Mystery School tradition

From Anthroposophy

This covers the tradition in the ancient Mysteries and Mystery Schools from the Atlantean epoch through the various cultural ages of the current epoch, with a distinction of Initiation before and after the Mystery of Golgotha, as also covered in the Mysteries of the Spirit, the Son and the Father and related to the Michaelic Stream.

The initiatory processes, rituals and traditions have always been tuned to the specific maturity of Man's bodily principles in each time period, and and very much related to the culture of the age and it's natural state of consciousness influencing the state of soul of 'how Man stood in the world'. For more context see also the Development of the I and the Current Postatlantean epoch.

The goal of the Mystery Schools has always been to establish, maintain and develop the link between humanity and it's spiritual guidance. This to assure Mankind is aware of the origin and future goal of evolution (see also Occult Atom). This therefore requires a deep connection with the spiritual reality, hence the focus on initiation as the various and evolving ways for Man to connect, reach into this spiritual reality and communicate with spiritual beings.

After the Atlantean oracles or mystery schools, in the current Postatlantean epoch we can distinguish a Northern and Southern stream, and the

  • Northern Mysteries - see Scandinavian and Germanic mythology - 'nature mysteries', intimately bound up with nature, the Earth's growth forces and the stars, how the whole evolution of the universe was connected with (what came from) the Earth.
  • Southern Mysteries or 'temple mysteries', based on the soul-experience and representation in symbols of the spiritual divine. For example gnostic wisdom, inspired by the cosmos, was connected with the world of the spirit and what took place in the far reaches of the universe.

Aspects

  • The Michaelic stream connecting the thread of Mystery School teachings across the ages
  • Midsummer and midwinter mysteries and the course of the year in ancient times (1922-12-23-GA219 and 1922-12-24-GA219)
  • Master lodges of the Mysteries include:
    • Turanian mysteries: School of Turanian Adepts (1907-02-18-GA096)
    • Externsteine near Teutoburg Forest in Germany - see Druidic and Trotten mysteries#3.2 - Externsteine (Germany)
    • Druidic and Trotten mysteries:
      • mother lodge in Scandinavia 'Druid' or ‘Drottes’ Lodge (1904-09-30-GA093), Jutland Mystery center in Denmark (see 1916-12-GA173 lectures on Nerthus)
      • an important initiatiate School of Trotten Mysteries in the North of present-day Russia (1906-07-29-GA097)
    • important Lodge by the Black Sea, see also Colchis Mysteries (1912-05-29-GA155, 1923-09-10-GA228)
    • Mystery School in current Burgenland
      • .. where around 2500 BC, Gilgamesh was brought to the great Atlantean being, Xisuthros, who belonged to higher hierarchies and who during the Atlantean time lived in the sphere of humanity but was afterwards transported from the world of men to dwell in higher regions (see lecture extracts covering Gilgamesh and Eabani on Individuality of Rudolf Steiner)

initiation

  • in ancient times an initiator pulled the etheric body out of the pupil's physical body to imprint experiences from spiritual worlds into it. From trances to three and one-half day temple sleeps, it was always the hierophant who mediated everything into the pupil's consciousness (1909-05-05-GA266)
  • The purpose of ancient initiation was also to get the people over the fear of becoming mortal in their soul.
    • in ancient mystery schools initiation was a life or death procedure, with trials to concur fear of death. This required both skill and great courage. Those who did not make it were killed. The ones who surpassed all trials became 'newborn (1910-06-18-GA266/2)
    • Because of the prevailing group soul, the initiation of single person sufficed to have an effect on their surrounding (1921-06-28-GA205)

Other

  • pagan Attis cult, (GA148, GA149, GA175 - see some references here, and wikipedia topic page)
    • and Phrygian Easter festival (note: Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now Asian Turkey)

Timeline

Atlantean epoch
  • Atlantean oracles of the seven planets (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) - as well as the secret Vulcan Oracle
  • Turanian mysteries (1907-02-17-GA097 and 1907-02-18-GA096 on School of Turanian Adepts)
  • descriptions: see 1907-03-07-GA097
Current Postatlantean epoch
  • In the Atlantean epoch teachers placed their stu­dents into a hypnotic trance and used this sleep state to enlighten their students. Astral bodies were identical enough so as to bring to all people one primal wisdom. After the flood, in the Current Postatlantean epoch, such unified wisdom was no longer possible and one has different teachings per geographical and cultural age. (1907-02-17-GA097)
  • The Southern stream and Northern stream, see also Christ Impulse - meeting of two streams#Southern and Northern streams
  • Sources of spiritual science providing a concise view on sources of the last 2500 years, from the Greek culture onwards

Northern stream

Southern stream

  • Persian Mysteries
    • Mythras cult and bull mysteries
  • Egyptian Mysteries: (see also Egyptian mythology)
    • Isis and Osiris cult
    • Hermes initiation
  • Mysteries of Adonis
  • Greek Mysteries:
    • Orphic mysteries (or Orpheus)
    • Ephesian (Mysteries of Artemis)
    • Eleusian
    • Chthonic
    • Samothracian mysteries (Kabiri)
  • other
    • school of St. Paul and Dionysius the Areopagite in the 1st century in Greece, tradition upto the 6th century
  • Europe in middle ages - before the fifth cultural age

Fifth cultural age

  • current Anglo-German cultural age:
    • Rosecrucian schooling
    • contemporary spiritual science after 1879
    • see more coverage in the Positioning section on Free Man Creator School

Inspirational quotes

1909-05-06-GA057

.. the Mysteries are schools for the training of those faculties which enable the soul of man to have actual vision of the spiritual worlds. They are schools, where in a methodical and systematic way, man's soul is so guided and trained that he can finally perceive the higher worlds with spiritual eyes and ears.

Although modern scholarship knows little of the Mysteries, they are nevertheless still in existence today and are the means whereby Man can be led consciously to the spiritual worlds. And the whole content of spiritual science, everything that is communicated in spiritual science, is, in its essence, Mystery-wisdom.

The Man who so trains his soul that he can perceive in higher worlds, is an Initiate. Through all the ages there have been centres for developing the faculty of fully conscious clairvoyance ..

1916-12-21-GA173

Mystery-truths are not the trifles certain mystic sects play around with today. Mystery-truths are grand and powerful impulses within human evolution. ... For the sake of self-knowledge it is necessary for mankind today to know what lived in such Mysteries. .. The mystery of mankind in its connection to all the mysteries of the cosmos, how it works when Man enters on the physical Earth into his physical existence, all this, at a certain period of earthly evolution, lay more deeply than anywhere else at the basis of these ancient northern Mysteries.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.432 shows a geographical view on the Current Postatlantean epoch, with the center of culture over millenia moving across the Southern most advanced stream described extensively by spiritual science. Meanwhile the Northern stream developed differently, as expressed in the Northern Scandinavian and Germanic mythology and ancient Mystery tradition, with initiation centers such as the Hibernian, Druidic and Trotten Mysteries (see Schema FMC00.437).

For more on the northern and southern streams, see Christ Impulse - meeting of two streams#Southern and Northern streams

It is important to realize that the development of humanity was not limited to the key cultures highlighted in the descriptive labels given to characterize each cultural age. For example the Mayan and Jewish cultures also belong to the third 'Egypto-Chaldean' cultural age. Also the Chinese culture is not a focus in the descriptions of the development of humanity.

Also shown are for reference are the Gobi desert and Tibet, see the migrations on Schemas FMC00.205 and variants on Atlantean epoch. For the geographical movement of the epicentrum of cultural height across the globe, see Schema FMC00.211 on Human races.

FMC00.432.jpg

Schema FMC00.437 provides a simple overview positioning key Mysteries of the Northern stream, with - in red - a few of the important Mystery Centers as described by Rudolf Steiner (see quotes and references on the right). The dotted line represents the Southern stream in the fourth cultural age of the current Postatlantean epoch. The arrows represent the impulse for the age of the intellectual soul coming from the Colchis Mysteries (to both south and north).

FMC00.437.jpg

Schema FMC00.545 provides an overview of a selection of well known historical sites with remnants dating back from ancient cultures. Most belong to the Current Postatlantean epoch. Some contain remnants of ancient cultures from migrated cultures of the Atlantean epoch.

Sources of spiritual science have pointed out that certain sites date from Atlantean or Lemurian cultures or epochs [eg Externsteine (Germany) or Eastern Island], and quite some of them have been initiation sites or temples related to the ancient Mysteries.

See also Schema FMC00.214E on Atlantean epoch for the notes to that Schema, and compare the geographic location of underwater sites such as Yonaguni or Bimini Road.

Note and disclaimer: the intention of this Schema cannot be to be exhaustive, it merely provides a sample as an entry point and reference point for exploring further.

