KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities

This page complements the general overview page Karma research case studies and has subsections for

the Individualities described in Rudolf Steiner's Karmic Relationship lectures of 1924
as well as additional Individualities covered throughout the 20 years of lecturing,
and additions from other sources - see Schema FMC00.672

Karmic studies on these 'Karmic Relationship Individualities' (KRI), each given a unique number ID, consists of:

mostly: biographical study of the Personality or Personalities (life and lives in other incarnations, looking at karmic themes, seven year rhythm and eighteen year rhythm, key relationships, challenges, influences)
sometimes also
- astrological study of birth and death charts
- physiognomical characteristics (for initiates)

.

The Karmic relationships topic page provides more information on the connectedness and interrelationships between groups of Individualities, to be seen in context of Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls.

Note regarding the KRI-IDs: As per Schema FMC00.241, KRI references 1 to 51 are the Individualities covered by Rudolf Steiner in the 1924 Karmic Relationship lecture cycles. Upto KRI 56 are Individualities he spoke about in other lectures. Beyond these are included other Individualities from other sources, see Schema FMC00.672, including other adepts such as Daskalos or Sri M who spoke and/or wrote about their previous incarnations.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.241A provides a reference to the Individualities (KRI) and the Karmic Relationship lecture number (KRL), see Schema FMC00.265 on Karma research case studies for references.

Schema FMC00.241 as an example of a structured table, made on the basis of listening to KR lectures in chronological order.

Schema FMC00.672: shows categories of qualification of different sources of information for karma research case studies on Individualities related to Rudolf Steiner's work and life. This is important to qualify the source and related trustworthy-ness of information in context of studies of previous lives, as in some case conflicting hearsay memories cause conflicts or confusion.

Examples to illustrate: (1) Two conflicting candidates for incarnation Socrates: KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities#KRI 65: Silenus - Socrates and Tolstoj/Schroer; (2) Pythagoras as previous incarnation of Rudolf Steiner. This statement was made by Beinsa Douno, also independently asked by Rittelmeyer but repudiated by Steiner in a conversation when Rittelmeyer asked him.

Regarding category E, many such hearsay rumours abound on important historical personalities and trigger speculative discussions, eg Judas <-> Augustinus, or Da Vinci, Moses <-> Goethe, and so on.

KRI 1: Vischer

Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807-1887), professor of aesthetics in Tübingen, had an important earlier incarnation as one of the Arabian-Moorish conquerors in Sicily during the eighth century.

See als: Reconquista

KRI 5: Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Aspects

Individuality
- Franciscan ascetic monk (who inflicted intense self-torture on his body with the result that through the self-inflicted pain he knitted himself strongly with his physical body .. the effect of which was that, in the next incarnation the soul had no desire to be in the body at all)
  - for reference: the Franciscan order was founded in 1209
relations with
- KRI 83 Richard Wagner
- Paul Rée
- Lou Salomé, who also had friendships with Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Rée, and Sigmund Freud.

Lecture coverage and references

1895-GA005 - Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom

GA065 - Nietzsches Seelenleben und Richard Wagner: zur Weltanschauungs-Entwicklung der Gegenwart

1924-03-15-GA235

It may seem disrespectful to relate such things, but no disrespect whatever is intended. Moreover I am convinced that it can be of great value for any human being to know of such connections and apply them to his own life, even if it means that he has to say to himself: Three incarnations ago I was an out-and-out scoundrel! It can be of immense benefit to life when a man can say to himself: In one incarnation or another, perhaps not only in one, I was a thoroughly bad lot! In speaking of such things, just as in other circumstances present company is always excepted, so here present incarnations are excepted!
I was also intensely interested in the connections of destiny of a man with whom my own life brought me into contact, namely Friedrich Nietzsche. I have studied the problem of Nietzsche in all its aspects and, as you know, have written and spoken a great deal about him.
His was indeed a strange and remarkable destiny. I saw him only once during his life. It was in Naumburg, in the nineties of last century, when his mind was already seriously deranged. In the afternoon, about half-past-two, his sister took me into his room. He lay on the couch, listless and unresponsive, with eyes unable to see that someone was standing by him: He lay there with the remarkable, beautifully formed brow that made such a striking impression upon one. Although the eyes were expressionless, one nevertheless had the feeling: This is not a case of insanity, but rather of a man who has been working spiritually the whole morning with great intensity of soul, has had his mid-day meal and is now lying at rest, pondering, half dreamily pondering on what his soul worked out in the morning. Spiritually seen, there were present only a physical body and an etheric body, especially in respect of the upper parts of the organism, for the being of soul-and-spirit was already outside, attached to the body as it were by a stubborn thread only. In reality a kind of death had already set in, but a death that could not be complete because the physical organisation was so healthy. The astral body and the ego that would fain escape were still held by the extraordinarily healthy metabolic and rhythmic organisations, while a completely ruined nerves-and-senses system was no longer able to hold the astral body and the ego. So one had the wonderful impression that the true Nietzsche was hovering above the head. There he was. And down below was something that from the vantage-point of the soul might well have been a corpse, and was only not a corpse because it still held on with might and main to the soul — but only in respect of the lower parts of the organism — because of the extraordinarily healthy metabolic and rhythmic organisation.
Such a spectacle may well make one attentive to the connections of destiny. In this case, at any rate, quite a different light was thrown upon them. Here one could not start from a suffering limb or the like, but one was led to look at the spirituality of Friedrich Nietzsche in its totality.
There are three strongly marked and distinct periods in Nietzsche's life. The first period begins when he wrote The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music while he was still quite young, inspired by the thought of music springing from Greek tragedy which had itself been born from music. Then, in the same strain, he wrote the four following works: David Friedrich Strauss; Confessor and Author, Schopenhauer as Educator, Thoughts out of Season, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. This was in the year 1876. (The Birth of Tragedy was written in 1871). Richard Wagner in Bayreuth is a hymn of praise to Richard Wagner, actually perhaps the best thing that has been written by any admirer of Wagner.
Then a second period begins. Nietzsche writes his books, Human, All-too Human, in two volumes, the work entitled Dawn and thirdly, The Joyful Wisdom.
In the early writings, up to the year 1876, Nietzsche was in the highest sense of the word an idealist. In the second epoch of his life he bids farewell to idealism in every shape and form; he makes fun of ideals; he convinces himself that if men set themselves ideals, this is due to weakness. When a man can do nothing in life, he says: Life is not worth any thing, one must hunt for an ideal. — And so Nietzsche knocks down ideals one by one, puts them to the test, and conceives the manifestations of the Divine in nature as something “all-too-human,” something paltry and petty. Here we have Nietzsche the disciple of Voltaire, to whom he dedicates one of his writings. Nietzsche is here the rationalist, the intellectualist. And this phase lasts until about the year 1882 or 1883. Then begins the final epoch of his life, when he unfolds ideas like that of the Eternal Recurrence and presents the figure of Zarathustra as a human ideal. He writes Thus spake Zarathustra in the style of a hymn.
Then he takes out again the notes he had once made on Wagner, and here we find something very remarkable! If one follows Nietzsche's way of working, it does indeed seem strange. Read his work Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. — It is a grand, enraptured hymn of praise. And now, in the last epoch of his life, comes the book The Case of Wagner, in which everything that can possibly be said against Wagner is set down!
If one is content with trivialities, one will simply say: Nietzsche has changed sides, he has altered his views. But those who are really familiar with Nietzsche's manuscripts will not speak in this way. In point of fact, when Nietzsche had written a few pages in the form of a hymn of praise to Wagner, he then proceeded to write down as well everything he could against what he himself had said! Then he wrote another hymn of praise, and then again he wrote in the reverse sense! The whole of The Case of Wagner was actually written in 1876, only Nietzsche put it aside, discarded it, and printed only the hymn of praise. And all that he did later on was to take his old drafts and interpolate a few caustic passages.
In this last period of his life the urge came to him to carry through an attack which in the first epoch he had abandoned. In all probability, if the manuscript he put aside as being out of keeping with his Richard Wagner in Bayreuth had been destroyed by fire, we should never have had The Case of Wagner at all.
If you study these three periods in Nietzsche's life you will find that all show evidence of a uniform trend. Even the last book, the last published writing at any rate, The Twilight of Idols, which shows entirely his other side — even this last book bears something of the fundamental character of Nietzsche's spiritual life. In old age, however, when this work was composed, he becomes imaginative, writing in a graphic, vividly descriptive style. For example, he wants to characterise Michelet, the French writer. He lights on a very apt expression when he speaks of him as having the kind of enthusiasm that takes off its coat. This is a marvelously apt description of one aspect of Michelet. Other similar utterances — graphic and imaginative — are also to be found in The Twilight of Idols.
If you once have this tragic, deeply moving picture before you of the individuality hovering above the body of Nietzsche, you will be compelled to say of his writings that the impression they make is as though Nietzsche were never fully present in his body while he was writing down his sentences. He used to write, you know, sometimes sitting but more often while walking, especially while going for long tramps. It is as though he had always been a little outside his body. You will have this impression most strongly of all in the case of certain passages in the fourth part of Thus Spake Zarathustra, of which you will feel that they could have been written only when the body no longer had control, when the soul was outside the body.
One feels that when Nietzsche is being spiritually creative, he always leaves his body behind. And this same tendency can be perceived, too, in his habits. He was particularly fond of taking chloral in order to induce a mood that strives to get away from the body, a mood of aloofness from the body. This tendency was of course due to the fact that the body was in many respects ailing; for example, Nietzsche suffered from constant and always very prolonged headaches, and so on.
All these things give a uniform picture of Nietzsche in this incarnation at the end of the 19th century, an incarnation which finally culminated in insanity, so that he no longer knew who he was. There are letters addressed to George Brandes signed “The Crucified One” — indicating that Nietzsche regards himself as the Crucified One; and at another time he looks at himself as at a man who is actually present outside him, thinks that he is a God walking by the River Po, and signs himself “Dionysos.” This separation from the body while spiritual work is going on reveals itself as something that is peculiarly characteristic of this personality, characteristic, that is to say, of this particular incarnation.
If we ponder this inwardly, with Imagination, then we are led back to an incarnation lying not so very long ago. It is characteristic of many such representative personalities that their previous incarnations do not lie in the distant past but in the comparatively near past, even, maybe, in quite recent times.
We come to a life where this individuality was a Franciscan, a Franciscan ascetic who inflicted intense self-torture on his body. Now we have the key to the riddle. The gaze falls upon a man in the characteristic Franciscan habit, lying for hours at a time in front of the altar, praying until his knees are bruised and sore, beseeching grace, mortifying his flesh with severest penances — with the result that through the self-inflicted pain he knits himself very strongly with his physical body. Pain makes one intensely aware of the physical body because the astral body yearns after the body that is in pain, wants to penetrate it through and through. The effect of this concentration upon making the body fit for salvation in the one incarnation was that, in the next, the soul had no desire to be in the body at all.
Such are the connections of destiny in certain typical cases. It can certainly be said that they are not what one would have expected! In the matter of successive earthly lives, speculation is impermissible and generally leads to false conclusions. But when we do come upon the truth, marvellous enlightenment is shed upon life.

1924-07-20-GA240

Michael teaches how recognition can be made to-day if men are willing to listen to him. For the Michael schooling has worked on and still to-day it is possible for men to draw near it. Then it teaches how Ahriman himself as an author has made attempts — first attempts of a deeply shattering, deeply tragic character — working, of course, through a human being.
Nietzsche's Anti-Christ, his Ecce Homo, his autobiography, and the annotations in The Will to Power — those most brilliant chapters of modern authorship with their often devilish content — Ahriman was their writer, exercising his sovereignty over that which in letters on the Earth can be made subject to his dominion through the art of printing!
Ahriman has already begun to appear as an author and his work will continue.
On Earth in the future alertness will be necessary in order that not all the productions of authorship shall be deemed of the same calibre. Works written by men will appear, but some individuals at least must be aware that a Being is training himself to become one of the most brilliant authors in the immediate future: that Being is Ahriman!
Human hands will write the works, but Ahriman will be the author. As once the Evangelists of old were inspired by super-sensible beings and wrote down their works through this inspiration, so will the works of Ahriman be penned by men.

Discussion

Input from a reader 2023-06 (RH)

The story is the following:
Wagner and Nietzsche were incarnated together again and again. A common incarnation was Pontius Pilate (Nietzsche) and his wife (Wagner). Pilate's wife pleaded for the release of Jesus. Pilate "What is truth" is said to have been Solomon "There is nothing new under the sun". This rejection of evolution by Solomon had dramatic, tragic consequences; when he said this, his heart chakra was damaged. Merlin was a magician who could be effective in the etheric sphere. Wagner's music is an efficacy in the etheric sphere (while the composers of Viennese Classicism were efficacious in the soul sphere). Nietzsche threatened to fall further and further into the arms of Ahriman and so Merlin or Wagner saved Nietzsche. This happened when Nietzsche had the serious psychic incident in Turin when he fell around the neck of the coachman's horse. It was at this moment that Merlin cut off Nietzsche's etheric head with an etheric sword (these are of course words from the physical material sphere which can only partially describe any etheric realities). After this incident in Turin, Nietzsche was 'benighted', mentally deranged.
Rudolf Steiner describes his visit to Nietzsche when Nietzsche is in his sick bed, and writes how his luminous etheric head hovers above his physical head.
The Nietzsche-Pontius Pilatus-Salomo story comes from Tomberg. I cant judge whether it s true or not, but it may be possible. In Nietzsche I see this "being torn between 2 sides, 2 forces" in his life and when you look at his entire life this seems to be the greatest, strongest most important trait: most pious poems in his youth and the mouthpiece of the Antichrist himself later. And I see something similar in Pontius Pilatus and also Salomo. These are my ideas, not Tombergs.
Such biographical "constellations" can drag on through many incarnations, through the millennia. I know this from myself, but I don't know the deeper background. How does it come to such a main characteristic in many successive biographies? Does it possibly go back to events in the Atlantean epoch ? Are such main constellations actually kamic tasks, assignments that go beyond the personal? Maybe certain represent tasks beyond the personal, i.e. to bring together again the fragmentation of mankind into many groups, currents, mysteries etc.? Doesn't it seem as if we walk around like in a labyrinth without knowing the entrance and the exit?

KRI 6: Harun al Rashid - Francis Bacon

Aspects

incarnations
- Harun al Rashid (766-809)
  - see: Reconquista#The story of Harun al Rashid in the Karmic Relationship lectures
  - Harun al Rashid was Caliph of Baghdad, an "an organiser in the grandest style" gathered at his illustrious court (held in high esteem even by Charlemagne) the most eminent spiritual and intellectual figures of his time, some of which were initiates. He developed a kind of universal academy were the highest of art and science were joined into a great organic whole. Architecture, poetry, astrology, geography, history, anthropology—all of these were brilliantly represented by the most illustrious of men. (1924-09-01-GA238).
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
  - also called Lord Bacon of Verulam
  - inspired by the same spiritual entity/being as Shakespeare and Boehme, see Schema FMC00.646
  - Rudolf Steiner calls him "the bearer of abstract science" (1924-03-16-GA235) and "famous reformer of modern philosophy and science ... for the sphere of knowledge in general ....from England, Bacon's work for the sciences spread over Europe more widely and with greater force than is generally realised." (1924-04-06-GA236) and speaks highly of Bacon "the scientist, the philosopher, the statesman".

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.510: illustrates two Individualities described in Rudolf Steiner's Karmic Relationships lectures of 1924. The KRI stands for Karmic Relationship Individuality, the unique ID for each Individuality, as per overview Schema FMC00.241A.

The illustrations of these personalities were taken from the internet public domain. For ancient time periods, the representations may not always necessarily be trustworthy or documented, one can even argue they were made up (but then even more interesting the 'coincidence'), nevertheless and despite all reservations, the purely visual side-by-side may trigger a feeling of correspondence.

The series of this Schema FMC00.510 and its variants FMC00.510A etc are supporting illustrative material to the quote from 1907-05-29-GA099: "highly developed Individualities have great similarity of stature and form of the physical body from one incarnation to another .. "it is said that such a Man is not born in a different body". See also Schema FMC00.503 (Raphael-Novalis) and Schema FMC00.502 (Campanella-Weiniger).

illustrates two Individualities described in Rudolf Steiner's Karmic Relationships lectures of 1924. The KRI stands for Karmic Relationship Individuality, the unique ID for each Individuality, as per overview Schema FMC00.241A. The illustrations of these personalities were taken from the internet public domain. For ancient time periods, the representations may not always necessarily be trustworthy or documented, one can even argue they were made up (but then even more interesting the 'coincidence'), nevertheless and despite all reservations, the purely visual side-by-side may trigger a feeling of correspondence. The series of this Schema FMC00.510 and its variants FMC00.510A etc are supporting illustrative material to the quote from 1907-05-29-GA099: "highly developed Individualities have great similarity of stature and form of the physical body from one incarnation to another .. "it is said that such a Man is not born in a different body". See also Schema FMC00.503 (Raphael-Novalis) and Schema FMC00.502 (Campanella-Weiniger).

Schema FMC00.646: depicts the impact from the Mystery of Golgotha and the important shift from the group soul connection to the experience of individual I-consciousness. See also topic page Development of I.

Centrally: examples of the Individualities of Hector (described by Homer) and Empedocles, period of 8th to 6th century BC (1912-09-15/16-GA139), and how they worked in a transformed way in Shakespeare and Goethe after the Mystery of Golgotha and gave rise to the creation of Hamlet and Faust.

On the right: the explanatory notes to the key point how the MoG was a turning point between an ending and the start of something completely new, as "the full consciousness of the human I actually made its appearance only through the Mystery of Golgotha".

On the left: two additions:

Above: the essence of various statements on "sing o muse" regarding the fact that initiates as Homer did not speak of that what lived in the Individuality, but gave expression to the higher type soul that spoke through them.

Below: the essence of various statements on the force working in Shakespeare, Boehme, Bacon, added here because of the immense influence of these three on the culture and development of Central Europe in the new age of the consciousness soul. See also Schema FMC00.430.

Reference extracts

1897-GA006, Ch. 1

His way of thinking is Platonism in reverse. Plato sees reality only in the world of ideas, Bacon only in the world of perception without ideas. Within Bacon's conception there lies the starting point for that attitude of thinkers by which natural scientists are governed right into the present-day.

KRI 7: Gebel al Tarik - Charles Darwin

Aspects

incarnations:
- Gebel al Tarik or Tariq ibn Ziyad (unknown - ca 720)
  - initiated the Muslim conquest of Visigothic Hispania (present-day Spain and Portugal) in 711–718 AD, conqueror of Gibraltar (711) and Spain (712-713)
  - see: Reconquista#Early Arabic influence on Europe
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

KRI 9: Woodrow Wilson

Aspects

incarnations:
- Muawiyah or Mu'awiya I (ca. 597-605–680), pne of the earliest successors of the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century AD, was the founder and first caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate, ruling from 661 until his death.
- Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) was an American politician who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
  - typical example of a personality who, though he was considerably older externally, inwardly he remained 27 years old (1917-05-13-GA174B, 1917-05-29-GA176)
  - link: fatalism of will such as can be found in the Koran, carrying Arabist abstraction in its most radical form into external civilisation (1924-04-05-GA239, 1924-04-09-GA240

Reference extracts

1917-05-13-GA174B

After really careful research into our time, I noticed a very characteristic example of a person who, no matter how old they get, is condemned to be no older than twenty-eight years old, and that is the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. Yes, you laugh, my dear friends, but for me this was a very significant realization that solves an enormous number of puzzles of our time.
...
As much as one can think today without what can only be established internally, so much can he think, Woodrow Wilson, no more! A Wilson of the sixth period would only be able to live to the age of twenty-one, even if he lived to be a hundred years old.

1917-05-29-GA176

I did research into a personality who is typical because as far as his soul disposition is concerned it must be said that, though he is considerably older externally, inwardly he is but 27 years old. In his activity in public life he proves himself a typical representative of such a personality. There are many examples to choose from, but let us take this more distant one through whom much has come about in our time: Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States of America. I have taken great pains in investigating this man's soul disposition. He represents those human beings whose development gains nothing through the fact that man's soul has become free...
...
I did research into a personality who is typical because as far as his soul disposition is concerned it must be said that, though he is considerably older externally, inwardly he is but 27 years old. In his activity in public life he proves himself a typical representative of such a personality. There are many examples to choose from, but let us take this more distant one through whom much has come about in our time: Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States of America.
I have taken great pains in investigating this Man's soul disposition.
He represents those human beings whose development gains nothing through the fact that Man's soul has become free, has become independent of the bodily nature and should be self-reliant. In consequence their age remains the same as that of mankind, which at present is 27. It is really an untruth when such people claim to be 30, 40, 50 or more years old. As regards inner development they are no more than 27.
A friend of our movement who has suffered much through the events taking place at present heard the lecture I am now giving in Munich. He told me afterwards that this explanation of the peculiarity of present events was like a ray of light helping him to understand many phenomena. The abstract ideals of youth, the abstract discussions about freedom, indulging one's own pleasure while believing to have a world mission; all these things are characteristic of Woodrow Wilson.^3NoteNum Not developing beyond the age of 27 explains his unpractical views, his inability to discover fruitful ideas that relate to reality as a creative force, his wishing to express only views that please people, that are intelligible in general to people who do not want any ideas more mature than those coming from a 27-year-old—these are also things that are characteristic of Woodrow Wilson. To take an example: his ideas about peace, which have swept through the world, are so impractical that they have contributed to war for his own country. All these things are closely related but they have their origin in the facts I have indicated. Spiritual research discovers deeper truths of human evolution which are not comfortable to hear. This no doubt accounts for them being so little appreciated. People are not consciously aware that such truths can be disagreeable, but subconsciously they are, and they fear them. The fear is subconscious and because people do not allow it to rise into consciousness it turns into hate, into antipathy against the deeper truths. What today calls forth so much antipathy towards spiritual science is subconscious hatred, and especially subconscious fear of the deeper truths which indeed are not, let us say, so digestible as those phrases so loved today such as “The best man in the right place,” and the like. In the future man's ideas as well as his ideals must be far more definite, far more concrete; they must relate to reality, to facts as they are. I have spoken of this from the most varied standpoints. Ideas and ideals must spring from real knowledge, from true insight into the meaning and direction of man's evolution. Man's evolution will indeed not prosper as long as people refuse to base what is called “idealism” on direct spiritual investigation. Arbitrary notions will not provide ideals that have any connection with reality.

1920-10-31-GA200

This had to happen because this twentieth century had to give us a taste of the fact that there can be a Man, marvelled at by vast numbers as a world-leader, even though there are no concepts in his words whatsoever—that there can be a man like Woodrow Wilson. who utters words which no longer contain any concepts.
It is for this reason that people have had to fall back upon something entirely devoid of spirit—on blood relationship, on the blood-related characteristics of the nations. All that has resulted from this is that peace treaties have been made in which people who know absolutely nothing about the conditions of life in the modern civilized world have determined the shape of the maps of the countries of that world. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the materialism of modern times, its denial of everything spiritual, than the emergence of the principle of nationalism.
...
Everything that will develop out of the foolish Wilsonian formulas, and out of any other form of chauvinism that spreads over the world, will be quite unworkable. Through all such things modern civilization is heading towards impossible situations. However many more national states you set up you will provide only so many more seeds of destruction; and it is just out of everything that is loaded onto human souls as a result of modern civilization that the feeling I have just described from another point of view will proceed.
...
So what is ruling in this 'scientific conscientiousness'? The lie—which, albeit may arise from impotency, from inability. But this lie is spreading with tremendous speed in theology, philosophy, history, jurisprudence and similar branches of teaching. Modern humanity should take note of this fact. For it is in this fact—not in speeches that Woodrow-Wilsonism fabricates out of words empty of content—that the causes lie for steering us into chaos.

1924-04-05-GA239

In Dornach recently I was able to call attention to another connection of karma, one which caused me repeatedly during the War, and especially at the end of the War, to warn people against allowing themselves to be blinded by a certain outstanding figure of modern times.
In the Helsingfors⁴ lectures of 1913 I had already spoken of the very limited abilities of the person in question.
This was because the connection between Muawiyah, a follower of Mohammed in the 7th century, and Woodrow Wilson, was clear to me.
All the fatalism which characterised the personality of Muawiyah, came out in the otherwise inexplicable fatalism of Woodrow Wilson—in his case, fatalism of will. And if anyone wants to find corroboration, to discover the origin of the well known Fourteen Points, he has only to turn to the Koran. Such are the connections.
These things must be kept absolutely free from sympathy or antipathy; it is not a question of criticism but only of the purest objectivity. But this very objectivity leads from one point in history at which a soul has appeared, to another such point. When humanity outsteps in some degree the still surviving heritage of materialism, people will be willing to listen to such things and observe for themselves. And then they will feel quite differently about their place in modern civilisation because they will be able to see it not in a dead but in a living setting. That is the important point. The whole process of historical development will be imbued with life. And if Man is to get beyond the blind alley in which he is now standing in his civilisation, he needs the living spirit and not the dead spirit of abstract concepts and ideas.

1924-04-09-GA240

Now a predecessor of Haroun al Raschid, one of the earliest successors of the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century AD. was Muawiyah. He was a remarkable personality who longed to make conquests in the West but achieved little; his inner longing for the West could not find fulfilment, but he was still aware of the urge towards the West when he passed through the gate of death, and this impulse continued through his life between death and a new birth.
Then this individuality of one of the Prophet's earliest successors appeared again, exercising a dominant influence upon the conditions prevailing in the twentieth century.
Before the Christmas Foundation Meeting I had spoken of many things that are confirmed by what can be known about the repeated lives of a certain personality. People understood little of what I said on those occasions, for the power of conviction with which these utterances were made came ultimately from the observation of karmic relationships through many lives on Earth.

Muawiyah appeared again in our age as Woodrow Wilson, who carried Arabist abstraction in its most radical form into external civilisation. In Woodrow Wilson there appeared an individuality who brought Arabism to very strong expression in our time, particularly in the famous Fourteen Points. The calamities for which Woodrow Wilson was responsible can best be studied by comparing the actual phrasing of those Fourteen Joints with certain passages in the Koran. You will then find that a great deal becomes intelligible and you will discover remarkable things once you have knowledge of the true circumstances.

KRI 10: Garibaldi

KRI 11: Lessing

KRI12: Haeckel

Monk or Abbot Hildebrand, who became Gregory the Great
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919)
- Haeckel visited Darwin and promoted and popularised his work in Germany
- developed the influential recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny")

Lecture coverage and references

Steiner mentions this Individuality in three KR lectures

1924-09-19-GA238

Anyone who did not research, but merely thought things out, would of course come to absolutely different conclusions. But we only understand karma when we can take these most extreme cases and connections, seeming almost paradoxical in the world of sense.
They are there none the less in the spiritual world, even as that other fact is there, which I have often mentioned — I mean that Ernst Haeckel, who so violently fought against the Church, is the re-incarnation of Abbot Hildebrand, who became Pope Gregory the Great.
Here we see how indifferent a matter is the external content of a man's belief or theory in earthly life, for all these things are his thoughts. But if you study Haeckel, especially in connection with what he was as Abbot Hildebrand, as Gregory — (I believe he too is included among these pictures from Chartres) — you will see that there is in fact a real dynamic sequence.
I chose the above example in order that you might see how present individualities carry the past into this present time.
If you will afterwards observe the features of the Monk Hildebrand, who became Gregory the Great and whom you know from history, you will see how wonderfully the soul-configuration of Haeckel is contained in this countenance of Hildebrand, of Gregory the Great.

KRI 14: Lord Byron

KRI 17: Amos Comenius

Hannah Krämer-Steiner studied Amos Comenius

Steiner 1916-04-11-GA167 references 'book by Friedrich Eckstein entitled Comenius and the Bohemian Brothers'

KRI 19: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer

Aspects

incarnations (1924-04-12-GA236)
- Italy 6th century (living at the Roman Court at Ravenna)
- Thomas à Becket (1118-1170),
  - C.F. Meyer's poem 'Der Heilige' (The Saint) ... "In the descriptions in his poem he is describing his own destiny." and "in 'The Saint' there lives a history which was undergone once upon a time by this individuality himself;
    - points to 12 th century in Canterbury: murder of Thomas à Becket (1118-1170), Chancellor of Henry II (1155-1162) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1162-1170), at the instigation of the King of England Henry II (1133-1189) ... probably after conflict over the rights and privileges of the Church.
- woman at time Thirty Years' War (1618-1648)
- Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825-1898) was a Swiss poet and historical novelist

Reference extracts

1924-04-12-GA236

...Now my dear friends, I must admit that for me one of the most interesting personalities in modern spiritual life, with regard to his karma, was Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Anyone who observes him closely will see that his most beautiful works depend on a peculiar fact, namely this: Again and again, in his whole human constitution, there was a kind of tendency for the I and astral body to flee from the physical and etheric bodies.
Morbid conditions appear in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer bordering very nearly on dementia. But these morbid conditions only express in a rather more extreme form what was always present in him in a nascent state. His soul - and - spirit tends to go out – holds to the physical and etheric only by a very loose thread. And in this condition — the soul - and - spirit holding to the physical and etheric by a very loose thread only — the most beautiful of his works originate; I mean the most beautiful of his longer works and of his shorter poems too.
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's most beautiful poems may even be said to have originated half out of the body. There was a peculiar relationship between the four members of his nature. Truly there is a great difference between such a personality and an average Man of the present time. With an average Man of this materialistic age we generally find a very firm and robust connection of the soul - and - spirit with the physical and etheric. The soul - and - spirit is deeply immersed in the physical and etheric – "sits tight", as it were. But in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer it was not so.
He had a very tender relation of the soul - and - spirit to the physical and etheric. To describe his psyche is really one of the most interesting tasks one can undertake when studying the developments of modern spiritual life. Many things that emerge in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer appear almost like a dim, cloudy recollection — a recollection which has however grown beautiful in growing dim. When Conrad Ferdinand Meyer writes we always have the feeling: He is remembering something, though not quite exactly. He changes it — but changes it into something beautiful and form - perfected. We can observe this wonderfully, piece by piece, in certain of his works.
Now it is characteristic of the inner karma of a human being when there is such a definite relationship of the four members of his nature — physical body, etheric body, astral body and I.
[30 years war]
And in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's case, when we trace back this peculiarly intimate connection, we are led first of all, to the time of the Thirty Years' War. This was the first thing clear to me in this case: there is something of a former earthly life ar the time of the Thirty Years' War. And then there is a still earlier life on earth, going back into the pre - Carlovingian age, going back quite evidently into the early history of Italy.
When we endeavour to trace Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's karma, the peculiar, intangible fluidity of his being ( which none the less expresses itself in such perfection of form ) — the peculiar, intangible fluidity of his life somehow communicates itself to our investigation, until at length we feel: We are getting into confusion. I have no other alternative but to describe these things just as they happened in the investigation.
[6th century Italy]
We go back into the time of the 6th century in Italy. There we have the feeling: We are getting into an extraordinarily insecure element. We are driven back again and again, and only gradually we observe that this is not due to ourselves but to the object of our research. There is really in the soul — in the individuality – of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer something that brings us into confusion as we try to investigate him. We ate driven to return again and again into his present incarnation or into the one immediately before it. Again and again we must "pull ourselves up" and go back again.
The following was the result. You must remember, all that has lived in a human soul in former incarnations becomes manifest in the most varied forms — in likenesses which are often quite imperceptible to outer observation. This you will have seen from other instances of reincarnation given here.
So at length we come to an incarnation in Italy in the early Christian centuries — at the end of the first half of the first millennium A.D. Here we come to a halt. We find a soul living in Italy, to a large extent at Ravenna, at the Roman Court. But now we come into confusion. For we must ask ourselves: What was living in that soul? The moment we ask ourselves this question ( in order to call forth the further occult investigation ), the whole thing is extinguished once again.
We become aware of the experiences which this soul underwent while living at the Court at Ravenna – at the Roman Court. We enter into these experiences and we think we have them, and then again they are extinguished — blotted out from us; and we ate driven back again to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer as he lived on earth in the immediate past.
At length we perceive that in this later life he obliterates from our vision the content of his soul in the former life. Only after long trouble do we perceive at length how the matter really stands. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer – or rather the individuality who lived in him — was living at that time in a certain relationship to one of the Popes who sent him, among others, to England on a Roman Catholic, Christian Mission.
The individuality who afterwards became Conrad Ferdinand Meyer had first absorbed all that wonderful sense of form which it was possible to absorb in Italy at that time. The Mosaic art of Italy bears witness to it; also the old Italian painting, the greater part, nay practically the whole of which has been destroyed. This art did not continue.
And then he went on a Roman Catholic Christian Mission to the Anglo - Saxons. One of his companions founded the Bishopric of Canterbury. What afterwards took place at Canterbury began essentially with this foundation. The individuality, however, who afterwards appeared as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, was only there as a witness, so to speak. Nevertheless, he was a very active person, and he called forth the ill - will of an Anglo - Saxon chieftain, at whose instigation he was eventually murdered. That is what we find to begin with.
But when he lived in England there was something in the soul of this Conrad Ferdinand Meyer which robbed him of real joy in life. His soul was deeply rooted in the Italian art of his time — or, if we will call it so, in the Italian spiritual life. He gained no happiness in the execution of his missionary work in England. Yet he devoted himself to it with great intensity — so much so that his assassination was a reaction to it.
This constant unhappiness – being repelled from something which he was none the less doing with all force and devotion out of another impulse in his heart — worked on in such a way that when he passed through his next earthly life there ensued a cosmic clouding - over of his memory. The inner impulse was there but it no longer coincided with any clear concept.
[Canterbury]
And so it came about that in his subsequent incarnation as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, an undefined impulse was at work in him, to this effect: "I was once working in England. It is considered connected somehow with Canterbury. I was murdered owing to my connection with Canterbury".
So indeed the outer life of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in this incarnation takes its course. He studies outer history, he studies Canterbury, studies what happened in Canterbury, in connection with the history of England. He comes across Thomas à Becket, Chancellor of King Henry II in the 12th century.
He learns of the strange destiny of Thomas à Becket, who from being the all - powerful Chancellor of Henry II, was murdered virtually at his instigation. And so in his present incarnation as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, his own half - forgotten destiny appears to him in Thomas à Becket. It comes before him, half - forgotten in his subconsciousness, for I am speaking of course, of the subconscious life which comes to the surface in this way.
So he describes it in the story of what actually happened in the 12th century between King Henry II and Thomas à Becket of Canterbury, whose fate he recounts in his poetic work "Der Heilige" ( "The Saint" ). So indeed it is — only all this takes place in the subconscious life which embraces successive incarnations. It is as though within a single earthly life a man had experienced something in his early youth in connection with a certain place. He has forgotten it. He experienced it maybe in the second or third year of his life. It does not emerge, but some other similar destiny emerges. The very same place is named, and as a result he has a peculiar sympathy for this other person's destiny. He feels it differently from one who has no "association of ideas" with the same place.
Just as this may happen within one earthly life, so it took place in the concrete instance I am now giving you. There was the work in Canterbury, the murder of a person connected with Canterbury ( for Thomas à Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury ), the murder of Thomas à Becket at the instigation of the King of England. All of these schemes work in together. In the descriptions in his poem he is describing his own destiny.
[30 years war]
But now the thing goes on — and this is most interesting in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's case. He was born as a woman about the time of the Thirty Years' War – a lively woman, full of spiritual interests in life, a woman who witnessed many an adventure. She married a man who first took part in all the confused events of the Thirty Years' War, but then grew weary of them and emigrated to Switzerland, to Graubünden ( Canton Grisons ), where he lived a somewhat philistine existence. But his wife was deeply affected and impressed by all that took place in the Graubünden country under the prevailing conditions of the Thirty Years' War.
This too is eclipsed, as though with another layer. For it is so with this individuality: That which is living in him is easily forgotten in the cosmic sense, and yet he calls it forth again in transmuted form, where it becomes more glorious and more intense. For out of what this woman observed and experienced in that incarnation there arises the wonderful characterisation of "Jürg Jenatsch", the man of Graubünden, in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's historic novel. Observing Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in this incarnation, we have indeed no explanation of his peculiarly if we cannot enter into his karma.
I must say — speaking with a grain of salt — that I envy the people who "understand" him so lightheartedly. Before I knew his reincarnations, all that I understood was that I did not understand him. This wonderful inner perfection of form, this inner joy in form, this purity in form, all the strength and power that lives in "Jürg Jenatsch", and the wonderful personal and living quality in "The Saint", — a good deal of superficiality is needed to imagine that one understands all this. Observe his beautiful forme — there is something of clear line in them, almost severe: they are painted and yet not painted. Here lives the mosaics of Ravenna. And in "The Saint" there lives a history which was undergone once upon a time by this individuality himself; but a mist of the soul has spread over it, and out of the mist it emerges in another form.
And again one needs to know: All that is living in his romance of Graubünden, "Jürg Jenatsch", was absorbed by the heart and mind of a woman; while in the momentum, the driving power that lives in this romance there lives again the swashbuckler of the Thirty Years' War. The man was pretty much of a philistine, as I said, but he was a swashbuckler. And so, all that comes over from former experiences on earth comes to life again in a peculiar form in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer.
[integration]
Only now found we begin to understand him. Now we say to ourselves: In olden times of human evolution, men were not ashamed to speak of Spirits from beyond descending to the earth, or of earthly human beings finding their way upward and working on from spiritual worlds. All this must come again, otherwise man will not get beyond the present outlook of the earth - worm. For all that the natural - scientific conception of the world contains, it is the world - outlook of the earthworm.
Men live on earth as though only the earth concerned them, as though it were not true that the whole Cosmos works upon all earthly things and lives again in man. As though it were not true that earlier epochs of history live on, inasmuch as we ourselves carry into later times what we absorbed in former times.
We do not understand karma by talking theoretic concepts about successive earthly incarnations. To understand karma is to feel in our hearts all that we can feel when we see what existed ages ago flowing into the later epochs in the souls of men themselves. When we begin to see how karma works, human life gains quite a new content. We feel ourselves quite differently in human life.
Such a spirit as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer feels his former earthly lives like an undertone — an undertone that sounds from far away. We understand what appears in him only when we develop an understanding for this undertone. The progress of mankind in spiritual life will depend on its ability to regard life in this way, to observe in all detail what flows across from former epochs of the world's evolution into later epochs through the human beings themselves.
Then we shall cease, in the childish way of psychoanalysts, to explain the peculiarities of souls by speaking of "hidden underlying regions" and the like. After all, one can ascribe anything one likes to what is "hidden". We shall look for the real causes. In some respects, no doubt, the psycho - analysts do quite good work. But these pursuits remind us of the story of how someone heard that in the year 1749 a son was born to a certain patrician.
Afterwards this son emerged as a very gifted man. To this day we can point to the actual birth - place in Frankfurt of the man who afterwards came forth as Wolfram von Goethe. " Let us make excavations in the earth and see by dint of what strange emanations his talents came about". Sometimes the psycho - analysts seem to me just like that. They dig in the earth - realm of the soul, into the hidden regions which they themselves first invent by their hypothesis, whereas in reality one ought to look into the preceeding lives on earth and lives between death and a new birth.
Then if we do so, a true understanding of human souls is opened put to us. Truly the souls of men are far too rich in content to enable us to understand their content out of a single life alone.

KRI 20: Pestalozzi

KRI 22: Emerson - Tacitus

Aspects

incarnations:
- Publius Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 55 - ca. 120)
  - Rudolf Steiner calls Tacitus "a historian of incomparable significance" (1906-05-07-GA096)
  - "Men like Tacitus .. were at the beginning of such an instinctive esoteric development; hence the wonderful, incomparable descriptions given by Tacitus. As an esotericist, who reads Tacitus, one knows that this unique kind of history-writing depends upon the very special working of a choleric temperament into the etheric body." (1913-03-22-GA135)
  - author or book 'De origin et situ Germanorum' generally known as 'Germania', describes o.a.
    - worship of goddess Nerthus in the germanic people the Ingaevones
    - Germanic tribes as still immersed in group soul, and "how the individual Cheruscans and Herules experienced themselves, not as individuals, but as members of the tribal .. they felt themselves to be members of an organism, members of a tribe" (1908-06-07-GA098, 1924-03-08-GA353)
  - not to be confused with Tacitus, the Roman emperor from 275 to 276 AD
  - about Christ-Jesus
    - "one hundred years after the Mystery of Golgotha took place, one of the most important Roman writers, namely Tacitus, writes a single sentence about Christ Jesus in his extensive historical works! ... In his writings, there is only one sentence about Christ Jesus, which is: “The so-called Christ founded a sect among the Jews and was then executed according to court judgment.” That is all that the educated Roman Tacitus said, a hundred years after Christianity was founded in Palestine! So ... in Rome, a hundred years later, no more notice was taken of Christianity than that a sect had been founded and the founder had been executed after a proper legal judgment". (1924-03-08-GA353)
    - "One passage in Josephus is a forgery; and so is one in Tacitus. Historians therefore say: There is no testimony of this Christ Jesus." (1907-06-07-GA068A)

- Countess Matilde or Matilda di Canossa (1046- 1115), daughter and successor of Countess Beatrix of Tuscany = KRI23 (11th century)
  - now "an observer of history on a wide scale—(when a woman has greatness in her she is often wonderfully gifted as an observer)—and not only an observer but a direct participant in historical events"
  - from internet source, see more on www.historyofroyalwomen.com/matilda-of-tuscany/matilda-tuscany-great-countess/
    - "one of the most powerful and influential people to have lived during the Middle Ages. If the Middle Ages were represented with a chessboard, she would be one of its queens. In a time when women were considered at a lower level than men, Matilda went toe-to-toe with kings and princes, establishing her legacy as one of the most important and influential people in the Italian, hence European, Middle Ages. She was born in high nobility, she had been taught at the highest levels of quality and for the highest level of leadership since a young age; she had been into European political matters since a child. Nevertheless, this wasn’t per se necessarily unique. What turned out to be unique was her intellect, skills, Christian faith, devotion, and true grit. In a convulsed historic time, plagued by constant and simultaneous events such as wars, excommunications, and changing alliances, her focus, leadership, and foresight never waned. Even when her personal life(is she had any such part of life, due to her position) was tumultuous, she delivered. Her central role in the mediation between Pope Gregory VII and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, known in history records as the Investiture Controversy, is perhaps the most famous instance of her first-row role in European politics. Simply put, she supported the Pope, who would have not have survived — figuratively and perhaps literally — if it had not been for Matilde. With her face-to-face political deals, side agreements, military strategy of her own troops, immovable faith, and iron will. Not only. The papacy not only won, but humiliated the emperor who asked for absolution and revocation of the excommunication, solidifying the papacy status for some time in what has been described as the one of the most dramatic moments of the Middle Ages."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
  - Rudolf Steiner
    - calls Emerson "one of the most distinguished minds of our time" .. a "great ad noble mind" that is "part of the evolutionary process of the earth". (1914-11-15-GA158)
    - often refers to Emerson writing about Shakespeare and Goethe (in that context see also Schema FMC00.646)
  - Emerson wrote
    - two excellent essays—one on Shakespeare as the typical poet and one on Goethe as the typical writer. (1915-06-22-GA157)
    - among his very significant books there is 'The Representatives of the Human Race' (1914-11-15-GA158)
  - quotes by Emerson (quoted by Steiner, see oa 1914-11-05-GA064)
    - one sentence from Emerson's writings may be particularly engraved on our consciousness in our present time, the sentence where Emerson says: “The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.”
    - the words that Emerson spoke of Goethe: “He is wise to the highest degree, though often his wisdom may be obscured by his talent."
karmic relationship with KRI 23: Tacitus <-> Pliny the Younger

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.510B: illustrates two related Individualities with karmic relationships in at least three joint incarnations:

KRI 22: Tacitus (ca. 55 - ca. 120) - Countess Matilda (1046- 1115), daughter of Countess Beatrix - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
KRI 23: Pliny the Younger (ca. 61 – ca. 113) - Countess Beatrix of Tuscany (ca 1020-1076) - Hermann Grimm (1828-1901)

Notes: a painting depicting Matilda of Canossa exists too, but has not been included as there is no qualitative picture of mother Beatrix.

illustrates two related Individualities with karmic relationships in at least three joint incarnations: *KRI 22: Tacitus (ca. 55 - ca. 120) - Countess Matilda (1046- 1115), daughter of Countess Beatrix - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) *KRI 23: Pliny the Younger (ca. 61 – ca. 113) - Countess Beatrix of Tuscany (ca 1020-1076) - Hermann Grimm (1828-1901) Notes: a painting depicting Matilda of Canossa exists too, but has not been included as there is no qualitative picture of mother Beatrix.

Reference extracts

1924-04-23-GA236

quote B

As a writer he becomes an imitator of this style—I mean, of course, an artistic imitator in the best sense, not a pedantic one—an imitator of this style in the artistic, aesthetic sense of the word. And do you know, the book he opened at that moment, reading it right through as quickly as he possibly could and then afterwards reading everything he could find of the author's writings—this book was Emerson's Representative Men. And the person in question adopted its style, immediately translated two essays from it, conceived a deep veneration for the author, and was never content until he was able to meet him in real life.
This man, who really only now found himself, who for the first time found the style that belonged to him in his admiration for the other—this reincarnation of Pliny the Younger and of the Countess Beatrix, is none other than Herman Grimm.
And in Emerson we have to do with the reincarnated Tacitus, the reincarnated Countess Mathilde.
When we observe Herman Grimm's admiration for Emerson, when we remember the way in which Herman Grimm encounters Emerson, we can find again the relationship of Pliny the Younger to Tacitus. In every sentence that Herman Grimm writes after this time, we can see the old relationship between Pliny the Younger and Tacitus emerging. And we see the admiration that Pliny the Younger had for Tacitus, nay more, the complete accord and understanding between them, coming out again in the admiration with which Herman Grimm looks up to Emerson.
And now for the first time we shall grasp wherein the essential greatness of Emerson's style consists, we shall perceive that what Tacitus displayed in his own way, Emerson again displays in his own special way. How does Emerson work? Those who visited Emerson discovered his way of working. There he was in a room; around him were several chairs, several tables. Books lay open everywhere and Emerson walked about among them. He would often read a sentence, imbibe it thoroughly and from it form his own magnificent, free-moving, epigrammatic sentences. That was how he worked. There you have an exact picture of Tacitus in life! Tacitus travels, takes hold of life everywhere; Emerson observes life in books. It all lives again!
And then there is this unconquerable desire in Herman Grimm to meet Emerson. Destiny leads him to Representative Men and he sees at once: this is how I must write, this is my true style. As I said, he had already acquired an academic style of writing from his uncle Jacob Grimm and his father Wilhelm Grimm, and he then abandons it. He is impelled by destiny to adopt a completely different style.
In Herman Grimm's writings we see how wide were his historical interests. He has an inner relationship of soul with Germany, combined with a deep interest in Italy. All this comes out in his writings.
These are things that go to show how the affairs of destiny work themselves out. And how is one led to perceive such things? One must first have an impression and then everything crystallizes around it. Thus we had first to envisage the picture of Herman Grimm opening Emerson's Representative Men.
Now Herman Grimm used to read in a peculiar manner. He read a passage and then immediately drew back from what he had read: it was a gesture as though he were swallowing what he had read, sentence by sentence. And it was this inner gesture of swallowing sentence by sentence that made it possible to trace Herman Grimm to his earlier incarnation.
In the case of Emerson it was the walking to and fro in front of the open books, as well as the rather stiff, half-Roman carriage of the man, as Herman Grimm saw him when they first met in Italy—it was these impressions that led one back from Emerson to Tacitus. Plasticity of vision is needed to follow up things of this kind.

KRI 23: Hermann Grimm - Pliny the Younger

Aspects

incarnations:
- Pliny the Younger (1st century, ca. 61 – ca. 113)
  - not to be confused with Pliny the Elder, who died with the eruption of the Vesuvius (1906-04-16-GA096)
  - Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus) was a Roman author best known for his encyclopedic work Natural History. Pliny the Younger (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus) was his nephew and adopted son. He was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome, well known for his letters, many of which provide a valuable historical account of Roman life and events, including the famous letters describing the eruption of Vesuvius that killed his uncle.
- Countess Beatrix of Tuscany (11th century), mother of Countess Mathilde = KRI 22
  - see: Beatrice of Lorraine (ca 1020-1076)
- Hermann Grimm (1828-1901)
  - close with Rudolf Steiner who mentioned him very often in his lectures, as Grimm was in the stream of Goethe and specialized in the lives of Raphael, Homer, Michelangelo
  - led to correspond with Ralph Waldo Emerson in Massachussets USA (KRID=22, Individuality of Tacitus), which is remarkable given Pliny the Younger was a friend and admirer of Tacitus) (1924-04-23-GA236)
  - as example of Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls: "Goethe, who had been physically dead since 1832 and who had almost been forgotten, was revived in the 1870s by Herman Grimm" (1914-10-07-GA156 on Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls#1914-10-07-GA156, but see also Thirty three years rhythm#Goethe example)
  - On Schema FMC00.243A: Grimm's father was Wilhelm Grimm and his uncle Jakob Grimm. He belonged to a clique associated with Bettina von Arnim (all three on the schema).
karmic relationship with KRI 22: Pliny the Younger <-> Tacitus
- Pliny is "an ardent admirer of Tacitus"
- Beatrix is mother of Mathilde
- Herman Grimm has "this unconquerable desire to meet Emerson"

Reference extracts

1913-01-13-GA062

1913-04-10-GA062

provides an interesting linkeage of Grimm - Emerson to the impulse or stream of Goethe, in context of Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls and Jacob Boehme#Note 2 - Impulse wave Jacob Boehme - a tentative reconstruction - (read full lecture for context)

Now compare what a person can learn today through this journalism about what is happening in the world, and also about what the human mind is exploring, with the way he could learn about all the events at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Take a mind like Goethe's! We can look at him precisely because of the careful way in which his correspondence has been preserved, we can almost know what he did from hour to hour, we can know what he talked about and did with this or that scholar. Through this, the achievements of human intellectual life slowly flow together in his lonely Weimar room. But the central figure of Goethe was necessary for this to happen, which anyone can do today through journalism. But that changes the whole human soul, the whole position of the human soul in relation to the environment.
Let's approach something else. Today we write books or read books. Anyone who writes a book today knows that it will no longer be readable after about sixty years if it is printed on the paper that is the result of great technological advances, because it will have disintegrated. So, if you are not under any illusions, you know how much what was done in the past differs from what is available today.
In one lecture of this series, I tried to characterize a mind that, although it is connected to the whole spirit of the first half of the nineteenth century, is nevertheless a mind of the second half of that century: Herman Grimm. We have seen that he presents himself as a custodian of the heritage of the first half of the nineteenth century into the second half. But anyone who reads Herman Grimm's art essays with inner understanding will notice two things, among other things. In his work, even in the most valuable essays, a certain school resonates that he went through, a school that can be heard resonating in every essay. He was only able to undergo this schooling because, relatively early on, by what is called chance, he came into contact with a great mind, that of Emerson, a great preacher and writer who was a preacher and writer of world views not in the sense of older times, but in the most modern sense. Try to visualize Emerson, to immerse yourself in him, and you will find that a nineteenth-century spirit stands before us. Try to feel the pulse of the thoughts that arise with the coloration and nuance of the nineteenth century, even when they refer to Plato the philosopher or Swedenborg the mystic. No matter how unprejudiced they are, they are nineteenth-century thoughts that could only be thought in a century that was destined to make the telegraph the world's means of communication. Emerson, in particular, has a mind that, while rooted in Western culture, elevates this culture of the West to what it has become in the eminent sense. One tries to compare a page by Emerson with a page by Goethe, wherever one might open Goethe. Then try – which, however, you must find natural in the case of Goethe – to compare the image of the leisurely Goethe, still walking in the steps of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the rapidly hurrying being of the man of the nineteenth century, which continues to have an effect in the train of thought of Herman Grimm. That is one thing.
But then we saw how Herman Grimm, in his wonderful novel of the times, 'Unüberwindliche Mächte' (Insurmountable Forces), even pointed to the existence of the human etheric body or life body, as he pointed to much that has only been fully developed in spiritual science. But one can also see how Herman Grimm deals with everything artistic in a thoroughly personally interesting, outstanding way, how he is able to juxtapose more distant periods of time artistically, how he is able to give an interesting, subtle consideration of art. It is impossible for anyone who is able to see such things to think that the thoughts that form the most beautiful essays of Herman Grimm could have been written in any other age than the one in which it was impossible for Herman Grimm to travel from Berlin to Florence or South Tyrol without being in a hurry. For this is the precondition for the formation of much of his work. Imagine that someone like Herman Grimm could have said in earlier centuries: “I have always written the most important parts of my Homer book in Gries near Bolzano during the weeks of spring, because that is when I feel the effect of spring!” That something like this could be integrated into a person's life is only possible in the overall atmosphere of the nineteenth century. There we feel a confluence of what springs forth as a wonderful contemplation of art in Herman Grimm, what proves to be an immersion into the soul of the entire cultural impact of the nineteenth century, with what emanates from technology, and flowing back into it, from the triumphs of the nineteenth century.

1924-04-23-GA236

quote A

Let me now give you another example of how things work over in history through human individualities themselves.
In the first century A.D., about a hundred years after the founding of Christianity, we have an exceedingly significant Roman writer in the person of Tacitus. In all his work, and very particularly in his ‘Germania’, Tacitus proves himself a master of a concise, clear-cut style; he arrays the facts of history and geographical details in wonderfully rounded sentences with a genuinely epigrammatic ring. We may also remember how he, a man of wide culture, who knew everything considered worth knowing at that time—a hundred years after the founding of Christianity—makes no more than a passing allusion to Christ, mentioning Him as someone whom the Jews crucified but saying that this was of no great importance. Yet in point of fact, Tacitus is one of the greatest Romans.
Tacitus had a friend, the personality known in history as Pliny the Younger, himself the author of a number of letters and an ardent admirer of Tacitus.
To begin with, let us consider Pliny the Younger. He passes through the gate of death, through the life between death and a new birth, and is born again in the 11th century as a Countess of Tuscany in Italy, who is married to a Prince of Central Europe. The Prince has been robbed of his lands by Henry the Black of the Frankish-Salic dynasty and wants to secure for himself an estate in Italy. This Countess Beatrix owns the Castle of Canossa where, later on, Henry IV, the successor of Henry III the Black, was forced to make his famous penance to Pope Gregory.
Now this Countess Beatrix is an extraordinarily alert and active personality, taking keen interest in all the conditions and circumstances of the time. Indeed she cannot help being interested, for Henry III who had driven her husband, Gottfried, out of Alsace into Italy before his marriage to her, continued his persecution. Henry is a man of ruthless energy, who overthrows the Princes and Chieftains in his neighbourhood one after the other, does whatever he has a mind to do, and is not content when he has persecuted someone once, but does it a second time, when the victim has established himself somewhere else. As I said, he was a man of ruthless vigour, a ‘great’ man in the medieval style of greatness. And when Gottfried had established himself in Tuscany, Henry was not content with having driven him out but proceeded to take the Countess back with him to Germany.
All these happenings gave the Countess an opportunity of forming a penetrating view of conditions in Italy, as well as of those in Germany. In her we have a person who is strongly representative of the time in which she lives, a woman of keen observation, vitality and energy, combined with largeness of heart and breadth of vision.
When, later on, Henry IV was forced to go on his journey of penance to Canossa, Beatrix's daughter Mathilde had become the owner of the Castle. Mathilde was on excellent terms with her mother whose qualities she had inherited, and was, in fact, the more gifted of the two. They were splendid women who because of all that had happened under Henry III and Henry IV, took a profound interest in the history of the times.
Investigation of these personalities leads to this remarkable result: the Countess Beatrix is the reincarnated Pliny the Younger, and her daughter Mathilde is the reincarnated Tacitus. Thus Tacitus, a writer of history in olden times, is now an observer of history on a wide scale—(when a woman has greatness in her she is often wonderfully gifted as an observer)—and not only an observer but a direct participant in historical events. For Mathilde is actually the owner of Canossa, the scene of issues that were immensely decisive in the Middle Ages. We find the former Tacitus now as an observer of history.
A deep intimacy develops between these two—mother and daughter—and their former work in the field of authorship enables them to grasp historical events with great perspicacity; subconsciously and instinctively they become closely linked with the world-process, as it takes its course in nature as well as in history.
And now, still later on, the following takes place.—Pliny the Younger, who in the Middle Ages was the Countess Beatrix, is born again in the 19th century, in a milieu of romanticism. He absorbs this romanticism—one cannot exactly say with enthusiasm, but with aesthetic pleasure. He has on the one hand this love for the romantic, and on the other—due to his family connections—a rather academic style; he finds his way into an academic style of writing. It is not, however, in line with his character. He is always wanting to get out of it, always wanting to discard this style.
This personality (the reincarnated Pliny the Younger and the Countess Beatrix) happens on one occasion brought about by destiny, to be visiting a friend, and takes up a book lying on the table, an English book. He is fascinated by its style and at once feels: The style I have had up till now and that I owe to my family relationships, does not really belong to me. This is my style, this is the style I need. It is wonderful; I must acquire it at all costs.

KRI 26: Friedrich Hölderlin

Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) was a German poet and philosopher and key figure of German Romanticism and German Idealism.

In the circle of friends with Hegel and Schelling; at University of Jena interacted with Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Novalis. Struggled to establish himself as a poet, plagued by mental illness, sent to a clinic in 1806 but deemed incurable.

Hölderlin followed the tradition of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller as an admirer of Greek mythology and Ancient Greek poets such as Pindar and Sophocles, and melded Christian and Hellenic themes in his works.

Aspects

previous incarnations
- student in school of Plato in ancient Greece, together with the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling (1830-1889)
see: Karmic relationships - see Schema FMC00.243A and Schema FMC00.497

Inspirational quotes

Martin Heidegger

Hölderlin is one of our greatest, that is, most impending thinkers because he is our greatest poet.

KRI 30: Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a French romantic writer and politician.

Aspects

from KR lectures
- initiate in Irish Mysteries, see Hibernian Mysteries
- Saturn sphere
connection with KRI 65 - Leo Tolstoj (inspiration for, and they met)
exoteric biography
- would influence other writers such as Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- as a politician, spoke in parliament against the death penalty and social injustice
- his work appeared on the Church's list of banned books, eg Hugo counted 740 attacks on 'Les Misérables' in the Catholic press
- music lover and friends with Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt.

KRI32 - Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805)

Lecture coverage

1924-07-18-GA310

from the synopsis: Schiller's disharmony with his body. His ugly head, long legs, and weak rhythmic system, leading to cramps. All this due to stoppages in the fulfilment of karma. Similar conditions illustrated in acquaintance of Steiner, who also could not bring experience of spiritual world into physical. He suffered from stutter and squint and died after operation for the latter at 30. He would have had difficulty in developing consciousness soul at 35. Schiller prevented from finishing things by his cramp. The “Malteser” and “Demetrius.” Mystery of his death.

KRI 33: Heine

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. His poetry was set to music by oa Franz Schubert.

Lecture coverage

1924-06-01-GA240

1924-06-09-GA239

KRI 36 - Eabani - Aristotle - Thomas Aquinas - Rudolf Steiner

see dedicated topic pages:

KRI 37 - Gilgamesh - Alexander the Great - Reginald Piperno - Ita Wegman

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.604: provides an overview of the information that can be found in multiple sources regarding several incarnations of the Individuality of Rudolf Steiner (KRI 36), Marie-Steiner von Sivers (KRI 59) and Ita Wegman (KRI 37), in context of Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls.

Note: as an example of connected Individualities, Wilhelm Anton Neumann (1837-1919), was connected in a previous incarnation with Thomas Aquinas (re lecture of 1888-11-09 attended by Neumann and referenced by Rudolf Steiner in 1920-05-24-GA074, 1924-07-18-GA240, 1924-09-12 and a conversation with Rittelmeyer in 1921). Also in this previous incarnation, Gunther Wagner (1842-1930) was the brother of Thomas Aquinas father and abbot Sinibaldus of the Benedict abbey of Monte Cassino (IT) where Thomas Aquinas was entered at age five to have his education (1912-03-06-GA265A and many additional research notes in appendix (incl. letter by Marie Steiner of 1907-08-18, and a letter by Rudolf Steiner to Doris and Franz Paulus 1904-05-14 who were also connected in this incarnation).

A similar diagram could be made linking Plato and Socrates who also had earlier incarnations as Silenus and Dionysus.

See also the KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities topic page, as part of Karma research case studies and Karmic relationships.

provides an overview of the information that can be found in multiple sources regarding several incarnations of the Individuality of Rudolf Steiner (KRI 36), Marie-Steiner von Sivers (KRI 59) and Ita Wegman (KRI 37), in context of Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls. Note: as an example of connected Individualities, Wilhelm Anton Neumann (1837-1919), was connected in a previous incarnation with Thomas Aquinas (re lecture of 1888-11-09 attended by Neumann and referenced by Rudolf Steiner in 1920-05-24-GA074, 1924-07-18-GA240, 1924-09-12 and a conversation with Rittelmeyer in 1921). Also in this previous incarnation, Gunther Wagner (1842-1930) was the brother of Thomas Aquinas father and abbot Sinibaldus of the Benedict abbey of Monte Cassino (IT) where Thomas Aquinas was entered at age five to have his education (1912-03-06-GA265A and many additional research notes in appendix (incl. letter by Marie Steiner of 1907-08-18, and a letter by Rudolf Steiner to Doris and Franz Paulus 1904-05-14 who were also connected in this incarnation). A similar diagram could be made linking Plato and Socrates who also had earlier incarnations as Silenus and Dionysus. See also the KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities topic page, as part of Karma research case studies and Karmic relationships.

KRI 38 - Dionysus - Plato - Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim - Karl Julius Schröer

Aspects

incarnations
- Dionysus (1911-08-24-GA129)
  - name: also Dionysius or Dionysos
  - Note: Silenus and Dionysus are not timed in classical history, and many individuals with the name Dionysus can be found but should not be confounded with the Dionysus described by Rudolf Steiner as no direct reference allows to map this unambiguously, eg the figures below whose profiles show up on Wikipedia date from after Plato .
    - Dionysus the Renegade (ca. 330 BC – c. 250 BC), also known as Dionysius of Heraclea, was a Stoic philosopher and pupil of Zeno of Citium who, late in life, abandoned Stoicism when he became afflicted by terrible pain.
    - Dionysus the Younger or Dionysus II (ca. 397 BC – 343 BC), was a Greek politician who ruled Syracuse, Sicily, Magna Graecia, from 367 BC to 357 BC and again from 346 BC to 344 BC.
- Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim (ca. 935–973) (see 1924-09-23-GA238)
  - Hrotsvitha was a secular canoness who wrote drama and Christian poetry under the Ottonian dynasty. She was born in Bad Gandersheim to Saxon nobles and entered Gandersheim Abbey as a canoness. She is considered the first female writer from the Germanosphere, the first female historian, the first person since the Fall of the Roman Empire to write dramas in the Latin West, and the first German female poet.
- Plato (either 428/427 or 424/423 – 348 BC)
  - relation with Socrates and Aristotle
- Karl Julius Schröer (see 1924-09-23-GA238)

Lecture coverage

1911-08-24-GA129

describes ancient greece with Silenus and his pupil Dionysos, and how both reincarnate later as Socrates and Plato

Little by little such things have to be told if spiritual science is not to stop at platitudes, if it is to enter into the reality. Things which are true have to be told for the sake of the further evolution of humanity.
The wise old teacher of Dionysos was born again, and in his further incarnation was none other than Socrates. Socrates is the reincarnation of old Silenus, he is the reincarnated teacher of Dionysos.
And Dionysos himself, that reincarnated being in whom verily lived the soul of Dionysos of old, was Plato.
One only realises the profound meaning of Greek history if one enters into what was known—not of course to the writers of external history — but to the Initiates who have handed down the tradition from generation to generation right up to today — knowledge which can also be found in the Akasha Chronicle. Spiritual science can once more proclaim that Greece in its early period harboured the teacher of humanity whom it sent over to Asia in the journey conducted by Dionysos, whose teacher was Silenus. What Dionysos and the wise Silenus were able to do for Greece was renewed in a manner suited to a later age by Socrates and Plato. In the very time when the Mysteries were falling into decay, in the very time in which there were no more Initiates who could still see the younger Dionysos clairvoyantly in the holy Mysteries, that same Dionysos emerged as the pupil of the wise Silenus, he who had himself become Socrates — emerged as Plato, the second great teacher of Greece, the true successor of Dionysos.
One only recognises the meaning of Greek spiritual culture in the sense of ancient Greek Mystery-wisdom when one knows that the old Dionysian culture experienced a revival in Plato. And we admire Platonism in quite another way, we relate ourselves to it in its true stature when we know that in Plato there dwelt the soul of the younger Dionysos.

1924-09-23-GA238

And at length we see the Individuality ripe to return to Earth once more in the 19th century. He became an individuality of the very kind I described above as a hypothetical case. For the whole spirituality of Plato is held back, recoils and shrinks back in the face of the intellectuality of the 19th century which it will not come near.
And to make this process the easier the feminine capacity of the nun Hroswitha has been instilled into the same soul. Thus as the soul appears on the scene, all that it had received from its incarnation as a woman, great and radiant as she was, makes it the more easy to repel the modern intellectualism wherever it is not liked.
Thus the individuality stands upon Earth anew in the 19th century. He grows up into the intellectuality of the 19th century but lets it come near him only to a certain extent, externally, while inwardly he is perpetually shrinking back from it. Platonism comes forward in his consciousness not in an intellectualistic way, for again and again, wherever he can, he speaks of how Ideas are living in all things.
...
Nay more, in his youth this personality had something like a dream-intuition of how Mid-Europe cannot and may not after all be truly Roman. For indeed he himself had lived as the nun Hroswitha. Thus in his youth he represented Mid-Europe as a modern Greece. Here we see his Platonism striking through. And he represented the rougher region that had stood over against ancient Greece, namely Macedonia, as the present East of Europe. There were strange dreams living in this personality, dreams from which one could see, and this was very interesting, how he wanted to conceive the modern world in which he himself was living, like Greece and Macedonia. Again and again, especially in his youth, there arose the impulse to conceive the modern world—Europe on a large scale—as Greece and Macedonia magnified.
The personality of whom I am speaking is none other than Karl Julius Schröer. With the help of all that I have now brought together you need only take Karl Julius Schröer's writings. From the very beginning he speaks in a thoroughly Platonic way. But this is so strange: with a kind of feminine coyness, I might say, he takes good care not to enter into intellectualism wherever he has no use for it.
...
And yet this Platonic spirituality, repelling intellectualism, this Platonic spirituality that did not want to enter into this body made at the same time a quite peculiar and strong impression, for in seeing Schröer one had the distinct perception: this soul is not quite fully there within the body. And then when he grew older one could see how the soul, not being really willing to enter into the body of that time, withdrew little by little out of that body. To begin with the fingers grew swollen and thick. Then the soul withdrew ever more and more, and as we know, Schröer ended in the feeblemindedness of old age. Certain features of Schröer, not the whole individuality, but certain features, were taken over into my character Capesius, Professor Capesius, in the Mystery Plays.

KRI 39: Swedenborg - Ignatius von Loloya

Aspects

incarnations:
- Ignatius von Loyola (1491-1556)
  - Spanish Catholic priest and theologian, who, with six companions, founded the religious order of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), envisioned the purpose of the Society of Jesus to be missionary work and teaching.
  - 'Spiritual Exercises' (1548)
- Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772)
  - Swedish Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher, and mystic - with a prolific career as an inventor and scientist.
  - in 1741 (aged 53), entered into a spiritual phase in which he began to experience dreams and visions,
  - wrote o.a. Arcana Cœlestia, (1749), 'Heaven and Hell (1758), The Heavenly Doctrine,
Mars sphere

Lecture coverage and references

1920-10-23-GA200

Ignatius

1924-09-09-GA346

KRI 40: Ovid - Laurence Oliphant

The Individuality underlying Ovid and Laurence Oliphant "was the guide in the spiritual world for many Initiates" such as eg Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante; he was "the guide and leader of souls in the spiritual world".

Rudolf Steiner calls the Ovid-Oliphant connection "of most far-reaching import and one of the most illuminating examples one could possibly find".

Aspects

Ovid (43 BC-17/18 AD) was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus banished him.
- Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', see 1923-11-30-GA232 and 1904-12-27-GA090A
Laurence Oliphant (1829-1888) a Member of Parliament, was a South African-born British author, traveller, diplomat, British intelligence agent, Christian mystic, and Christian Zionist.
- comparative life pattern with Schelling (1923-06-11-GA258)
- books 'Sumpneumata' or 'Evolutionary Forces now active in Man', 'Scientific Religion' (1916-10-15-GA171)
- "Oliphant was a very, very rich man and threw away everything he owned; gave it to charitable foundations, etc. and moved to America poor, where he earned his bread with the labor of his hands" (GA265)

Lecture coverage and references

1906-12-01-GA266/1

We'll give an example from the life of a very rich Briton, Laurence Oliphant, who lived in the middle of the last century. He and his wife had a noble love for their poorer neighbors and moved by this feeling they gave most of what they had to them; and then they migrated to New York. There they made enough money to go to Mt Tabor near Haifa.
Here a strange phenomena arose. Oliphant began to write some very interesting and strange books about Genesis that were some of the strangest things that were written about the Bible at the time. But he could only have these thoughts with the help of his wife.
After she died Oliphant could only keep on working for a short time, and then the inspiration of his deceased wife no longer reached the physical plane.

1923-06-11-GA258

In another form, the same thing happened in England. It is extremely interesting to read the writings of Laurence Oliphant. Oliphant describes—in another way naturally, for Englishmen describe otherwise than Germans, more tangibly, in terms of things and senses,—he describes the picture which had risen before his mind of earliest ages of Man's evolution upon earth. And in a certain sense, and taking into consideration the difference of national genus, they are parallel phenomena: Schelling, in the first half of the nineteenth century, more from the idealist side; and Laurence Oliphant, more from the realist side; in both, a powerful kind of striving after the spiritual world, of striving after a comprehension of the world as revealed to man's sight from the spirit.
If one examines what it is exactly that is so curious, in Schelling as well as in Oliphant (it is the same phenomenon really in both, only varied by country), one finds that it is this: These two people grew up,—the one in German, the other in English fashion,—into the civilization of their age,—struggled through till they reached a crowning perfection in the ideas, then held as the philosophic ideas of the age, about Man, about the Universe, and so forth.
Schelling in his fashion, as well as Oliphant in his fashion, struggled their way through. Now, as you know from the anthroposophic descriptions which I have given you, Man's evolution to-day takes place during the first part of his life in such a way, that the physical presents an accompanying phenomenon to the evolution of his soul. This ceases later on.—With the Greeks, as I told you, their evolution still went on until they were in the thirties, in such a way that there was an actual, progressive evolution of the two, a parallelism of the physical and the spiritual.—With Schelling and with Oliphant it was again somewhat different from what it is with the average person of the present day. With them, what took place was this: their evolution went on at first as it does with a normal human being, ... for of course to-day one can be a philosopher, and in every respect a quite normal human being,—perhaps, indeed, a sub-normal one; but that's by the way! ... One just develops one's notions a little further, you know, and then one stops short, if one is a normal human being. Schelling and Oliphant didn't stop short; but with increasing age their souls became all of a sudden as lively as they had been in a previous Earth-life, and there rose up a memory of things which they had known long ago, in earlier incarnations,—rose up in a natural way: distant memories, hazy memories.
And now, a light suddenly flashes on one; now one begins to see both Oliphant and Schelling in a different light.
They struggle their way through; become first normal philosophers, according to their different countries; then in their later years they acquire a memory of something they had known before in previous earth-lives,—now as a hazy memory. And then, they begin to talk about the spiritual world. It is a hazy, indistinct memory, that rises up in Schelling and in Laurence Oliphant; but still it was a thing of which there was a certain amount of fear amongst the people who had merely a traditional, old evolution, lest it might get the upper-hand, might spread. These people were horribly afraid lest men might come to be born, who would remember what they had lived through in times before, and would talk about it. ‘And then’—thought they—‘what will become of our principle of secrecy? We exact solemn oaths from the members of the first, second, third grades; but if people come to be born, in whom it all wakes up again as a living memory, what we've preserved so carefully and keep locked up, of what use then is all our secrecy!’

1924-07-13-GA237

And then, one day down in Italy, an Ambassador who had been in Spain, standing at that moment under a great historic impression, received a kind of sun-stroke, and there arose in him as a great and mighty revelation all that he had received as a preparatory training in his School. All this became a mighty revelation under the influence of the slight sun-stroke which came over him. Then he saw what man could see under the influence of the living principle of knowledge: He saw a mountain mightily arising with all that lived and sprang forth from it, minerals, plants, and animals, and there appeared to him the Goddess Natura, there appeared the Elements, there appeared the Planets, there appeared the Goddesses of the seven Liberal Arts, and at length Ovid as his guide and teacher. Here once again there stood before a human soul the mighty vision that had stood before the souls of men so often in the first centuries of Christianity. Such was the vision of Brunetto Latini which was afterwards handed down to Dante and from which Dante's Divina Commedia took its source.

1924-07-18-GA240

[about B. Latini]
While under the influence of the sunstroke and of what came to him from the School of Chartres, this personality had gazed into the weaving life of the Goddess Natura, and, allowing this Intuition to impress him still more deeply, he beheld the working of the Elements—Earth, Water, Air, Fire—as this was once revealed in the ancient Mysteries; he beheld the majestic weaving of the Elements. Then he beheld the mysteries of the soul of man, he beheld those seven Powers of whom it was known that they are the great celestial Instructors of the human race.—This was known in the early Christian centuries. In those times men did not speak, as they do to-day, of abstract teachings, where something is imparted by way of concepts and ideas. In the first Christian centuries men spoke of being instructed from the spiritual world by the Goddesses Dialectica, Rhetorica, Grammatica, Arithmetica, Geometria, Astrologia or Astronomia, and Musica. These Seven were not the abstract conceptions which they have become today; men gazed upon them, saw them before their eyes—I cannot say in bodily reality but as Beings of soul—and allowed themselves to be instructed by these heavenly figures. Later on they no longer appeared to men in the solitude of vision as the living Goddesses Dialectica, Rhetorica and the rest, but in abstract forms, in abstract, theoretic doctrines.
The personality of whom I am now speaking allowed all that I have related to work upon him. And he was led then into the planetary world, wherein the mysteries of the soul of man are unveiled. Then in the world of stars, having traversed the “Great Cosmic Ocean,” he was led by Ovid, who after he had passed through the gate of death had become the guide and leader of souls in the spiritual world.

This personality, who was Brunetto Latini, became the teacher of Dante. What Dante learned from Brunetto Latini he then wrote down in his poem the Divina Commedia. And so that mighty poem is a last reflection of what lived on here and there as Platonism. It had flowed from the lips of Sylvestris at the School of Chartres in the twelfth century and was still taught by those who had been so inwardly fired by the old traditions that the secrets of Christianity rose up within them as Inspirations which they were then able to communicate to their pupils through the word.

1924-08-24-GA240

In the early years of this century I was several times in London. On the occasion of one of these visits I was prompted to make myself acquainted with an extraordinarily significant personality—to begin with, simply in his writings. And as in those days there were rather longer intervals between the journeys than there are now, I obtained from the Theosophical Library the books he had written—the books that is to say, of Laurence Oliphant.
Laurence Oliphant is a remarkably interesting and significant personality: he strikes you in this way directly you begin to study his writings. These books deal with the similarities to be found in different religions, with spiritual religions, and so forth; and all of them bear evidence of a deep understanding of how in the various processes of his body and soul, Man is connected with the secrets of the universe. When you read Oliphant's writings you have the impression: Here is a picture of Man in his earth-life that owes its inspiration to deep cosmic instincts. The processes of the earthly life of man that are connected with birth, embryonic life, descent and so forth, are described in such a way as to show how man, as microcosm, is wondrously rooted in the macrocosm.
[spiritual being]
Now I was very soon led in this study to a point where the figure of the dead Laurence Oliphant stood before me, but not in a form which suggested that I had here to do with the individuality as he was then living after death; it was rather that what was contained in these writings (which may be described as setting forth a kind of cosmic physiology, a cosmic anatomy) began to come alive, began to spiritualise; and a figure appeared, not all at once entirely clear, but unquestionably there before me on many different occasions. I was able to make occult investigations into the matter and I could never do otherwise than bring the figure into connection with what came to me from reading Oliphant. It was very often there before me. At first I was often unable to satisfy myself as to what this figure wanted, what its manifestations meant. The whole manner of its appearance however, left me in no doubt whatever that it was none other than the individuality of Laurence Oliphant; and it was likewise clear to me that this figure had had a long life in the time between death and a new birth—that is to say, the birth as Laurence Oliphant—probably only broken by one earth-life that was not very significant for the rest of the world. What might not then be hidden in the personality of Laurence Oliphant! In short, this appearance of the figure of Laurence Oliphant suggested significant questions of karma.
When I entered on an investigation of the karma, a spiritual being became manifest who is engaged in the elaboration of human karma, in the same way as the Mars Being of whom I told you in connection with Voltaire and with Ignatius Loyola.
...
Now the investigations which I described in Torquay led me into close contact with the spirit of Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante. When one penetrates into these spiritual worlds in the manner described, it also becomes possible to stand before individualities in the form in which they lived in a particular epoch. Thus one can stand face to face with Brunetto Latini, the great teacher of Dante in the 13th century. Brunetto Latini still possessed a knowledge whereby nature was seen, not in the abstraction of natural laws, but as under the influence of living spiritual Beings. On the way back to his native town of Florence from his post as Ambassador in Spain, Brunetto Latini heard all kinds of reports that troubled and disturbed him, and in addition he had a slight sunstroke. In this condition and under the influence, too, of the pathological disturbances, glimpses came to him of nature in her creative work, of cosmic creation, and of the connection of man with the planetary world. What he was able to see was wonderful and sublime and no more than a shadow-picture of it subsequently found its way into the great work of Dante—the Divine Comedy.
But now if we follow this Brunetto Latini, we find that in a critical moment, when the knowledge was like to suffocate him, when it seemed to him that he might go astray from true knowledge and fall into error—in this critical moment, Ovid became his guide, Ovid, the Roman author of the Metamorphoses which contain such wonderful visions of the old Greek age, though expressed in the prosaic, characteristically Roman style.
And so we meet the individuality of Ovid together with Brunetto Latini. If we have a true grasp of the connection we can see Brunetto Latini, in the pre-Dante time, actually together with Ovid. Ovid is with him.
And now, precisely in connection with the scientific, medical researches of which I was speaking, Ovid revealed himself as Laurence Oliphant. The long life since the Ovid time, passing but once to earth again in the interval and then as a woman in an incarnation that had little significance for the world outside, came at length to this fulfilment. The content of the soul is transplanted into modern times, and Ovid appears again as Laurence Oliphant.
Nor is it Brunetto Latini alone but other personalities too of the Middle Ages who assert that Ovid was their guide. At first it sounds like a tradition that simply gets carried on. In reality, Ovid was the guide in the spiritual world for many Initiates, appearing again as Laurence Oliphant with his sublime treatment of physiology and pathology.

This connection between Laurence Oliphant and Ovid is of most far-reaching import and is one of the most illuminating examples one could possibly find.

KRI 42: Titius Livius - Walther von der Vogelweide - Ludwig Schleich

helper
Titius Livius or Livy (59 BC-17AD) was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, and was a friend of Augustus, whose young grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, he encouraged to take up the writing of history.
Walther von der Vogelweide (ca 1170-1230) was a Minnesänger who composed and performed love-songs and political songs ("Sprüche") in Middle High German, and has been described as the greatest German lyrical poet before Goethe. His hundred or so love-songs are widely regarded as the pinnacle of Minnesang, the medieval German love lyric, and his innovations breathed new life into the tradition of courtly love. He was also the first political poet to write in German, with a considerable body of encomium, satire, invective, and moralising. Little is known about Walther's life. He was a travelling singer who performed for patrons at various princely courts in the states of the Holy Roman Empire. His work was widely celebrated in his time and in succeeding generations - for the Meistersingers he was a songwriter to emulate - and this is reflected in the exceptional preservation of his work in 32 manuscripts from all parts of the High German area. The largest single collection is found in the Codex Manesse, which includes around 90% of his known songs. However, most Minnesang manuscripts preserve only the texts, and only a handful of Walther's melodies survive.
Carl Ludwig Schleich (1859-1922) was a German surgeon and writer best known for his contribution to clinical anesthesia. He was also a philosopher, poet and painter

KRI 44: Tycho Brahe - Julian the Apostate

see: Individuality of Julian the Apostate

KRI 48: von Hertling - Cardinal Mazarini

unnamed incarnation connected to decadent system of Mysteries in Asia Minor (pagan cults that proceeded out of the ancient Mysteries)
sceptic philosopher 'agrippa' (end 1st century AD)
Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661), born Giulio Raimondo Mazarini: Italian cardinal, diplomat and politician who served as the chief minister to the Kings of France Louis XIII (1601-1643) and Louis XIV (1638-1715) from 1642 to his death in 1661.
- first years in office were marked by military victories in the Thirty Years' War, which he used to make France the main European power and establish the Peace of Westphalia (1646–1648). Mazarin's policies also added Alsace to France.
- links with oa Richelieu, Anne of Austria, French king and queen
- patron of the arts in France in the 17th century

Georg Friedrich von Hertling (1843-1919): German politician, foreign minister and minister president of Bavaria, chancellor of the German Reich and minister president of Prussia

Reference extracts

1924-09-19-GA238

extract below shortened (SWCC), bullet point summary of essential elements

[sceptic philosopher]

a personality who lived at the end of the first Christian century
his name in that incarnation is of no great importance, he was a certain “Agrippa”
he was a philosopher .. one of the Sceptics, who really think nothing in the world is certain
- belonged to that sceptical School which though it already saw the dawn of Christianity, stood altogether on the ground that it is impossible to gain certain knowledge, and above all that it is quite impossible to say with certainty whether a Divine Being could assume a human form or the like.
- this individuality in his incarnation gathered up into himself the whole of Greek Scepticism.
if we use the word not in a contemptuous sense but as a technical term, he was one whom we should even call a Cynic. I mean a Cynic not in his conception of life, for in that he was a Sceptic, but a Cynic in his way of taking things.
- was really very fond of making light and joking about most important things that met him in the world.
In that life Christianity passed him by, leaving no trace.
between death and new birth
- a certain mood remained with him as he passed through the gate of death.
  - This mood was not so much a result of his scepticism, for that was his philosophic conviction, a thing that one does not carry very far after one's death. But it lay in the deeper habits of his soul and spirit as an easy-going way of taking important events of life, a certain mischievous delight when things in the world which look important turn out to be not quite so important. This fundamental mood he carried with him into the life after death.
- [paragraph on Moon region and primeval wise Teachers of mankind with only etheric body, their teaching in Mysteries being felt as inner inspiration. Moon region being first station after death .. they explain the laws of karma]
- the philosopher 'Agrippa' in that region: there dawned upon him the meaning of a former incarnation. The characteristic of that former incarnation which now made so great an impression on him as he looked back after death, was that in it he had still been able to see a very great deal of how the cults of Asia Minor and Africa proceeded out of the ancient Mysteries.
  - he went once more, with great intensity, through all that he had once undergone on Earth in connection with many a decadent system of the Mysteries in Asia Minor .. he saw supersensibly, how in the ancient Mysteries the Christ had been expected [whereas in this life on earth he had not been touched by Christianity].
  - the cults that proceeded from the Mysteries had already grown external .. he had received the impressions of cults and religious institutions which were transmitted in the first centuries A.D., in a Christianised metamorphosis, to Roman Christianity.
  - in this region after his death, there was prepared in this individuality an understanding for the external features of the cults and clerical institutions which had formerly been Pagan but were arising again in the first Christian centuries and passing over into the clearly defined Roman cult and ceremony with all the ecclesiastical conceptions connected with it
- this brought about in him a very peculiar spiritual configuration .. in the further course of the life between death and a new birth .. elaborating his karma most especially in the region of Mercury, so he is able to see things not in an inward sense but in the sense of being gifted with outward intelligence. He gains a wide sweep of vision for many facts and relationships.

[Cardinal Mazarini]

Cardinal Cardinal Mazarini, who carried on the Government of Louis XIV when Louis XIV was still a child
- in all his greatness and splendour and with the external conception of Christianity into which he finds his way so readily, so naturally, under the woman who was Louis XIV's guardian.
- He absorbs of Christianity all the external institutions, the Christian cult, the Christian pomp and grandeur. For him all these things are surrounded, as it were, with an Eastern glamour as of Asia Minor. Indeed we may say he rules Europe like one who in a former incarnation had strongly absorbed the character of Asia Minor.
- in this incarnation he had the occasion to be more powerfully touched by the facts and circumstances.
  - You need only remember that it was the time of the Thirty Years' War. Remember all the things that took place proceeding from Louis XIV. There was indeed a peculiar quality in this Cardinal Mazarini. He was a great statesman with a wide sweep of vision, yet on the other hand in the midst of a certain noise and confusion. We might say that he was intoxicated by his own deeds so that they seemed deeds of magnificent skill, but not coming out of the depths of the heart.
between death and new birth
- in passing again through the region of Mercury, all that this personality had done was dissolved as in a cloud of mist
- there remained with him the ideas he had absorbed about Christianity and all he had undergone by way of scepticism in relation to knowledge. These things were transformed
- “Science can never lead us to the final truths.” An intense feeling for knowledge of which there was a suggestion already in his former passage through Mercury, came and passed away again.
- there was karmically developed in his life a peculiar mentality .. which held fast with great tenacity to penetrating ideas which he had passed through before. But while he held fast to them, he could evolve for his next life on earth very few concepts with which to master and express them.
- As this personality passes through the life between death and a new birth one has the feeling: Whatever will he try to do in his next incarnation? Is there anything with which he is really united? One has the feeling: he may be more or less intensely united with all kinds of things and yet again with nothing. All the antecedents are there: the preceding life of scepticism, followed by his intense life in a Christianity with all its external details along the paths by which one becomes a Cardinal. All these things are deeply embedded in him. He will become a man rich in knowledge, yet able to come forward with concepts by no means profound. Moreover the map of Europe which he once ruled over is as though blotted out. One does not know how he will find his way to it again. What will he do with it? He will be altogether at a loss with it.

[Georg Friedrich von Hertling]

Hertling, who became Chancellor of the German Reich at a great age
re-born showing a strangely double countenance. He cannot be quite a statesman, nor quite a cleric, but is drawn strongly in both directions.
In karmic sequence he had to use up in this way the remnants of his Mazarini nature. All the peculiar qualities with which he came to Christianity, and entered into it, came forth again in his Christian professorship at the present time.

KRI 49: Vladimir Solovyov

Incarnations:

participant Council of Nicæa 4th century christian - see also 325
woman middle ages (- visionary nun)
Vladimir Solovioff

Aspects

influence at his death and expanding ether body in 1900 (1912-02-09-GA130)

Lecture coverage

1910-06-16-GA121

Solovyov goes further than Hegel and Kant. He is the prophetic dawn of the sixth post-Atlantean cultural age.

He has a much more advanced conception of Christ has been able to come in the East than in Western Europe, excepting where it has come about through Anthroposophy. Of all non-anthroposophists the most advanced conception of Christ is that held by the Solovyov.

It is very remarkable and extremely interesting to see how the Eastern European expresses his tendency of receptivity towards the pure Spirit by receiving with great devotion Western European culture, thus indicating prophetically that he will be able to unite something still greater with his being. Hence also the little interest he has in the details of this Western European culture. He receives what is presented to him more in broad outlines and less in details, because he is preparing himself to take up that which as Spirit-Self is to enter into mankind.
It is particularly interesting to see how, under this influence, a much more advanced conception of Christ has been able to come in the East than in Western Europe, excepting where it has come about through Anthroposophy.
Of all non-Anthroposophists the most advanced conception of Christ is that held by the Russian philosopher, Solovyov. It is so advanced that it can only be understood by Anthroposophists, because he develops it higher and higher and gives it an endless perspective, showing that what man is able to recognize in Christ to-day is only the beginning, because the Christ-impulse has as yet only been able to reveal to man a small degree of what it contains within it. But as regards the conception of Christ, if we look for instance at the way in which Hegel understood Him, we shall find that one may say: Hegel understood Him as only the most refined, most sublimated Spiritual Soul could.
But in Solovioff the concept of Christ is a very different one. He fully recognizes the two parts in this conception, and everything which has been expressed in the many theological disputes, and which in reality rest upon great misunderstandings, is put aside, because the ordinary conceptions do not suffice to make the idea of Christ in His twofold nature comprehensible; they do not suffice to make one understand that therein the human and the spiritual must be clearly distinguished. The concept of Christ rests upon clearly grasping what took place when the Christ entered into the Man Jesus of Nazareth, who had developed all the necessary qualities. There were, then, two natures which must first of all be comprehended as such, although at a higher stage they again form unity. As long as one has not grasped this duality, one has not realized Christ in His complete form. This can, however, only be done by the philosophical comprehension which has a premonition that man himself will reach a culture in which his Spiritual Soul will attain to a state into which the Spirit-Self can come; so that man will in the sixth age of civilization feel himself to be a duality in whom the higher nature will hold the lower nature under complete control.
Solovioff carries this duality into his conception of Christ and brings emphatically into notice that there can be no meaning in it unless one accepts the facts of a divine and a human nature, both really working together, so that they do not merely form an abstract but an organic unity, that thus only can this be understood. Solovioff recognizes that two Will-centers must be thought of in this Being.
If you take the teachings of Spiritual Science as to the true significance of the Christ-Being, which proceed from the existence of, not an imaginary, but a spiritually real Indian influence, you then have to think of Christ as having developed within His three bodies the capacities of feeling, thought and will. There you have a human feeling, thinking and willing into which the divine Feeling, Thinking and Willing has immersed itself.
The European will only thoroughly assimilate this when he has risen to the sixth stage of culture. This has been prophetically expressed in a wonderful way in Solovioff's conception of Christ, which like a rosy dawn announces a later civilization.
Hence this philosophy of Eastern Europe strides with giant steps beyond that of Hegel and Kant, and when one enters the atmosphere of this philosophy, one suddenly feels as it were the germ for a future unfolding. It goes so much further because this conception of Christ is felt to be a fore-shining, the morning dawn of the sixth post-Atlantean civilization.
By means of this the whole Christ-Being and the whole significance of Christ becomes the central point of philosophy, and it thus becomes a very different thing from what the Western European conceptions are able to offer concerning it. The conception of Christ, — so far as it has been worked out in non-Anthroposophical circles, in which it is comprehended as living substance which, as a spiritual personality, is to work into the social life and the life of the States, which is felt as a Personality in Whose service man finds himself as ‘man with the Spirit-Self,’ — this Christ-Personality is worked out in a wonderful, plastic manner in the various expositions Solovioff gives of St. John's Gospel and its opening words. Again it is only on the ground of Spiritual Science that a comprehension can be found of what is so profoundly understood by Solovioff in the sentence, ‘In the beginning was the Word, or the Logos,’ and so on, of how differently St. John's Gospel is understood by a philosophy, which can be felt as a germinating philosophy which points in a remarkable manner to the future. Although on the one hand it must be admitted that in the domain of philosophy Hegel's work represents a most mature fruit, something that is born from the Spiritual Soul as a very ripe philosophical fruit, on the other hand this philosophy of Solovioff is the germ in the Spiritual Soul for the philosophy of the Spirit-Self, which will be added in the sixth age of culture.
There is perhaps no greater contrast than that eminently Christian conception of the State which hovers as a great ideal before Solovioff as a dream of the future, that Christian idea of the State and the people, which takes everything it finds in order to offer it to the down-streaming Spirit-Self to hold it towards the future so that it may be Christianized by the powers of the future: — there is really no greater contrast than this conception by Solovioff of a Christian community in which the Christ-idea is still a future one, — and the conception of the divine State held by St. Augustine, who accepted, it is true, the Christ-idea, but constructed the State in such a way that it was still the Roman State; he took up Christ into the idea of the State given him by the Roman State. The essential point is, that which provides the knowledge for the Christianity which is growing on into the future. In Solovioff's State Christ is the blood which runs through all social life, and the essential point is that the State is thought of in all the concreteness of personality, so that it acts indeed as a spiritual being, but it will fulfill its mission with all the characteristic peculiarities of a personality. No other philosophy is so permeated by the Christ-idea, — the Christ-idea which shines forth to us from still greater heights in Anthroposophy, — and yet remaining only at the germinal stage.
Everything that we find in the East, from the general feeling of the people up to its philosophy, comes to us as something that bears only the germ of a future evolution within it, and that therefore had to submit to the special education of that Spirit of the Age whom we already know; for we have said that the Spirit of the Age of the ancient Greeks was given as an impulse to Christianity, and was entrusted with the mission of becoming later on the active Spirit of the Age for Europe. The national temperament which will have to develop the germs for the sixth age of civilization had not only to be educated but to be taken care of, from the first stages of its existence, by that Spirit of the Age. So that we may literally say, — whereby the ideas of Father and Mother lose their separate sense, — that the Russian temperament, which is gradually to evolve into the Folk-soul, was not only brought up, but was suckled and fed by that which, as we have seen, was formed out of the old Greek Spirit of the Age and then acquired another rank, outwardly.
Thus are the missions divided between Western, Central, Northern and Eastern Europe. I wished to give you an indication of these things. We shall work further on the foundations of these indications, and show what will distinguish the future of Europe, and also show that we must form our ideals from such knowledge. We shall show how through this influence the Germanic Scandinavian Folk-spirit gradually transforms himself into a Spirit of the Age.

1911-09-19-GA130

There are two main streams. The first is known through the fact that there is a so-called Western philosophy, and that the most elementary concepts of the spiritual world arise out of the purest depths of philosophy. And it is remarkable what we see when we make a survey of what has gradually taken place within the science of Western culture. We see how some people become purely intellectual, whilst others are rooted in the religious life, yet at the same time are filled with what can only be given by the vision of the spiritual world that is behind all existence. On all sides we see spiritual life flowing out of Western philosophy. I will only mention Vladimir Soloviev, ( 12 ) the Russian philosopher and thinker, a real clairvoyant, though he only saw into the spiritual world three times in his life:

once when he was a boy of nine,

the second time in the British Museum,

and the third time in the Egyptian desert under the starry heavens of Egypt.

On these occasions there was revealed to him what can only be seen by clairvoyant vision. He had a prevision of the evolution of humanity, there welled up in him what Schelling and Hegel also achieved through sheer spiritual effort. As they stood alone on the heights of thinking, we may now place them on the summit which all educated people will eventually reach. All this was said in the course of previous centuries, particularly the last four centuries. When we survey this and work on it with the methods of practical occultism, as has been done recently, in order to make a special investigation into what the purely intellectual thinkers from Hegel to Haeckel have worked out, we can see occult forces at work here too.
And a very remarkable thing comes to light: we can speak of pure inspiration in the case of just those people who appear to have least of it. Who inspired all the thinkers who are rooted in pure intellectualism? Who gave the stimulus for this life of thought that speaks out of every book to be found even in the lowliest cottage? Where does all this abstract thought life in Europe come from, that has had such a curious outcome?
…
If we read Leibniz, Schelling and Soloviev today, and ask ourselves how they have been inspired, we find that it was by the individuality who was born in the place of Suddhodana, ascended from Bodhisattva to Buddha and then continued to work selflessly. In fact he continued to work in such a selfless way that we can go back in time today to a point when not even the name of Buddha was mentioned in the West. You do not find the name of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha, not even in Goethe! You know, though, that he lives in everything. He has met with so much understanding that he works on unnamed in Western literature. The Middle Ages knew about this, too, but they did not speak about it in this way then. They tell us something different.

1912-02-09-GA130

And I want to begin here by giving an example. Those who participate consciously in the occult life of the spirit had a strange experience from the eighties on into the nineties of the previous century; they became aware of certain influences emanating from a remarkable personality (I am only mentioning one case among many). There was, however, something not quite harmonious about these influences.
Anyone who is sensitive to influences from contemporaries living a great distance away, would, at that time, have been aware of something raying out from a certain personality, which was not altogether harmonious.
When the new century dawned, however, these influences became harmonious.
What had happened? I will tell you the reason for this.
On the 12th August 1900 Soloviev had died — a man far too little appreciated or understood. The influences of his ether body radiated far and wide, but although Soloviev was a great philosopher, in his case the development of the soul was in advance of that of the head, the intellect; he was a great and splendid thinker, but his conscious philosophy was of far less significance than that which he bore in his soul. Up to the time of his death the head was a hindering factor and so, as an occult influence, he had an inharmonious effect.
But when he was dead and the ether body, separated from the brain, rayed out in the ether world, he was liberated from the restrictions caused by his thinking, and the rays of his influence shone out with wonderful brilliance and power.

1915-06-15-GA159

1916-09-18-GA171

1924-09-19-GA238

I will now take another example, which will probably be of great and deep value to you all. Though I almost shudder to speak of it in any easy way, yet I cannot but choose it, for it leads so infinitely deeply into the whole spiritual texture of the present time.
I will now mention another personality, of whom as I said, I almost shudder to speak in this way. And yet he is infinitely characteristic of all that is carried from the past into the present and of the way in which this happens.
[325 AD - Council of Nicæa]
I have often referred — and it will be known to you from external history — to the Council of Nicæa, which was held in the 4th century, where the decision was made for Western Europe as between Aryanism and Athanasianism, and Aryanism was condemned.
It was a Council in which the important personalities were imbued with all the high scholarship of the first Christian centuries, and brought it forth. They did indeed dispute with deep and far-reaching ideas. For in that time the human soul still had quite a different mood and constitution. It was as a matter of course for the human soul to live directly within the spiritual world.
And they were well able to dispute with real content and meaning as to whether Christ was the Son, of the same essence with the Father, or only of like essence with the Father. The latter was the standpoint of Aryanism.
Today we will not go into the dogmatic differences of the question. We will only bear in mind that it was a question of immensely deep and sharp-witted controversies, which were, however, fought out with the peculiar intellectualism of that time. When we to-day are clever and sharp-witted we are so as human beings. Indeed to-day, as I have often said, almost all men are clever. They are really dreadfully clever — that is to say, they can think. Is it not so? It is not saying much, but it is a fact that they can think: I may indeed be very stupid and still be able to think ... but the fact is the men of today can think. In those times it was not so. It was not that men could simply think, but they felt their thoughts as inspiration.
He who was sharp-witted felt himself gifted by the grace of God, and his thinking was a kind of clairvoyance. It was still so even in the 4th century A.D., and those who listened to a thinker still had some feeling of the living evolution of his thought.
Now there was present at the Council of Nicæa a certain personality who took an active part in these discussions, but at the end of the Council he was in a high degree disappointed and depressed. His main effort had been to bring forward the arguments for both sides. He brought forward weighty reasons both for Aryanism and for Athanasianism. And if things had gone as he wished, undoubtedly the result would have been quite different. Not a wretched compromise, but a kind of synthesis of Aryanism and Athanasianism would have been the outcome. — One should not construct history in thought, but this may be said by way of explanation. — It would probably have been a very much more intimate way of relating the divine in the inner being of man to the divine in the universe. For, in the way in which Athanasianism afterwards evolved these things, the human soul was very largely separated from its divine origin. Indeed, it was thought heretical to speak of the god in the inner being of man.
If, on the other hand, Aryanism alone had won the day, there would of course have been much talk of this god in the inner being of man. But it would not have been spoken of with the necessary depth of reverence, and above all, not with the necessary inward dignity. Aryanism alone would indeed have come to regard man at every stage as an incarnation of the god who dwells within him. But the same may be said of any animal, indeed of the whole world, of every plant, of every stone. This conception only has real value if it contains at the same time the active impulse to rise ever higher and higher in spiritual development, for then only do we find the god within. The statement that there is a divine within us at any and every stage of life can have a meaning only if we take hold of this divine in a perpetual upward striving of the self, by whom it is not yet attained.

But a synthesis of the two conceptions would undoubtedly have been the outcome if the personality to whom I now refer had been able to gain any decisive influence at the Council of Nicæa. He failed. Deeply dissatisfied, he withdrew into a kind of Egyptian hermitage, lived a most ascetic life, and was deeply imbued at that time in the 5th century with all that was the real spiritual substance of Christianity during that age.

Indeed he was probably one of the best informed of Christians in his time, but he was not a wrangler. This is evident from the very way in which he came forward at the Council. He spoke as a man
who quietly weighs and judges all aspects of the question, and is yet deeply enthusiastic for his cause, though not for this or that one-sided detail.

as a man who felt his failure with extraordinary bitterness, for he was deeply convinced that good would only come for Christianity if the view for which he stood won its way through.

Thus he withdrew into a kind of hermitage. For the rest of his life he became a hermit, following however, in response to the inner impulses of his soul, a quite definite course of the inner life. It was that of investigating the origin of the inspiration of thought. His mystic penetration was in the effort to perceive whence thinking receives its inspiration. It became one great longing in him to find the source of thinking in the spiritual world, until at length he was filled through and through with this longing. And with this longing he died, without having reached any real conclusion, any concrete answer during that earthly life. No answer was forthcoming. The time was after all unfavourable.

between death and new birth
he underwent a peculiar experience. For several decades after his death he could still look back upon his earthly life, and he saw it forever coloured by that element to which he had come at last. He saw it forever in the atmosphere of that which, looking backwards, came immediately next his death. He saw the human being thinking. Still this was no fulfilment of the question. And this is most important. There was as yet no thought in answer to the question. But though there was no answer, he was able, after his death, to look, in marvellously clear imaginations, into the cosmic intelligence of the universe. The thoughts of the universe he did not see. He would have seen them if his longing had reached fulfilment. He did not see the thoughts of the universe, but he saw in pictures the Thinking of the universe.

he was as in a state of equilibrium between mystic imaginative vision and his former sharp-witted thinking — a thinking, however, in perpetual flow, that had not reached its conclusion. In the elaboration of the karma, his mystic tendency won the day to begin with.

He was born again in the Middle Ages as a visionary, a woman, who unfolded truly wonderful insight into the spiritual world. For a time, the tendency of the thinker fell entirely into the background; the quality of spiritual vision was in the foreground. For this woman had wonderful visions, while at the same time she gave herself up mystically to the Christ. Her soul was penetrated, with infinite depth, by a visionary Christianity. They were visions in which the Christ appeared as the leader of peaceful hosts, not quarrelsome or contentious, but like the hosts of peace, who would spread Christianity abroad by their very gentleness — a thing which had never yet been realised on earth. It was there in the visions of this nun. It was a deep, intensive Christianity, but it found no place at all in what afterwards evolved as Christianity in its more modern form. Nevertheless during her life this nun, the seeress, came into no conflict with positive dogmatic Christianity. She herself grew out of it and grew into a deeply personal Christianity, which was afterwards simply non-existent on the earth.

between death and new birth
And thus, if I might put it so, the whole universe then faced her with the question: how should this Christianity be realised in a physical body in a new incarnation? And at the same time, long after the seeress had passed through the gate of death, there came over her again the echoes of the old intellectualism, the inspired intellectualism. The after-echoes of her visions were now, if I might put it so, idealised through and through, filled with ideas.

Then, seeking for a new human body, this individual became the individuality of Solovioff, Vladimir Solovioff.
Read the writings of Solovioff! — I have frequently described the impression they make upon a modern man and have said it again in my introduction to the German edition of his works. You may well try to feel it in his writing. You will feel how much there lies between the lines, how much of a mysticism which we may often feel even sultry and oppressive. It is a Christianity quite individual in its forms of expression. It shows quite clearly how it had to seek for a pliable, in all directions supple body, such as can be obtained only out of the Russian people.
Looking at these examples, I think one may indeed preserve the holy awe and reverence before the truths of karma, which should indeed be held sacred and virginal in the inmost depths of life. For one who has a true feeling for the contemplation of the spiritual world, these deep truths are, verily, not unworthily unveiled. I mean this in the sense of what is so often said about the sacred veils of truth, of which people say that they should never be drawn aside.
Anthroposophy has been reproached again and again, notably in theological circles, for drawing aside the veil of sacred mystery from secret and mysterious truths, and thus making them profane. But the more deeply we enter into the esoteric portions of the anthroposophical conception, the more do we feel that there can truly be no talk of profanation. On the contrary the world itself will fill us with a holy awe when we behold the lives of man one after another in the marvellous working of former into later lives. We must only not be profane in our inner life or in our way of thinking and then we shall not make such objections.
Read the writings of Solovioff against the background of the previous nun, with her wonderful visions and infinite devotion to the Being of Christ. See that ancient personality going forth with deep and bitter feelings from the Council where he had brought forward such great and important things. Discover in the soul and in the heart of this individual what I may call the twofold background of Christianity, now in its rationalistic, but inspired rationalistic form, and now again in its visionary form of seership. See all this in the background, and of a truth the lifting of the veil will not profane the secret.

KRI 50: Weininger - Thomas Campanella

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.502 shows (above) birth and death horoscopes for two personalities of the same individuality KRI=50. It is an example taken from Wachsmuth (1956, see 'Further reading' section below). The two charts below show the remarkable clustering of planets in certain zodiac signs for birth and death of the two incarnations (so four planetary positions 1 to 4). Wachsmuth identifies alignments, oppositions and squares.

KRI 52: Elijah - John Baptist - Raphael - Novalis

Aspects

as part of Karmic relationships in context of Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls
- Raphael - see Schema FMC00.493
- Novalis - see Schema FMC00.497 and Schema FMC00.243A, specifically described1912-12-29-GA143

See also:
- The being of Elijah
- Mystery of John

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.503 shows (left) birth and death horoscopes for two personalities of the same individuality KRI=52. It is an example taken from Wachsmuth (1956, see 'Further reading' section below). The four charts on the right show the remarkable clustering of planets in certain zodiac signs for birth and death of the two incarnations (so four planetary positions 1 to 4). Wachsmuth identifies alignments, oppositions and squares.

Observe the remarkable clustering of four planets cluster in three zodiac signs (Taurus-Aries-Pisces), whereas Jupiter and Saturn take positions in the other zodiac signs (also with certain patterns).

Lecture coverage and references

GA143 lectures below available in audio version here: https://www.rudolfsteineraudio.com/threepathstochristCW143/threepathschristCW143.html

1912-12-16-GA143

is a lead-up to the lecture of 29th of Dec, already covers the four incarnations and Personalities of Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis, as a fourfold heraldship of Christianity through the same Individuality

1912-12-29-GA143

Novalis as herald of the spiritual Christ Impulse

synopsis:

Novalis as prophet of the new times, his being radiated by the Christ Impulse
the reincarnated soul of Elijah, John the Baptist and Raphael in Novalis
Novalis and his contemporaries Goether, Schiller, Fichte [editor: see see Schema FMC00.497 and Schema FMC00.243A on Karmic relationships ]
- Goethe's relation to Spinoza and Leibniz, how the monad teachings are related to the Sankhya philosophy. Fichte's renewed Vedanta words
- Novalis as carrier of spirit, and Schiller of ethical individualism. Novalis praising of Schiller.
- Goethe's quote 'wisdom is only in truth' as a leitmotiv (leading sentence)
Novalis path of incarnations as leading north star, his poem: 'when no longer figures and forms'

KRI 53: Philo of Alexandria - Spinoza - Fichte

Already in lectures as early as 1903, Rudolf Steiner unveilede that Fichte, Spinoza and Philo of Alexandria were three incarnations of the same Individuality. This can explain a great deal for those who read or studied Spinoza and Fichte.

Aspects

incarnations:

Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE–50 CE)
- when Jesus of Nazareth lived, there was the school of Philo in the famous Alexandria. One of these students was the evangelist who wrote the Gospel of John [see Individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz, generally believed to be one of Steiner's two masters]. Among his many teachings were those that he gave about the five books of Moses; saying that these were not written to express what is told in them, but that this was only an outer garment to express deep inner human truths. (1904-05-27-GA090A).
  - note: the teachings of the Logos originate with Philo and John, see The three Logoi#Aspects
- appears in context on Schema FMC00.673
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814)
- see Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls#IG04 - Idealism (Jena, Germany) in the 18th century

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.510A - for explanation of this series see Schema FMC00.510.

Above: Rudolf Steiner talked on several occasions about Spinoza, Fichte and Philo of Alexandria being incarnations of the same Individuality. On the left are fairly trustworthy depictions (and compare the noses, for example); the illustrations on the right were added because it's still interesting how an imaginary depiction from the middle ages of Philo is shown 'coincidentally' with such expressive eyes, whereas the eyes are also a characteristic in Spinoza's and Fichte's facial expression.

Lecture coverage and references

1903-08-24-GA088

As an example of a regular development of an individuality, we can consider a contemporary of Jesus, Philo of Alexandria. His individuality reappeared as Spinoza and then as Johann Gottlieb Fichte. So here we have one continuous individuality in three personalities. If you read Fichte without knowing about this, you will understand very little. But with this knowledge, you will find that his words are written in fire. All these great minds have undergone a regular development.

1903-08-24-GA090C

An incarnation does not depend solely on one's own development, but also on the usefulness and significance for the whole evolution.
An example of regular development. The succession of personalities of higher individualities is no longer irregular. There is no regular development in the less developed.
In highly developed individualities, however, outstanding qualities will emerge. These include
firstly, a sincere looking up to the Higher,
secondly, a calm love for God,
thirdly, becoming in God.
As a regular development of an Individuality, we can consider
firstly: a contemporary of Jesus, Philo;
secondly: Spinoza;
thirdly: Fichte.
Three personalities – one individuality. If you read Fichte without knowing about these processes, you will understand very little. But with this knowledge, you will find that the words of these personalities are written in fire. These great minds have undergone a regular evolution themselves.

1904-05-28-GA090A

In fact, we could and perhaps will be able to go back to the origin, to the actual theories of such writings, to the first inspirers. But we do not want to do that today. We want to touch on a question that goes back to an historical fact, which admittedly cannot be established by the external means of literature today, but which will become quite clear once the theosophical movement has taken root. So, I would like to consider an historical fact first. At the time when Christianity had its first starting point, when Jesus of Nazareth lived, there was the school of Philo in the famous Alexandria. Among the manifold teachings that Philo gave, the most outstanding were those that he gave his students about the five books of Moses.
I note that one of these students was the evangelist who wrote the Gospel of John.
So the spirit that lived in the Egyptian schools also lives in the Fourth Gospel. This interpretation required a very special spiritual quality, and Philo began by telling his students that the five books of Moses were not written to express what is told in them, but that this was only an outer garment to express deep inner human truths. Line by line, the Old Testament is to be understood as allegorical, symbolic of human inner processes, of such processes that also took place in time at the same time, that is, the processes took place in the hearts of the people for many hundreds of years, from the time when Abraham wandered in the Canaanite land until the time when the Jews were led into Babylonian captivity. There events took place that did not happen outwardly, but in the souls, which were, however, connected with historical events. But one does not understand the historical events if one does not bring them into connection with the inner happenings. Above all, the students entered into a mood in which the whole of the Old Testament appeared to them as a revelation of the inner human self.
I will give you a few examples in a moment. What I have told you was regarded by nineteenth-century scholars as mere myth, especially the explanations given by Philo. He still gave these in a very forceful manner in oral discourse. Everything that has come down to posterity from this has been regarded as an allegorical interpretation, to which nothing more can be added. In the nineteenth century, the aim was to remain on the physical plane and to examine the facts that arise for the historian.
Even if the Bible was doubted in its chronology, even if it was no longer believed that the world was created 4000 years before the birth of Christ, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Bible was still taken as a kind of historical document, as something that gave us information about historical events. The events that were narrated - even if they were inaccurately narrated - were taken as if they mattered. I am now talking from the point of view of external scholarly research. The other things that occurred in the occult realm were not noticed at all.

1913-06-05-GA158

on Spinoza and Fichte

1917-04-17-GA175

see: Christ Module 13 – Teachings through the ages#1917-04-17-GA175

To put it more clearly, the Christians expressed their sentiments in words that could be found amongst many of their contemporaries. One of these was Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Christ, who probably had first-hand knowledge of what was later found in the Christian writings. Philo makes the following remarkable statement:
“According to traditional teachings I must hate that which others love” (he is referring to the Romans) “and love that which others hate.”
If you bear this statement in mind and turn to the Gospel of St. Matthew, you will find countless passages which echo this statement of Philo.
...
Many who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha, such as Philo, caught fleeting glimpses of it which they described each after his own fashion.
...
Much that Philo says agrees closely with the Gospels and I would like to quote a passage which shows that because he was not inspired to the same extent as were the Evangelists later, his style was rather different from theirs. As a talented writer in the popular sense he made less heavy demands upon the reader than the Evangelists. In one notable passage Philo gave expression to something that was occupying the hearts and minds of the men of his time. He says:
“Do not concern yourselves with the genealogical records or the documents of despots, take no thought for the things of the body; do not attribute to the citizen civic rights or civil liberties, which you deny to those of humble origin or who have been purchased as slaves in the market, but give heed only to the ancestry of the soul!”
If the Gospels are read with understanding one cannot fail to recognize that something of this attitude of mind, albeit raised to a higher level, pervades the Gospels ...

KRI 55: Copernicus - Nicolas de Cusa

Aspects

incarnations:

Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464)
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)

Reference extracts

H. P. Blavatsky

.. gave a few examples in her books and writings of advanced souls who may have quick reincarnations ('immediate or quick rebirth').

For more info on this, see coverage in the book 'H.P. Blavatsky, Tibet and Tulku', by Geoffrey A. Barborka).

“Collected Writings”, volume XIV, pp. 377-379

As an instance of an Adept who enjoyed the first mentioned power some mediaeval Kabalists cite a well-known personage of the fifteenth century - Cardinal de Cusa; Karma, due to his wonderful devotion to Esoteric study and the Kabalah, led the suffering Adept to seek intellectual recuperation and rest from ecclesiastical tyranny in the body of Copernicus. Se non é vero é ben trovato [If it is not true, it is cleverly invented]; and the perusal of the lives of the two men might easily lead a believer in such powers to a ready acceptance of the alleged fact.

1901-GA007

Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age - Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa

1903-11-07-GA052

I would like to remind of the sensitive theosophist Nicholas of Cusa because he can be an ideal for the modern theosophists. He expressed that in all religions a core is contained, that they are different aspects of an original religion, that they should be reconciled, that they should be deepened.

1912-12-18-GA130

Between birth and death we live on the earth. Between death and a new birth man has a certain connection with the other planets. In my Theosophy you will find Kamaloka described. This sojourn of man in the soul world is a time during which he becomes an inhabitant of the Moon. Then one after the other, he becomes an inhabitant of Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and then an inhabitant of the further expanses of heaven or the cosmos. One is not speaking incorrectly when one says that between two incarnations on the earth lie incarnations on other planets, spiritual incarnations. Man at present is not yet sufficiently developed to remember, whilst in incarnation, his experiences between death and a new birth, but this will become possible in the future. Even though he cannot now remember what he experienced on Mars, for example, he still has Mars forces within him, although he knows nothing about them. One is justified in saying: I am not an earth inhabitant, but the forces within me include something that I acquired on Mars. Let me consider a man who lived on earth after the Copernican world outlook had become common knowledge. Whence did Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno and others acquire their abilities in this incarnation? Bear in mind that shortly before that, from 1401–1464, the individuality of Copernicus was incarnated as Nicholas of Cusa, a profound mystic. Think of the completely different mood of his docta ignorantia.
How did the forces that made Copernicus so very different from Nicholas of Cusa enter this individuality?
The forces that made him the astronomer he was, came to him from Mars! Similarly, Galileo also received forces from Mars that invested him with the special configuration of a modern natural scientist. Giordano Bruno too, brought his powers with him from Mars, and so it is with the whole of mankind. That people think like Copernicus or Giordano Bruno is due to the Mars forces they acquire between death and a new birth.

1912-12-22-GA141

By the time of the fifteenth/sixteenth century it was necessary that the evolution of Mars should become a process of ascent, for the consequences of the phase of descent had become all too evident in that sphere. As already said, when we pass again into earthly existence through birth we bring with us the impulses and forces gathered from the worlds of stars, among them the forces of Mars. The example of a certain individuality is clear evidence of the change that had come about in the forces brought by human beings from Mars to the Earth.
It is known to all occultists that the same soul which appeared on Earth in Nicolas Copernicus, the inaugurator of the dawn of the modern age, had been previously incarnated from 1401 to 1464 in Cardinal Nicolas of Kues, Nicolas Cusanus.
But how utterly different were these two personalities who harboured the same soul within them!
Nicolas of Cusa in the fifteenth century was dedicated in mind and heart to the spiritual worlds; all his study was rooted in the spiritual worlds, and when he appeared again as Copernicus he was responsible for the great transformation which could have been achieved only by eliminating from the conception of space and the planetary system every iota of spirituality and thinking only of the external movements and interrelationships of the heavenly bodies.
How was it possible that the same soul which had been on the Earth in Nicolas of Cusa and was wholly dedicated to the spiritual worlds, could appear in the next incarnation in an individual who conceived of the heavenly bodies purely in terms of their mathematical, spatial and geometric aspects?
This was possible because a soul who passed through the Mars sphere during the interval between the time of Nicolas of Cusa and that of Copernicus had entered into a phase of decline. It was therefore not possible to bring from the Mars sphere any forces that would have inspired souls during physical life to soar into the spiritual worlds. The souls who passed through the Mars sphere at that particular time could grasp only the physical and material nature of things. If these conditions on Mars had continued without change, if the phase of decline had been prolonged, souls would have brought with them from the Mars sphere forces that would have rendered them incapable of anything except a purely materialistic conception of the world. Nevertheless the results of the decline of Mars were responsible for bringing modern natural science into existence; these forces poured with such strength into the souls of men that they led to triumph after triumph in the domain of materialistic knowledge of the world; and in the further course of evolution this influence would have worked exclusively for the promotion of materialistic science, for the interests of trade and industry only, of external forms of culture on the Earth.

KRI 56: Charlemagne

KRI 59: Marie Steiner von Sivers

Marie Steiner-von Sivers (1867-1948) was born to an aristocratic family and fluent in Russian, German, English, French and Italian. She studied theater and recitation with several teachers in Europe. As the second wife of Rudolf Steiner (who she met in 1900, they married in Dec 1914 after Steiner's first wife had died in 1911), she made a great contribution to the development of anthroposophy, particularly in her work on the renewal of the performing arts (eurythmy, speech and drama), and the editing and publishing of Rudolf Steiner's literary estate.

Previous incarnations

(potential/hypothetical - as deduced from statements and hints, conversations and interactions with Rudolf Steiner) - see Schema FMC00.604

Orphic mysteries teacher of Pherecydes of Syros (who died 520 BC)
Hypatia: neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire (unknown - died 415AD)
Albertus Magnus (approx 1200 - 1280) - was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop.

Aspects

Question by Marie von Sivers to Rudolf Steiner at the so-called 'Chrysanthemum Tea' on 17 November 1901 about a western esoteric movement
involvement in Eurythmy from 1907
conflict with Ita Wegman after Rudolf Steiner's death over the continuation of anthroposophical work in the AAG, which led in 1935 to Ita Wegman and Elisabeth Vreede being recalled from their positions on the Executive Council and their supporters being expelled from the Society by the General Assembly.
founded the "Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung' in 1943 and transferred all rights to Steiner's works to it in 1947.
- disputes with the General Anthroposophical Society (AAG) since 1945, which for its part claimed rights to Steiner's works.
- lawsuit over the publishing rights for the work of Rudolf Steiner

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.604: provides an overview of the information that can be found in multiple sources regarding several incarnations of the Individuality of Rudolf Steiner (KRI 36), Marie-Steiner von Sivers (KRI 59) and Ita Wegman (KRI 37), in context of Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls.

Note: as an example of connected Individualities, Wilhelm Anton Neumann (1837-1919), was connected in a previous incarnation with Thomas Aquinas (re lecture of 1888-11-09 attended by Neumann and referenced by Rudolf Steiner in 1920-05-24-GA074, 1924-07-18-GA240, 1924-09-12 and a conversation with Rittelmeyer in 1921). Also in this previous incarnation, Gunther Wagner (1842-1930) was the brother of Thomas Aquinas father and abbot Sinibaldus of the Benedict abbey of Monte Cassino (IT) where Thomas Aquinas was entered at age five to have his education (1912-03-06-GA265A and many additional research notes in appendix (incl. letter by Marie Steiner of 1907-08-18, and a letter by Rudolf Steiner to Doris and Franz Paulus 1904-05-14 who were also connected in this incarnation).

A similar diagram could be made linking Plato and Socrates who also had earlier incarnations as Silenus and Dionysus.

See also the KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities topic page, as part of Karma research case studies and Karmic relationships.

Schema FMC00.645: provides an overview of biographical literature and memories of Marie Steiner-von Sivers, predominantly in the German language. The * column highlights the limited known translations (non-exhaustively).

provides an overview of biographical literature and memories of Marie Steiner-von Sivers, predominantly in the German language. The * column highlights the limited known translations (non-exhaustively).

Reference extracts

Virginia Sease - The karmic core of anthroposophy: Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner 1900-1907

published in The Golden Blade No 49 (1997)

Even as Marie von Sivers' translations into German of Edouard Shure's dramas meant a turning point for his international recognition, so too for Rudolf Steiner did she bring about the next and most vital step into the future.
He speaks about this moment years later in a lecture (11 October 1915) when he alludes to a conversation with Marie von Sivers in the autumn of 1901 at the home of a theosophist. Marie von Sivers always spoke of this destiny conversation as the 'Chrysanthemum Tea' conversation, as so many chiysanthemums decorated the room! The tea itself was to commemorate the founding of the Theosophical Society on 17 November 1875.
Marie von Sivers asked if it were not necessary to call into life a spiritual movement expressly for Europe, as Theosophy was so connected with eastern spirituality. Rudolf Steiner responded that he could only be for such a movement that would connect decidedly with western Christian occultism and which he would develop further. Through this question Rudolf Steiner knew that the person had appeared who could carry his own spiritual task with him. This was in a sense a prerequisite for the task itself. He referred to Marie von Sivers from the beginning as co-founder in the work.
Johanna Mücke, a trusted co-worker from the early days in Berlin, recalled a statement by Rudolf Steiner:
"Therewith [that is, Marie von Sivers' question] I received the possibility to work in the way which I imagined.

The question was presented to me and I could, true to spiritual laws, begin to give the answer to such a question."

Discussion Notes

1/ Regarding quotes or references where it/was said that a spiritual entity was working through Marie Steiner.

From exchange with a reader (Robert H., 2024)

This appears in the bios: van Manen is very short, Hammacher opens the whole context. There is a Steiner quote, paraphrased approximately like: "You cant write a biography about Marie because she s a cosmic being". Hammacher goes into details of what Steiner said among others about Hypatia: many incarnations in the Hibernian mysteries, in the Orphic mysteries in Greece. There is a strange karma about the artistic side of anthroposophy; it is nearly completely rejected in the world and often even inside anthro circles.
On the side of the human Individuality she appears to be at times greater than Steiner. However we must take into account that there are many incarnations of Marie and Rudolf Steiner which we dont know, and which we can only guess.
(I personally believe Steiner had an incarnation in Egypt, see the Mystery Dramas and/or the time gap between Eabani and his first Greek incarnation. The Mystery Dramas can be understood also as hints on the karma, incarnation of Rudolf and Marie.

Note regarding the last sentence: another view develops potentially when reading Frank Teichmann .. it might also be possible that a very early incarnation of the Individuality of Rudolf Steiner may have been in the Northern stream instead of the Southern stream. See Schema FMC00.445 and Discussion Note Druidic and Trotten mysteries#Note 4 - Commentary on Rudolf Steiner in 1923-1924 and specifically 1923-09-09

KRI 65: Silenus - Socrates and Tolstoj/Schroer

Rudolf Steiner describes the Individualities of Silenus-Socrates and Dionysos-Plato as "individualities who have been of immense importance for the education of modern human consciousness .. who "were and are momentous for what Man has become" (1911-08-24-GA129).

Both Leo Tolstoj and Tobias Gottfried Schröer are candidates for an incarnation of Socrates, therefore this section of KRI65 contains information on both for the sake of completeness (as they are in the greyzone or could be qualified as 'rumour' status).

Previous incarnations

Silenus, contemporary and teacher of Dionysos in the early Greek Mysteries
- "Socrates is the reincarnation of old Silenus, he is the reincarnated teacher of Dionysos (who incarnated as Plato)." (1911-08-24-GA129)
Socrates (ca 470-399 BC), contemporary and teacher of Plato

two candidates for a later incarnation:
- Leo Tolstoj (1828-1910)
- Tobias Gottfried Schröer (1791-1850) - see Note 1 below

Aspects for Tolstoj

Rudolf Steiner lectured on Tolstoj on various occasions, see some RSL references below, and stated
- he was "inspired by the spiritual power which also stood behind Gothic initiate Ulfilas" (1905-09-30-GA093A) or called him an "instrument of, inspired by Gothic Initiate Wulfila". More context on Spiritual guidance of mankind#Inspiration.
- he was mentioned as an outstanding representative of the Russian folk soul (1912-04-11-GA158) who stands for a forward-looking spiritual conception of the soul (1903-10-03-GA052)
note: the preserved part of Steiner's private library, comprising around 9.000 volumes, contains 25 books with works by Tolstoj in German translation and four works of secondary literature on Tolstoj.
appears also on: Schema FMC00.444

Tolstoj-Socrates

Tolstoj in earlier incarnation as Socrates, the teacher of Plato (two sources: 1910-08-27 Beinsa Douno, and Rudolf Steiner in conversation as reported separately by both Alexander Strakosch and Assja Turgenjev)
the figure of Socrates appears in Leo Tolstoy’s (9 Sep 1828-1910) diary entries as early as 8 Apr 1847. Note coincidentally, Tolstoj's first moon node after 18 years and 7 months fell on .. April 1847. In 1885 Tolstoy (aged 57) published 'The Life of Socrates' also known as 'Socrates, The Greek Teacher'.

Contacts and influence - karmic relationships

influence on Gandhi regarding non violence - Tolstoj and Gandhi got into contact with one another through Edward Maitland (1824-1897) who played a key role next to Anna Kingsford and was in contact also with Laurence Oliphant (KRI 40) and William Butler Yeats
relationship with Victor Hugo (KRI 30)
- Young Tolstoy visited Hugo during a trip to Europe and had read and admired 'Les Miserables' before he wrote 'War and Peace'. It is said that Hugo's writings inspired Tolstoj because they embed morality and moral themes in novel form.
Tolstoy also exchanged letters with American Quakers on the topic of non-violence and the writings of Quaker Christians (eg William Penn and Jonathan Dymond)

Works

Confession (1882)
- about Tolstoj's own moral crisis and spiritual awakening
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1893 or 1894)
novels 'War and Peace'and'Anna Karenina' and 'Resurrection'

Various other

Saint Spyridon (see Individuality of Daskalos, who also had an incarnation as a russian writer) is the patron saint of the Tolstoj family, chosen by Andrei Tolstoy in the 15th century).
- as a lateral thought, see also the potentially interesting coincidence KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities#1973 - Assja Turgenjef - 'Memories of Rudolf Steiner'

Aspects for Tobias Gottfried Schröer (Christian Oeser)

second candidate for another incarnation of Socrates is Tobias Gottfried Schröer (1791-1850), the father of Karl Julius Schröer (see above) and used the name Christian Oeser as pseudonym.
- Sources: attendants to lecture of 1924-09-23-GA238, Helene Finckh and Günther Schubert (possibly also Herman von Skerst), see below.
Rudolf Steiner calls him 'an important spirit' (1915-12-GA065).
T.G. Schröer wrote about the life and thought of Socrates in a literary form appropriate for children, see the English translation below under 'References and further reading'.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.510A - for explanation of this series see Schema FMC00.510.

Lecture coverage for Silenus - Socrates

1911-08-24-GA129

If you read the little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, which is to be published within the next few days, you will see that in all ages there have been great teachers of mankind who have remained unseen, who only manifest themselves to clairvoyant consciousness. You will see that when the ancient Egyptians said, in answer to a question from the Greeks as to who their teachers were, that they were instructed by the gods, it was the truth. They meant that men who were clairvoyant were inspired by teachers who did not descend to Earth, but who appeared to them in the etheric sphere and taught them. I am not putting it fancifully, what I am saying is absolutely true! When in ancient Greece pupils were introduced into the Mysteries, after having undergone due preparation so that they did not take such things lightly, superficially—as is done today when they are discussed in abstract terms—they were then in a position to see within the Mystery the teacher who was not to be seen by physical eyes but was visible only to the inspired consciousness. The hierophants, who were to be seen with physical eyes were not the important people. The important Beings were those visible to clairvoyant consciousness. In the Mysteries with which we are concerned in these lectures, in the Dionysian Mysteries, the highest teacher of the pupils who were sufficiently prepared was in fact the younger Dionysos himself—that figure which I have already told you was a real one, he who was followed by a train of sileni and fauns and who made the journey from Europe to Asia and back again. He was the real teacher of the pupils in the Dionysian Mysteries. Dionysos appeared in an etheric form in the holy Mysteries, and from him it was then possible to perceive things which were not merely seen as mirror-images in normal consciousness, but things which welled forth directly from the inner being of Dionysos.
But because Dionysos is in us, the human being saw his own self in Dionysos, and learnt to know himself—not by brooding upon himself, as is so often recommended by people who know nothing of reality—but the way to self-knowledge for the Greek Mysteries was to go out of himself. The way to self-knowledge was not to brood upon himself and to gaze only upon the mirror-images of ordinary soul-life, but to contemplate that which he himself was, though he could not reach down to it in normal consciousness, to look upon the great Teacher. The aspirants looked upon the great Teacher, who was not yet visible when they entered into the Mystery, as upon their own being. In the world outside, where he was recognised merely as Dionysos, he made his journey from Europe to Asia and back, actually incarnated in a fleshly body; there he was a real man standing upon the physical plane. In the Mysteries he appeared in his spirit-form.
...
But in the Dionysian Mysteries the soul was exposed to yet another test. I told you that the aspirants learned to know Dionysos as a spirit-form. In the Mysteries they were actually instructed by him, they learned to recognise him as a spirit-form governed entirely by what was most essential and most important in man's own nature, by what represented the human self firmly planted upon the Earth. When the Greek pupils directed their clairvoyant sight upon the figure of Dionysos, then this Dionysos seemed to them a beautiful, sublime figure, a noble external representation of humanity. Now just suppose that one of these pupils had left the Mystery Temple, after having seen Dionysos there as a beautiful, sublime human form. I expressly draw your attention to the fact that the younger Dionysos still remained a teacher in the Mysteries long after the real man, of whom I have told you that he journeyed from Europe to Asia and back again, was dead. If however one of these pupils had left the place where the Mystery was enacted and had encountered in the world outside the real Dionysos incarnated in the flesh, if he had met that human being who corresponded to the higher man whom he had seen in the Mystery, he would have seen no beauty! Just as today the man who has entered into the Mystery may not hope to see the figure which he had before him in sublime beauty in the spiritual world in the same august beauty on the physical plane, just as he must be clear that the physical embodiment of the spiritual form which he met in the Mystery is maya, is complete illusion, and conceals the sublime beauty of the spiritual figure, so that in the physical world it becomes in a way hideous—so it was in the case of Dionysos. And what tradition has given us as the external appearance of Dionysos, who is not represented as such a perfect divine form as Zeus, is in fact the image of the Dionysos who was manifested in the flesh. The Dionysos of the Mystery was a beautiful being; the fleshly Dionysos was not to be compared with him. Hence it is no good looking for the figure of Dionysos among the finest types of antique human beauty. He is not so represented by tradition, and we have in particular to think of those who constituted his followers as being hideous in appearance, like the satyrs and sileni.
What is more, we discover in Greek mythology something extremely remarkable. We are told something which is in fact the truth—that the teacher of Dionysos was himself a very ugly man. This person, Silenus who was the teacher of Dionysos himself, the aspirants in the Mystery came to know also. But Silenus is described to us as a wise individual. We need only recall that a great number of wise sayings are attributed to him, sayings which repeatedly stress the worthlessness of the normal life of man if it is only viewed from the outside in its maya or illusion. Then we are told something which made a great impression upon Nietzsche—we are told that King Midas asked Silenus, the teacher of Dionysos, what was best for man. The wise Silenus gave the significant but puzzling reply: ‘Oh, thou race of brief duration, the best would be for thee not to have been born, or since thou hast been born, the second best for thee would be swiftly to die.’ This saying has to be rightly understood. It is an attempt to indicate the relationship between the spirituality of the super-sensible world, and the maya, the great illusion, of outer life.
Thus, when we look at them in their physical human forms, these exalted beings are by no means beautiful—or at any rate they can only be regarded as beautiful in a different sense from that in which the late Greek period understood ideal beauty. We can in a way still idealise Dionysos in contrast to what he was as a man in the outer world. If we wish to contrast the form Dionysos assumed in the physical with the majestic splendour of the spiritual form which he revealed in the Mystery itself, there is nothing to stop us doing so. We are not obliged to think of him as ugly. But we should be wrong to think of the teacher of Dionysos, old Silenus, otherwise than as with an ugly snub-nose, and ears which stuck out, and anything but handsome. Silenus, the teacher of Dionysos, who was finally to hand over to man the archetypal wisdom in a form suitable for the human egoconsciousness—a wisdom which sprang from the deeper self of man—this Silenus was still closely akin to the life of Nature, which man in his present bodily form has really grown out of. The ancient Greek imagined that the present comeliness of the human being, from the point of view of external maya, had developed out of an old, ugly, human form, and that the type of the individuality who was incarnated in Silenus, the teacher of Dionysos, was not at all pleasing to look at.
Now as students of spiritual science it will not be difficult for you, from all I have said so far, to suppose that both in the younger Dionysos and in his teacher the wise Silenus, we have to do with individualities who have been of immense importance for the education of modern human consciousness. Thus when we cast about to find the individualities in the spiritual environment who—both for our own as well as for Greek consciousness—were and are momentous for what man has become, we find these two, Dionysos and the wise Silenus. These individualities are there in prehistoric times into which no history, no epic, goes back, but of which nevertheless the later history of the Greeks tells us, particularly in the epic tradition of its sagas and its myths.
In these times both the wise Silenus and Dionysos were incarnated in physical bodies, performed physical deeds and died, as their bodies had to do. The individualities remained.
...
[Later incarnations]
Now you know of course that in human history very much happens which is highly surprising to the man who only thinks abstractly; this is especially the case as regards the incarnation of human and other beings. Sometimes a later incarnation, although more advanced, may from the outside seem less perfect than an earlier one. In my second Rosicrucian Mystery Play, in the incarnation of the monk in the Middle Ages (Maria in modern times), I have been able to give just a very faint idea of the spiritual realities. Thus in history too the abstract thinker must sometimes be overcome with astonishment when he contemplates two successive incarnations, or at any rate incarnations which belong together.
The younger Dionysos, who, I told you, allowed his soul to be poured out into external culture was nevertheless able at a specific time to gather himself together again as a soul in a single physical human body; he was born again, incarnated among men; but in such a way that he did not keep his old form but added to his outer physical form something of what had constituted his spirit-form in the Dionysian Mysteries. Both the younger Dionysos and his teacher, the wise Silenus, were reincarnated in historical times. Those initiated in the Mystery-wisdom of ancient Greece were fully conscious that these two had been born again; so were the Greek artists, who were stimulated and inspired by the Initiates.
Little by little such things have to be told if spiritualscience is not to stop at platitudes, if it is to enter into the reality. Things which are true have to be told for the sake of the further evolution of humanity.
The wise old teacher of Dionysos was born again, and in his further incarnation was none other than Socrates. Socrates is the reincarnation of old Silenus, he is the reincarnated teacher of Dionysos.
And Dionysos himself, that reincarnated being in whom verily lived the soul of Dionysos of old, was Plato.
One only realises the profound meaning of Greek history if one enters into what was known—not of course to the writers of external history—but to the Initiates who have handed down the tradition from generation to generation right up to today—knowledge which can also be found in the Akasha Chronicle. Spiritualscience can once more proclaim that Greece in its early period harboured the teacher of humanity whom it sent over to Asia in the journey conducted by Dionysos, whose teacher was Silenus. What Dionysos and the wise Silenus were able to do for Greece was renewed in a manner suited to a later age by Socrates and Plato. In the very time when the Mysteries were falling into decay, in the very time in which there were no more Initiates who could still see the younger Dionysos clairvoyantly in the holy Mysteries, that same Dionysos emerged as the pupil of the wise Silenus, he who had himself become Socrates—emerged as Plato, the second great teacher of Greece, the true successor of Dionysos.
One only recognises the meaning of Greek spiritual culture in the sense of ancient Greek Mystery-wisdom when one knows that the old Dionysian culture experienced a revival in Plato. And we admire Platonism in quite another way, we relate ourselves to it in its true stature when we know that in Plato there dwelt the soul of the younger Dionysos.

Lecture coverage for Tolstoj

Overview coverage

Two main lectures: 1904-11-03-GA053 and 1909-01-28-GA057

However Rudolf Steiner mentioned Tolstoj in various contexts in many other lectures; he is mentioned several times as an outstanding representative of the Russian folk soul (1912-04-11-GA158) who stands for a forward-looking spiritual conception of the soul (1903-10-03-GA052).

Reference extracts

1904-11-03-GA053

title: Theosophy and Tolstoy

1905-09-30-GA093A

Now however Buddhi-Manas must also begin its development. Man must learn something beyond speech.
Another force must be united with speech, such as we find in the writings of Tolstoj. It is not so much a matter of what he says, but that behind what he says stands an elemental force that has in it something of Buddhi-Manas, which must now enter into our civilisation.
Tolstoj's writings work so powerfully because they are consciously opposed to West[ern] European culture and contain something new and elemental.
A certain barbarism which is still contained in them will later be brought into balance.

Tolstoj is just a small instrument of a higher spiritual power which also stood behind the Gothic initiate Ulfilas. This spiritual power uses Tolstoj as its instrument.

1909-01-28-GA057

lecture: Tolstoy and Carnegie

1909-06-29-GA112

This gives you the keynote of the Christ-event regarded from another point of view. Christ represents the descent to our Earth of the force of spiritual love, which is today but at the beginning of its work. If we pursue this thought with the help of the Gospels of St. John and St. Luke, we shall see that spiritual love is the very keynote of the Christ-impulse; we shall see how the Egos which had been sundered, are drawn together as regards their inmost being. From the beginning men have had but a dim presentiment of the significance of Christ for the world; as yet very, very little of this mission had been realized, for the separative influence (the after effect of the Luciferic powers) is still there, and the Christ principle has been at work but a short time. Though it is true that in our day a sympathetic cooperation is sought in certain external departments of life; in the most intimate and important things people have no inkling of the meaning of harmony and concord between souls, or at least they have it only in their thought and intellect, which matters least. It is indeed true that Christianity is only at the beginning of its mission; but it will penetrate ever deeper into the souls of men and ennoble the Ego ever more and more. Precisely the youngest nations recognize this in our day. They perceive that they must unite themselves with the power of Christ, and penetrate themselves with His force, if they would progress. A contemporary personality in Eastern Europe, the executor of the great Russian philosopher Solovioff, said: ‘Christianity must unite us as a nation, otherwise we shall lose our I and, with it, the possibility of being a nation!’ Powerful words which seem to issue from an intense intellect for Christianity.
But it also shows how necessary it is that Christianity should pierce to the depths of the soul. Let us examine an outstanding case and we shall find that, as regards the inmost life of the soul, even the most exalted and noblest are far from grasping what they will one day experience, when Man's inmost thoughts, opinions, and feelings are steeped in Christianity.
Think of Tolstoi and his work in the last few decades, as he strives to expose the true meaning of Christianity. Such a thinker must inspire the greatest respect, especially in the West, where whole libraries are filled with endless philosophical disquisitions on the same subject which Tolstoi expounds with greatness and power in a single work such as his essay On Life. There are pages in Tolstoj's writings where with an elemental force, certain deep knowledge of theosophical truth is set forth, certainly unattainable by a philosopher of Western Europe, or on which he must write an extensive literature, because something unusually powerful is expressed therein. In Tolstoj there is an undertone which we may call the Christ-impulse. Meditate on his words and you will see that the Christ-impulse it is, which fills him.
Turn now to his great contemporary, who interests us for the reason that he soared upwards from a comprehensive philosophical conception of the universe to the boundary line of a life so truly visionary, that he could survey an epoch, as it were in perspective, apocalyptically. Even though his visions are distorted, because they lack the true foundation, Solovioff nevertheless rises to a visionary perception of the future; he places before us vistas of the future of the twentieth century. If we give him our attention, we find in his writings great and noble thoughts, especially with regard to Christianity. But he speaks of Tolstoi as of an enemy of Christianity, as of Antichrist! Thus two men of our day may believe in their deepest thoughts that they are doing the best for their time; their work may spring from the profoundest depths of their soul, and yet they may altogether fail to understand one another, and see, each in the other, nothing but an antagonist. No one today stops to think that if outward harmony and a life steeped in love are to be realized, the Christ-impulse must have penetrated to the utmost depths of human nature, so that human love becomes something entirely different from what it is at present, even among the noblest spirits.
The Impulse which was foretold, and then entered the world, is only at the beginning of its work, and an even deeper understanding for it must be shown. What is lacking to all those who, precisely in our time, cry out for Christianity and declare it to be a necessity, yet cannot bring it within their reach? Anthroposophy, spiritual science, is lacking to them — the present day way of comprehending Christ. For Christ is so great that each successive epoch must find new methods by which to know and understand Him. In earlier centuries other methods of striving for wisdom, and other forms were employed. Today Anthroposophy is a necessity, and, for long periods to come, what Anthroposophy now teaches will hold good for the purpose of understanding the Christ. For Anthroposophy will prove to be a stimulus for all human powers of cognition. Man will gradually find his way to an understanding of Christ. But even the anthroposophical presentation is only temporal: of this we are well aware. We know too that the great subject of our temporal representations will require still greater modes of representation.

1910-08-27 - Beinsa Douno

Protocols from the annual meeting of the Spiritual Chain 1910 Veliko Tarnovo (27.8.1910 В. Терново), translated by Annael (2024-06)

..It can be assumed that there are people who have not heard of the Lord's Name [being on Earth] in flesh and blood, but there are such people who know Jesus Christ.
Socrates, for example, was a very wise man who has known Christ, and this [fact] is evident from his current special appearance as Leo Tolstoy.

Yes, Socrates is [reincarnated now] as Leo Tolstoj. He once lived in Greece. Tolstoj is the true reincarnation of Socrates…

1910-12-18-GA244 Q&A 210.9

page 375, on the importance of Tolstoj's teachings for theosophy, freely translated here ..

Important is also how Tolstoj did not find the way into the spiritual/esoteric .. it is tragical, that such souls - called to do great work, remain before this gate, that will be opened in the future.

1920 - Beinsa Douno

in 'The new humanity' (translation by Annael)

What happened in Russia? Russia did not listen to [Leo] Tolstoy's voice, which was [actually] the Voice of the Living God ..

1952 - Alexander Strakosch - 'Lebenswege mit Rudolf Steiner, Erinnerungen

The book by Alexander Strakosch (1879-1958), 'Lebenswege mit Rudolf Steiner, Erinnerungen' (1947; there is a Part II covering period 1919-1925 published in 1952) is an autobio with a special emphasis on his encounters with Steiner. Strakosch got to know Steiner in 1908. Both couples, and also Steiner and Strakosch individually, were very good personal friends. In the early days, before WWI, and with close friends, Steiner talked quite naturally about esoteric and occult stuff in their interactions.

In that context (the book contains more such anecdotes): they once visited a museum in Italy together, where they saw a bust of Socrates.

After the visit Steiner said to Strakosch

"did you see the resemblance of Socrates who is now Tolstoj",

and then with a twinkle in his eyes

"and he even brought his wife (Xanthippe) with him again".

1973 - Assja Turgenjef - 'Memories of Rudolf Steiner'

see: 'Reminiscences of Rudolf Steiner and Work on the First Goetheanum' (2003 in EN, in DE 1973 as 'Erinnerungen an Rudolf Steiner und die Arbeit am ersten Goetheanum')

Assja Turgenjef (1890-1966) was the granddaughter of the famous Russian writer Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), who wrote a famous novel with the same first name Asya. As an aside, see: KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities#Note 1 - incarnation as a russian writer

She came into contact with Rudolf Steiner in 1912. In her booklet " Memories of Rudolf Steiner," she tells of a conversation in Munich in 1913. There she had visited the glyptotheque where a large collection of antique sculptures, including a bust of Socrates, was on display. Afterwards, she and her husband Boegajef -better known as Andrej Bjelyj-were guests of Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers.

Assja Turgenjef:

After viewing and discussing my drawings, the conversation turned to the glyph library.
"Well, did you see Tolstoy there too ?" he asked me suddenly.
I happily agreed because, since the resemblance between Tolstoy and Socrates had occupied my mind for many years, I immediately understood his question.
"Only I don't understand why he dragged his Xanthippe back," I said.
"Surely Countess Tolstoy is not a Xanthippe !" intervened fraülein von Sivers.
"Surely she is, that is a real Xanthippe," he said unperturbed.
At least that was my experience when I got to know her.
But whether this was all meant seriously, I did not know ...

Note: Rudolf Steiner did meet Countess Sophia Tolstaya, the wife of the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. Their meeting took place in 1907. Steiner had been invited to the Tolstoy estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in Russia, where he met Sophia Tolstaya. However, Leo Tolstoy himself was not present during Steiner's visit.

2022 - Socrates in Russia

Volume Editors: Alyssa DeBlasio and Victoria Juharyan

More info see eg abstract here, from Ch 14 from the book 'Socrates in Russia', below SWCC

Tolstoy not only references Socrates in admiration but later repeatedly uses the story of his life and death as literary and philosophical inspiration for his own fictional characters, polemical works, and religious views. In 1885 Tolstoy collaborated with Aleksandra Kalmykova (1849–1926) on a parabolic pedagogical essay in thirteen parts based on Socrates’ life and teachings. Unsurprisingly, Tolstoy’s Socrates is a Christian before Christ. Included here are translations of the biographical sections—chapters I and X–XIII of “The Greek Teacher Socrates”—on childhood and early education as well the concluding chapters about the trial, final days, and death of Socrates.

Lecture coverage for Tobias Gottfried Schröer (Christian Oeser)

Overview sources

The German edition of GA238 contains a note stating that 'according to participants', Tobias Gottfried Schröer was named by Steiner as a reincarnation of Socrates. See below, and also coverage in Der Europäer (2000), see 'References and further reading' section below:
- quote from Der Europäer (machine translation): In the same lecture on Schröer, which Kolisko based his observation on (1924-09-23-GA238), Rudolf Steiner also made a highly important karmic comment on Schröer's father, as if in passing. This was apparently not included in the shorthand notes, but was reported in later editions of these lectures on the basis of several listeners' notes. This note has the following wording: "According to lecture participants, Rudolf Steiner mentioned Christian Oeser, the father of Karl Julius Schröer, as the reincarnation of Socrates."
Christian Karl's Rudolf Steiner Handbook also mentions as a tip to "a gap in the text in shorthand of this lecture where Steiner called Schröer’s father (Tobias Gottfried Schröer), that Herman von Skerst, a participant of this lecture, confirmed this in the magazine “Goetheanum” no. 41, p. 194 (1988), and drew attention to the fact that the pseudonym "Christian Oeser" can be read as anagram: "Hierin Socrates" (Socrates in that).

Reference extracts

1915-12-GA065

machine translation

In the 1915-12-09-GA065 and 1915-12-10-GA065 lectures where Rudolf Steiner covers Karl Julius Schröer.

Steiner calls T.G. Schröer 'an important spirit' and 'an important dramatic poet' (who did not get known because of censorship conditions that made that his works had to be printed abroad).

Karl Julius Schröer was the son of Tobias Gottfried Schröer, who I mentioned in mentioned by me in the previous lecture on Austrianism. Tobias Gottfried Schröer was basically also an extraordinarily important personality for Austria.
He had founded the Bratislava Lyceum and wanted to turn it into a place for the cultivation of the German intellectual life. What he set out to do was to help those Germans in Austria, who were in the midst of other popula the full awareness of their essence as belonging to German intellectual/ spiritual life.
..
Tobias Gottfried Schröer is a personality who, if one approaches him from a spiritual historical perspective, that one feels a certain emotion, for one always has the feeling: how in the world it is possible that an important spirit, due to the unfavorable conditions of the times, can remain completely unknown .. in so far as one calls "being known" means that one knows that this or that personality has existed and has done this or that.
However, the achievements of Tobias Gottfried Schröer are by no means unknown, nor have they remained unappreciated.

1916-GA020 Ch 4.

Karl Julius Schröer lived his boyhood and youth in the light of a man who, like himself, had his roots in spiritual German Austrianness, and who was one of its blossoms: his father, Tobias Gottfried Schröer.
It was not so long ago that in the widest circles certain books were known to which many people certainly owed the awakening of a feeling, supported by a view of life in accordance with the spirit, for history, poetry, and art. These books are Letters on Aesthetics' Chief Objects of Study, by Chr. Oeser, The Little Greeks, by Chr. Oeser, World History for Girls' Schools, and other works by the same author. Covering the most manifold areas of human spiritual life from the point of view of a writer for young people, a personality is speaking in these writings who grew up in the way of picturing things of the Goethean age of German spiritual development, and who sees the world with the eye of the soul educated in this way. The author of these books is Tobias Gottfried Schröer, who published them under the name Chr. Oeser.
Now, nineteen years after the death of this man, in 1869, the German Schiller Foundation presented his widow with an honorary gift accompanied by a letter in which was stated:
“The undersigned Board has heard with deepest regret that the wife of one of the most worthy German writers, of a man who always stood up for the national spirit with talent and with heart, is not living in circumstances appropriate to her status nor to the service tendered by her husband; and so this Board is only fulfilling the duty required of it by the spirit of its statutes when it makes every possible effort to mitigate somewhat the adversity of a hard destiny.”
Moved by this decision of the Schiller Foundation, Karl Julius Schröer then wrote an article about his father in the Vienna New Free Press that made public what until then had been known only to a very small circle: that Tobias Gottfried Schröer was not only the author of the books of Chr. Oeser, but also a significant poet and writer of works that were true ornaments of Austrian spiritual life, and that he had remained unknown only because he could not use his own name due to the situation there regarding censorship. His comedy The Bear, for example, appeared in 1830. Karl von Holtei, the significant Silesian poet and actor speaks of it in a letter to the author right after its appearance: “As regards your comedy The Bear: it delighted me. If the conception, the disposition of characters, is entirely yours, then I wish you good luck with all my heart, for you will still write more beautiful plays.” The playwright took all his material from the life of Ivan (the Fourth) Wasiliewitsch and all the characters except Ivan himself are freely created.
A later drama, The Life and Deeds of Emerick Tököly and his Comrades in Arms, received warm acclaim, without anyone knowing who the author was. One could read of it in “Magazine for Literary Conversation” (October 25, 1839): “An historical picture of remarkable freshness ... Works offering such a breath of fresh air and with such decisive characters are true rarities in our day ... Each grouping is full of great charm because it is full of great truth; ...The author's Tököly is a Hungarian Götz von Berlichingen and only with it can this drama be compared... From a spirit like this author we can expect anything, even the greatest.” This review is by W. v. Ludemann, who has written a History of Architecture, a History of Painting, Walks in Rome, stories and novellas, works that express sensitivity and great understanding for art.
Through his father's spiritual approach the sun of idealism in German world views had already shone beforehand upon Karl Julius Schröer as he entered the universities of Leipzig, Halle, and Berlin at the end of the 1840s and there could still experience, through much that worked upon him, this idealism's way of picturing things. When he returned to his homeland in 1846, he became director of the Seminar for German Literary History and Language in the Pressburg secondary school for girls that his father had founded in this city. In this position he unfolded an activity that essentially took this form: Through his striving Schröer sought to solve the problem of how to work best in the spiritual life of Austria if one finds the direction of one's strivings already marked out by having received the motive forces of one's own soul from German culture. In a Text and Reading Book (that appeared in 1853 and presents a “History of German Literature”), he spoke of this striving: “Seniors, law students, students of theology ... came together there (in the secondary school) ... I made every effort to present to a circle of listeners like this, in large perspectives, the glory of the German people in its evolution, to stimulate respect for German art and science, and where possible to bring my listeners closer to the standpoint of modern science.” And Schröer describes how he understands his own Germanness like this: “From this standpoint there naturally disappeared from view the one-sided factional passions: one will listen to a Protestant or a Catholic, to a conservative or a subversive enthusiast, or to a zealot of German nationalism only insofar as through them humanity gains and the human race is elevated.” And I want to repeat these words, written almost seventy years ago, not in order to express what was right for a German in Austria at that time, nor even now. I only want to show the nature of one man in whom the German—Austrian spirit expressed itself in a particular way. To what extent this spirit endows the Austrian with the right kind of striving: on this question the adherents of the different parties and nations in Austria will also decide very differently. And in all this one must also remember that Schöer expressed himself in this as a young man still who had just returned from German universities. But the fact is significant that in the soul of this young man—and not for political purposes, but out of purely spiritual thoughts about how to view the world—a German Austrian consciousness formed for itself an ideal for the mission of Austria that Schröer expressed in these words: “If we pursue the comparison of Germany with ancient Greece, and of the Germanic with the Greek tribes, we find a great similarity between Austria and Macedonia. We see the beautiful task of Austria exemplified there: to cast the seeds of Western culture out over the East.”

From Volume GA238

.. in GA 238 'Esoterische Betrachtungen karmischer Zusammenhänge, Band IV' we read on page 183 in the footnotes concerning page 162 : "According to participants in the lecture, Rudolf Steiner is said to have named as the incarnation of Socrates Christian Oeser, pseudonym for Tobias Gottfried Schröer (1791-1850), the father of Karl Julius Schröer."

1988 - Michel Schweizer in GA Beiträge

Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe, Nr. 99/100, Ostern 1988, pages 68-69 (here in machine translation below)

A small text correction with surprising consequences

On the karma lecture of September 23, 1924

(in "Esoterische Betrachtungen karmischer Zusammenhänge" Volume IV, GA 238)

In this lecture on the individuality of Karl Julius Schröer, Rudolf Steiner also makes an allusion to Schröer's relationship to a "newer incarnation" of Socrates. The passage reads in the previous version (1981, p. 162):
"And Karl Julius Schröer has written a history of German poetry in the nineteenth century.
Take a look at it: Wherever you can get at it emotionally with Platonism, it is very good;
where you need intellectualism, it suddenly becomes so that the lines dry up. He is not at all professorial.
Thus he also writes about Socrates, who in the more recent incarnation was not even considered externally in the world. He writes many pages about some of those about whom the other literary histories are silent; about those who are famous, he sometimes writes a few lines."
It is not clear from this who it is. But it must mean:
"So he also writes many pages about Socrates, who was not considered at all in the more recent incarnation in the world, about whom the other literary histories are silent; about those who are famous, he sometimes writes a few lines."
What follows from this? Rudolf Steiner describes here how Karl Julius Schröer in his book "Die deutsche Dichtung des 19. Jahrhunderts in ihren bedeutenderen Erscheinungen. Populäre Vorlesungen" (Leipzig 1875) treats this "newer incarnation".
The characterization applies only to Chr. Oeser, pseudonym (formed by changing S-chr-oe-er) for Tobias Gottfried Schröer (1791-1850), the father of Karl Julius Schröer.
Nine pages are devoted to him in this work, as many as to Johann Peter Hebel, Jean Paul and Tieck; only Kotzebue (twelve pages), August Wilhelm Schlegel (eleven pages) and Friedrich Schlegel (ten pages) are represented with more pages. Eichendorff and Hamerling (two and a half pages each), Chamisso and Jordan (one page each), Mörike, Jeremias Gotthelf and Gottfried Keller (half a page each) are only briefly presented.
Some forty years ago, more than twenty years after the lecture, two listeners to the lecture, the stenographer Helene Finckh (1883-1960) and Marie Steiner's long-time collaborator Günther Schubert (1899-1969), informed Hella Wiesberger and Robert Friedenthal, the two members of the Rudolf Steiner Estate Administration, that they had heard Rudolf Steiner refer to Chr. Oeser as this newer incarnation.
A corresponding footnote has been included in the Complete Edition since 1960 and was supplemented by a reference in 1981.
It was previously assumed that Rudolf Steiner had mentioned the name at the relevant point in the lecture, but that it had not been recorded in the shorthand notes. Now, however, after the latest examination of the text documents, according to which the original stenogram shows no signs of gaps here, the question of the occasion on which Rudolf Steiner could have made this statement must remain open.
In any case, the correspondence between the oral tradition and the new findings is important.
With regard to the technical side of this text correction, the following can be said: this is a case of a transcription error, which is not unusual for stenographic recordings, but rare for the stenographer in question and, according to previous experience, unique in terms of importance.
This means that a correctly heard and correctly notated word was not read correctly when transcribed in longhand due to the ambiguity of the corresponding character in the original stenogram, which in turn is caused by the unavoidable distortion of the characters during the rapid speed of the writing process.
The correction could be made with the help of a parallel stenogram that had only recently become available. This was made by an amateur stenographer and is of inferior quality to the one on which the publication is based. However, it is recorded in a different stenographic system, in which the key word of this passage, the back-referring pronoun "den", can now be clearly read. The incorrect transcription of "manche" instead of "den" then resulted in the incorrect structuring of the sentences - which the stenographer has to do himself when transcribing - and the smoothing out of the resulting linguistic inconsistency.
Rudolf Steiner spoke at length about Tobias Gottfried Schröer

in two public lectures in Berlin during the war,
on December 9, 1915 in the lecture "Pictures from Austria's Spiritual Life in the Nineteenth Century" and

on February 10, 1916 in the lecture "Austrian Personalities in the Fields of Poetry and Science" (both in the volume "Aus dem mitteleuropäischen Geistesleben", GA065),

and then in his book "Vom Menschenrätsel. Ausgesprochenes und Unausgesprochenes im Denken, Schauen, Sinnen einer Reihe deutscher und österreichischer Persönlichkeiten", Berlin 1916, in the chapter "Bilder aus dem Gedankenleben Österreichs" (GA020).

A biography is available: "Chr. Oeser's - Tobias Gottfried Schröer's Lebenserinnerungen. A contribution to German literary and cultural history, summarized by his son Karl Julius Schröer and edited by his grandsons Arnold and Rudolf Schröer and Robert Zilchert", Stuttgart 1933.

Discussion

Note 1 - incarnation of Socrates: Tolstoj and T.G. Schroer

The above summarizes the available information for both 'candidates' of a later incarnation of Socrates. The goal here is not to try and arbitrate, but just note that:

the dates of birth and death for Leo Tolstoj (1828-1910) and T.G. Schröer (1791-1850) overlap, so it is the one or the other
on T.G. Schroer:
- T.G. Schroer was the father of Karl Julius Schröer (1825-1900), whom Rudolf Steiner discusses explicitly 'on the record' in the KR lectures as an incarnation of Plato. It is interesting to note that his father-son relationship is not discussed more explicitly in context of a teacher-student relation across incarnations - at a bit greater length than as an occasional note in passing by in this in the lecture of 1924-09-23-GA238, especially given the importance of an Individuality such as Socrates. Meaning, one might expect at least a sentence or two more on this.
- Steiner only discussed T.G. Schroer relatively scarcely in the 1915-1916 period (certainly compared to Tolstoj) before mentioning him again in the 1924-09-23-GA238 lecture.
On Tolstoj
- Rudolf Steiner stated Tolstoj was "inspired by the spiritual power which also stood behind Gothic initiate Ulfilas" (1905-09-30-GA093A) and called him an "instrument of, inspired by Gothic Initiate Wulfila" (see also Spiritual guidance of mankind#Inspiration). This may point to a case of more complex spiritual economy, see Principle of spiritual economy, whereby we point specifically to Schema FMC00.430 (and are reminded of cases such as Paracelsus-Goethe which are beyond the patterns of 'regular' reincarnation).
- Beinsa Douno also stated Tolstoj as an incarnation of Socrates (though, note, he is also said to have linked Rudolf Steiner to Pythagoras, which Steiner refuted to Rittelmeyer in a conversation where the latter had dreamt this also).
- Steiner never linked Tolstoj to Socrates in any public lecture. His private library did contain some 25-30 books by Tolstoj.

.

in the 10th lecture, the newer incarnation of Socrates is said to have gone unnoticed by literature historians (which certainly could not have been said of Tolstoy even during his lifetime). Note that the English translation of this part differs, the German version has a footnote stating that the sentence was corrected "after thorough examination of the original shorthand".

References and further reading

Socrates

editors Alyssa DeBlasio, Victoria Juharyan: 'Socrates in Russia' (2022)

Tolstoj

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: 'Tolstoi's religiöse Botschaft' (1904, four lectures by Rittelmeyer)
Paul Biruhoff: 'Tolstoi und der Orient : Briefe und sonstige Zeugnisse über Tolstois Beziehungen zu den Vetretern orientalischer Religionen' (1924)
Janko Lavrin (1887-1986)
- Tolstoy: a psycho-critical study (1922)
- Tolstoy: an approach (1948, in NL 1963 as 'Leo Tolstoj : leven en werk')
Derrick Leon: 'Leo N. Tolstoi : Leben und Werk' (1946)
Ilja Karenovics: Tolstoj und Rudolf Steiner (see PDF online here)

Tobias Gottfried Schröer

publishers Arnold and Rudolf Schröer, Robert Zilchert (publisher): 'Chr. Oeser´ s - Tobias Gottfried Schröer's Lebenserinnerungen' (1932 or 1933)
On Plato Socrates Schröer: extract from Der Europäer: Nr. 2/3 Dec-99/Jan-00 and Nr. 4 Feb-00
- download in DE and EN from: KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities#Further reading 9
David W. Wood: 'Tobias Gottfried Schröer on Socrates' (1839) - PDF online here
- The Austrian writer Tobias Gottfried Schröer (1791-1850) - writing in 1839 under the pseudonym Chr. Oeser - succinctly relates the life and thought of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates in a literary form appropriate for children. Translated by David W. Wood from the original German text in: Chr. Oeser, Pallas Athene und die kleinen Griechen. Erstes Lesebuch für Knaben, die einst wackere Männer werden sollen (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Einhorn, 1839), pp. 156-163. This translation first appeared in the newsletter: Schröer Studies, eds. David W. Wood & Keith Eagle, issue 2, 2001 (Dublin).

KRI 69 - Annie Besant

Giordano Bruno

KRI 70 - Ramon Lull - Willem Zeylmans van Emmichoven

Ptolemaeus I or Ptolemaeus Sotus of Egypte ?

KRI 71 - Friedrich Rittelmeyer

source: 'Meine Gespräche met Rudolf Steiner' (2016) with Rittelmeyer's notes from conversations that are not in 'Rudolf Steiner enters my life' (1928 in DE, 1929 in EN); p 44: Anregung zou eigener karmischer Forschung (Inspiration for own karmic research)

Rittelmeyer describes how

in conversations with Rudolf Steiner, the latter confirmed three earlier incarnations that he came to himself, and added a fourth one in between that Rittelmeyer had already suspected
Steiner stated to come back to this in more detail, but that conversation unfortunately did not take place
for Rittelmeyer, it wasn't about individual persons with total certainty, but about situations, spiritual situations and connections, fundamental experiences

Earlier incarnations

from notes by W.J. Stein quoting Rittelmeyer: (not exhaustive)

part of the Cluniac Reforms (also called the Benedictine Reform), a series of changes within medieval monasticism in the Western Church focused on restoring the traditional monastic life, encouraging art, and caring for the poor. The movement began within the Benedictine order at Cluny Abbey, founded in 910 by William I, Duke of Aquitaine (875–918). The reforms were largely carried out by Saint Odo (c. 878 – 942) and spread throughout France (Burgundy, Provence, Auvergne, Poitou), into England (the English Benedictine Reform), and through much of Italy, northern Portugal and Spain.
- Rittelmeyer felt affinity connection to Frederick II (1194-1250) was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 and King of Jerusalem from 1225. He was the son of Emperor Henry VI of the Hohenstaufen dynasty (the second son of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa) and Queen Constance I of Sicily of the Hauteville dynasty.
at the time of the MoG
felt related to Valentinus (100-160 AD) the early Christian Gnostic theologian who founded school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen.
Rudolf Steiner stated thar Rittelmeyer met/was together with Pope Alexander VI (ca 1431-1503) in the spiritual world

KRI 72 - Albert Steffen

Giotto

KRI 73 - Helmuth von Moltke

pope Nicholas I died in 867

KRI 74 - Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz

Hadrian (emperor Rome)

earlier incarnation in Egypt temple of Hatschepsut

KRI 75 - Walter Johannes Stein

Francisco de Almeyda

KRI 77 - Wilhelm Rath

Johannes Tauler

KRI 80 - Gunther Wagner

Sinibald (uncle Thomas Aquinas) and Benedict Abt Monte Cassino [15]

KRI 83 - Richard Wagner

See: Richard Wagner

Aspects

relationship with Nietzsche

Discussion

In anthroposophical secondary literature, several sources mention Richard Wagner as an incarnation of the Individuality of Merlin.

Sources include:

a) Steiner to Marie Steiner in presence of Ilona Schubert (Eurythmy)

Extract from book: Ilona Schubert: 'Selbsterlebtes im Zusammensein mit Rudolf Steiner und Marie Steiner', (p32) statement from 1921

„Nach einer Weile wiederholte Marie Steiner:
«Merlin-Wagner» und nochmals, wie erkennend, «Ach, Merlin-Wagner!» und dann fragend: «Ist Richard Wagner – Merlin?»
«Ja», sagte Rudolf Steiner, «so ist es. In seiner Musik kann man das herausfühlen.»

in EN

"After a while Marie Steiner repeated:
"Merlin-Wagner" and again, as if recognizing, "Oh, Merlin-Wagner!" and then asking: "Is Richard Wagner - Merlin?"
"Yes," said Rudolf Steiner, "that's right. You can feel it in his music."

b) In Tintagel, Eleanor Merry to Daan van Bemmelen

see: Eleanor C. Merry: 'Erinnerungen an Rudolf Steiner und D. N. Dunlop' (1992)

c) book: Merlin Richard Wagner. Eine Karmabetrachtung, by Friedrich Oberkogler

KRI 87: Origen - Spyridon - Daskalos

see topic page: Daskalos

Daskalos (1912–1995) spoke quite openly about his previous lives and relationships to other souls he met during life, below follow mentions of some 10-12 incarnations (more details on the topic page Daskalos), of which three incarnations of known historical personalities: Origen, Spiridon and Daskalos.

Daskalos: "In studying my own incarnations I discovered that I usually spend only one or two earthly years before I descend down again to work. And that is part of the reason why I can remember so much of my previous lives."
three or four incarnations in ancient Egypt as a hierophant
- hierophant called Thorisis - also known as Khor-Amon or Khor-Aton (Korraton) - in ancient Egypt (connected with three other Individualities that appear in the various books),
  - The three main Individualities (Daskalos, the other two called Iacovos and Theophanis in the books MOS and HTS) are described in several incarnations as an example of karmic relationships. (HTS p 87-89, 94-96, 143; MOS p 29-32). A fourth Individuality part of this same group appears as Petrovna in FIH Ch 9.
  - see HTS Ch 5 'Thorisis and Rasadat' from where the following extract:
    One of the early worshippers of Aton was a cousin of the Pharaoh. He had two sons. The older was called Rasadat. The two brothers strikingly resembled each other. Rasadat was eventually brought to the temple by his father to become a hierophant of Aton. Rasadat's father had a cousin named Chapsitou. Her husband was a Greek by the name of Ares who served in the Pharaoh's army. His wife gave birth to Thorisis, myself. ... The first to enter Aton's temple was Thorisis. Rasadat, a year younger, followed. A great friendship developed between the two. ... The pharaoh was very angry at me. Consequently he sent me away to his colonies, to Cyprus. He changed my name from Thorisis to Korraton which in ancient Egyptian meant 'he who has been deceived by Aton'
  - from FIH, where a person called Petrovna was taken to Daskalos and has an amazing experience confronted with the painting of the Symbol of Life (see Schema FMC00.560)
    .. Kostas' fascination was also based on his realization that Petrovna was for him an old and close acquaintance from his Peruvian, Mexican, and English incarnations. Petrovna felt equally happy with her encounters with the Cypriot healers Daskalos, Kostas, and Theophanis. ... I sat there listening to the four of them as they reminisced of Egypt and Peru, mentioning names and places they said they recalled from those distant and colorful incarnations. Petrovna seemed to have remembered it all, nodding, affirming, and hinting of experiences that Kostas, Theophanis, and Daskalos had shared with her.
  - Khor-Aton, prince and high hierophant at the time of pharaoh Ankh-en-Aton - see Daskalos#1 - Karmic relationships
    - In Symbol of Life (SoL), Daskalos mentions the hierophant Khor-Aton (p267) .. Khor-Aton was a new name, given by the Pharaoh to Khor-Amon, the grandson of the pharaoh (p263)
    - Daskalos confirmed the link also in the lesson of 1990-09-24
      Amenhotep gave himself a new name and called himself: "Ankh-en-Aton" (loved by Aton) and Khor Amon changed his name to "Khor Aton".
at the time of Christ-Jesus as a young boy called Jason, part of the group of children that apostle John brought to Christ-Jesus
- see also Daskalos' book 'Joshua Immanuel the Christ: His Life on Earth and His Teaching' (2001)
Origen of Alexandria (ca 184 – ca 253 AD),
Saint Spyridon or Spiridon (ca 270-348), Bishop of Trimythous, Cyprus (and encounter with Arius at oecumenial council in Nicea 325 AD)
- see HTS Ch 4.
tibetan lama
several incarnations in the Aztecs culture, ao one during the spanish conquest of Cortez (1485-1547)
Italian incarnation in Venice
incarnation as a russian writer

Discussion

Note 1 - incarnation as a russian writer

From HTS:

"I was a Russian in my previous life"
...
Daskalos went on to say that his knowledge of several languages was the result of previous incarnations. He claimed he had never had training in the Russian language, yet he knew Russian because in his last incarnation he was a Russian writer. In the same way Daskalos knew Armenian and some Italian.
..
Daskalos was lying on the couch listening with eyes closed to Russian Gregorian chants on his portable stereo cassette recorder. ..
Daskalos seemed to be deeply engrossed in his meditation. As I gazed at him the thought crossed my mind that he was perhaps back to his beloved Russia. Although born a Greek Cypriot of half-Scottish parents (both his grandfathers were Scottish expatriates who married local Greek women), he had a special identification with and love for Russia. His small library in the Stoa had several dusty old Russian monographs. He confided to me once that in his immediately previous life he was a Russian writer and that his memories of that life's intense experiences were still too vivid in his consciousness. It was not difficult for me to fantasize Daskalos as a bearded nineteenth-century Russian novelist living in the midst of historical turmoil and passionately delving with his quill pen into the great mysteries of existence.

Who could have been the russian writer Daskalos mentions as a previous incarnation?

Daskalos explains there are only few years between his incarnations (so previous death not so long before Daskalos' birth in 1912), and
Rudolf Steiner stated that very advanced Individualities incarnate in a very similar or same physical body (re Karma research case studies#1907-05-29-GA099).

As a disclaimer upfront: this will always remain guessing and pure speculation with no value.

Notes:

A quick scan brought up Turgenev (1818-1883) as such potential candidate, one observes facial similarities of the nose and a left eye a bit smaller than the right, which is quite apparent when comparing certain pictures. However the public life of Turgenev does not show any signs of resonance with the Michaelic stream.
Also, this may well have been a writer which did not become world famous, one could imagine a scenario of a writer as a public professional activity (just as Daskalos had a daytime job all his life too) with little more, whereby the esoteric work remained hidden from the world.
The mentioned 'dusty old Russian monographs' might surely have given hints, but we don't have more info.

.

Note (2024): a personal communication from the direct circle of Daskalos' students stated that it was well known in his circle that this previous incarnation as a russian writer was Tolstoj. Furthermore another incarnation of Daskalos is said to be Leonardo Da Vinci.

KRI 88: Sri M

Sri M was born as Mumtaz Ali Khan (1949) and Sri M is shorthand for Sri Madhukar Nath. See also wikipedia topic page for Sri M.

In the second volume of his biography 'The journey continues' (TJC), Sri M extensively describes his path through multiple incarnations , including contacts with several important spiritual Individualities. The stories of these nine different incarnations is spread over the different chapters, these are put in a tentative chronological sequence below.

Not all references to the eight previous incarnations are described in full, eg for some only a short statement is given without further details, another incarnation is described through a dream story.

Remark the great variance in lives: [A] and [E] also [F] are 'materially successful' in earthly mundane terms, some like [C] are quite totally the opposite, allmost hitting rock bottom. