Greek mysteries

The Greek Mystery School tradition includes the mysteries of

• Ephesian Mysteries of Artemis
• Eleusian Mysteries
• Chthonic mysteries
• Samothracian mysteries (Kabiri)

Aspects

Orphic Mysteries (Apollo)

• see: Orpheus
• ancient Greek mysteries of Orpheus (also Orphic wisdom, Apollo's lyre)
  • pupils of these Mysteries had to live through in their own soul what is described in the myth of Dionysos Zagreus, who was dismembered by the Titans but whose body was carried away by Zeus into a higher life. A pupil of the Orphic Mysteries had to develop the inner strength of soul which would enable him, re-established as a self-based individuality, to triumph over the disintegration of his being in the external world. When all this had become an actual human experience, it represented in a certain sense one of the very highest secrets of Initiation. And many pupils of the Orphic Mysteries had undergone such experiences, had lived through this disintegration in the world and, as a kind of preparation for Christianity, had therewith attained the highest experience within reach in pre-Christian times. (1910-12-27-GA126)
  • Orphic wisdom and Apollonian art: the Priest-Initiates made use of those beings who cradled themselves in the condition of balance between Man's inbreathing and out-breathing. The tuning of the strings of Apollo's lyre mirrored the dance of the daemons of the air, those beings who lived between the moon-sphere and the Earth-sphere and hovered (or danced, as it were) on the strings of the cosmos which had been woven into the balance between inbreathing and out-breathing. (1922-09-22-GA216).
• an Individuality who had been both a pupil and teacher of these Orphic Mysteries was later reborn in Alexandria as Hypathia
  • the Individuality of Hypathia <-> Marie Steiner [KRI59]; see KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities#KRI 59: Marie Steiner von Sivers
  • a famous pupil of this Individuality in the earlier incarnation in the Orphic Mysteries is Pherecydes of Syros (also: Pherekydes) (ca 580-520 BC, teacher of Pythagoras).
• historical sources
  • Orphic tablets, amulets, and hymn text fragements date back to the 5th–6th century BC or earlier
  • References surviving through fragments cited by later writers, state that Eudemus of Rhodes (4th century BC), student of Aristotle, referenced Orphic cosmogony in his works, and discusses how Phanes emerges from the cosmic egg to create the universe.
  • the Neoplatonist philosopher Damascius (6th century CE), citing earlier Orphic traditions, recounts Orphic cosmogony, describing the hatching of Phanes (or 'Protogonos' (for 'First-Born') from the cosmic egg and his role in birthing the gods and cosmos
• see also:
  • www.rosicrucian.org/rosicrucian-digest-orphic

Eleusian Mysteries

• wikipedia: see Eleusinian Mysteries for background, and info on location and site at Eleusis
• Eduard Schuré published 'Le drame sacré d'Eleusis' (1890 in FR in EN as 'The Mysteries Of Eleusis'), which was staged by Steiner at the Munich congress of the Theosophical Society in 1907.

Chthonic mysteries

• wikipedia: Chthonic, in Greek; "in, under, or beneath the Earth", literally means "subterranean", but the word in English describes deities or spirits of the underworld in the ancient Greek religion; and refers to the manner and method of offering sacrifices to a specific deity or deities such as for example Persephone and Hades in classical mythology.

Samothracian mysteries (Kabiri)

• terminology: Kabiri (or Kabeiri, or Cabiri or Cabeiri)
• location
  • see Schema FMC00.307
  • wikipedia: see Samothrace temple complex for map and pictures of the important religious temple on the Greek isle of Samothrace
• timing
  • no timings given, but ancient Green probably around 6th to 4th century AD, as Rudolf Steiner mentions Aristotle and Alexandre still experienced their influence, and later also Ptolemy (ca. 100 – ca 165 AD) is mentioned in remembrance (see Wegman reference below)
  • "in the time when the ancient Mysteries were already receding, the Mysteries of the Kabiri at Samothrace still existed. Samothrace was still there as a place of remembrance" and "through the influence of the Mysteries of the Kabiri - there arose for Alexander and Aristotle [say approx 340-320 AB] something like a memory of the old Ephesian time which both of them had lived" (1924-04-22-GA233A, see also1923-12-27-GA233)
• "these Kabiri were worshipped as guardians of the forces connected with the origin and evolution of mankind. ... this permeated all the various ideas the Greeks held about the Gods, and concerning the connection between these Gods and mankind ... the old Greek was convinced that ... it was to the influence of these Samothracian Mysteries he owed the idea of Man's immortality and Man's membership of the world of soul and spirit" (1919-01-17-GA273)
• evocation rituals
  • Northern Greek Mysteries, which placed three symbolic vessels on the altar before the pupil which were used for evocation of three deities representing the realities of Mercury, Mars and the Sun (Apollo). The evocation was done by uttering words in the incense smoke from the three vessels. Through speech, the priestly magician was able to swrite certain signs in the sacrificial smoke and these uttered the secrets of the universe. Thereby he felt his expiration as an organ of touch: he felt the smoke taking form and therein he felt these great Gods, the Kabiri, streaming towards him. He grasped the curves and angles that the smoke took through something that came from outside to the expiration of breath. (see Schema FMC00.351 and references 1923-12-21-GA232 and 1924-09-05-GA346).
  • those who entered the innermost temple of the Kabiri, were full of depth and seriousness but were nevertheless joyful, happy countenances (1923-12-22-GA232)
• Kabiri
  • details about the Kabiri and correspondence to Man's bodily principles
    • "there are actually eight Kabiri, but for Samothrace itself only the four come into consideration" (1918-08-23-GA277) and "the three Kabiri still to come are the spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man (1919-01-25-GA188)
    • ancient greek names of four Kabiri are given as Axieros, Axiokersos, Axiokersa, and Kadmillos (1915-10-10-GA254).
    • Man consists of physical body (Axieros), etheric body (Axiokersos), astral body (Axiokersa) that have no consciousness .. the fourth, the human 'I' was not developed at the time of the Samothracian mysteries, it 'performs consciousness' ... so "Kadmilos, who corresponds to the I, thinks for all three." (1918-08-23-GA277,1919-01-25-GA188)
      • In the Greek Mysteries, there were four Cabeiri and "three of them kill the fourth": Man's lower three bodily principles are transient and mortal in the sense they are dispersed after physical death in the journey between death and a new birth. If the I does not take part in the spiritual, it is killed and drawn into mortality by the three others (1921-06-28-GA205)
  • wikipedia: the Cabeiri or Cabiri (also transliterated Kabeiri or Kabiri), were a group of enigmatic chthonic deities. They were worshipped in a mystery cult closely associated with that of Hephaestus, centered in the north Aegean islands of Lemnos and possibly Samothrace, at the Samothrace temple complex, and at Thebes.
• "Ptolemy's enthusiasm for the great Cabiri spirits, to which he gave expression in his Ptolemy temple, whose foundations and pillars still lie around, as well as in the Arsineium .. and it made a strange impression on me to read, in Greek, on a great gable stone, the words: 'Here Ptolemy and Veronica honour the great Cabiri' .. " (Ita Wegman 1932 about her visiting all the mystery sites in Greece, quote taken from Ch 11. in biography of Willem Zeylmans van Emichoven by Emanuel Zeylmans (1979, 2002)
• Rudolf Steiner refers to
  • discussed the Samothracian Mysteries about the Kabiri divinities in Goethe's Faust (1919-01-17-GA273, 1919-01-18-GA273, 1919-01-25-GA188) ... "Goethe thought that possible through the impulse of the Kabiri the developing of Homunculus into Homo might be represented.
  • ... and quotes from Schelling's work 'The Gods of Samothrace" (GA008, 1916-03-18-GA174A, 1918-0X-06-GA184)

Mysteries of Apollo and Dionysos

• see 1909-08-28-GA113
• Dionysian Mysteries: see 1911-08-24-GA129

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.307 positions the Greek Mysteries and various ancient sites

Schema FMC00.351: is a drawing by Rudolf Steiner sketching the evocation of the kabiri deities in Samothracian mysteries, described in 1923-12-21-GA232 and 1924-09-05-GA346.

To this picture, the following extract from 1922-12-04-GA218

Ample proof of this lies in the way art has developed. Originally it was one with religious life. In primitive ages of mankind it was woven into religious cults. The images men formed of their gods was the source of plastic art.

As an instance of this let us recall the Samothracean Mysteries alluded to by Goethe in the second part of his Faust, where he speaks of the Kabiri.

In my studio in Dornach I tried to make a picture of these Kabiri. And what came of it? It was something very interesting. I simply set myself the task of puzzling out intuitively how the Kabiri must have appeared in the Samothracean Mysteries.

And just imagine this: I arrived at three pitchers, but pitchers, it is true, shaped plastically and in accordance with art. At first I astonished myself, although Goethe actually spoke of pitchers. The matter became clear to me only when I found that these pitchers stood on an altar: then something in the nature of incense was put into them, the sacrificial words were sung, and from the power of the sacrificial words—which in the more ancient times of mankind had a force of vibratory stimulus quite different from anything possible today — the smoke of the incense was formed into the desired image of the divinity. Thus in the ritual you had the accompanying chant immediately expressing itself plastically in the smoke of the incense."