Various authors have gathered Rudolf Steiner's hints on this topic, see ao Gsänger, Wachsmuth. Recently also various documentaries have become available online that provide (irrespective of storytelling and interpretations) some beautiful imagery, eg BAM Builders of the Ancient Mysteries (2020) or Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalyse (2022).

FMC00.545.jpg

Lecture coverage and references

Coverage overview

Rudolf Steiner spends a whole series of lectures on the Mysteries in December 1923. They are published spread over GA232 and GA233, depending on the edition.

The cycle 1923-12-GA233 is called 'World History in the light of Anthroposophy'

  • Ephesian Mysteries of Artemis (1923-11-30-GA233?, 1923-12-02-GA323 also 1923-12-02-GA323)
    • extra on Mysteries Ephese in 1923-12-28-GA233
  • Hibernian Mysteries (1923-12-07-GA323, 1923-12-08-GA323, 1923-12-09-GA323)
  • Mysteries of the Samothracian Kabiri (1923-12-21-GA232) - these are also covered in 1924-09-05-GA346
  • Chthonic and Eleusinian Mysteries (1923-12-14-GA323)

further also

  • Mysteries of Hybernia and Ephese (1923-12-27-GA233)
  • Transition for ancient Mysteries to Mysteries of the middle ages (1923-12-22-GA233)

Furthermore the Karmic Relationship lectures 1924-GA23x discuss the School of Chartres.

Furthermore 1924-01-GA233A 'Rosicrucianism and Modern Initiation' complementary covers:

  • middle-ages (1924-01-04-GA233A, 1924-01-05-GA233A)
  • Mysteries of Adonis - and the link to Easter and the festivals (1924-01-19-GA233A)
  • 18-19th century schools (1924-01-12-GA233A)

Source extracts

1907-02-17-GA097

In those past ages teaching was a pouring out of wisdom; it came from within, not from outside the human being. Between that age and ours, there was an intervening age, the Atlantean epoch. In the middle of this age human beings could begin to see the outlines of things and beings. Everything was still enveloped in a vague mist of color, penetrated by sounds that had something to say, sounds that were wise. A teaching arose at that time, which was developed later into religious teaching. Vast ages ago there was a great school of adepts there. All that we learn today began with them, the Turanian adepts.

[Note: see ao Turanian stream#1910-09-01-GA123]

It has been transmitted down through the ages to the present day. Teaching was very different than it is today. We must bear in mind that humanity was in a stage of transition. The wisest of those people would be unable to count to five. But if one focused on the inner life, one could enlighten them and teach them wisdom through imagery. One could not have explained a doctrine of wis­dom to them; they would have failed to understand such a thing.

The people of that time did not have the kind of clear day con­sciousness we have. Rather, they could return easily to a state where God could illuminate them from within.

Teachers placed their stu­dents into a hypnotic trance. It was not the same hypnosis with which so much nonsense is done today, but it was something similar. The teachers used this sleep state to enlighten their students.

At that time they had an esoteric script, or esoteric language. There are mantras today that contain more than their thought value alone, but, com­pared to the sound and tone combinations of the past, they are mere shadows. These tone combinations were simple; but when such a tone was struck it reinstated a lost capacity to illuminate. That world of inner enlightenment then entered human beings synthetically, and they could see the spirits of the world at work just as before.

The disciples received formulas and certain signs from their teachers, and they then could perceive the secrets of the world directly. For exam­ple, this sign told them how a plant comes into being out of a seed.

[illustration of a spiral]

If not explained, a modern person would neither think of anything in particular nor feel anything when viewing this sign. It directly effected the people of that age, however, when they saw it or when it was formed in front of them. The formulas used at that time were taught to the peoples who came later by the founders of religions.

As we go farther back in time, the world soul was more unified.

During sleep, the astral bodies of all human beings are still somewhat similar; but during the Atlantean age, astral bodies were always the same. One could bring to all people one primal wisdom. After the great flood had passed over Atlantean humanity, a unified wisdom was no longer possible. One had to teach in India according to what the Indian body required, differently in Persia, differently in Egypt, differ­ently with the Greeks and Romans, and differently again with the ancient Germanic races. Nevertheless, within all true forms of reli­gion, the common element from which each had arisen continued to live.

In Atlantis enlightenment meant imparting life, not teaching. The sign of the spiral awakened an immediate feeling sensation. Today feelings must first be awakened by thoughts.

The seven peti­tions of the Lord's Prayer were also once given in the form of a scale of seven tones, together with seven specific colors and fragrances. In this way, disciples in Atlantis experienced the sevenfold essence of the human being.

Christ, the greatest of the religious teachers, poured this into the Lord's Prayer. Everyone who prays the Lord's Prayer is affected by it. It is not really a mantra, though it may have mantric powers. It is a "thought mantra." Of course, its greatest power was in the original human language, but because it is precisely a thought mantra, it will not lose its power even when translated into a thousand languages. We can digest food without knowing the laws of digestion; similarly, we have the fruit of the Lord's Prayer without knowledge. One who has the higher knowledge, however, will receive an entirely different fruit from it.

Religious truths followed such paths. Our souls were all asleep at one time within the soul of the world, which was then divided into many members and drawn down into many bodies. Spiritual percep­tion was darkened as was the possibility of invoking the original state. Religious teachings are only a weak echo in thoughts and words, especially the religious forms and rules derived from the spiritual world. The wisdom of the Old Testament still speaks of ideas, even the original ideas. A dim reflection of the original ideas lives in these ideas; but that ancient wisdom is not lost but still sleeps within our souls. Lifting it into clear consciousness is the task of spiritual sci­ence. After their final incarnation, when human beings have come to know all of the external world, they will be lifted to their original clairvoyance, bringing new enlightenment, in clear consciousness, with them.

1908-05-19-GA103

is about the Esoteric School of Paul and Dionysius the Areopagite

If we have now understood this properly, we come to a deeper comprehension of the present human being and we are in a position to repeat and to understand better what has been taught in Esoteric Christianity from the beginning. This Esoteric Christianity has always been fostered alongside the outer Christian exoteric teaching.

I have often pointed out that Paul, the great apostle of Christianity, used his powerful, fiery gift of eloquence to teach Christianity to the people, but that at the same time he founded an esoteric school, the director of which was Dionysius, the Areopagite, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. In this Christian Esoteric School at Athens which was directly founded by Paul himself, the purest Spiritual Science was taught.

And now, having brought together the necessary material in the above observations, we shall be able to place before our souls what was taught there.

This school also taught that …

1908-05-23-GA103

Each age must have its special function, its special truths.

Why is it that we can speak today of reincarnation, etc.? Why are we able to sit together in such an assembly as this and foster spiritual science?

We can do so, because all of the souls which are present within you today have been incarnated upon the Earth in so and so many bodies and so and so many times. Very many of the souls which are within you now lived at one time in the Germanic countries where the Druid priests walked among you and brought to your souls spiritual wisdom in the form of myth and saga. And because your soul received it in that form at that time, it is now in the position to receive it in another form, the anthroposophical. At that time it was in the form of pictures—today it is in the form of anthroposophy.

But then it would not have been possible to impart truth in its present form. Do not imagine that the ancient Druid priest would have been able to impart the truth in the form in which it is presented today. Anthroposophy is the form befitting the humanity of the present or of the immediate future. In later incarnations truth will be proclaimed, and men will work for it in quite different forms, and what is now called Anthroposophy will be related as something remembered, just as we now relate the sagas and fairy-tales.

Anthroposophists should not be foolish enough to say that in ancient times there existed only stupidities and childish ideas, and that we alone have advanced the world so gloriously. Those, for example, who pretend to be monists do this. But we are working in spiritual science in preparation for the next age. For if our present age were not here, the next would likewise not come. ...

So we must understand clearly that there is nothing absolutely fixed in the forms of truth, but that what corresponds to a particular age of human evolution, always becomes known. That greatest impulse of evolution had, as it were, to descend even into the life customs of that time. For it had to clothe the highest truth in language and functions befitting the understanding of the particular period in question.

Therefore by means of a kind of Dionysian rite or wine sacrifice, the Christ had to tell how mankind could raise itself to the Godhead. One should not fanatically ask why Christ changed the water into wine. The age should be taken into consideration. Through a sort of Dionysian rite, Christ had to prepare for what was to come.

