has created an image in himself of what as Sun Soul was united with the human body at that time. Then he has achieved something of tremendous significance for the evolution of mankind.

When we consider such a human being with his soul ennobled in this way, we can visualize the future of the human race and the whole relationship of this future to the idea, the percept of humanity in general. Today, disputing and quarrelling, people decide things by majority vote. As long as such majority resolutions are deemed to be the ideal, one has not yet grasped real truth. Where does real truth live in us? Truth lives in us when we endeavor to think logically. It would be nonsense to decide by majority vote that two times two equals four, or that three times four equals twelve. Once man has recognized what is true, millions of others may dissent but he will remain certain within himself.

In scientific thinking we have advanced as far as the use of logic, that is, thinking untouched by passions, drives and instincts. Wherever these come into play, they bring about chaos and cause men to quarrel and fight in wild confusion. When, however, in the future, these passions, drives and instincts will have been purified and become what is called Buddhi or Chrestos, when they will have reached the level of development at which logical, passionless thinking stands today, then the ideal of mankind, which radiates from the wisdom of ancient religions, from Christianity, and from the anthroposophical science of the spirit, will have been reached. When our feelings will have become so purified that they sound harmoniously together with what others feel, when for our feelings and sensations the same stage will have been achieved on earth as that of our intellects, when Buddhi and the Chrestos will have been incorporated into the human race, then the ideal of the ancient teachers of wisdom, of Christianity and of anthroposophy will have been fulfilled. Then it will not be necessary to determine by vote what is good, noble and right any more than one needs to decide by vote what is logically correct or logically false. Everyone can place this ideal before his soul and in so doing he raises the ideal of the Sun Hero, of all initiates of the sixth degree.

This was felt by the German mystics of the Middle Ages when they spoke the important word for “becoming Godlike,” “becoming one with the Divine” (Vergottung). What does this word signify? It means that those beings, whom we consider today to be the spirits of the universe, also passed through the stage of chaos upon which mankind stands today. The leading spirits of the universe have struggled up to the divine stage where their living utterances resound harmoniously through the All. What appears to us in the harmonious annual orbit of the sun, in the growth of plants, the life of animals was, in past ages, chaotic and a struggle had to be made to arrive at its present sublime harmony. Man stands today at a stage of development at which these spirits once stood. But he will develop out of chaos into a future harmony patterned after the present sun and the presiding universal harmony.

To allow these ideas to sink into our souls, not as theory or doctrine but as living sensation, yields the anthroposophical Christmas mood. Let us feel vividly that the glory and the revelation of divine harmony appears in the heights of heaven. Let us realize that the revelation of this harmony will resound from our own souls in the future. Then we will feel the peace of those who are of good will that will come about in mankind through this harmony. When from this great perspective we look into the divine world order, into the revelation and its glory in heavenly heights, when we look out upon the future of mankind, we may have now, today, a presentiment of the harmony that will reign in human beings on earth in the future. The more we let the harmony in the outer world sink into us, the more will there be peace and unity on earth.

If, during the time of Christmas, we feel and experience the orbit of the sun in nature in the right way, the great ideal of peace will be presented to our souls as a feeling of nature of the highest order. If we feel during these days the victory of the sunlight over darkness, we will gain from it the great confidence that unites our own developing souls with this cosmic harmony, and it will not flow in vain into our beings. Then something will flow and live in us that will be harmonious, and the seed of peace upon earth will sink into our souls. Those men are of good will who feel this peace, a peace that will prevail when the higher stage of harmony, which today has been attained only by the intellect, is reached by the feelings and heart. Strife and disharmony will have been replaced by the all-pervading love of which Goethe speaks in the Hymn to Nature I have quoted, when he says that a few draughts from the chalice of love are compensation for a life of trouble.

In all religions this Christmas festival has been a festival of confidence, trust and hope because they have felt that during these days the light must be victorious. This seed, placed in the earth, will sprout forth and prosper in the light of the newly arising year. A seed of a plant, when buried in the earth, will burgeon forth into the light of the sun. In the same way, divine truth, the divine and truthful soul, is sunk in the depth of the life of passions and instincts. There, in darkness, the divine Sun Soul will ripen. A seed in the earth sprouts as a result of the victory of light over darkness, and likewise, through the continuous victory of light over the darkness of the soul, the soul will become filled with light. In darkness there can only be strife; in light, only peace. Through true comprehension, world harmony, world peace will prevail. This is the deep and true word also of Christianity during these Christmas days: Glory, revelation of the divine powers in the heights of heaven, and peace to men who are of good will!

Out of this great cosmic feeling, the Christian Church resolved in the fourth century to establish the festival of the birth of the World Savior at the same time of year that all great religions had celebrated the victory of light over darkness. Before the fourth century, the time of the Christian festival, the festival of the birth of Christ, varied. It was not until the fourth century that it was resolved that the Savior of the Christians be born on the day on which the victory of light over darkness had always been celebrated.