Lecture coverage and references

Coverage overview

The cycle 1923-12-GA233

• 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
• Mysteries of the Samothracian Kabiri (1923-12-21-GA232) - these are also covered in 1924-09-05-GA346
  • wikipidia on: Samothrace temple complex and Kabiri (or Cabeiri)
  • articles oa here
• Chthonic and Eleusinian Mysteries (1923-12-14-GA323)
  • Chtonic: also references in GA214 and GA346
  • Eulesian mysteries: wikipedia on Eleusinian Mysteries

further also

• Mysteries of Hybernia and Mysteries of Ephese (1923-12-27-GA233)
• Mysteries of Adonis - and the link to Easter and the festivals (1924-01-19-GA233A)
  • wikipedia: Adonis

Reference lecture extracts

Blavatsky - Secret Doctrine

the Kabiri (link theosophy.wiki) are described in as a generic term for the gods or pitris that were the rulers and instructors of the primeval races, the benefactors of men that gave the very early impulses to civilizations.

1909-08-28-GA113

see extract on: Archangel Michael#1909-08-28-GA113

.. we find a region of Postatlantean civilisation where those two kinds of mysteries existed contemporaneously:

• a region where on the one side the so-called Apollonian culture and mysteries were developed,
• and on the other the culture and mysteries of Dionysos.

1910-12-27-GA126

There again we have a projection on the physical plane of earlier, more spiritual conditions. In the Orphic Mysteries of ancient Greece there was a wonderful personality, one who was initiated in the Mystery-secrets and was among the most loveable, most interesting pupils of these Mysteries, well prepared by a certain Celtic occult training undergone in earlier incarnations. This individuality sought with deepest fervour for the secrets of the Orphic Mysteries.

The pupils of these Mysteries had to live through in their own soul what is described in the myth of Dionysos Zagreus, who was dismembered by the Titans but whose body was carried away by Zeus into a higher life. How, as the result of a certain path taken in the Mysteries, man's life is surrendered to the outer world, how his whole being is torn in pieces so that he can no longer find his bearings within himself — this was to become an actual, individual experience in the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries.

[Orphic Mysteries]

When in the ordinary way we study animals, plants and minerals, what we learn is merely abstract knowledge because we remain outside them; but anyone who wishes to obtain knowledge in the occult sense must train himself to feel as if he were actually within the animals, plants and minerals, in air and water, in springs and mountains, in stones and stars, in other human beings — as if he were one with them all. Nevertheless, a pupil of the Orphic Mysteries had to develop the inner strength of soul which would enable him, re-established as a self-based individuality, to triumph over the disintegration of his being in the external world. When all this had become an actual human experience, it represented in a certain sense one of the very highest secrets of Initiation. And many pupils of the Orphic Mysteries had undergone such experiences, had lived through this disintegration in the world and, as a kind of preparation for Christianity, had therewith attained the highest experience within reach in pre-Christian times.

Among the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries was the loveable personality of whom I am speaking, whose earthly name has not come down to posterity, but who stands out clearly as a pupil of these Mysteries. Already in youth and then for many years, this person was closely connected with all the Greek Orphics during the period preceding that of Greek philosophy — a period of which no account is given in books an the history of philosophy. For what is recorded of Thales and Heraclitus is an echo of what the Mystery-pupils had accomplished in their way at an earlier period. And one of the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries was the individual of whom I have just spoken, whose pupil in turn was Pherecydes of Syros, referred to in the lecture-course given at Munich last year: The East in the light of the West

Investigation of the Akasha Chronicle reveals that the individuality of that pupil of the Orphic Mysteries was reincarnated in the 4th century A.D. We find this individuality amid the activity and life of those gathered together in Alexandria, the Orphic secrets now transformed into personal experiences of the loftiest kind. It is very remarkable how all the Orphic secrets were transformed into personal experiences in this new incarnation. At the end of the 4th century, A.D., we find this individuality reborn as the daughter of a great mathematician, Theon. We see how there flashes up in her soul all that could be experienced of the Orphic Mysteries through vision of the great mathematical, light-woven texture of the universe. All this was now personal talent, personal genius. These faculties had now to be of so personal a character that it was necessary even for this individuality to have a mathematician as father in order that something might be received from heredity.

Thus we look back to times when man was still in living connection with the spiritual worlds, as was this Orphic pupil; and we see the shadow-image of this pupil among those who taught in Alexandria at the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century A.D. This individuality had as yet experienced nothing that enabled men at that time to see beyond the shadow-sides of Christianity at its beginning. For all that had remained in this soul as an echo of the Orphic Mysteries was still too powerful to enable any Illumination to be received from that other Light, the new Christ Event. What arose round about as Christianity, represented by men of the type of Theophilus and Cyril, was in truth of such a nature that this Orphic individuality, working now with personal faculties, had things far greater, far richer in wisdom to say and to give than those who represented Christianity in Alexandria at that time.

Theophilus and Cyril were both filled with the deepest hatred of everything that was not Christian in the narrow ecclesiastical sense in which these two bishops, in particular, understood it. Christianity had assumed in them such an entirely personal character that these two patriarchs levied hirelings in their service; men were collected from far and near to form bodyguards for them. Their aim was power in its most personal sense. They were utterly obsessed by hatred of what originated in ancient times and yet was so much greater than the new that was appearing in caricatured shape. The deepest hatred was directed by the dignitaries of Christianity in Alexandria against the individuality of the reborn Orphic pupil. The fact that she was branded as a black magician will not therefore surprise us. But that was enough to incite the whole mob of hirelings against the noble, unique figure of the reborn pupil of the Orphic Mysteries. She was still young, but in spite of her youth, in spite of the fact that she was obliged to undergo much that in those days, too, imposed great hardships an a woman during a long period of study, she found her way upwards to the light that outshone all the wisdom, all the knowledge existing in those days. And it was wonderful how in the lecture halls of Hypatia — for such was the name of this reincarnated Orphic pupil — the purest, most luminous wisdom in Alexandria was presented to the enraptured listeners. She drew to her feet not only the Pagans, bat also Christians of deep and penetrating insight, such as Synesius. She was an influence of outstanding significance, and the revival of the old Pagan wisdom of Orpheus transformed into personality could be experienced in Alexandria in the figure of Hypatia.

World-karma was working in the truest sense symbolically. What had constituted the secret of her Initiation was now projected, mirrored, on the physical plane. And here we come to an event that is symbolically significant in the case of many things that have taken place in historical times. We come to one of those events that is seemingly only a martyrdom, but is in reality a symbol in which spiritual forces, spiritual intimations are coming to expression.

On a day in March in the year 415 A.D., Hypatia fell victim to the fury of these who formed the entourage of the patriarch of Alexandria.

[in DE: Der Wut derer, die um den Erzbischof von Alexandrien waren, verfiel an einem Märztage des Jahres 415 Hypatia. See below on the Indivividuality of that bishop]

They resolved to rid themselves of her power, of her spiritual power. The utterly uncivilised, wild hordes were rushed in from the environs of Alexandria as well, and the chaste young sage was fetched away under false pretences. She mounted the chariot, and at a given sign the enflamed rabble fell upon her, tore off her clothing, dragged her into a church, and literally tore the flesh from her bones. The fragments of her body were then scattered around the city by these hordes, completely dehumanised by their rapacious passions. Such was the fate of the great woman philosopher, Hypatia.

Symbolically, so to say, there is indicated here something that is deeply connected with the founding of Alexandria by Alexander the Great — although it happened a long time after the actual founding of the city. In this event, important secrets of the 4th Post-Atlantean epoch are reflected. This epoch, destined as it was to represent the dissolution, the sweeping-away, of the old, contained so much that was great and significant, and with paradoxical grandeur placed before the world a most pregnant symbol in the slaughter — one can call it nothing else — of Hypatia, the outstanding woman at the turn of the 4th-5th centuries of our era.

sourced from anthrolexus; source info: Po2: Thomas Meyer: Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz. Ein Europäer (1994), page 564 of DE edition

this comes from a conversation by Rudolf Steiner with Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz on 1925-03-03

DE edition 1994, p 564:

Fra Bartolomeo di San Marco war ja auch ein bedeutender Dichter-Maler, der die Schule des Giotto fortführte und der jene Individualität ist, die damals in Alexandrien erstmalig abendländisches Gebiet betrat und jener Bischof war, der Hypatia töten ließ. Er kam aus mexikanischen Mysterienzusammenhängen und spielte eine große Rolle im Geschehen, das sich wie ein Gegenbild zu den Mysterien von Golgatha verhält. Auch dieser Strom mußte von uns aufgenommen werden und ist wie die Erdenbasis des Geistdreieckes im Pentagramm.

internet translation

Fra Bartolomeo di San Marco was also an important poet-painter who continued the school of Giotto and who is the individuality who first entered Western territory in Alexandria and was the bishop who had Hypatia killed.

He came from Mexican mystery contexts and played a major role in what is happened in this antithesis to the Mysteries of Golgotha.

This current also had to be absorbed by us and is like the earthly base of the spirit triangle in the pentagram.

1911-08-24-GA129

covers 'The Dionysian Mysteries'

1914-GA018 Part 1 - Ch 2.

is called: 'The World Conception of the Greek Thinkers'

Pherekydes also speaks of three principles of the world: Of Chronos, of Zeus and of Chthon.

see also: Three mothers#1914-GA018 Part 1 - Ch 2.

In the civilizations of the different peoples this transition from the old picture-consciousness to the consciousness of thought experience took place at different times. In Greece we can intimately observe this transition if we focus our attention on the personality of Pherekydes of Syros. He lived in a world in which picture-consciousness and thought experience still had an equal share. His three principal ideas — Zeus, Chronos and Chthon — can only be understood in such a way that the soul, in experiencing them, feels itself as belonging to the events of the external world. We are dealing here with three inwardly experienced pictures and we find access to them only when we do not allow ourselves to be distracted by anything that the thought habits of our time are likely to imagine as their meaning.

Chronos is not time as we think of it today. Chronos is a being that in contemporary language can be called “spiritual” if one keeps in mind that one does not thereby exhaust its meaning. Chronos is alive and its activity is the devouring, the consumption of the life of another being, Chthon. Chronos rules in nature; Chronos rules in man; in nature and man Chronos consumes Chthon. It is of no importance whether one considers the consumption of Chthon through Chronos as inwardly experienced or as external events, for in both realms the same process goes on. Zeus is connected with these two beings. In the meaning of Pherekydes one must no more think of Zeus as a deity in the sense of our present day conception of mythology, than as of mere “space” in its present sense, although he is the being through whom the events that go on between Chronos and Chthon are transformed into spatial, extended form.

The cooperation of Chronos, Chthon and Zeus is felt directly as a picture content in the sense of Pherekydes, just as much as one is aware of the idea that one is eating, but it is also experienced as something in the external world, like the conception of the colors blue or red. This experience can be imagined in the following way. We turn our attention to fire as it consumes its fuel. Chronos lives in the activity of fire, of warmth. Whoever regards fire in its activity and keeps himself under the effect, not of independent thought but of image content, looks at Chronos. In the activity of fire, not in the sensually perceived fire, he experiences time simultaneously. Another conception of time does not exist before the birth of thought. What is called “time” in our present age is an idea that has been developed only in the age of intellectual world conception.

If we turn our attention to water, not as it is as water but as it changes into air or vapor, or to clouds that are in the process of dissolving, we experience as an image content the force of Zeus, the spatially active “spreader.” One could also say, the force of centrifugal extension. If we look on water as it becomes solid, or on the solid as it changes into fluid, we are watching Chthon. Chthon is something that later in the age of thought-ruled world conception becomes “matter,” the stuff “things are made of”; Zeus has become “ether” or “space,” Chronos changes into “time.”

In the view of Pherekydes the world is constituted through the cooperation of these three principles. Through the combination of their action the material world of sense perception — fire, air, water and earth — come into being on the one hand, and on the other, a certain number of invisible supersensible spirit beings who animate the four material worlds.

Zeus, Chronos and Chthon could be referred to as “spirit, soul and matter,” but their significance is only approximated by these terms. It is only through the fusion of these three original beings that the more material realms of the world of fire, air, water and earth, and the more soul-like and spirit-like (supersensible) beings come into existence. Using expressions of later world conceptions, one can call Zeus, space-ether; Chronos, time-creator; Chthon, matter-producer — the three “mothers of the world's origin.”

We can still catch a glimpse of them in Goethe's Faust, in the scene of the second part where Faust sets out on his journey to the “mothers.”

As these three primordial entities appear in Pherekydes, they remind us of conceptions of predecessors of this personality, the so-called Orphics.

[in DE: So wie bei Pherekydes diese drei Urwesen auftreten, weisen sie zurück auf Vorstellungen bei Vorgängern dieser Persönlichkeit, auf die sogenannten Orphiker.]

They represent a mode of conception that still lives completely in the old form of picture consciousness. In them we also find three original beings: Zeus, Chronos and Chaos. Compared to these “primeval mothers,” those of Pherekydes are somewhat less picture-like. This is so because Pherekydes attempts to seize, through the exertion of thought, what his Orphic predecessors still held completely as image-experience. For this reason we can say that he appears as a personality in whom the “birth of thought life” takes place. This is expressed not so much in the more thought-like conception of the Orphic ideas of Pherekydes, as in a certain dominating mood of his soul, which we later find again in several of his philosophizing successors in Greece. For Pherekydes feels that he is forced to see the origin of things in the “good” (Arizon). He could not combine this concept with the “world of mythological deities” of ancient times. The beings of this world had soul qualities that were not in agreement with this concept. Into his three “original causes” Pherekydes could only think the concept of the “good,” the perfect.

1915-10-10-GA254

names of four Cabeiri are given as Axieros, Axiokersos, Axiokersa, and Kadmillos.

1916-03-18-GA174A

If you were to take an even closer look at the Central European life of the spirit, and in particular the trait to which I have just drawn attention in my public lecture, you would see that while it is not yet spiritual science as such, it does have something which is the seed of spiritual science. Fichte¹ spoke of a ‘higher sense’, Goethe² of ‘the power of intuitive judgement’. Schelling,³ on the other hand, said that the soul had to attain to a higher level of ‘intellectual intuition’ if it was to gain true insight into the secrets of life. To understand this more clearly we have to take note of the great achievements of Schelling’s old age, when he wrote two extremely profound works—"The Philosophy of Mythology" and "The Philosophy of Revelation". These reveal a profound appreciation of Christianity and are far from understood even today.

The world is seen in terms of the spirit in works such as "The Gods of Samothrace", where Schelling seeks to penetrate the mysteries of the Samothracian Cabeiri or Kabiri.

Nowhere else in recent philosophy does one find such a marked awareness of the fact that the Christian faith is not a collection of dogmatic statements, that such dogma as there is really only has secondary importance and that the heart of the matter is that the Christ event, the mystery of Golgotha, did occur. Nowhere else is this more strongly represented than in Schelling’s "Philosophy of Revelation". All this is capable of further development and must lead to the development that I have frequently outlined, a necessary development that reveals itself when we reflect on the tasks to be achieved specifically in Central Europe during the fifth post-Atlantean age.

PS, Steiner already mentions this in GA008

Schelling describes the feelings of an initiate thus: “The initiate, through the rites which he received, became a link in the magic chain; he himself became a Cabeiri. He was received into the indestructible relationship, joining the army of the higher gods, as ancient inscriptions express it.”

1918-08-23-GA277

(SWCC)

In Goethe's Faust, the Nereids and Tritons rush off to bring the Kabiri, which the Sirens comment on in this way:

Away they go in a flash! Straight to Samothrace, Gone with a fair wind.

What do they think to accomplish. In the realm of the high Kabiri?

Are gods! wondrously their own, Who are always making themselves, And never know what they are.

.. this is what the sirens say about the Kabiri.

Perhaps this is the easiest way to get close to the overall condition of these Kabiri, if you think of the passage in the Bible where it speaks of the Elohim, who actually only see after they have created their day's work that it was good, or actually, as it says there, that it was beautiful. Of course, it is somewhat difficult for humans to understand, because gods - the Kabiri - precisely those we are talking about here, do not have such a consciousness as humans or as certain later gods. The Kabiri are gods of first emergence, and they are absorbed in this emergence. Therefore, they are far too alive to have a fully developed consciousness. They also belong together in this respect.

There are four such Kabiri gods in Samothrace. Actually there are eight, but for Samothrace itself only the four come into consideration.

.. one may say, "Wondrously peculiar, who continually produce themselves, and never know what they are."

This can already be said of the three, of the three main gods who are the gods of generation: Axieros, Axiokersos and Axiokersa. Of them it can already be said that they do not know what they are. But as little as these three together know what they are, so well does the fourth know for the three.

So, if you think that Man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an I, and that the I 'performs consciousness', you must think that these Kabiri are four. Whereas in Man these four members hold together, these Kabiri are four separate beings.

And Axieros is the physical body, Axiokersos is the etheric body, Axiokersa is the astral body; so they have no consciousness. Kadmilos, on the other hand, who corresponds to the I, thinks for all three.

So that is the peculiarity of these gods, that the fourth is actually their consciousness at the same time. If you take the cycle where I spoke of the Elohim, it is also similar in that the seventh actually thinks for the six.

1919-01-17-GA273

... Let us sum up all this. First, Goethe shows a festival of the sea, or rather, dreams evoked during this festival. Secondly, this festival took place during the night, under the influence of the Moon. Goethe arranges everything to show that here it is a question of having to gain a conception independently of the body, a conception of the kind that would be attained consciously, outside the body, is then experienced in pictures. And now we see that, while on the one hand, Goethe wishes to satisfy those who keep to the superficial—this is not said in any belittling sense—by making the Sirens collect wreckage for the Nereids and Tritons who covet it, yet these Nereids and Tritons are on the way to Samothrace to seek the Kabiri and bring them to the festival of the sea. By introducing the Gods of the primeval Samothracian sanctuary into this scene, Goethe shows that he is touching upon the highest human and cosmic secrets.

What, then, must take place when Homunculus is to become Homo, when the outlook of Homunculus is to become the outlook of Homo? What must then actually happen?

Now the idea of Homunculus, as understood within the world of the senses, must be taken out of that world and transposed into the world of soul and spirit where, between falling asleep and waking, man has his being. Homunculus must be taken into the world man experiences when, free of his body, he is united with the existence of soul and spirit. It is in this picture-world that we must now find Homunculus, he must then transfer this picture of Homunculus, he must then transfer this picture into that other world, the world of Imagination, Inspiration, and so forth. There alone can the abstract idea of Homunculus be grasped by the real forces of being, those forces that never enter human knowledge when we stop short at the understanding through the senses. When Homunculus, the idea of Homunculus, is separated from the body and transferred to the world of so and spirit, then in all earnestness everything becomes real. Then we have to come upon those forces that are the real ones behind the origin and evolution of man.

In all this Goethe is showing that he had a profound and significant comprehension of the Samothracian Kabiri, that he had a feeling how, in primeval times, these Kabiri were worshipped as guardians of the forces connected with the origin and evolution of mankind. Thus, by evoking from the age if atavistic clairvoyance, pictures of the divine forces associated with human evolution, Goethe was touching upon what is highest.

When dealing with the Samothracian Mysteries, the conception of the Greeks referred back to what was very ancient. And it may be said that the ideas about these Samothracian Mysteries about the Kabiri divinities, permeated all the various ideas the Greeks held about the Gods, all their ideas concerning the connection between these Gods and mankind. And the old Greek was convinced that his idea of human immortality was a legacy bequeathed to the Greek consciousness by the Samothracian Mysteries. It was to the influence of these Mysteries he felt he owed the idea of man's immortality, the idea of man's membership of the world of soul and spirit.

Goethe therefore wishes at the same time to suggest that, were the impulses of the Greeks, that are associated with the Kabiri of Samothrace, grasped in a state free of the body, perhaps the abstract human idea of Homunculus might be united with the true evolutionary forces of man. In the Greek consciousness there was definitely something that could live again, vividly, in Goethe when he touched on this profound mystery. To take an example, this may be seen in what the Greeks used to say of Philip of Macedonia how, by watching the Mysteries of Samothrace, he found Olympia. And the Greeks had in their consciousness how, at that time, the great Alexander decided to descend to these parents when coming to earth, when soul to soul before the divinities of Kabiri Philip of Macedon and Olympia found each other. Those things must be touched upon for the awe to be felt which the Greeks actually experienced when the Kabiri were in question, an awe shared later by Goethe.

From an external point of view they are simply ocean-deities. The Greeks knew that, in an age relatively not very ancient, Samothrace had been inundated, rent asunder, and reduced to confusion by most fearful volcanic storms. The nature-demons had shown their power here in such a terrific way that it still remained in historic memory among the Greeks. And in the woods, in the forests of Samothrace, at that time very dense, the Kabiren Mysteries were concealed. Among the many different names they bore is one Axieros; a second, Axiokersos; a third, Axiokersa; the fourth was Kadmyllos. And a vague feeling existed that there were also a fifth, sixth and seventh. But man's spiritual gaze was mainly fixed on the first three. The old ideas of the Kabiri centered round the secret of men's becoming; and the initiate it in to the holy Mysteries of Samothrace was supposed to come to the perception that what is seen spiritually in the spiritual world corresponds to what happens on earth when, for an incarnating soul a man arises, a man comes to birth. In the spiritual world the spiritual correlate of the human birth was supposed to be watched.

Through such vision, Goethe believed he could change the idea of a homunculus to that of homo. And it was to this vision the Samothracian Initiates were led. We cannot see a man in his true nature when we regard him as a being enclosed within his skin and when we are under the delusion that all we are concerned with in man stands before us in external, physical human form, visible to the external eye. Whoever wishes really to know man must go beyond what is enclosed within the skin and look upon the human being as extending over the entire universe. He must have in mind, what extends spiritually outside the skin.

Now many of the ideas about the Gods depend on this impulse of the Greeks to see the human being outside his skin. And connected with these ideas there was an exoteric and an esoteric side. The exoteric side of man's becoming related, however, to the whole of nature's becoming; the connection of man's becoming with the becoming of nature was involved when, later, the Greeks spoke of Demeter, of Ceres. The esoteric side of Ceres, of Demeter, of the world in its becoming, was the Kabiri. We must know how to look at him, if in any way we are to be able to penetrate the secret of man.

You see, to look at man simply as a figure standing on the physical earth is, really, to deceive yourself about him. For the human being has been united from a threefold stream, a trinity. And as three lights cast their beams on a point—a circle—and we see the fusion of the lights and then refuse to recognise how one, perhaps yellow, another blue, and the third of reddish colour flow together into one, refuse to see this harmony, preferring to believe that what has arisen from a mingling of lights is a unity and so deceive ourselves in believing this mixed product we see before us as man in his skin to be a unity. He is not a unity and if we take him for one we shall never read the secret of mankind. At the present time man is unconscious of not being a unity. But he was conscious of it while atavistic clairvoyance glowed warmly through human knowledge. Thus, the Initiates of Samothrace put men together out of Axieros standing in the middle, and the two extremes, Axiokersos and Axiokersa, whose forces were united with those of Axieros. We might say than that there are three—Axieros, Axiokersos, and Axiokersa. These three forces flowed together to form a unity. The higher reality is the trinity; the unity springs from the trinity. This is what comes before the eye of man.

It might also be said that the Samothracian Initiate learned to know man who stood, physically perceptible, before him. He was told: You must take away from this man the two extremes, Axiokersos and Axiokersa, that only ray into him. Then you can retain Axieros. So the matter stands thus: Of the three, Axieros represents the centre condition of the human being, and the others the two invisible ones, merely shine upon him.

Thus, in the Mysteries of Samothrace, man is shown to be a trinity. Goethe asks himself: Can the idea of the abstract Homunculus perhaps be changed into that of the complete Homo by turning to what, in the Samothracian Mysteries, was regarded as the secret of man—the human trinity? And he said: This trinity can only be arrived at as a conception when man, with his soul and spirit, leaves the body. This is what he told himself.

We must, however, always emphasise that, as regards spiritual perception, Goethe was only a beginner. What is so wonderful about all that Goethe stands for will, as I said recently, only be rightly understood when we think of it as being continually developed, being necessarily developed in order to lend to ever greater heights. In Goethe himself we have the theory of metamorphosis, from leaf to leaf, from the green leaf of the foliage to the coloured petal of the flower, or from the spinal vertebrae, perhaps, to the bones of the head—this secret, if rightly understood, leading from one incarnation to another, from one earth-life to another, as I have often shown you. Hence, from the standpoint of Goethe's own conception of the world, we may ask: How then should the Mystery of Samothrace be pictured today? The Samothracian Mystery, as such, with its Kabiri-symbolism of the secret of humanity, corresponds entirely with the atavistic clairvoyant world-conception; but the living content of knowledge at any one human period, cannot be continued on in the right way, and must be re-moulded. It is not suitable for a return to old conceptions adapted to a quite different state of human evolution; the conceptions must be transformed. The Samothracian Mystery has naturally only historical value. Today we should say: We represent how in the centre of the Representative of Man there stands Axieros, how he is encircled by Axiokersa, and how Axiokersos must be placed in connection with all that is earthly—thus giving us the Representative of Man, Lucifer and Ahriman. And here we have the re-moulding suited to the present age, and on into the future, of the holy Mystery of Samothrace.

It might be said: Were Goethe to appear among us today, wishing, in conformity with all that man has since won for himself, to tell us what is able to change Homunculus to Homo, he would point to the Representative of Man, surrounded by, and in combat with, Lucifer and Ahriman. I beg of you, however, not to make an abstraction of these things, not to apply the favorite modern method of settling these matters by a few abstract concepts, and taking them for symbols. the more you feel that a whole world, containing the secret of man, lies hidden in the figure of the Representative of Man in connection with Lucifer and Ahriman; the more you repudiate the pride, the unjustified, childish pride, of modern man in his abstract scientific concepts; the more you open your soul to a world giving you a view of this image of the mystery of man—then the nearer you come to this secret.

Spiritual Science meets with all kinds of opposition today. But one of its strongest opponents is man's desire for abstraction, his desire to label everything with a few concepts. Goethe's teaching is, in feeling, the exact opposite of this mischievous modern habit of pasting concepts everywhere. One has peculiar experiences in this regard. Men come to a movement like Spiritual Science from very different motives. There are many who wish to reduce everything to abstractions. For instance, man consists of seven principles—I once had the experience, a horrible experience, of someone explaining Hamlet by attributing to him the principle of Buddhi on one place, in another, Manes, and so on. That, my dear friends, is something much worse than all materialism. These quite abstract explanations, all this symbolising of an abstract nature is, regarded inwardly, much worse than any external materialism. Anyhow, we see that, in showing his Nereids and Tritons on the way to Samothrace to fetch the holy Kabiri, Goethe wished, above all, to raise the idea of Homunculus to a very high human plane.

And so, with regard to the Kabiri, we must experience what the ancient peoples did with regard to their deities. These deities of primeval peoples appear primitive to man today—mere idols. This is so because modern man has no understanding for idols. This is so because modern man has no understanding for all that flows out of elemental forces. Not even in art does man rise today to anything really creative. He keeps to a model, or judges what is represented for him in art by the question: Is it like?—Often indeed one hears the objection that it is not natural, because, among men today, there is very little real artistic feeling. In any case, whoever wishes to understand the sometimes grotesque looking figures of the ancient Gods, must try to form an idea of the beings belonging to the third elemental world, from which our world springs, on the one hand in its mineral, on the other, in its organic products.

You know how the scene begins. The Nereids and Tritons are on their way to Samothrace to fetch the Kabiri, amongst whom Homunculus is to be transformed into Home. In the meantime, while they are on their journey, Thales, who is to be the guide of Homunculus in becoming man, betakes himself to the old sea God, Nereus. It was Thales, the old philosopher of nature, whom first Homunculus had sought out. Now, Goethe is neither a mystic in the bad sense of the word, not a mere natural philosopher, when it is a question of finding reality. Hence Thales himself cannot be made to help Homunculus to become Home. Goethe had a deep respect for Thales conception of the world, but did not attribute to him the ability, the force, to advise Homunculus how to become man, complete man. For this, one should betake oneself outside the body to a demonic power—to old Nereus. Goethe brings the most various demonic powers to Homunculus. What kind of power is this Nereus? Now we can see this by the way the old sea-God speaks in Goethe's poem. It might be said that Nereus is the wise, prophetic, but somewhat philistine inhabitant of the spiritual world nearest man, the world man first enters on leaving the body. And, we ask, does he know at all how Homunculus is to become man? Nereus has indeed understanding, even to the point of prophetic clairvoyance; and he makes noble use of this understanding, but even so does not really succeed in reaching what is innermost in the human being. Because of this he feels men do not listen to him, do not heed his counsel. He has, as it were, no access to the human soul. On many occasions he has advised men, warned men; once he warned Paris against bringing so much misery on Troy, but to no effect. Now Nereus, since he is not hampered by a physical body, has developed on the physical plane to a very high degree human understanding that is possessed in a much less degree by man. But even with this understanding he cannot help Homunculus very far on the road to becoming Homo. What Nereus is able to say does not entirely meet the case. So by that nothing is actually gained for Homunculus' task.

Nereus says, however, that although he will not concern himself in giving Homunculus advice about becoming Homo, he is expecting his daughters, the Dorides (or Nereides). In particular, he expects Galatea, the most outstanding of them; for they are to attend the ocean-festival. Galatea! and Imagination of a mighty kind.

What the question is here, is to see how things are connected in the world. It is not very easy to speak on this point, because of the soul's desire today to reduce everything to abstractions. But anyone who looks into these matters may experience a great deal. There are, no doubt, well-intentioned people who say they believe in the spirit. Certainly, it is not a bad thing at least to believe in the spirit; but how do they answer the weighty question: What do you mean exactly by the ‘spirit’ in which you believe? What is the spirit? Spiritualists generally renounce all claim to learning anything of the spirit by doing much that is quite unspiritual. Spiritualism is the most materialistic doctrine that can exist. Certain souls more finely tuned speak indeed of the spirit, but what is it exactly that they have i mind when so speaking? That is why very modern and sceptical minds prefer to forgo the spirit—I mean, of course, only in thought—prefer to give up the spirit as against what can be known today through the senses. Read the article called “Spirit” in Fritz Mauthner's Dictionary of Philosophy; there you will probably be able to get bodily conditions but not those of the head.

Now, you see, in Spiritual Science one should rise above all this abstract talking, even if it is about the spirit. Follow what is said in Spiritual Science, and you will see how it rises progressively as we work. Everything is drawn upon that, step by step, can lead into the actual spiritual world. What is said is not merely the spoken word but derives its force from a method of comparison. Only think how, by the very way Spiritual Science is presented here, it becomes comprehensible that man is pursuing a certain path in life, in the physical body. Read, for instance, what is given comprehensively in the October number of Das Reich (1918). It is shown there how, and by means of what forces, a human being while quite a child has the closest affinity to the material world; how in middle life his soul gains in importance; how in later life he becomes spiritual. This, however, he often does not recognise because he is not prepared for it. He becomes spiritual as the body falls into decay, as the body becomes dry and sclerotic the spirit becomes free, even during the waking condition. Only, a man is very seldom conscious of what he is able to experience if he grows old with a certain gift. I mean here with a gift of the spiritual; that is to say if, not simply growing decrepit in body, he experiences the soul becoming young, becoming spirit.

This makes us realise, my dear friends, that the spirit cannot be seen in an old man or old woman; naturally it is invisible. The decrepit body can be seen but not the spirit growing young and fresh. Wrinkles may be perceived in the flesh of the cheeks, but not the growing fullness of the spirit; that is supersensible. We can, however, indicate where the spirit may be found here in the world where we are leading our everyday existence. And if we then say: The whole of nature is permeated by spirit, we reach the point when we realise that outside in nature where the minerals and plants make manifest the external world, there dwells something of the same force into which we men and women grow as we become old. There you have the visible expression of it. To say, in a pantheistic way, that outside lives the spirit, means nothing at all, because spirit then remains a mere word. But if we say, not in a direct abstract way, but with the necessary and various details: To find the force that as you grow old is always becoming stronger in you, look to the innermost and most active of the forces of nature—then we are speaking of a reality. The essential thing is to set the one force by the side of the other, and to notice the place of each. These things can be livingly realised by turning one's gaze to the force-impulses in the whole connection of a physical human being's descent to earth—from conception, throughout the embryonic life till birth. The dull, dry-as-dust scientist stops short at this force; it is true, he examines it punctiliously but only in his own way, and then comes to a standstill. When a man is able to survey the world from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, he knows, however, that this force is also present in other places. Acting more quickly, the very same force makes itself felt when you wake in the morning, when you wake out of sleep. Exactly the same force, though in a more tenuous form, is present, as the one leading from conception through the embryonic life to birth; it is the identical force. This force is not only in you, in your innermost being; it is diffused outside, throughout everything and every process in the whole wide cosmos.

This force is the daughter of cosmic intelligence. You see, if we wish to describe these things, we must touch on many matters that, today, are quite out of the ordinary. What then does the modern scientist do, when wishing to come upon the secret of physical germination? He uses the microscope; he examines the germ-cell under the microscope, before it is fertilised, after it is fertilised, and so on. He has no feeling that what he thus examines in the smallest object under the microscope is constantly before his eyes in the macrocosm. The very same process that goes on, for example, in the womb of the mother, before and during conception, and during the whole embryonic life, this same process, this very same process, goes on macrocosmically when, after the seed has sunk down into the earth, the earth sends forth the little plant. The warmth of the womb, the warmth of the pregnant mother, is exactly the same as is the sun outside for the whole vegetation of the world. It is important to be able to realise that what can be seen in the smallest object under the microscope, can be looked upon macrocosmically all around in the external world. When we wander about among he growing plants, we are actually in the womb of the world. In short, the force underlying the becoming of man is outside in the whole macrocosmic world, seething and weaving there. Imagine this force personified, imagine this same force of human becoming grasped spiritually in its spiritual counterpart outside the human body, and you have Galatea, with those akin to her, her sisters, the Dorides. In these Imaginations we are led into a mysterious but quite real world. This is one of the most profound scenes written by Goethe, who was conscious that, at the most advanced age, man may have a premonition of these secrets of nature.

There is something overwhelmingly significant in Goethe beginning Faust in his youth and then, shortly before the end of his life, writing such scenes as are now being shown. For sixty years he was striving to find the way of putting into outward form what, at the beginning of that time, he had conceived. He draws upon everything he considers relevant to raise the idea of Homunculus to the idea of Homo, and to present man's becoming outside the body, in all its mystery. He draws upon the Kabiri Mystery, and the mystery of becoming man as it appeared in the figure of Galatea. And he knows that reality is so all-embracing, so profound, that the Imaginations awakened by the Kabiri impulses, by the Galatea-impulse, can do no more than hover on its surface. The mystery is far greater than what can be contained even in such impulses.

Goethe himself tried every means of approaching the secret of life in a true and living way. Thus he evolved his theory of metamorphosis, in which he follows up the different forms in nature—how one form develops out of another. Now Goethe's theory of metamorphosis must not be regarded in and abstract way. He shows us this himself. It is perhaps because it can only be conceived and brought to man's soul in a world-outlook free of the body that, with his theory of metamorphosis Goethe approaches what was atavistically experienced in the old Proteus-myth. Perhaps Proteus, who in his own becoming takes on such different forms, perhaps through his experiences it would be possible to find how Homunculus can become Homo. (You know how, in this scene, Goethe introduces him, and we present him, as tortoise, man, dolphin, three forms appearing one after another.)

But Goethe felt that there were still limitations to his theory of metamorphosis. Surely, you may say, a man with such profound, such fundamental knowledge, as Goethe could see what follows from this theory; with it one can watch one leaf of a plant changing into another, up to the petal of the flower, the spinal vertebrae transforming themselves into the bones of the head, the skull-bones? But Goethe—anyone who has worked on Goethe's world-conception knows how he wrestled in this sphere—Goethe knew he could go no farther. Yet he felt: There is something beyond all this.—We know what that something is—the head of the present man is the metamorphosis of the body of the previous man, the man of an earlier life on earth; the rest of his body in this earth-life will, in the next life, become the head. There, for man's life, we have metamorphosis—the crown of metamorphosis. He draws on what he feels about Proteus, but that can lead only to raising the idea of Homunculus to that of Homo. Goethe felt he had made a great beginning with the Protean idea of metamorphosis, but that this had to be developed were Homunculus to become Homo. Goethe in all honesty represents poetically both what he can and what he cannot do, and we see deep into his soul. It is no doubt, easier to picture an abstract, perfect Goethe and to assure ourselves he knew everything. But No! Goethe becomes all the greater by our recognising the limitations he himself so honestly admits, as may be seen, for instance, in his not allowing Proteus—that is, the way he conceives his theory of metamorphosis—to give counsel regarding Homunculus becoming Homo.

Goethe strove, indeed, form the most varied directions to approach this becoming—this growing to true man. For him, artistic conception was not, as it is for so many, fundamentally abstract. He considered that everything expressed in works of art was part of all that is creative in the world. Into this scene he puts all that was to have led him to his heart's desire—to fathoming the mystery of becoming man. As he stood before the Greek works of art, or rather, the Italian work which made Greek art real for him, he said to himself: I am an the track of what the Greeks were doing in the creation of their works of art; they acted in accordance with the same forces as does nature, in her creations. And he had the experience that, if the artist is a true artist, he unites himself in marriage, as it were, with the forces creating in nature; he creates his forms, and all that can be created artistically, out of what is working in the arising, the growing, of plants of animals, of man. But in all this there is still no inner knowledge. That is what Goethe had to admit to himself. The creative forces present themselves to our vision, allow us to feel them, but in metamorphosis we do not go right within them.

There next appear the Telchines of Rhodes. They are such great artists that, naturally. all external human art seems small in comparison. They forged Neptune's trident. They were the first who tried to represent Gods in human form, that is, to create man out of the actual cosmic forces. This art of the Telchines comes nearer reproducing man's becoming, but does not quite reach it. This is what Goethe is wishing to tell us. He expresses it through Proteus who says finally: Even this does not lead to the real mystery of man.