1909-05-06-GA057

is called 'The European Mysteries and Their Initiates'

In ancient times a kind of natural clairvoyance was a common heritage of the European peoples. Indeed Man's consciousness as it is today has evolved from that earlier state of clairvoyant consciousness. With these ancient clairvoyant faculties, Man was able to perceive certain connections of his life, and what he so perceived was then expressed in the legends and myths which speak of goblins, elfin-beings, dwarfs and the like. Now these legends and myths are very different in character. They were based on what Man was able to see with his clairvoyant faculties, but when we study them we find on the one hand certain resemblances and on the other outstanding differences, simply because the clairvoyant powers of men were by no means the same. There is a much greater similarity in the more important mythological figures — the figures of Gods and Heroes in the sagas. These sagas, too, were the outcome of clairvoyance, but in a different sense.

The great mythological figures lead us back to the experiences of those who were Initiates in the ancient Mysteries. It is not easy for our present consciousness to form a true conception of these ancient Mysteries and their Initiates, for the nature of our education and the knowledge resulting therefrom does not conduce to an understanding of the nature of Initiation — far from it!

If we were to speak of the nature of the Mysteries and their Initiates in the language of current thought, we should say that the Mysteries are schools for the training of those faculties which enable the soul of man to have actual vision of the spiritual worlds. They are schools, where in a methodical and systematic way, man's soul is so guided and trained that he can finally perceive the higher worlds with spiritual eyes and ears. Although modern scholarship knows little of the Mysteries, they are nevertheless still in existence to-day and are the means whereby man can be led consciously to the spiritual worlds. And the whole content of spiritual science, everything that is communicated in spiritual science, is, in its essence, Mystery-wisdom.

The Man who so trains his soul that he can perceive in higher worlds, is an Initiate. Through all the ages there have been centres for developing the faculty of fully conscious clairvoyance and the aim of the present lecture is to give a cursory survey of the European Mysteries.

For this purpose we must go back to ancient pre-Christian times and try to visualise what went on in the occult schools of Initiation and how they influenced civilisation and culture in general. You have often heard how man to-day can be led to the Initiates, how his thinking, feeling and willing can be so trained that he can set out on the path leading to the 'Mothers'. This is the path which the pupils of all the Mysteries have had to tread in quest of fully conscious clairvoyance.

more on: Druidic and Trotten mysteries#1909-05-06-GA057

1909-07-01-GA112

describes the Bull, Lion, Eagle initiation in ancient mysteries, in context of the different evangelists of the gospels

If we now wish to understand the position of the other Evangelists in this matter we must recall various points that have already been established in the previous lectures. We learned, for example, that there existed certain lofty spiritual beings who transferred their sphere of action to the sun when the latter detached itself from the earth; and it was pointed out that their outer astral form was in a sense the counterpart of certain animal forms here on earth.

  • There was first, the form of the Bull spirit, the spiritual counterpart of those animal natures the essence of whose development lies in what could be called the nutritional and digestive organization. The spiritual counterpart is naturally of a lofty spiritual nature, however inferior the earthly image may appear. So we have certain exalted spiritual beings who transferred their sphere to the sun whence they influenced the earth sphere, appearing there as the Bull spirits.
  • Others appear as the Lion spirits, whose counterpart lives in animal natures pre-eminently developed as to their heart and organs of circulation.
  • Then we have spiritual beings who are the counterparts of what we meet in the animal kingdom as eagle natures, the Eagle spirits.
  • And finally there are those that harmoniously unite, as it were, the other natures as in a great synthesis, the Man spirits. These were in a sense the most advanced.

[initiation - Atlantean oracles and Postatlantean mysteries]

Passing now to the old initiation, we find that this offered the possibility of beholding, face to face, the exalted spiritual beings that had outstripped man. But the manner in which primitive men had to be initiated, in accord with the demands of those ancient times, depended upon the origin of their descent — that is, whether from Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus. Even in Atlantis, therefore, there existed oracles in manifold variety. Some had adjusted their spiritual vision primarily to the beholding of what we have described as the Eagle spirits, while others saw the Lion spirits, the Bull spirits, or the Man spirits: the initiation accorded with the specific traits of the candidate. This differentiation was one of the characteristics of the Atlantean age, and certain echos of it have persisted into our own Post-Atlantean time. Thus you could find Mystery temples in Asia Minor, or in Egypt, where the initiation took a form that brought about the vision of the lofty spiritual beings as Bull spirits, or as Eagle spirits. And it was in the Mysteries that outer culture had its source.

  • The initiates who saw the lion form in the exalted spiritual beings conjured up in the lion body a sort of image of what they had beheld; but they saw as well that these spirits take part in the evolution of man. That is why they assigned a human head to the lion body, a concept that later became the sphinx.
  • Those who saw the spiritual counterparts as Bull spirits bore testimony to the spiritual world by introducing a Bull worship, which led on the one hand to the Apis Bull worship in Egypt, and on the other, to the worship of the Persian Mithras Bull; for everything we find in the way of outer cult usages among the different peoples derived from the initiation rites. There were initiates everywhere whose spiritual vision was focussed principally on the Bull spirits, others attuned primarily to the Eagle spirits, and so on.

To a certain extent we can even indicate the differences in the various modes of initiation. Those initiated, for example, in such a way that the spiritual beings appeared to them in the form of Bull spirits were informed principally concerning the secrets connected with man's glandular system, with what pertains to the etheric principle. And there is still another branch of the nature of Man into which they were initiated: the human properties that are firmly attached to the earth — welded to it, as it were. All this was grasped by those initiated in the Bull Mysteries.

Let us try to experience the soul mood of such initiates.

  • From their great teachers they had learned, in effect, that Man had descended from divine heights, that the primordial human beings were the descendants of divine-spiritual beings and that therefore they traced the first Man back to his Father-God. Thus Man came down to earth and passed from one Earth form to another. These men were primarily interested in what was bound to the Earth, as well as in all that men had experienced when they had thought of divine-spiritual beings as their ancestors. That was the attitude of the Bull initiates.
  • The Eagle initiates constituted a different case. These envisioned those spiritual beings who bear a most peculiar relation to the human being; but in order to understand this a few words must be said concerning the spiritual character of the bird nature.

Animals rank below human beings by reason of their inferior functions, and they represent, as you know, beings that solidified too early, having failed to retain the softness and flexibility of their body substance until such time as they might have been able to embody in human form. But in the bird nature we have beings that did not assume the lowest functions: instead they overshot the mark in the opposite direction. They failed to descend far enough, as it were; they remained in unduly soft substances, while the others lived in substances that were too hard. But as evolution continued, outer conditions compelled them to solidify; hence they hardened in a manner incompatible with a nature that had descended to the earth, being too soft. That is a rough description in untechnical terms, but it gives the facts. The archetypes of these bird natures are those spiritual beings who likewise overshot the mark, who remained in a substance too soft, and who consequently were carried, as it were, beyond what they might have become at a certain point of their development. They deviated from the normal development in an upward direction, while the rest diverged downwards.

The middle position is in a certain sense occupied by the Lion spirits, as well as by the harmonious ones, the Man spirits, who grasped the right moment to incorporate.

...

We have already seen how the Christ event was received by those in whom there lived something of the old initiation. According to the nature of their specific initiation they had been able in the past to see into the spiritual world; and those who had received the Bull initiation — throughout a great part of Egypt, for example — were aware of the following: We can gaze up into the spiritual world, and therefore the lofty spiritual beings appear to us as the counterparts of the Bull nature in man.

It was definitely prescribed in each of these initiation Mysteries how the candidate should be led up into the spiritual world, and the rites varied according to the manner in which he was to enter it. There were Mysteries of many different shades, especially in Asia Minor and in Egypt, where it was customary to guide the initiates in such a way as to bring them eventually to the Bull nature, or to a vision of the Lion spirits, as the case might have been. With this in mind let us now consider those who, as a result of many different kinds of initiations in the past, had become capable of sensing the Christ impulse, of comprehending Christ in the right way.

1910-06-18-GA266/2

translation A

In the ancient Egyptian mystery schools, those being prepared for initiation intended that the Incarnation was to be dedicated entirely to initiation, for it was a life or death procedure. They had to undergo trials that placed great demands on their courage, for example. They were shown things that could so stir up their fear that they fell over dead. If they lived through these trials, then they had arrived on the other shore, and were newborn. They had descended to the god in their inner being; they had encountered the drives, desires, and passion and their own bodies, and had victoriously withstood the encounter. They could now say of themselves : Ex Deo nascimur.

Now, one could ask about the evil that was encountered on the path to the inner god: does that also come from the gods? Here we must always say that it was originally something divine; that only we human beings made it into something evil.

The path of ecstasy was followed in the Druid mysteries. Those being initiated united themselves with the spirit that held sway every where in nature: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

In the Rosicrucian path the two paths are united; that is, from each was taken what is beneficial for us. The modern human being can no longer be initiated unconsciously. Since the advent of the Christ-principle, the human being must be present with his or her waking consciousness.

The meditations given to us by the Masters of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings are all directed toward the Christ, even though His name might not appear in them...

translation B

In ancient mystery schools, candidates resolved to devote their incarnation entirely to initiation, for it was a do or die procedure. They had to undergo trials that required great courage. Terrifying things were shown that killed some of them. But if they survived, they had come to the other shore and were reborn. They had descended to the God within them, had encountered drives, desires and passions in their bodies and had passed the test. Then they would say of themselves: Ex Deo nascimur. Well, one could ask: Does this evil that one encounters on the way to the inner God also come from the Gods? Here we must tell ourselves that it was originally something divine which we made into something evil.

Men trod the path of ecstasy in the Druidic mysteries. The candidate united himself with the spirit that worked everywhere in nature: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

These two paths are united in the Rosicrucian path, that is, what's good for us is taken from both. One can no longer initiate a modern unconsciously. Since the breaking in of the Christ-principle, a man must be there with his waking consciousness.

The meditations that the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings have given us are all directed towards the Christ, even if his name doesn't occur in them. The words: In the pure rays of light are arranged in such a way that if one makes oneself deaf and blind for one's immediate environment, one slowly lifts one's etheric body out of the physical one, and thereby one unites oneself with the Christ-etheric aura, which is now our earth's aura. If we would lift ourselves out of the body without our meditation's content, then our soul would be alone with itself. But now it's permeated by Christ and it experiences what Paul called “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.”

In the pure love for all beings. These words remind us that all soul things are woven out of love. This meditation is a slow dying of the lower ego. And we have the connection between the two paths in this dying into Christ and coming to life in him in: In Christo morimur. It's a conscious coming to life in the Christ spirit. That's why we've added the word Sanctum to the words Per Spiritum.

1912-04-12-GA136

In past times it was a strict rule—and this is still the case today for many initiations which still exist in the world—it was a strict rule that anyone who went in search of the path leading to initiation had to have a kind of guide, who was called in certain circles the spiritual guide, the guru.

What is the task of a guru? We have seen that in the course of development described above, we encounter certain dangers, dangers against which we must be warned. In the initiations of the past, which have been handed down traditionally, the guru's chief task was to warn against dangers. A guru may do this even today, if he or she is simply a person whom we consider as a kind of teacher as in ordinary science—a person whom we can trust. But it can easily happen that the new guru wants to be what the old guru had to be, even though the guru today cannot be allowed to have that relationship with the pupil, and this will be increasingly the case the more initiation adapts itself to the progressive course of human development.

Initiation really began everywhere in the manner described above. Rules were given, and each person had a personal guide and was told: Now you must concentrate upon this thing, and now upon that; now you must do this exercise, and now that. Under strict guidance, a condition was produced in which the world of imagination appeared.

The modern person on the other hand—for that is the very nature of the modern human being—must pass over from imagination to inspiration through a strong effort of his or her own will, where in olden times this task was taken over by the guru who led the pupil from the stage of imagination to that of inspiration by means of certain influences to which the pupil was more easily amenable after having been led up to this stage of initiation.

What I have described to you, as something lying concealed in every human being, became an impulse which the guru transmitted to the pupil. This brought the pupil's imaginative, visionary life into order. But, in the process, the guru would gain complete control over the pupil who would become, as it were, an instrument in the teacher's hands. Therefore in all initiations of the past, and they are really the source of every religious faith, there was therefore a strict requirement that the guru, the initiator, should be above the possibility of exercising an immoral or unjust influence over the pupil. In his or her whole inner attitude the guru had to be above every kind of deceit, and success depended upon the guru's having attained to this stage of development. The guru had to use influence only to the extent of transmitting to the pupil the truth-images of the higher world that he or she had gained, thus rendering the pupil's path more easy.

1916-12-21-GA173

[Northern Mysteries - connection with Earthly, vs South Gnosis and cosmos]

These northern Mysteries were founded on something utterly different from the foundation of the Mysteries of Asia Minor, the Mysteries of the South. These Mysteries of the North were founded on something that was more intimately bound up with the life of the stars, with nature, with the Earth's growth forces, rather than that which was shown in the symbols of a temple.

Mystery-truths are not the trifles certain mystic sects play around with today. Mystery-truths are grand and powerful impulses within human evolution. Just as we cannot find our way back today through anthroposophy to gnosis, to the ancient gnostics, neither can mankind return to what the ancient Mysteries of the North once meant for human evolution. It would be a foolish misunderstanding to believe that such Mystery-truths are being revealed now because of a desire to return in some way to what lived in them. For the sake of self-knowledge it is necessary for mankind today to know what lived in such Mysteries.

For what in the northern Mysteries involved the whole evolution of the universe was connected with what came from the Earth, whereas the gnostic wisdom inspired by the cosmos was connected with what took place in the far reaches of the universe. The mystery of mankind in its connection to all the mysteries of the cosmos, how it works when Man enters on the physical earth into his physical existence, all this, at a certain period of earthly evolution, lay more deeply than anywhere else at the basis of these ancient northern Mysteries.

more on: Nerthus#1916-12-21-GA173

1923-02-02-GA221

If we look back to ancient times in human history we shall find, scattered about the inhabited earth, what are know as the Mysteries. We find that various groups of people, living their lives scattered about the earth, develop under the influence of the Mysteries. They do so outwardly—but more particularly in regard to culture and the life of the soul. We find that individuals are accepted into the Mysteries, according to their degree of maturity. There they undergo further development, which is to lead them to a particular grade of knowledge, of feeling, and willing. Then, when they have advanced in knowledge, in higher feeling, and higher willing, they step out again and move among the majority of mankind, giving guidance for the details of daily life, for the strengthening of the soul's inner work and of their will, their actual deeds. With regard to past ages of man, the best place in which to study such guidelines is actually the training of those preparing for initiation in the Mysteries.

Though not of course in the abstract, intellectual manner of today, the pupils in the Mysteries were led to know the world about them. Most importantly, they learned to know the so-called three kingdoms of nature and all that lives in them. In the lowest classes of our schools we learn, by way of all sorts of concepts and pictures, how we stand within the three realms of nature. Through concepts and ideas we learn to know mineral, plant and animal. We then seek there the key to understanding human life itself. Such concepts, with the intellectual soul-content imparted to people these days, did not exist among those working for initiation in the ancient Mysteries. Concepts did exist then; but they were not won, as today, through the exercise of observation and logic. Rather, people had to exercise their souls inwardly, so as to arrive eventually at inner pictures of mineral, of plant, and animal. These people did not absorb the abstract concepts of today but experienced pictures—pictures that intellectual modern man might find fantastic but, nevertheless, pictures. And man knew from direct experience that what he discovered, when he experienced these pictures, actually yielded him something that lived in the mineral, plant or animal—of what grew there, took form, and unfolded within them. This he knew: and he knew it from those pictures which to modern man would appear fantastic myths.

Ancient man knew that reality expressed itself in things which today are considered mere mythology. He could certainly say: ‘The animal before me has firm visible outlines.’ But these firm outlines were not what he tried to grasp or understand. He tried rather to follow the flowing, mobile, fluid quality of its life. He could not do this, however, in sharp outlines, in sharply defined concepts. He had to teach in pictures that were fluid, metamorphosing, changing. And thus it was taught in the Mysteries.

But when, on the basis of this Mystery-knowledge, a man was to rise to self-knowledge, he underwent a significant crisis in his soul. According to the type of knowledge available in those ancient times, early man obtained pictures of mineral, plant and animal. With his dreamlike consciousness, he could then see, as it were, into the inner realms of nature. From the content of the Mysteries he also received the guiding principles of self-knowledge, much as he did in later times. ‘Know Thyself’ has been an ideal in all civilizations, in all ages of human cultural development. But in progressing from his kind of imaginative, natural knowledge towards knowledge of himself, ancient man underwent an inner crisis of the soul. I can only describe the nature of the crisis by saying that when he learned to look at the nature of the mineral as it was spread before him man found fulfillment in his soul-life. He bore in himself the effects of physical-mineral processes. He bore in himself pictures of interweaving vegetative life, and also of animal life. In his world he was able to bring all these together: mineral, plant and animal. Looking back from the vantage point of the world around him into his own inwardness, he had, in his primitive type of memory, an inner picture of mineral, plant and animal, and of how they worked together.

1923-12-21-GA323

talks about the evocation of the kabiri in the Samothracian Mysteries. The same is also stated in 1922-12-04-GA218: a picture of the godhead appeared in the sacrificial smoke. See also evocation in

Then the pupil understood why on the altar there were placed before him three symbolic vessels or jars.

We once made use of a copy of these vessels here in an Eurhythmy presentation of Faust, and as you saw these three vessels, so they were seen in the Samothracian Mysteries, the Northern Greek Mysteries; but the essential thing was that through these vessels, these pitchers, in their whole symbolic form, a sacrificial ritual, a ritual of consecration took place.

A kind of incense was put into these three vessels, which was then kindled, and when the smoke poured out, three words of which we shall speak further tomorrow were uttered with mantric power by the celebrant. These words were uttered [sung] into the smoke which rose up above the vessels, and then there appeared the forms of the three Kabiri They appeared because the human breath breathed out through the mantric words, fashioned itself, and then imparted its form to the rising smoke, the incense arising from the substance which was incorporated into these symbolic vessels. While the pupil learnt to read in this way what was written in the smoke by his, own breathing, he learnt to read, at the same time, what the mysterious planets spoke to him from out of the great universe.

Now he knew that

  • the form assumed by the first of the Kabiri through the mantric word and its power represented the reality behind Mercury; in
  • the form assumed by the second Kabiri he learnt the reality of Mars; and
  • in that of the third Kabiri he learnt the reality of Apollo, the Sun.

Note: in a verse exchanged by Rudolf Steiner to Ita Wegman about their earlier incarnations together, it is mentioned ..

1923-12-22-GA232

Transition for ancient Mysteries to Mysteries of the middle ages

1924-01-12-GA233A

relates the way how students were taught in the past, with a narrative describing various aspects such as how students were taught to 'feel' the meaning of the six pointed star and the two etheric streams with their body, see the link between their body and the macrocosmos (eg nerves relation to the moon and sun), etc.

1924-09-05-GA346

Then came the mysteries which are reflected in the modem mass. The Catholic mass, the Armenian mass and other masses arose from the half new mysteries in a very complicated way, and even though they have become externalized, they still contain the complete initiation principle. What man can perceive when magical words awaken within him began to be present in these half new mysteries, instead of the god's presence in the ancient mysteries and the presence of forces which the gods sent in the semi-ancient mysteries. These words enable one to acquire very profound knowledge of the inner nature of sound, and intense feelings resound in them.

During the time of the half new mysteries human language and cultic language were two different things, and remnants of the latter are still present in individual religious confessions. In this cultic language everything depends upon rhythm, a deep understanding of sounds and an understanding of the way that sounds from the priest's mouth penetrate human hearts. The intonation of magical cultic words in sacred places enabled people to ascend to the forces of the gods for the first time.

  • The first human period — ancient mysteries — the gods descend.
  • Second human period — semi-ancient mysteries — the gods send their forces down.
  • Third human period — half new mysteries — man learns a magical language and begins to ascend to the forces of the divine world through the intonation of magical words.

This is why words were intoned during the third period of acts of consecration of man. The Kabiri element lived in all religious cults which arose during this third period. For the Kabiri services and sacrifices which were celebrated in Samothrace were brought into all of the half way new ceremonies in the act of consecration of man and into all the ceremonies which belong to This.

Let's place the Kabiri altar at Samothrace before our souls. The Kabirs who stood upon it as external relics were sacrificial urns that contained no ferments, but substances which men find if they can penetrate the inner spiritual aspect of matter. The sacrificial urns contained such substances. The sacrificial substances in the urns were ignited, and smoke ascended. The magical language created an Imagination of the intoned words in the rising smoke. Thus the way up to divine forces was outwardly visible in the sacrificial smoke. The priests who were surrounded by this smoke knew that they were in the right atmosphere for carrying out a transubstantiation.

As Aristotle explained to Alexander, the substances were mixed in such a way that a sacred Imagination emerged from the sacrificial smoke, and this showed one the way to the, gods. If people found this way, the priest's transubstantiation was a right one and the act of consecration of man was executed correctly. Those who celebrated and participated in it knew that it was an organ of cognition. For when the ceremonially shaped, magical words and prayers flamed up in the sacrificial smoke and streamed up to the gods, an apocalyptic revelation came down from above as a gift of grace. This was the third stage in the development of apocalyptic things and of an act of consecration of man.

1924-07-13-GA237

is on the School of Chartres. For an illustration of the four areas listed below, see Schemas FMC00.260B (table) and FMC00.260 (BBD illustration)

  • .. from the 6th, 7th or 8th century onwards — there was no direct connection with the spiritual world, nevertheless a certain awareness of this connection still found a haven of refuge, if I may put it so, in isolated centres of learning. In isolated centres of learning men still spoke, in knowledge, in the way they had spoken in the first Christian centuries. Nay more, it was possible for single, chosen human beings to receive deep inner impulses from the way in which the spiritual world was spoken of, — impulses enabling them, at certain times at least, to break through into the spiritual world. There were indeed isolated centres where teachings were given in a manner of which the people of today can have no conception.
  • This only came to an end in the 12th, 13th century .. Human beings on the earth had lost, to some extent, the connection with the spiritual world. And in those who lived above — who, while on earth, had still experienced such a connection, — the earthly conditions which they now beheld called forth a strangely painful feeling. They saw the slow death of what they themselves had still experienced on earth. Then from the super-sensible world they enthused-inspired-inspirited — certain individualities in the world of sense, so that here or there at any rate there might arise a home and centre for the real connection of man with the spiritual world.
  • Even until the 7th or 8th century — in a kind of echo of pre-Christian Initiation — Christianity was taught in centres that had remained as the high places of knowledge, relics of the ancient Mysteries. In those centres human beings were prepared, not so much by way of instruction, but by an education towards the Spirit — a training both bodily and spiritual.
    • 1- They were prepared for the moment when they might have at least a delicate vision of the spirituality that can manifest itself in the environment of man on earth. Then they looked outward to the realms of mineral and plant-nature and to all that lives in the animal and human kingdoms. And they saw, springing forth like an aura and fertilised in turn out of the cosmos, the spiritual-elemental beings that lived in all Nature. Then above all there appeared to them as a living Being, whom they addressed as they would address a human being — only it was a being of a higher kind, — the Goddess Natura. She was the Goddess whom they saw before them in her full radiance, in full reality of soul. They did not speak of abstract laws of Nature, they spoke of the creative power of the Goddess Natura, working creatively in all external Nature. She was the metamorphosis of Proserpine of antiquity. She was the ever-creating Goddess with whom he who would seek for knowledge must in a certain way unite himself. She appeared to him — appeared to him from every mineral, from every plant, from every creeping beast, from the clouds, the mountains, the river-springs. Of this Goddess who alternately in winter and in summer creates above the earth and beneath, — of this Goddess they felt: She is the hand-maid of that Divinity of whom the Gospels tell. She it is who fulfils the divine behests.
    • 2 - And when the seeker after knowledge had been sufficiently instructed by the Goddess about the mineral and plant and animal natures, when he was introduced into the living forces, then he learned to know from her the nature of the four Elements: — Earth, Water, Air and Fire. He learned to know the waving and weaving within the mineral and animal and plant kingdoms of the four Elements which pour themselves in all reality throughout the world: — Earth, Water, Fire, Air. He felt himself with his etheric body interwoven with the life of the Earth in its gravity, Water in its life-giving power, Air in its power to awaken sentient consciousness, Fire in its power to kindle the flame of the I. In all this he felt his human being interwoven, and he felt: This was the gift of instruction from the Goddess Natura — the successor, the metamorphosis of Proserpine. The teachers saw to it that their disciples should gain a feeling, an idea of this living intercourse with Nature — Nature filled with divine forces, filled with divine substance. They saw to it that their pupils should penetrate to the living and weaving of the Elements.
    • 3 - Then when they had reached this point, they were introduced to the planetary system. They learnt how with the knowledge of the planetary system there arises at the same time the knowledge of the human soul. “Learn to know how the wandering stars hold sway in the heavens, and thou shalt know how thine own soul works and weaves and lives within thee.” This was placed before the pupils.
    • 4 - And at length they were led to approach what was called “The Great Ocean,” — but it was the Cosmic Ocean, which leads from the planets, from the wandering stars, to the fixed stars. Thus at length they penetrated into the secrets of the I, by learning the secrets of the universe of the fixed stars.

Mankind today has forgotten that such instructions were ever given; but they were:

  • A living knowledge of this kind was cultivated until the 7th or 8th century in the last relics of the ancient Mysteries.
  • And as a doctrine, as a theory, it was still cultivated even until that turn of the 14th and 15th centuries of which we have so often spoken. In certain centres we still see these old teachings cultivated, though with the   greatest imaginable difficulties. They were well-nigh shadowed-down to concepts and ideas; yet the concepts and ideas were still living enough to kindle, in one man and another, the upward vision of all the realities of   which I spoke just now.

●In the 11th and especially the 12th century, reaching on to the 13th, a truly wonderful School existed. In this School there were teachers who still knew how the pupils in preceding centuries had been led to a conscious experience of the Spirit. It was the great School of Chartres. Here there flowed together all the conceptions that had issued from the living spiritual life which I have described.

1924-09-14-GA238

is on the school of Chartres

Temple sleep

this section includes reference extracts for both

  • healing through temple sleep in previous cultural ages such as Egypto-Chaldean cultural age
  • the process of initiation
1907-03-17-GA097

Before Christian times, initiation was such that the pupil would first be prepared for everything occult science was able to offer, up to the point where he was familiar with all the concepts and ideas, all the habits and feelings that are needed for living in the higher worlds and be able to have perceptions in them.

Then came the ‘resurrection’, as it was called, taking three and a half days and three nights.

For this the temple priest used his arts to put the individual artificially into a death-like sleep for three and a half days.

Normally the physical and the ether body remain connected in sleep, but the art of the priest who performed the initiation caused the ether body of the initiand to be lifted out of the physical body for this period, leaving only a loose connection between the physical body and the other bodies. It was a deep trance sleep.

The initiand's I lived in the higher worlds during this time. The pupil knew his way about there because he had been given knowledge of the higher world. The priest would guide him. To begin with, the priest had to free the ether body of the lethargic physical body so that he might guide the pupil into the worlds of spirit. Human beings would not have been able to rise into those higher worlds in a fully conscious state. They had to be lifted out of that state.

The initiand would experience magnificent, tremendous things there, but he would be entirely in the hands of the priest. Another person had control over him, and that was the price that had to be paid for entering into the higher worlds.

You can imagine what he would be afterwards, if you remember that he was able to know his eternal principle on this occasion. He was rid of the part of his finite nature, of his physical body, which was of no use to him when he wanted to move in higher worlds. Such an individual would be a ‘knower’ after this, able to bear witness from personal vision of life's victory over death. Those were the initiates who could bear witness. The ether body had to be lifted out of the physical body to meet the Christos in the human being.

Those initiates were able to say: ‘I know from personal experience that there is a part of the human being that is eternal, continuing through all incarnations. I know this; I have had living experience of this eternal core of my self.’

To gain this prize, they had to enter into three days of total dream sleep.

1908-08-05-GA105

The unique fact lying at the foundation of temple-sleep is that among the Egyptian priests, and in ancient civilizations in general, wisdom was held to be very closely bound up with the art of healing and with health. ...

We must now sketch in a few words, and bring before your souls, the nature of temple-sleep, which was one of the remedies employed by the priests of Egypt. Anyone who had suffered loss of health in any way in those days was not treated as a rule with external remedies; there were only a few of these, and they were seldom used. Sufferers were in most cases taken to the temple and there put into a kind of sleep. It was not an ordinary sleep, but a kind of somnambulistic sleep which was so intensified that the patient became capable of having not chaotic dreams merely but of seeing orderly visions. During this sleep the patient perceived etheric forms in the spiritual world, and the wise priests understood the art of influencing these etheric pictures which passed before the sleeper; they could control and guide them.

Let us suppose that an invalid was put into a temple-sleep. The priest skilled in medicine was at his side when he fell into this somnambulistic sleep, the invalid then entered a world of etheric forms, and the priest, because of the power he possessed through his initiation (and which was only possible in those ancient times when conditions of existence were such as no longer or very seldom exist today), was able to control the entire sleep. He formed and fashioned the etheric visions and beings in such a way that there actually appeared before the sleeper, as if by magic, those forms which at one time the ancient Atlanteans had looked on as their Gods. These divine forms, concerning which the various peoples still possessed a remembrance, in the German and Norse, and the Greek mythologies, were now placed before the soul of the person who was in the temple-sleep. He saw in particular certain figures which were connected with the healing principle.

Had the patient remained conscious, as in the waking consciousness of today, it would not have been possible for such forces to act upon him; this was only possible in somnambulistic sleep.

The wise priest guided this dream-life in such a way that powerful forces were liberated during the etheric visions, and these restored to order and harmony the forces of the body which had fallen into disorder and discord. This was only possible when the self-consciousness of the patient had been suppressed. Temple sleep had therefore a very real significance, and we can see how the healing art of the priests was connected with knowledge only accessible to Man through initiation. The connection lies clearly before us. It was the priests who, through the revival of the ancient vision of higher worlds, possessed in their wisdom the forces which came from these worlds, whereby spirit could work upon spirit. They acquired the capacity of allowing spirit to work upon spirit, and through this wisdom was brought into inner connection with health.

...

When we rightly understand the effect of that which is spiritual we find that temple-sleep is not unintelligible to us.

What was it that was conjured up before the sleeper in the temple in his etheric visions?

It was the picture of the Atlantean Gods whom we once knew as etheric forms; among whom we once lived, when we were able to be conscious outside the physical body and could exercise etheric clairvoyance. If we go still farther back in human evolution, far beyond the Atlantean epoch, we reach a period in which Man first became what he now is, when he first appeared as the individual personality he is today. This period is called the Lemurian epoch.

...

These forces in Man were healthy, and so was that which, as his kind, he produced. The priests of ancient Egypt knew this, and they said:

The further we guide man's vision back into previous conditions the more do we bring him into conditions in which there is no disease. The vision of the old Atlantean Gods acted curatively, and this was still more the case when the priests guided these visions so that the temple-sleeper had before him those primeval forms which were fertilized, not from their like, but from that which was in their environment.

The invalid who lay in the temple-sleep beheld the form of her who was the mother of her kind without having received fertilization from her kind. Before him stood the generating woman, the woman with child, yet who is virgin; the Goddess who in the Lemurian epoch was the companion of man, and who has since disappeared from the sight of man. In ancient Egypt she was called Holy Isis. Isis could only be seen by men in a normal way when death had not as yet appeared on earth. At that time men were, in normal consciousness the companions of such forms as floated around them, and they brought forth their kind virginally.

When Isis was no longer the visible companion of humanity, when she was withdrawn into the circle of the Gods, she continued to interest herself in the health of mman from the Spiritual World so said the priests—and when a person was raised to the vision of those ancient forms in an abnormal way, as in temple-sleep, the pictured Isis still acted curatively on him. She is that principle in man which was present in him before he received his mortal covering. HER veil has no mortal raised, for she is the form which was there when death had not as yet come into the world. She is the ONE ROOTED IN THE ETERNAL; she is the great HEALING PRINCIPLE to which humanity will again attain, when it steeps itself anew in spiritual wisdom.

[editor: see further: Sistine Madonna]

1908-09-05-GA106

The ancient Egyptian physicians did something similar. They reduced the patient's consciousness to a sort of hypnotic sleep, during which they could govern the soul-pictures that arose around the patient. They guided these pictures in such a way that they were able to work back on the physical body and make it healthy.

This was the significance of the temple-sleep that was applied for internal ailments.

The patient was given no medicine, but was allowed to sleep in the temple.

His consciousness was damped down, and he was allowed to look into the spiritual worlds. Then his astral experiences were guided in such a way that they had the power to pour health into the body.

This is no superstition; it is a secret that was known to the initiates.

They introduced the spiritual into the patient's experiences. In this medical art, which we find so closely connected with the principle of initiation, the Atlantean conditions were artificially recreated during the healing. Since Man did not work against himself through his day-consciousness, those forces could be active that were necessary for healing. This is how the temple-sleep worked.

1908-11-16-GA107

I would have to tell you a great deal to portray for you the deeper meaning of the Egyptian temple sleep and how it affected the health of the people, if I were to describe what emanated from such a cult - the Apis cult, for example - in the way of popular medicines for their general well-being. The direction and guidance of the people depended upon the initiates in these cult centers to provide the elixirs of health. But now that was to change. The Jews were to become a nation of priests. Everyone should feel a spark of the Jehovah God within himself, should have a direct relationship to Him. No longer was the priest to be the sole mediator. That is why the people had to be so instructed. They had to be made aware that the false images, the lowlier images of the highest god are also destructive to health.

1909-05-05-GA266

Things were different in ancient times when an initiator pulled the etheric body out of the pupil's body to imprint experiences from spiritual worlds into it. From trances to three and one-half day temple sleeps, it was always the hierophant who mediated everything into the pupil's consciousness, whereas today the pupil tears out and elevates the etheric body himself and lets the master's teachings stream into him.

1910-09-10-GA123

The power of the soul and of the spirit had a far greater more momentary influence on the human body at one time than was later the case. As the body became denser the soul lost power over it. Therefore, healing through the soul was formerly more possible than it is today.

The soul had then far more power to permeate a disordered body with active health-giving forces drawn from the spiritual worlds, and to restore it to harmony from within itself.