Today we cannot deal with the wisdom of the teaching of Christianity itself. This will be the subject of a lecture next year. But one thing shall and must be said today. Nothing could have happened with more justification than the establishment of the birthday of Christ at that time of year. For that Divine Individuality, the Christ, is the guarantor for the Christian that his divine soul will be victorious over all that is darkness. Thus, Christianity is in harmony with all great world religions, and when the Christmas bells ring, we can remind ourselves that this festival was celebrated during these days throughout the world in the past. It was celebrated wherever on earth there was comprehension of the true progress of the human soul, wherever a knowledge prevailed of the significance of spirit and spiritual life, wherever self-knowledge was practiced.

We have not spoken of an abstract feeling for nature today. We have, rather, spoken of a feeling for nature in all its living spirituality. When we have connected our considerations with the Goethean words, “Nature! We are encompassed and enfolded! ...” we may be clear about the fact that we do not interpret nature in the materialistic sense. We see in it the external expression and physiognomy of the divine cosmic spirit. Just as the body is born out of the corporeal, the soul and spirit out of the divine soul and divine spirit, and just as the body united itself with merely material forces, so the soul unites itself with the spirit.

The great festivals stand as symbols leading us to use our feeling and thinking in order to bring about an experience of the union with the universe, not in an indefinite way but in a most decided fashion. If this is felt again, the festivals become something different from what they are today. They will become implanted in soul and heart in a living way, and they will become what they are intended to be for us, that is, focal points in the year that join us to the spirit of the universe. If, as the year proceeds, we have fulfilled our duties and tasks for everyday life, we can look to these focal points to what unites us with the eternal. Although we have had a hard struggle in the course of the year, during these festival days the feeling arises in us that beyond all struggle and chaos, peace and harmony exist. Therefore, these festivals are celebrations of the great ideals. The Christmas festival is the festival of the greatest ideal of humanity, and humanity must make it its own if it wishes to reach its destination. The Christmas festival, rightly understood, is the festival of the birth of mankind's highest feelings and will impulses.

The anthroposophical science of the spirit intends to contribute to this understanding. We do not wish to send a dogma a mere doctrine or philosophy into the world, but life itself. It is our ideal to have all that we say and teach, all that is contained in our writings and science, pass over into life itself. This will happen if men practice spiritual science in everyday relationships, if from the pulpits spiritual-scientific life resounds in the words that are spoken to the listeners, without special emphasis being put on the term, spiritual science. If in all courts of justice the deeds are judged with spiritual-scientific sensitivity, if the medical doctor feels and heals with spiritual-scientific insight, if in the schools the teachers develop spiritual science concerning the growing child, if on all the streets spiritual-scientific thoughts, feelings and actions prevail to the point of making spiritual-scientific teaching superfluous, then our ideal will have been achieved. Then the science of the spirit will have become an everyday affair. Moreover, spiritual science will then also be alive in the focal points of the great festivals throughout the year, and man will join his everyday life to the spirit through anthroposophical thinking, feeling and willing. Then the eternal, imperishable Spirit Sun will shine into his soul at the great festivals of the year, reminding him that in him there lives truth, a higher self, a divine, sun-like, light-filled Being. This Being will ever and again be victorious over all darkness and chaos, and will achieve soul peace and balance in the face of all disharmony, struggle and war in the world.

• 1. From Goethe's Faust, translated and edited by George Madison Priest; copyright by, and reprinted here with permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Let us on this day in particular, turn our hearts with special devotion to those who are without on the scene of action, and who have to devote their lives and souls to the great task of the age; and let us say:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the Earth-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And for those who have already passed through the portal of death in consequence of the severe duties demanded of them in these times, we will repeat the same words in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And may that Spirit Whom we seek in our spiritual strivings, the Spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha for the sake of the freedom and progress of humanity, the Spirit Whom we must specially bear in mind today, may He be with you in your severe tasks.

Let us call to mind the decree ringing forth from the depths of the Mystery of the Earth’s evolution.

‘Revelation of the Divine in the heights of existence and peace to men on earth who are permeated by good will.’ And as Christmas Eve approaches, we must (this year in particular) ask ourselves: ‘What are the feelings that unite us with this saying and its deep cosmic meaning?’ That deep cosmic meaning in which countless men feel the word ‘peace’ resounding, at a time when peace keeps away from a very large part of our earth. How should we think of these Christmas words at such a time?

There is one thought, which, in connection with this verdict, sounding through the world, must concern us far more deeply at this present epoch than at any other time—one thought. Nations are facing each other in enmity. Much blood has saturated our earth. We see and feel countless dead around us at this time. The atmosphere of sensation and feeling around us is interwoven with infinite sorrow. Hate and aversion are heard murmuring through the spiritual realm and might easily testify how very far removed men still are in our day from that love which He wishes to announce Whose birth is celebrated on Christmas Eve. One thought, however, arises: we think how opponents can face each other, enemy face enemy, how men can mutually bring death to one another and how they can all pass through the same Gate of Death with the thought of Christ Jesus, the Divine Light-Bringer. We recall how, in the whole earth, over which war, suffering and discord are spread abroad, these men can still be one at heart, however greatly they may otherwise be disunited, who in the depths of their hearts are united in their connection with Him Who entered the world on the day we commemorate at Christmas. We see how through all enmity, aversion and hatred, one and the same feeling may everywhere penetrate the human soul at this time: out of the blood and hatred may spring the thought of an inner union with One, with Him Who has united the hearts through something higher than anything which can ever separate mankind on earth. Thus the thought of Christ Jesus is a thought of immeasurable depth of feeling, a thought of infinite greatness uniting mankind, however disunited it may be as regards all that is going on in the world. If we grasp the thought in this way, we shall want to comprehend it still more deeply at the present time. We shall feel how much there is that can become strong and powerful within human evolution if connected with this thought—this thought which must develop in order that many things may be acquired by human hearts and souls in a different way from the present tragic method of learning them.

That He may strengthen us, That He may invigorate us,

That He may teach us all over the earth really to experience in the truest sense of the words the utterance of the Christmas Eve saying, which transcends all that separates men from one another. This it is which he who really feels himself united with Christ Jesus solemnly vows anew at Christmas time.

There is a tradition in the history of Christianity which repeatedly appears in later times and for centuries became a custom in certain Christian regions. In olden times representations of the Christian Mysteries were organised chiefly by the Christian Churches for believers in many different regions. And in the remotest times these representations began by reading, occasionally even by enacting, the story of Creation as it occurs at the beginning of the Bible. There was first shown just at Christmas time, how the Cosmic Word sounded forth from the depths of the Cosmos and how out of the Cosmic Word Creation gradually arose: how Lucifer appeared to man, and how men thereby began their earth-existence in a manner different from what was originally destined for them before the approach of Lucifer. The entire story of the temptation of Adam and Eve was brought forward, and it was then shown how man was, as it were, embodied in the Old Testament history. Then as time went on there was added that which was presented in more or less detail in the performances which evolved during the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries in the countries of Central Europe (of which we have just seen one small example). Very little now remains of the grand thought which united the beginning of the Old Testament at this Christmas Eve festival with the secret history of the Mystery of Golgotha. Only this one thing remains, that in our calendar, before the actual Christmas Day comes the day of Adam and Eve. This has its origin in the same thought. But in olden times, for those who through deeper thinking, through deeper feeling, or through a deeper knowledge, were to grasp the Mystery of Christmas and the Mystery of Golgotha, with the help of their teachers, there was exhibited also again and again a great comprehensive thought: the thought of the Origin of the Cross. The God Who is introduced to man in the Old Testament gives to man, as represented by Adam and Eve, this commandment: ‘Ye may eat of all the fruits of the garden, but not of the tree—not of the fruits which grow on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ Because they did eat of this they were driven from the original scene of action of their being.

But the tree—as was shown in many different ways—came by some means into the line of generations, into the original family from which proceeded the bodily covering of Christ Jesus. And it so came about that (as was shown at certain times) when Adam, the man of sin, was buried, there grew out of his grave the tree which had been removed from Paradise. Thus the following thoughts are aroused: Adam rests in his grave: the man who was led astray by Lucifer and passed through sin, rests in his grave. He has united himself with the Earth-body. But from his grave sprouts the tree which can now grow out of the earth, with which Adam’s body is united. The wood of this tree descends to the generations to which Abraham and David belong. And from the wood of this tree, which stood in Paradise and which grew forth from Adam’s grave, was made the Cross upon which Christ Jesus hung.

That is the thought which again and again was made clear by their teachers to those who had to understand the Mystery of Golgotha and its secrets from a deeper point of view. A deep meaning lies in the fact that in olden times profound thoughts were expressed in such pictures. And even at the present day this is still the case, as we shall presently see.

We have made ourselves acquainted with the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha which reveals to us that the Being Who passed through the body of Jesus has poured out over the Earth and into the Earth’s aura what He was able to bring to the Earth. That which the Christ brought to the Earth is since united with the whole body of the Earth. The Earth has become quite different since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Earth-aura there lives what the Christ brought out of the heavenly heights to the Earth. If we unite this spiritually with that old picture of the tree, it shows us the whole connection from another point of view. The Luciferic principle drew into man as ho began his earthly career. Man as he now is belongs to the Earth, through his union with the Luciferic principle. He forms part of the Earth. And when we lay his body in the earth, this body is not merely that which anatomy sees, but is at the same time the outer mould of what man is in his inner being within his earthly nature. Spiritual Science makes it quite clear to us that what goes through the gates of death into the spiritual worlds is not the only part of man’s being, but that man through his whole activity, through his deeds, is united with the Earth. He is really united with the Earth as are those events which the geologists, mineralogists and zoologists, connect with the Earth. We might say that that which binds man to the Earth is at first concealed from the human individuality on going through the gates of death. But we surrender our external form in some manner to the Earth. It enters the Earth-body. It carries in itself the imprint of what the Earth has become through Lucifer’s entering the Earth evolution. That which man accomplishes on the Earth bears the Luciferic principle in it. Man brings this Luciferic principle into the Earth-aura. There springs forth and blossoms from man’s deeds and activities not only that which was originally intended for man but that which has mingled with the Luciferic principle. This is in the Earth-aura. And when we now see on the grave of the man Adam led away by Lucifer, that tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which through the Luciferic temptation has become different from what it originally was, we then see everything that man has become through forsaking his original state, when he submitted to the Luciferic temptation and brought something into the Earth’s evolution not previously determined. We see the tree grow out of what the physical body is for the Earth, that which has been stamped in its Earth form, and causes man to appear in a lower sphere on the Earth than the one originally destined for him, which would have been his if he had not succumbed to Lucifer. There grows out of the whole Earth existence of man something which has entered human evolution through the Luciferic temptation. While we seek knowledge, we seek it in another way than that originally destined for us. That however allows us to recognise that what grows out of our earthly deeds is different from what it would have been according to the original Divine decree. We form an earth existence other than the one laid down by the original Divine Will. We mingle something else with it; something else, concerning which we must form quite definite conceptions if we want to understand it.