Thus does Goethe wish to evoke a true feeling that there are two worlds—the waking world of day, and the world that is entered when man is free of the body, the world he would see if, during sleep he became awake to this body-free condition. Everything of the kind that he would say, is indicated by Goethe in this scene most delicately and sublimely. Take, for example, the passage where the Dorides bring in the sailor-lads; read the works in which the world is described, how the physical world is set beside the world entered when man is free of the body—how this is pictured in the Dorides set beside the physical sailor boys. They have found each other and yet not found each other. Human beings and spirits meet one another, yet do not meet; they approach each other and remain strangers. In this passage, the relation of the two worlds is wonderfully indicated. Everywhere Goethe endeavours to show how essential it is to place oneself into the spiritual world to find what makes Homunculus into Homo. At the same time he delicately indicates how physical world and spiritual world are together yet apart.

One might say that in his artistic representation, Goethe sees—or rather, makes us see—how Homunculus can become Homo if the soul approaches the intimate mystery of the Kabiri, if it approach what Nereus evoked in his daughter Galatea. All that is active in the true art that works out of the cosmos. But, alas, it is as if one were grasping after reality in a dream, and the dream immediately fades away. It is as though one wished to hold fast what welds together the physical and the spiritual worlds. The Gods will not suffer it; the worlds fall apart.

This difficulty of knowing the spirit is the fundamental experience, the fundamental impulse in the soul of one who watches this scene with true understanding. It is this that leads Goethe to his mighty finale—the shattering of Homunculus against the shell-chariot of Galatea, the shattering that is at the same time an arising, a coming into being, the ascent into the elements, which is a finding of the self in reality.

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Let us without prejudice speak of what this really involves. In what man can experience of himself through ordinary knowledge, that amounts only to what he is as Homunculus, Goethe saw something to be compared with the unfertilised human germ-cell. Considering the unfertilised germ-cell in the human mother, we recognise it as something from which no physical human being can arise. It must first be fertilised; only then can there be a physical human being. And when we think with physical understanding alone, in these thoughts the inner being of man can never be lit up, for this is only what can be produced one-sidedly, and may be compared with what can be produced by the woman one-sidedly. All it is possible to grasp with out physical understanding, must be fertilised by knowledge gained outside the physical body. Half the riddle on man is hidden from the mere physical power of understanding. The atavistic clairvoyance adapted to ancient times wished to point, in the Mystery of the Kabiri, to what, in the spiritual connection of nature, is the other half of man's becoming which in its turn points to the immortal in man. That is why Goethe thought that possible through the impulse of the Kabiri the developing of Homunculus into Homo might be represented.

But Goethe, as one who sought knowledge, was not only to a high degree a serious seeker, but, at the same time, something which, my dear friends, is very much rarer in the sphere of knowledge than one might think—a deeply honest soul. He wished to test how far he would get by breathing new life into such a mystery as that of the Kabiri. Those who seek knowledge with less honesty make a few antiquarian studies, perhaps adding a few fantasies founded upon these, and then consider they know something of what is expressed in the Kabiri Mystery. Yes, my dear friends, the honest seeker after knowledge never knows as much as the seeker who is less honest, for he always considers himself more stupid than those who light-heartedly piece together information from here and there, which, easily acquired, is then said to be absolutely complete. Goethe was not one of those who took knowledge thus light-heartedly. He knew that, even if he had striven for it from the year 1749 to the year 1829, in which he wrote this scene just witnessed (a scene written in the most difficult circumstances about two years before his death) even if he has grown old in this striving and has never relaxed, nevertheless, for the honest searcher after knowledge there is always a remaining sting. Perhaps in some direction one ought to have done better.—This is what worked so intensively out of Goethe's very nature—this absolute honesty. This made him recognise, where the riddle of the Kabiri is concerned: As a modern man who can no longer call upon clairvoyance, I cannot know what the Greeks thought about the Kabiri—I cannot know this for certain!—But perhaps that is not of most importance, for Goethe had the feeling that there was a kind of knowledge of the Kabiri Mystery within him, which, however, he could not wholly grasp. It was like a dream that not only immediately fades, but of which one knows that, although it passes away so quickly, it contains something most profound; it hovers so lightly that the understanding, the intellect, does not suffice, the soul-forces do not suffice to give it clear and definite outline. It is precisely in this intimate inner development that there lies the significance of this scene. We do not understand it at all if we wish to explain every detail. For Goethe has called up pictures for the very purpose of showing—“Here I am close to my goal yet cannot reach it.”

Thus, he introduces the Kabiri to show how, perhaps not he but someone who fully grasps the Kabiri Mystery, may find the bridge for Homunculus, with the help of that Mystery, to come to Homo. He himself cannot yet succeed in this, and has therefore chosen other paths in the imaginative world. That is why he makes the philosopher Thales conduct Homunculus into the presence of Nereus. Now Goethe thought very highly of Thales, though not to the point of giving him credit for being able to show Homunculus how to become Homo. This Nereus has a great gift of human understanding and knows how to transform the divine into the demonic, thus foreseeing the future, so that it may be supposed he knows something about changing Homunculus into Homo. But here again Goethe wishes to show that this is not the path. For on this path we come to a one-sided development, raising the human critical understanding to a demonic height that not only runs to dull criticism but to actual prophetic criticism holding in mind the good side of human criticism. Nereus, however, a kind of priest among the demons, is not in a position, either, to approach the Homunculus-problem. He does not even want to do so. Goethe has the feeling that, should human understanding be developed to the demonic, should the critical faculty of investigation possessed by man be—shall we say—demonised, he would then lose all interest in this most profound human problem of raising Homunculus to man. Thus nothing is to be gained from Nereus. But he does at least draw attention to the imminent approach of his daughters, the Dorides, sisters of the Nereids, and among them, the most outstanding of them all, Galatea. Yesterday I tried to indicate what is represented in this picture of Galatea.

You see, my dear friends, the modern man of research sees everything telescoped into a single moment of life. In the Greek world-conception—by no means confined to what is generally known as classical Philology—what live in the human being was still closely connected with all that lives in the whole of external nature. All that contributes to the becoming of man exists in another form, weaving and pulsing through every process of nature. But we have to be able to discover it. Our present capacity for knowledge is not sensitive enough to penetrate into the regions through which we participate in external nature, in the experiences of the great universe. These experiences are, indeed, concealed in man, in his development from the human germ-cell, from conception, fertilisation, to birth and his appearing as a human being. The same processes that then take place, in concealment within the human being, are going on continuously all around us. It was precisely this which, in the Kabiri Mystery was disclosed to the candidate for initiation—how in nature conception and birth are living. We see the moon rise and set, we see the sun rise and set, feel the warmth the sun sheds around, receive the light it radiates; we see the clouds moving, look upon their changing forms. Within all this weaving and pulsing through the world lies the impulse of becoming. But modern man no longer perceives this; he will perceive it, however, if he develops himself further through Spiritual Science. And formerly he perceived it with an atavistic sense of cognition, with the atavistic perception and conception of olden times.

1919-01-25-GA188

After a scene from Faust, the Cabeiri are explained as Man's bodily principles. The first three being the physical, etheric, and astral bodies. The fourth 'I' was not developed at the time of the Samothracian mysteries. The three Cabeiri still to come are the spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man.

Take the scene with the Kabirs out of today's performance, try to read in this “Faust” scene everything that refers to the Kabirs, try to follow every single line with real interest, and you will see how Goethe, through his spiritualized instincts, was still very much within the realm of intuitive knowledge. Through such performances and mystery plays, as the Greeks had in imitation of the Kabirs, for example, the highest is expressed for man in relation to the pursuit of knowledge and the like. Goethe rightly associated these Kabirs with the path that should lead from homunculus to homo. He rightly associated these Kabirs with the mystery of human becoming.

Three Kabiras are brought forward. We speak first of three human limbs. Before we go into the true inner being of man, we speak of three human limbs: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body. Speaking of these human limbs immediately arouses the criticism of those people who today think they are particularly clever, who today think they are particularly scientific. Such people object, for example: Why divide, segment the unified human being? After all, man is a unity; it is schematic to separate man into such limbs. Yes, but it is not so simple. Of course, if it were only a schematic division of the human being, it would be unnecessary to attach any particular value to these limbs. But these individual limbs, which one seems to abstract so much from the whole human being, are all connected with completely different spheres of the universe. The fact that man has a physical body, as he has today, and the way in which this physical body has developed from its Saturnian disposition to the present day, means that man belongs to space, to the sphere of space. And through his etheric body, man belongs to the sphere of time. Thus, by belonging to the two totally different spheres, by, one could say, having crystallized out of the world of time and space, the human being consists of a physical body and an etheric body. This is not an arbitrary scheme, which is mentioned as a classification, as a structure of the human being. It is actually based on the whole connection of the human being with the universe. And through his astral body, the human being already belongs to the extra-spatial and extra-temporal.

This trinity, so to speak the human shell trinity, is presented in the three Kabirs. The fourth “did not want to come”. And it is he who thinks for them all! If we ascend from the three sheaths to the human ego, we have in this human ego, first of all, that which rises above space and time, even above the timeless, spaceless quality of the astral. But this human ego only came into consciousness in the period of time that followed the Samothracean worship of Kabir. The Greeks had, of course, derived their belief in the immortal from the ancient Samothracean teaching; but it was only within the Graeco-Latin period that the consciousness of the ego was to be born. Therefore the fourth did not want to come, representing as it does that which exists as a relationship between the ego and the cosmos. And how far removed that was from the Kabir mystery, which initially points to what was there in the becoming of man. The three highest, the fifth, sixth and seventh, are still to be “inquired of in Olympus”: spirit-self, spirit-life, spirit-man. These come, as we know, in the sixth and seventh periods. And the eighth has not yet been thought of at all!