With the progress of evolution the power of the soul over the body declined. Healing became less and less a spiritual process.

The physicians of those times, unlike those of today, were healers who worked on the body by influencing the soul. They purified the soul by their spiritual influences, filling it with healthy perceptions, impulses, and will-power. These were exercised either under the ordinary conditions of physical perception or through ‘temple sleep,’ which was but a means of rendering men clairvoyant.

In considering that ancient culture, we are obliged to say that those who were strong of soul and able to draw upon their own acquired resources could influence the souls of others, and through them their physical bodies to a considerable degree. These men, who were filled with spirit, so that they radiated healing forces, were called ‘Healers.’ Fundamentally, not the ‘Therapeutæ’ only, but also the Essenes, should be regarded as Healers.

[the meaning of the name or word Jesus]

We can go further: in a certain dialect of Asia Minor, where a language was spoken by those associated with the origin of Christianity, the word they employed, which we translate as ‘spiritual healer,’ was ‘Jesus,’ and means ‘Spiritual Physician.’ That is the actual meaning of ‘Jesus.’ It is the correct translation when one has a feeling for the value of words, and throws light on what was felt to exist in such names at a time when names still meant something.

1912-01-25-GA060

When we consider the sleep-state in the light of present-day spiritual science, we look upon it that while the human frame remains quiescent and sleeping, the actual centre of Man’s etheric Being is situated outside the recumbent figure, and that during such state the power of the true inner essence of this etheric nucleus is so low that unconsciousness supervenes, and the nucleus becomes, as it were, enveloped in darkness. The methods employed during these ancient mystic rites in order to affect the human soul were as follows:

Through the influence of certain advanced personalities, who had themselves passed through similar mystical initiation, a species of sleep-state was first induced. This was of such nature that the inner forces of the soul were thereby strengthened and intensified. When a certain stage was reached the soul left the body, which was then in a condition of deathlike sleep, and for a time entered upon a psychic existence, a kind of sleep-life, during which it could look upon the spirit world with full consciousness. While this sleep-life continued, the soul was able to realize its true position as an inhabitant of the spiritual realms.

When, in due course, the soul was brought back once again to ordinary mundane conditions, there came to it recollections of all those things which it had observed and experienced while freed from the body. It was then that it could [while active within the human form] come before the people and stand forth as a prophet, bringing to them proofs of the existence of a spirit world and of an eternal life to come.

In those olden days it was in the manner above indicated that the soul was enabled to take part in the life of the spiritual realms; and in the mysteries were found the canons to which it must submit, and for a long period, in order that the supreme spiritual leaders in the ancient Mystery Sanctuaries might bring about the final consummation of the soul’s desire.

We will now ask this question:

Whence came those ancient standards of human conduct which have been passed on by peoples spread throughout the world during the course of man’s evolution; and those flashes of spiritual enlightenment proclaiming his Godlike origin and the eternity of the soul?

The answer comes through Spiritual Science; from it we learn that this olden wisdom originated with those who had themselves undergone initiation after the manner we have outlined. There is a reflection of these primeval moral precedents, manifested in strange and curious fashion, in connection with Myths and Legends and various graphic portrayals of the past; for in these very fables we find depicted many of the same experiences which came, as if in a living dream, to the initiates in the Mystery-Sanctuaries.

Indeed, we first begin to understand Mythology rightly, when we regard the forms and figures there presented, as pictorial representations of things which appeared to the spiritual vision of the Initiates during the time of their participation in the secret rites. If we would establish a relation between the mythological conceptions of olden times and the religious teachings of an earlier age, we must hark back to the ancient mysteries and ponder upon all that lay concealed therein, deep hidden from a profane external world. Mysteries revealed to those alone, who, through severe trials and unswerving observance of that secrecy and restraint imposed upon all, had truly fitted themselves to take part in the dark ceremonies of initiation. We cannot, however, at this point enter into the actual circumstances which led to the close veiling of the mystic rites performed in that now remote grey past. But when we turn our gaze backward and follow the course of spiritual development in pre-Christian times, we realize that it was ever in the dim obscurity enshrouding the inscrutable observances of that by-gone age, that man’s soul unfolded and was strengthened.

The souls of men were not so fully developed in the past that they could of themselves and of their own efforts rise upward and enter the realms of the spirit, while merely dependent upon their immediate powers and unaided by the ministrations of the temple priests. In my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact, I have pointed out that even while external history ran its course a change was taking place; and it has there been my object to show how the whole plan and design underlying human evolution was such, that when the turning-point was reached which marked the birth of Christianity mankind was already prepared to enter upon a new era. This change had come about because of all that man had experienced and absorbed through repeated reincarnations, and through knowledge gained from initiates concerning the Spirit-World. From then on he would have the power of upliftment to spiritual heights within his own innermost soul, which could henceforth rise of its own effort, free from all external influence and unaided by those means which it was the custom to employ in the by-gone days of the mysteries.

According to the views which we now hold, the most outstanding event that came to pass in Palestine, in connection with the spiritual progress of mankind was the final perfecting of the soul, so that it should be fitted for what we might call Self-Initiation. This ultimate consummation had been approached gradually and the necessary preparation had extended over possibly hundreds of years; yet the end came just about the very time when that special turning-point was reached which marked the beginning of the Christian era. The soul was then so far perfected that it was ready for self-initiation, during which act it would be merely guided by those having knowledge of the true path and of the trials that must be endured; henceforth self-initiation might be achieved without external aid rendered by Temple priests, or by leaders having understanding of the mysteries. And further, through the founding of Christianity all those other rites and observances which were performed time and time again in the innermost sanctuaries of the Temples, memories of which are still preserved in Legends, Myths and Mythologies connected with folklore, are found to have a place in that Grand Plan which underlies the world’s history.

If we would indeed understand the Gospels, we should ask ourselves the following question:

‘What experiences were essential to a candidate for initiation in the days of the ancient Persians or Egyptians, who desired so to uplift his soul that it might gaze directly upon the Spirit-World?’

Injunctions concerning such matters were clearly set forth and formed the basis of what we might term a Ritual of Initiation. These commands and instructions covered a time extending from a certain event designated by some as The Baptism, and by others as The Temptation, up to that moment when the soul was led forth and blessed with a true discernment of the spiritual realms.

When we compare such Initiation Rituals with the most important statements contained in the Gospels, then (as I have shown in the book to which I have just referred) we find that in the Gospels there appear once again detailed narratives concerning ancient initiation ceremonies, but here the descriptions have reference to that great outstanding historical character, Jesus of Nazareth. It further becomes clear that whereas in previous times an Initiation Candidate was raised to spiritual heights in the seclusion of the Temples of the Mysteries, Jesus of Nazareth, because of the course which history had taken, was already so far advanced that He not only remembered His experiences in the Spirit-World and thus brought enlightenment to humanity, but He became unified in spirit with One, to Whom no earthly being had as yet become united, namely, The Christ-Being. Thus we find a great similarity between the narrative of the spiritual development of Jesus of Nazareth up to that moment when The Christ entered into His soul and during the following three years when He drew inspiration and wisdom from this Divine source, and the descriptions of the wonted course of the ancient forms of initiation.

In the accounts which tell us of all the trials and experiences which Jesus of Nazareth underwent in those olden days, we find the events connected with His initiation clearly marked by the magnitude and Godlike nature of the spiritual facts which underlie the historical descriptions. This is especially noticeable in the Gospel of St. John. While in previous times countless aspirants had taken part in the sacred rites, they had only advanced to that point when they could testify as follows:—‘The spiritual world is a reality, and to such a world does the human soul belong.’ But when it came to pass that Jesus was Himself initiated, He became actually unified and at one with the most significant and outstanding of all spiritual beings ever remembered by former initiates; and it was toward this supreme initiation that the ordered plan underlying all ancient forms and ceremonies had its trend.

1921-05-22-GA325

How mankind became aware of this inner nature and its strength can best be recognized by us when we examine from a definite point of view the highly developed Egyptian art of healing. It is quite different from our own medical science. For the illnesses existing in Egypt there were specialists, eye specialists in particular. The healers there made use of the so called temple sleep.

The sick were brought to the temple and put into a kind of sleep during which they entered a sort of dream condition. What they then remembered was studied in its pictorial characteristics by priests who were versed in such things. These priests found out what taught them pathology through the inner dramatic course of the dreams, through the character of the pictures, whether they were dark on light or dark following light and so on.

From another side they discovered indications for remedies in the particular configuration of the dreams.

Through observation of what men experienced inwardly and what in dream pictures presented itself to the inner sight, the inward bodily condition of human beings was studied in Egypt.