We must form such ideas as these, if we wish to understand correctly. We must say to ourselves as follows: I am placed in the Earth evolution. What I give to the Earth evolution through my deeds bears fruit. It bears the fruit of knowledge which comes to me through my participation in the knowledge of good and evil on the Earth. This knowledge lives on in the evolution of the Earth and is present therein. When, however, I behold this knowledge it becomes in me something different from what it would have been originally, it becomes something which I must alter if the Earth’s goal and task are to be reached. I see something grow out of my Earth deeds which must become different. The tree grows up, the tree which becomes the Cross of earth existence. It becomes something to which man must acquire a new relation, for the old relation does no more than allow the tree to grow.

The tree of the Cross, that Cross that grows out of the Luciferically tainted Earth evolution, springs up out of Adam’s grave, out of the man-nature which Adam acquired after the fall. The tree of knowledge must become the stem of the Cross because man must unite himself anew with the correctly recognised tree of knowledge as it now is in order to reach the Earth’s goal and task.

Let us now ask—and here we touch a significant Mystery of Spiritual Science: How does the case stand with those principles which we have learnt to recognise as the principles of human nature? Now we all know that the highest member of human nature is the Ego. We learn to utter ‘I’ at a definite time of our childhood. We enter into relation with the Ego from the time to which in later years memory carries us back. This we know through various lectures and books upon Spiritual Science. Up to that time the Ego worked formatively upon us, up to the moment when we have a conscious relation to our Ego. The Ego is present in our childhood, it works within us, but at first only builds up our physical body. It first creates the supersensible forces in the spiritual world. After passing through conception and birth, it still works for a time—lasting for some years—on our body, until that becomes an instrument capable of consciously grasping the Ego. A deep mystery is connected with this entry of the Ego into the human bodily nature. We ask a man we meet how old he is, and he gives as his age the years which have passed since his birth. As has been said, we here touch a certain mystery of Spiritual Science that will become ever clearer and clearer in the course of the near future, but to which I shall now merely refer. What a man gives as his age at a definite time of his life, refers only to his physical body. All he tells us is that his physical body has been so many years evolving since his birth. The Ego takes no part in this evolution of the physical body but remains stationary. It is a Mystery difficult to grasp, that the Ego, from the time to which our memory carries us back, really remains stationary: it does not change with the body, but stands still. We have it always before us, because it reflects back to us our experiences. The Ego does not share our Earth journey. Only when we pass through the gates of death we have to travel back again to our birth along the path we call Kamaloka in order to meet our Ego again and take it on our further journey. Thus the Ego remains behind. The body goes forward through the years. This is difficult to understand because we cannot grasp the fact that something remains stationary in time, while time itself progresses. But this is actually the case. The Ego remains stationary, because it does not unite with what comes to man from the Earth-existence, but remains connected with those forces which we call our own in the spiritual world. There the Ego remains; it remains practically in the form in which it was bestowed on us by the Spirits of Form. The Ego is retained in the spiritual world. It must remain there, otherwise we could never, as man, fulfil our original task on Earth and attain the goal of our Earth-evolution. That which man here on Earth has undergone through his Adam-nature, of which he left an imprint in the grave when he died in Adam, that belongs to the physical body, etheric and astral body and comes from these. The Ego waits; it waits with all that belongs to it the whole time man remains on Earth, ever looking forward to the further evolution of man, beholding how man recapitulates when he has passed through the gates of death, and retraces his path. This implies that as regards our Ego we remain in a certain respect behind in the spiritual world. Man will have to become conscious of this, and humanity can only become conscious of it because at a certain time the Christ descended from those worlds to which mankind belongs, out of the spiritual worlds Christ descended, and in the body of Jesus prepared, in the twofold manner we already know, that which had to serve Him as a body on Earth.

When we understand ourselves aright, we continually look back through our whole Earth life to our childhood. There, in our childhood, precisely the spiritual part of us has remained behind. And humanity should be educated to look back on that to which the spirit from the heights can say: ‘Suffer the little children to come to Me !’ Not the man who is bound to the Earth, but the little child. Humanity should be educated to this, for the Feast of Christmas has been given to it, that Feast which has been added to the Mystery of Golgotha, which need otherwise only have been bestowed on humanity as regards the three last years of the Christ life, when the Christ was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. It shows how Christ prepared for Himself this human body in childhood. This is what should underlie our feelings at Christmas: the knowledge of how man, through what remains behind in heavenly heights during his years of growth, has really always been united with what is now coming. In the figure of the Child man should be reminded of the Human-Divine, which he left behind in descending to Earth, but which has now again come to him. Man should be reminded by the Child of that which has again brought his child-nature to him. This was no easy task, but in the very way in which this Festival of the Cosmic Child, this Christmas Festival, was developed in Central Europe, we see the wonderful, active, sustaining force within it.

What we have seen today is only one of many Nativity Plays. There have remained from olden times a number of so-called Paradise Plays which were produced at Christmas and in which the story of Creation is enacted. In connection with the representation of today, which is merely a pastoral play, there has also remained behind the Play of the Three Kings offering their gifts. A great deal of this was recorded in numerous plays which for the most part have now disappeared.

About the middle of the eighteenth century the time begins in which they disappear in country districts. But it is wonderful to trace their existence. In West Hungary, about 1850, Karl Julius Schröer, made a collection of Christmas Plays such as-these in the neighbourhood of Pressburg. Other people made similar collections in other places. But what Schröer then discovered of the customs connected with the performance of these plays may sink deeply into our hearts. These plays were there in manuscript in certain families of the villages and were regarded as something especially sacred. With the approach of October preparations were always begun to perform this play at Christmas before the people of the place. The well-behaved youths and maidens were sought out and during this time of preparation they ceased to drink wine or alcohol. They might no longer romp and wrestle on Sundays. They had really to lead what is called a holy life. And thus a feeling prevailed that a certain moral tone of the soul was necessary in those who devoted themselves at Christmas to the performance of such plays, for they could not be performed in the quite worldly atmosphere. They were performed with all the simplicity of the villagers, but profound seriousness prevailed in the entire performance. In all the plays collected by Schröer and earlier by Weinhold and others in many different regions, there is everywhere this deep earnestness with which the Christmas Mystery was approached. But this was not always so. We need only go back two centuries further to find something else which strikes us in the highest degree as peculiar. The very manner in which these Christmas plays became part of the fife of the central European villages in which they arose and gradually evolved, shows us how powerfully the Christmas thought worked there. It was not immediately taken up in the manner just described; the people did not always approach it with holy awe, with deep earnestness, with a living feeling of the significance of the occurrence.

In many regions it was begun by erecting a manger before the side altar of some church. This was in the fourteenth or fifteenth century; but it goes back to still earlier times. A manger was erected, a stall with an ox and an ass, the Child and two figures representing Joseph and Mary. Thus at first it was attempted with simple art; later an attempt was made to bring more life into it, but on the spiritual side. That is, priests took part; one priest represented Joseph and another Mary. In earlier times they spoke their parts in the Latin tongue, for in the old churches great stress was laid on this—it was considered very important that the spectators should understand as little as possible of the matter and should only behold the external acting. But this could no longer continue to please, for there were among the spectators those who wanted to understand something of what was being enacted before them. Gradually it became customary to recite certain parts in the dialect used in the district. Finally the wish arose in people to participate, to take part in the experiences themselves. But the thing was still quite strange to them. We must remember that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was not as yet the knowledge of the Holy Mysteries, of the Mystery of Christmas, for instance, which we today regard as a matter of course. We must remember that although the people year in and year out attended Mass, and at Christmas the Midnight Mass, they did not possess the Bible, which was only there for the priests to read; they were only acquainted with a few extracts from the Holy Scripture. And it was at first really to acquaint them with what had once occurred that these things were dramatised in this fashion for them by the priests. The people first learnt to know of them in this way.

Something must now be said which I must ask you not to misunderstand, but it may be brought forward because it expresses purely historical truth. It was not that the participation in the Christmas plays proceeded from some mysterious influence or anything of that nature; what attracted the people was rather the desire to take part in what was presented before them and to draw nearer to it. At last they were permitted to share in it. Things had to be made more comprehensible to the laity. And this clearer understanding progressed step by step. At first the people understood absolutely nothing about the child lying in the manger. They had never seen such a thing as a child in a manger. Earlier when they were not allowed to understand anything, they accepted it: but now they wanted to share in it, it had to be made comprehensible to them. And so a cradle was brought and as the people passed, each one took part by rocking the child for a moment. Thus similar details were developed in which they took part. Indeed there were even districts in which all was quite serious at first, but when the child was brought, they made a tremendous uproar, everyone screaming and showing by dancing and shouting the pleasure they felt in the birth of the child. It was then received in a mood that felt a passion for movement and a desire to experience the story. But in this story lay something so great and mighty that, out of this quite profane feeling there gradually evolved that holy awe of which I have already spoken. The subject itself impressed its holiness on a performance which could not at first have been called in the least holy. Precisely in the Middle Ages the holy story of Christmas had first to conquer mankind. And it conquered the people to such an extent that in the performance of their plays, they desired to prepare their fives with this moral intensity.

What was it that thus overcame the feelings, the soul of man? It was the sight of the Child, of that which remains holy in man whilst his other three bodies unite with the Earth evolution. Even though in some districts at different times the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, yet it lay in human nature to evolve this holy regard for the child-nature, which is connected with what entered into the development of Christianity from the very beginning. And that is the consciousness of the necessity of a reunion of what remains stationary in man when he commences his Earth evolution, with what has connected itself with Earth-man, so that man gives over to the Earth the wood from which the cross must be made with which man has to form the new union. In the more remote times of Christian development in Central Europe, nothing but the conception of Easter was popularised, and only in the manner described was the conception of Christmas gradually developed. For what appears in ‘Heliand,’ for instance, was composed by various individuals, but never became popular.

The observance of Christmas grew into a popular custom as described, and it shows in a manner really startling how man acquired the thought of the union with the child-nature, that pure and noble childlike character that appeared in a new form in the Jesus-Child. When we so grasp the power of this thought that it lives in the soul as the only conception in our existence capable of uniting all men, then we have the true Christian conception. This Christ-Thought becomes mighty in us, it becomes something which must grow strong within us if the further Earth evolution is to proceed aright. Let us remember here how far removed man is in his present Earth-existence from what is really contained in the depths of the Christ-Thought.

A book by Ernst Haeckel has recently appeared called Thoughts about Life, Death, Immortality and Religion, in Connection with the World-War. Now a book by Ernst Haeckel certainly springs from a deep love of truth, certainly the deepest truth is sought for in it. The following may give some idea of what the book is intended to convey. It sets out to indicate what now transpires on the Earth, how the nations are at war with each other, living in hate, how countless deaths take place every day. All these thoughts which obtrude so painfully on mankind are mentioned by Haeckel, but naturally with the underlying thought of considering the world from his own point of view. We have said that Haeckel may, even by Spiritual Science, be considered a profound investigator. His point of view may indeed lead to other results, but leads to what can be observed in the newer phases of Haeckel’s evolution. Now Haeckel forms thoughts on the world-war. He too remarks how much blood is flowing, how greatly we are encompassed by death. And he asks: ‘Can the thoughts of religion endure by the side of this? Can one anyhow believe (he asks) that some wise Providence—a kindly God—rules the world, when one sees so many dying every day through mere chance (so he says)? They do not perish from any cause attributable to a wise cosmic ordering, but through the accident of meeting a possible shell. Have these thoughts of the wisdom of Providence any meaning in the face of this? Must not just such events as these prove that man is nothing more than what external materialistic history of evolution declares and that all earth existence is fundamentally directed not by a wise Providence but by chance? In the face of this, can there be any other thought than that of resignation (continues Haeckel), of saying: ‘We give up our bodies and pass out into the thought of the cosmic all?’ But if one questions further, (though Haeckel does not put the question), if this! all’ is nothing but the play of endless atoms, has the life of man any meaning in earth-existence? As said above, Haeckel does not pursue the question, but in his Christmas book he gives the answer: ‘These very events which touch us so painfully show us that we have no right to believe that a good Providence or wise cosmic ruling or anything of the kind moves and Eves in the whole world. So we must be resigned—we must put up with things as they are!’

And this is a Christmas book! A book nobly and honourably planned. But this book is based on the remarkable prejudice that it is useless to seek for a meaning to the earth. That it is denied to humanity to seek in a spiritual way for a meaning!

If we only observe the external course of events we do not see this meaning. Then it is as Haeckel says. And at that it has to remain, that is, that this life has no meaning! That is his opinion. A purpose may not be sought. But perhaps someone else may say: The events now taking place show us, for the very reason that, if we look at them externally and point only to the fact that numberless bullets are ending the lives of men today, they appear without purpose—those very events show us that we must seek more deeply to find the purpose. We must not simply seek a purpose in that which happens on the Earth alone, when these human souls forsake the body, but we must investigate the life that now begins for them when they pass through the gate of death. In short, another man may say: ‘Just because no meaning can be found in the external, it must be sought elsewhere, in the supersensible.’ Is that anything else than to take the same thought into another—quite different—domain? Haeckel’s science may lead those who think as he does today to deny all meaning to Earth-existence. It may seem to prove, from what happens so painfully today, that the Earth-life as such has no meaning. But if we grasp it in our way—as we have often done before—then this very same science becomes a starting point for showing what deep and mighty purpose can be discovered by us in the world phenomena. For this, however, there must be the spiritual active in the world; we must be able to unite ourselves with the spiritual. For man in the sphere of erudition does not yet understand how to let that power work on him which has so wonderfully conquered the hearts and souls that on beholding the Christmas Mystery, out of a profane comprehension, there has arisen a holy understanding. Because the learned cannot yet grasp this and cannot yet unite the Christ-Impulse with what they see in the external world, it is impossible for them to find a real true meaning in the Earth. And so we must say: The Science of which man is so proud today—and rightly so—with all its immense progress is not in itself in a position to lead man to any satisfactory philosophy. It can just as easily lead to a lack of sense and meaning as to a meaning for the Earth, just as in any other domain. Let us consider science in the later centuries, especially in the nineteenth and up to the present day—evolving so proudly all its wonderful laws, and let us look at what surrounds us today. It has all been produced by science. We no longer burn, as Goethe did, a night-light. We bum something else and illumine our rooms in a very different fashion. All that possesses our souls today, as the result of our science has arisen through the immense progress of which man is so proud, so justly proud. But how does this science work? It works beneficially when man evolves what is good. But today, just through its very perfection, it produces invincible instruments of murder. Its progress serves the cause of destruction as well as that of construction. Just as on the one side that science of which Haeckel is a follower may lead either to sense and meaning or to nonsense and lack of meaning, so, in spite of its greatness, it may serve both destruction and construction. And if it depended on science alone what was produced, then, from the same sources from which it constructs, science would bring forth ever more and more fearful instruments of destruction. Science itself has no direct impulse to bring humanity forward! If this could be realised, science would then, and then only, be valued in the right way. We should then know that in the evolution of man there must be something more than man can reach by means of science.