We actually see the mystery of humanity in its ancient form, as it was veiled in the mysteries of Samothrace, from which the Greeks took the best for their knowledge of the soul, for their wisdom of the soul, and even the best for their poetry, insofar as it related to the human being. That is the important thing to recognize: as soon as one turns one's gaze back to these ancient times, which Goethe tried to revive, one looks into a knowledge of the connection between man and the universe. Man felt himself related to all the secrets of existence. Man knew that he is not merely enclosed within the limits of his skin, he belongs to the whole wide universe. And that which is enclosed in his skin is only the image of his particular being.

1921-06-28-GA205

explains that there are four Cabeiri and three of them kill the fourth, meaning that Man's lower three bodily principles are transient and mortal in the sense they are dispersed after physical death in the journey between death and a new birth. If the I does not take part in the spiritual, it is killed and drawn into mortality by the three others.

As an illustration of this, see also the 'state of avichi' on Eighth sphere for an explanation of an illustrative case where this happens. In general, see also Human 'I' and Man's higher triad for schemas that show how the true spiritual Individuality starts with the spirit-self (also called 'causal body' or book of lives).

1922-09-22-GA216

see longer extract: Rhythmic subsystem#1922-09-22-GA216

Looking back to those ancient times of Greek development when the real inspiration was given for what manifested, later on, in a more external form—looking back to the times when forms of primitive grandeur were the source and wellspring of plastic art, of the Greek art of tragedy and of philosophy, we find that the Priest-Initiates of the Mysteries in their guidance of humanity, were able to make use primarily of those beings who cradled themselves in the condition of balance between man's inbreathing and out-breathing.

We can have no real knowledge of the Apollonian art, or of Orphic wisdom, unless we realise that their inspiration came from dæmonic beings moving within this condition of balance between inbreathing and out-breathing.

The strings of Apollo's lyre were tuned in accordance with what could be observed of those beings who lived between the moon-sphere and the Earth-sphere, who liked best to hover, to dance, as it were, on the strings of the cosmos which had been woven into the balance between inbreathing and out-breathing. The dance of the daemons of the air - this was mirrored in the tuning of the strings of Apollo's lyre.

1922-12-04-GA218

(SWCC)

Let us recall the Samothracian mysteries to which Goethe alludes in the second part of his Faust, where he speaks of the Kabiri.

I tried to find out by visualisation what the Kabiri must have looked like within the Samothracian mysteries. And .. I got three jars, but jars with a plastic-artistic design. At first I was surprised myself, though Goethe also speaks of jars.

The matter only became clear to me when I realised that these jars stood on an altar, something similar to incense was brought into them, the sacrificial word was chanted, and from the power of the sacrificial word (which in ancient times still had a completely different vibration-generating power than today), the sacrificial smoke formed itself into the image of the divinity that was sought.

1923-12-21-GA232

is on the mysteries of the Samothracian kabiri

Then after a majestic impulse was awakened in the pupils of the Northern Greek Mysteries through his gaze having been first directed towards the planetary orbits themselves, it was then deepened, in a human sense, so that his vision was taken possession of as it were by the heart; and he learnt to see psychically, with the soul.

• Then the pupil understood why on the altar there were placed before him three symbolic vessels, pitchers. 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 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.

Now when you look at those fashion-plate figures (and you must pardon me for using this strong expression) which are unfortunately mostly to be seen in picture galleries of the later Greek sculpture, and which are greatly valued because people have no idea from what these forms have arisen — if one considers these fashion-plate figures of Apollo, Mars and Mercury, one should look at them with, as it were, the gaze of Goethe, that gaze which Goethe applied during his Italian journey in order, through these fashion-plate forms, to get some idea of what Greek art really was in its freshness, that Greek art which was destroyed with so much else during the first few centuries after the foundation of Christianity. If one is able as it were to look through those later Greek plastic forms, which in one sense are rightly valued because they are signposts, but which being simply descendants from what lived before, should not be considered great — if one looks back to that from which they came, one sees that in the older Greek Art, copies were made of sacrificial revelations, revelations which arose in a much earlier epoch in a much more majestic and mighty way than we find them later in Samothrace, in these Mysteries of the Kabiri. One looks back to those times in which the mantric word was uttered into the sacrificial smoke, and the true form of Apollo, of Mars and of Mercury then appeared.

Those were times in which Man did not say abstractly: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and a God was the Word;” those were times when man could say something else, when he could say:

“My out-breathing fashions itself, it takes form; and while this expiration takes form in a regular way, it reveals itself as an image of cosmic creation, because it creates for me from the sacrificial smoke forms which for me are a living script, a living writing; and this writing reveals to me what the planetary worlds desire to say to me.”

When the pupil of the Kabiri Mysteries in Samothrace approached the portals of these temples of initiation, then, because of the instruction he had gone through, he had this feeling: “Now at last I am entering something which reveals to me the magical deeds of the sacrificial Father;” for in these Mysteries the initiating Celebrant was called “Father.”

What did the magical powers of this celebrant Father reveal to the pupil?

Through that which the Gods laid down in Man (i.e. the power of speech) this priestly magician and sage, this Hierophant, was able to write certain signs in the sacrificial smoke) certain characteristics; and these uttered the secrets of the universe. Therefore the pupil, when he approached the temple of initiation, could say in his heart: “I am now entering something which reveals to me a mighty spirit, the great Gods, those great Gods who through these sacrificial rites, reveal on the earth the secrets of the cosmos.” That was a speech which was there spoken, a writing which was there written, which truly did not appeal to the intellect of Man, but which made a claim on the whole being of Man.

In the Samothracian Mysteries there still existed something of a knowledge which today has quite disappeared. Man is today capable of saying, with truth, what a quartz crystal feels like, what a hair feels like, what the human skin feels like, what the skin of an animal feels like, what silk or velvet feel like. Man is today capable of that. He can realize all these things vividly in his feeling.

In the Samothracian Mysteries something else existed by means of which Man could realize with truth how the Gods could be felt. For the sense of touch in these ancient times was still such that Man was capable of feeling, of contacting the Gods. The most marvelous thing is really the following, and one has to go back to these ancient times if one ventures to say that man could assert with truth: “I know through my finger tips how the Gods contact one another.”

In these Samothracian Mysteries there existed another method by which one could touch, contact the Gods, and this consisted in the following.

While the priestly magician spoke into this sacrificial smoke the mantric words, while he caused these words to resound forth in his expiration, he felt in his outgoing breath just as Man usually feels when he stretches out a hand to touch something; and just as we know the different feeling in our finger-tips when they are contacting say silk, to what they feel when they contact velvet or touch the fur of a cat or the skin of a human being, in the same way the Samothracian priestly magician felt with the air he breathed out, which went forth into the sacrificial smoke, an utterance of something which came from himself. He felt his expiration as an organ of touch, which went into the smoke. He felt the smoke; and in the smoke he felt these great Gods, the Kabiri, streaming towards him. He felt how the smoke took form and that those forms which developed in the smoke came from outside to the expiration of breath. These out-breathings formed here into curves, there into angles, while at times something as it were grasped him; thus the whole divine form of the Kabiri was experienced by means of the mantric words in which the breath was clothed. Through the words which came out of the heart the sacrificing Hierophant contacted these great Gods, the descending Kabiri, who came to him in the sacrificial smoke. There was a living interchange between the Logos in man and the Logos outside in the cosmic spaces.

Thus while the initiating Father led the pupil before the sacrificial altar and gradually instructed him in the way in which he learnt to feel while speaking, and while the pupil progressed more and more and learnt to feel himself in this element of speech, he finally came to that stage of inner experience in which he had a clear consciousness of how Hermes, or Mercury was fashioned, of how Apollo was fashioned, and of how Aries or Mars was fashioned. It was as though the entire consciousness of man was lifted out of his body and what the pupil formerly knew as the content of his head was lifted out and remained above it. It was as though the forces of his heart were pressed into a different place, as though the forces of the heart were driven into the head. And in this human being really transcending, going out of himself, there arose something which formed these words: “It is thus that the Kabiri, the great Gods desire you to be.” From that moment the pupil knew that Mercury lived in his limbs, the Sun in his heart, and Mars in his speech.

You see it is not only the processes and being of nature in the external world that were brought before the pupil in these ancient times; what was brought before him was neither one-sided naturalistically nor in a moral way. It was something in which morality and nature flowed together in unity; and that was just the secret of these Samothracian Mysteries, that the pupil received this consciousness directly: “Nature is spirit; spirit is nature.”

In the times which found their last echo in the Samothracian Kabiri service, arose the insight which can bring earthly substances into harmony with the entire heavens. In these ancient times a man could not say, when he looked at that reddish-brown material which has the shining appearance of copper, at that substance which we today call copper, he could not say as one does today: “That is copper; that is a constituent of the earth.” At that time such a thing would have been inconceivable. Copper was no constituent of the earth for these ancient peoples, but the deed of Venus in the earth which revealed itself as copper. The Earth only allows stones such as sandstone, chalk, to arise, in order to receive into her bosom what the heavens imprinted into the earth. Just as little as we today are able to say that the seed simply grows out of the earth, so little at that time could one say, in regard to the surface of the earth, and copper ore in the earth, “This copper ore is a constituent of the earth.” What one had to say then was: “The Earth here with its sandstone or other soil is simply the basis, the soil; and what exists by way of metal inside it has been placed in the earth by the planets.” This is a seed implanted in the earth by a planet, and everything which exists in this way on the earth was then seen as something impelled into the earth from the heavens.

We today describe the Earth with the substances in it, as we may see in any book on mineralogy or geology; but the ancient science would not have described things in the same way. At that time a Man could let his gaze roam over the earth, but when he saw the substances with it he had to take the heavens into consideration; and it was in the heavens that he saw the real beings of substances. It is only apparently that copper, tin, lead, etc., lie in the earth. In reality they are simply the seeds which have been implanted into the earth during the ancient Sun and Moon existence, implanted from the heavens into earthly existence.

Now this was still the teaching of the Kabiri in the Samothracian Mysteries, and that finally was something which gave at any rate the atmosphere of the knowledge in which Aristotle and Alexander the Great worked. And then the beginning was created for something quite different.

1923-12-22-GA232

We will first of all look once again, by means of the Akashic Records, into the ancient Mysteries. There we find joyful faces, deeply serious but filled notwithstanding with joy.

If I were to describe to you a scene which even in these days can be brought to light again from the Akashic Records, a scene for example in the Samothracian Mysteries, I should have to say that the countenances of those who entered the innermost temple of the Kabiri, were full of depth and seriousness but were nevertheless joyful, happy countenances.

...

And when we look into a Rosicrucian alchemical laboratory of the fourteenth or even the fifteenth century, we find there instruments not unlike those of the present day; at any rate, one can gain some idea of them from instruments in use today. But when we look with spiritual vision into these Rosicrucian Mysteries, we find everywhere the earnest and deeply tragic personality, of whom Faust is a later and indeed a lesser development. For in comparison with the student who stands in the Rosicrucian laboratory with his deeply tragic countenance, who has so to speak done with life—in comparison with him, the Faust of Goethe is something like a newspaper print of the Apollo of Belvedere as compared with the real Apollo when he appeared at the altar of the Kabiri, taking form in the clouds of sacrificial smoke.

It is verily so; when one looks into these alchemical laboratories of the eighth to the thirteenth centuries, one is confronted with a very deep tragedy. The tragic mood and tone that belonged to the serious and earnest people of the Middle Ages is not to be found recorded in the history books, for the writers of those books have not looked into the depths of the soul of men.

1923-12-27-GA233

We shall have to see how Alexander the Great and Aristotle lived in a world that was not altogether adapted to them, in a world indeed that held great tragedy for them. The fact is, Alexander and Aristotle stood in an altogether different relation to the spiritual from the men around them; for although they cannot be said to have concerned themselves very much with the Samothracian Mysteries, they had nevertheless a strong affinity in their souls to what went on with the Kabiri in those Mysteries. And right on into the Middle Ages there were those who understood what this meant. Men of the present day build up altogether false ideas of the Middle Ages: they do not realise that there were individuals of all classes in life, on into the 13th and 14th centuries, who possessed a clear spiritual vision, at any rate in that realm which in the ancient East was designated as ‘Asia.’ The Song of Alexander² that was composed by a certain priest in the early Middle Ages is a very significant document; in comparison with the account history gives to-day of the doings of Alexander and Aristotle, the poem of the Priest Lamprecht is a sublime and grand conception, still akin to the old understanding of all that had come to pass through Alexander the Great.

1924-04-22-GA233A

And when we read the cosmic script a real content emerges of the kind which I described yesterday for the secret of the Moon. These things are really to be read in the cosmic writing, when the stars mean more to us than something merely to be calculated mechanically, mathematically, namely when they become for us the letters of the cosmic script.

To develop this idea still further, I must now refer to the following. In the time when the ancient Mysteries were already receding, the Mysteries of the Kabiri at Samothrace still existed.

At the time of Alexander, Samothrace was still there as a place of remembrance, nay more, as a place for the active cultivation of the Mysteries, while as a general rule the life of the Mysteries was in its decline.

And there came the moment when - through the influence of the Mysteries of the Kabiri - there arose for Alexander and Aristotle something like a memory of the old Ephesian time which both of them had lived through during a certain century. And once more the J O A resounded and once again the words resounded: ...

other translation

At the very time the Mysteries of the Kabiri arose in Samothrace, and the older Mysteries were declining, something emerged through the influence of these Kabiri Mysteries which for Alexander and Aristotle were like a remembrance of the earlier times they had passed through together in a certain century at Ephesus.

1924-09-05-GA346

In this lecture the act of consecration is described as it evolved in various stages. It also shows how contemporary religious ceremonies are a remnant of the old mysteries.

Note: In the context of the Catholic mass, by the act of consecration, the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ is brought about. Under the consecrated species of bread and wine, Christ is present in a real substantial manner.

See Schema FMC00.191 on Christ Module 7 - Cosmic dimension

Regarding "we are now at the beginning of a new mystery impulse", see also Schema FMC00.393 on Reverse ritual.

[introduction]

We will be able to explain many things if we tell ourselves that mysteries once existed, which I want to call the ancient mysteries. We don't want to take up time in this introduction with the giving of dates, so we will only describe four successive stages.

There were ancient mysteries, semi-ancient mysteries, half-new mysteries, and we are now at the beginning of a new mystery impulse.

Therewith we have four stages before us, four stages in the development of man's understanding of apocalypses and acts of consecration of Man.

...

[ re full lecture for an positioning and explanation of the below - an intermediate extract is added here as a bridge between introduction and the section on kabiri below]

... There were always holy times at the end of each year or at the end of a lunar cycle of 18 years or of other periods of time which indicated the difference or boundary between human intelligence and divine intelligence, and during which the priests in the mysteries could tell that gods can find the way to them and that men can find their way to the gods.

At such times priests tried to capture the activities of the sun and the moon in the substances with which they celebrated the act of consecration of man, so that they could extend what they had received during sacred times to the other times in which they had to celebrate. They preserved what the gods had made out of earthly substances and forces during the sacred times. They kept the water and its mercurial element, etc., from those times in order to celebrate the act of consecration of man during the rest of the year in such a way that it had a transubstantiation which was done in the same way it had been done by the gods in the services which had taken place during so-called dead times which, however, were sacred times.

During these times when cosmic language was more important than human language, the men in the ancient mysteries wanted to connect themselves with the gods who descended into the mysteries and who consecrated each religious service anew. The gods gave the human beings who carried, out or participated in these acts of consecration of man an understanding of apocalyptic things. This is how great truths were taught in ancient times, when an immersion in an act of consecration of man meant that one was permeated with apocalyptic substance. The act of consecration of man is a path of knowledge, and apocalypse is the object of this holy knowledge.

Then we come to the semi-ancient mysteries ... During this time the gods withdrew from men and sent their forces down into the mysteries, and no longer appeared there as beings. It was the time in which the act of consecration of Man acquired that radiance or divine glow which should always radiate above acts which consecrate human beings.

The secret behind transubstantiations was now sought in a different way. The substances and forces which were supposed to flow into the celebration of a transubstantiation were no longer determined by an astrological investigation of cosmic processes. Instead, one tried to arrive at an understanding of the inner nature of what ancient alchemists called ferments. A ferment is a substance which has attained a certain maturity, that is, it has passed through all of the preparatory stages of its material existence and activity. ... Try to imagine how ancient materials which had undergone inner events or a transubstantiation in the course of time were preserved in sacred vessels, which were greatly esteemed in the ancient and semi-ancient mysteries, and how they were taken out of these vessels after they had been transformed by very ancient and sacred processes.

Ferments were taken out of sacred vessels and they were used to transform substances through ancient and still sacred alchemical processes. The priest was an initiate who saw how the preserved substances and forces shone in the sacred crystalline vessels, and so he knew how the transubstantiation occurred. One looked upon these substances and forces as a cognitional organ for the people who were celebrating rituals, which enabled them to receive apocalyptic things.

... A priest passed his entrance exams, as it were, the moment he could stand before the sacred place or structure, and the old, fermenting substances in the sacred crystalline vessels became transformed for him in such a way that he saw a small sun or a natural small monstrance in the crystalline vessel, as the substances spread sunshine around them. This was something holy, and it can only be reproduced externally today. The moment he saw this he became a priest in an inner sense.

Today everyone who goes into a Catholic church sees a monstrance, but it is only a symbol for what it once was. In ancient times the only one who saw it was a true priest who saw a radiant sun appear in the preserved substances. At that moment his soul gained knowledge of apocalyptic things.

...

[paragraph on the Kabiri service]

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.

quote B

That was the meaning of everything that was intoned within the human consecration ritual in the third age of the mysteries. And that was in those days when the Cabeiri element lived on within the mysteries as a contemporary religious cult. For the services of the Cabeiri, the Cabeiri sacrifices celebrated in Samothrace, are part of all that is ceremonial in the semi-new mysteries and of all that belongs to priestly ceremonial. We visualize the Cabeiri altar of Samothrace. The Cabeiri that stood on it as external monuments were sacrificial jugs, which now contained not fermental substances but substances that human knowledge could find if it could penetrate into the inner spiritual of the substance.

Related pages

• Mystery School tradition
• Greek mythology
• Greco-Latin cultural age
• Orpheus

References and further reading

• Friedrich W.J. Schelling (1775-1854): On the Divinities of Samothrace (1815)
• S.F. Dunlap (1825-1905): The Mysteries of Adoni (1861)
• Dudley Wright: The Eleusian mysteries and rites (1919)
  • online version
• Walter Burkert: Greek Religion (1985)
  • chapter on 'The Kabeiroi and Samothrace'
• 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'
• Hans Gsänger
  • Mysterienstätten der Menschheit
    • Ephesos (1959)
    • Samothrake (1960)
    • Eleusis (1961)
    • Delphi (1962)
• Hella Krause-Zimmer
  • 'Alles durchweben die Götter' - subtitle: Reisen durch die Kultwelt der Ägäis (1984)
  • as well as, related: 'Griechische Plastik, Rätsel und Offenbarung' (1994)
• Guy Maclean Rogers: The Mysteries of Artemis of Ephesos (2012)
  • freely available online on academia.edu