1922-10-05-GA217

.. it is historically true that vision into the spiritual world through sleep was a deliberate and conscious striving among human beings of past epochs, apart from the fact that the candidates for initiation: the students of those days were prepared in a sacred way for the temple-sleep in which they were made aware of Man's participation in the spiritual world.

Discussion

Note 1 - Rudolf Steiner's new Mysteries and the Foundation Stone

At the end of 1923, Rudolf Steiner made a pivotal move by connecting his Personality and thus Individuality to the re-founded Anthroposophical Society, whereas upto then he had been a teacher of the movement, without taking earthly responsibilities for the society. This re-founding of the Anthroposopical Society is referenced through the ritual event of the Foundation Stone whereby a Foundation Stone meditation was given by Rudolf Steiner. This was to be a new start in the anthroposopical movement, to provide the new mysteries for our age also through the society.

The Foundation Stone (event, intentions, meditation) and the events of the next decades within the Anthroposophical Society have been subject of much study and debate.

For literature on the topic, see 'Further reading' section below, and also Polarization and polemics within the anthroposophical movement.

Some still adhere faithfully to the original intentions and see this as what is needed in the world as the 'new mysteries'. For others the whole initiative clairly failed due to what happened within the Anthroposophical Society after the death of Rudolf Steiner, relating it to the maturity (and karma) of individuals specifically and community in general.

Irrespective of which position one takes, it is interesting to observe a lack of objective analysis and positioning that combines the two dimensions required: 'perspective based on insight' with the 'reality context' of one century since 1922.

See contemporary commentary in coverage on: Druidic and Trotten mysteries#.5B4.5D - Commentary on Rudolf Steiner in 1923-1924 .28and 1923-09-09.29

Note 2 - Schema FMC00.545 epoch remnants or 'old stones'

Alignment to solstices and equinoxes

Ancient cultures were much more connected with the macrocosmos and path of the Sun and Moon. A characteristics of ancient sites and stone monuments is that they are aligned with the solstices and equinoxes (which happen simultaneously around the world across time zones as these astronomical events are based on our planet’s orbit around the Sun and tilt on its axis).

See also: Rhythm of a year

Examples:

  • Newgrange: during the winter solstice, a beam of sunlight exactly illuminates a small room inside the mound at dawn
  • Chaco Canyon (New Mexico): during summer and winter solstices, a stone called the Sun Dagger is exactly illuminated at mid day

Characteristics of stones

Related pages

References and further reading

  • Hermann Beckh: 'From the Mysteries: Genesis – Zarathustra' (2020)
    • includes: Our Origin in the Light (Genesis 1–9) (1924); Zarathustra (1927) and From the World of the Mysteries (1927), and more.
  • Hans Wohlbold (1877 - 1949)
    • Mysterienweisheit: Menschheitsentwicklung vom Mytos zum Christentum (1927)
  • Guenther Wachsmuth: 'Mysterien - und Geisteschichte der Menschheit' (1938)
    • with over 130 illustrations
    • Ch. 1: Ireland, Malta
    • Ch. 2: Mexico, Toltecs
    • Ch. 3&4: Egypt
    • Ch. 7: Druids, Mithras cult, northern and southern mysteries
  • Hans Gsänger (1906-1976)
    • see profile page on: biographien.kulturimpuls.org, from which the following excerpt (edited internet translation)
      • ".. the subject that wouldn't let him go until his end of life was the history of the mysteries of humanity in the light of Rudolf Steiner's explanations. He started traveling and publishing. ... and as has he needed new knowledge he studied history, religious history, archeology and mythology. Numerous essays and monographs were created. He collected a readership around him that burned to travel with him. He undertook well over 30 trips, and .. in the face of the holy sites, he found words that only the Genius Loci could inspire. Fellow travelers came from his generation and formed a travel community, familiar with eachother and loyal to his death."
    • his books are in the 'Further reading' sections on the topic pages for the different Mysteries (Greek, Hibernian, ..), but there are also:
      • 'Atlantis. Der Beginn der Mysterien' (1975)
      • 'Mysteriengeschichte der Menschheit. Von der Atlantis bis zur Gegenwart' (1977)
  • Max Guilmot: 'The Initiatory Process in Ancient Egypt' (1978)
  • Bernard Lievegoed: Mystery streams in Europe and the new mysteries (1982)
  • Markus Osterrieder: 'Sonnenkreuz und Lebensbaum: Irland, der Schwarzmeer-Raum und die Christianisierung der europäischen Mitte' (1995)
  • Ita Wegman: The Mysteries (1995, compiled and translated by Crispian Villeneuve)
  • Frank Teichmann (1937–2006)
    • 'The Origins of the Anthroposophical Society in the Light of the Ancient Mysteries' (2020 in EN, in DE as 'Die Entstehung der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft auf mysteriengeschichtlichem Hintergrund')
    • 'The Sacred Mysteries of Egypt. The Flowering of an Ancient Civilisation' (2016 in EN, in DE in 1999 as 'Die ägyptischen Mysterien. Quellen einer Hochkultur')
    • Die griechischen Mysterien: Quellen für ein Verständnis des Christentums
    • series: 'Der Mensch und sein Tempel' (The human being and his temple)
      • Ägypten
      • Megalithkultur in Irland, England und der Bretagne (1983)
      • Griechenland (1980)
      • Chartres

More

  • S.F. Dunlap (1825-1905): The Mysteries of Adoni (1861)
  • Dudley Wright: The Eleusian mysteries and rites (1919)
  • George E. Mylonas: 'Eleusis and the Eleusinian mysteries' (1961)
  • Walter Burkert (1931-2015)
  • Michael B. Cosmopoulos (editor): 'Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults' (2003)
    • Albert Schachter: 'Evolutions of a Mystery Cult: The Theban Kabiroi'
  • Grace F. Knoche: The mystery schools (1999, in NL in 2001 as 'De mysteriescholen door de eeuwen heen')
  • Hugh Bowden: 'Mystery Cults of the Ancient World (2010)
  • Guy Maclean Rogers: The Mysteries of Artemis of Ephesos (2012)
    • freely available online on academia.edu
  • Jan N. Bremmer: 'Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World' (2014)
    • freely available in PDF on degruyter.com

School of Chartres

  • Karl Heyer: Das Wunder von Chartres (1926)
  • Gottfried Richter: Die Herrlichkeit der Kathedrale (1982)
  • Rene Querido: 'The Golden Age of Chartres: The Teachings of a Mystery School ' (1987)
  • Frank Teichmann: Chartres; Kathedrale und Schule (1991)
  • Michael Ladwein: Chartres: Ein Führer durch die Kathedrale (1998, in NL 2000 as 'Chartres: complete gids voor de kathedraal')

Rudolf Steiner

School of Spiritual Science
  • Johannes Kühl, Bodo v Plato: 'The School of Spiritual Science: An Orientation and Introduction' (2010)
  • Johannes Kiersch: 'A History of the School of Spiritual Science - The First Class' (2006)
The Foundation Stone
  • Rudolf Steiner
    • The Foundation Stone Meditation: see GA260
    • The Christmas Conference for the Foundation of the General Anthroposophical Society 1923-1924
  • Valentin Tomberg Studies on the Foundation Stone Meditation
    • published in critical years of world history (1936-1939), were written just a few years after Tomberg's spiritual awakening. They penetrate into the Mystery of Christs Second Coming by offering the reader access from within to the Foundation Stone meditation given to humanity by Christ through Rudolf Steiner. More info here.
  • Willem Zeylmans van Emmichoven: The Foundation Stone (2002 in EN, original in DE as 'Der Grundstein' (1956) and translated in NL as 'De grondsteen' (1977, 1989)
    • analysis of the text by Rudolf Steiner on the day of the laying of the foundation stone for the new anthroposophical society in 1923.
  • Mark Willan: 'Dornach: The centre for spiritual science?' (2001 with update 2006)
  • Peter Selg: 'Rudolf Steiner's Foundation Stone Meditation: And the Destruction of the Twentieth Century (EN in 2013)
  • Bill Trusiewicz: 'The Foundation Stone Meditation as the Being of Isis/Sophia: Some Results from Working with the Foundation Stone Meditation' (published 2017 in Starlight Journal of the Sophia Foundation; and Being Human, see online here)
  • Adriana Koulias: 'The Foundation Stone Meditation: as a protection against evil' (2019)
  • The Foundation Stone Meditation and the Challenges of Our Time (2021)
    • editors: Arie van Amerigen, Christiane Haid
    • fourteen contributions, for list of essays, see contents here

and

  • Sergei O. Prokofieff:
    • Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries (1994)
    • Foundation Stone Meditation: A Key to the Christian Mysteries (2006)
    • Relating to Rudolf Steiner: And the Mystery of the Laying of the Foundation Stone (2008)
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