What is this science of ours? In reality none other than the tree growing out of Adam’s grave; and the time is drawing near when man will recognise this. The time will come when man will know that this tree must become the wood which is the Cross of humanity and which can only become a blessing when on it is crucified and properly united with it, that which lies on the further side of death, yet lives already here in man. That it is to which we look up in the Holy Christmas Eve, if we feel this Mystery of the sacred Festival aright—and that is what can be represented in childlike fashion, and yet is the cloak of the greatest Mysteries. Is it not really wonderful that in this simple way it could be brought home to people that something had appeared which, though it cannot extend beyond childhood, yet governs a man during his whole Earth-life? It is related to that to which man, as a supersensible being, belongs. Is it not wonderful that this, which is in the highest degree invisible and supersensible, could approach so near to those simple human souls through simple pictures such as these?

Indeed those who are learned will also have to follow the same path as those simple souls. There was even a time when the Child was not represented in the cradle nor in the manger, but when the sleeping child was placed upon the Cross I The Child sleeping on the Cross! A wonderful, profound picture, which expresses the whole thought I wished to lay before your souls today.

Cannot this thought in reality be very simply stated? Indeed it can! Let us just seek the origin of those impulses which today oppose each other so terribly in the world. Whence do they originate? Whence originates all that today is in such bitter conflict, all that makes life so difficult for humanity? It all originates in what we become in the world after the time of our earliest recollection. Let us go back beyond that time, let us go right back to the point when we are called the little children who may enter the kingdom of heaven. We do not find it then, there was then nothing in the human soul of what today is strife and hatred. In this simple way the thought can be expressed and today we must visualise spiritually that there is in the human soul an original condition rising above all human strife and disharmony.

We have often spoken of the old Mysteries, which were intended to awaken in the nature of man that which allowed him to perceive the supersensible; and we have said that the Mystery of Golgotha represents on the stage of history clearly for all mankind, the story of the supersensible Mystery. Now that which unites us with the true Christ-Thought is within us, it is really in us—to enable us to have moments in our life (this is to be taken literally not symbolically) moments when, in spite of everything we may be in the external world, we can yet make that which we have received as children alive within us, moments in which we behold man in his development between birth and death, and can feel the child-nature in ourselves.

In my public lecture on Johann Gottlieb Fichte, I might have added a few words more—perhaps they might not have been thoroughly understood then, they would, however, have explained many things which dwelt in this particularly devout person. I might have said why he became such a very special person; it was because, in spite of his age, he retained more than most people of the child-nature. There is more of the child-nature in such men than in others. Men like these, men who retain more of their child-nature, keep their youth and do not grow old as do others. This is really the secret of many great men, that they can in a sense remain children—speaking relatively, of course, for they have had to lead the life of men.

The Christmas Mystery appeals to the child-nature within us. It points us to the vision of the Divine Child that is destined to take up the Christ—and to which we look up as to something over which the Christ, Who went through Golgotha for the salvation of the Earth, already hovers.

Let us be conscious of this when we give over the imprint of our higher man, our physical body, to the Earth. This is not a mere physical event, for something spiritual takes place. But this spiritual event only takes place aright because the Christ-Being, by going through the Mystery of Golgotha, has flowed into the aura of the Earth. We do not behold the entire Earth in its completeness unless we visualise also the Christ, Who, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is united with it. We may pass Him by, as we pass by anything supersensible if we are merely equipped in a materialistic sense; but we cannot pass Him by if the Earth is really to have for us a true and actual purpose. Everything rests upon our being able to awaken in ourselves that which opens our gaze to the spiritual world.

Let us make this Christmas Festival what it should be to us, a Festival which not merely serves the past—but also the future; that future which is gradually to bring forth the birth of the spiritual life for the whole of humanity. We must unite ourselves with the prophetic feeling, with the prophetic premonition, that such a birth of the spiritual life in man must be accomplished, that a mighty Christmas must work to influence the future of humanity, a bringing to birth of that which in the thoughts of man gives a meaning to the Earth, that meaning which became the objective of the Earth when the Christ-Being united Himself with the Earth-aura, through the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us meditate at Christmas on the thought how from the depths of darkness light must enter human evolution. The old light of the spiritual life which was gradually dying out before Golgotha had to pass away and has now to arise anew, it must since Golgotha be born again through the consciousness in the human soul that this soul of man is connected with what the Christ had become to the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha.

When more and more men arise who can thus grasp Christmas in the sense of Spiritual Science, it will become a force in the hearts and souls of men which has a meaning for all times, whether in such times as men give themselves over to feelings of happiness, or when they must feel sorrow and pain such as we feel today, when we think of the great misery of our time.

Concerning the vision of the spiritual which gives meaning to the Earth, it has been expressed in beautiful words which I will put before you today: (Here follows a rough translation):

That which gives mine eyes the power
To cause deformity to disappear,
To turn dark nights to radiant suns of brightness,
To turn disorder into order, and decay to life;
Life, which through the ages,
Weaves invisibly in space,
Leading me on to th' eternal sources
Of the Beautiful, the True, the Good.
The source of all Delight,
In which immersed, my strivings are but vain.
Life it is, which since in Urania’s eyes I gazed,
The deep, the clear, the blue—pure flames of light
I have silently perceived and looked upon.
Since then I see those eyes in deeps profound,
The only permanent things in my existence,
They live on in me, part of my life,
And see through my beholding.

And in another small poem:

Nothing is but God, and God is naught but Life.
Thou knowest this, as I myself know too,
And yet our knowing would ne’er have power to be,
Unless t’were knowledge of the Life of God.
How fain would I devote myself to this!
But where shall it be found; if into some knowledge it doth flow,
Forthwith it is transformed into a semblance.
Commingled with Him, surrounded by His sheath,
When thou dost wake the true sheath to behold,
It is thy Self!
Let all that perishable is, decay.
Henceforth let God alone dwell in thy strivings,
Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet Eves on;
Then will the Sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine.

It is true men do not always know how to understand those who lead them to a vision of the spiritual which gives a meaning to the Earth. The materialists are not alone in this. Others, who believe themselves to be no materialists because they continually repeat, ‘God, God,’ or ‘Lord, Lord,’ too often do not know what to make of these guides to the spiritual. For what could one make of a man who says:

‘Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet Eves on;
Then will the sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine

who sees Divine Life in everything? He might be reproached with holding the world away from him, with denying its existence. Such a man might be accused of denying the existence of the world. His contemporaries accused him of denying God, of being an atheist, and drove him away from the High School on that account. For the words I have just quoted were written by Johann GottEeb Fichte. He is a case in point. When there Eves on in a human soul aU through his earthly life that which dwells as an impulse from the Mystery of Golgotha and the notes of which may be heard in the Christmas Mystery, a way is then opened in which we can find that consciousness in which our own ego flows in union with the Earth-Ego. For the Earth-Ego is the Christ. In this way something is developed in man which must become greater and greater if the Earth is to achieve that evolution for which it was destined from the beginning of aU things.

And so from the spirit of our Spiritual Science we have today tried to transform the Christmas thought into an impulse; and while looking up to it from that which is now going on around us, we shall try not to behold a want of purpose in the Earth-evolution, but rather in the midst of sorrow and pain, even in strife and hatred, to see something which finally helps man a step forward.

More important than the search for the causes of what happens today is this: that we should turn our gaze to the possible effects, to those effects which we must conceive as bringing healing to mankind.

That nation or people will do the right thing which is able to fashion something healing for mankind in the future, from what springs up out of the blood-saturated Earth. But this healing can only come about when man finds his way to the spiritual worlds: when he does not forget that not only a transitory but an eternal Christmas exists, an everlasting bringing to birth of the Divine Spiritual in the physical Earth-man.

Especially today let us retain the holiness of this thought in our souls, and keep it there, even beyond the Christmas season, during the time which can be for us in its external course, a symbol of the evolution of fight. Darkness, the most intense Earth-darkness prevails at this time of the year. But we know that when the Earth lives in the deepest outer darkness, the Earth-soul experiences its light, its greatest time of growth begins.

The spiritual time of awakening coincides with Christmas and with this spiritual awakening should be united the thought of the spiritual awakening of the earth-evolution through Christ Jesus. For this reason the Christmas Festival was placed just at this particular time.

In this cosmic and at the same time earthly and moral sense let us fill our souls with the thoughts of Christmas and then, strengthened and invigorated with this moral thought, let us, as far as we can, turn our gaze on everything around us, desiring what is right for the progress of events and especially as regards the present occurrences. And as we begin at once to make active within us the strength we have been able to acquire from this Christmas Festival, let us conclude once more by turning to the Guardian Spirit of those who have to take a difficult part in the great events of the times.

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the earth-men committed to your charge,
That, united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And for those who have already passed through the gates of death while fulfilling the severe tasks given to man as a result of the great demands of our present time, let us repeat those words again in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your charge,
That united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And may the Spirit Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, that Spirit Who, for the progress and salvation of the Earth, has made Himself known in the Mystery of Christmas, which men will gradually learn to understand better and better, may He be with you in the severe tasks that lie before you.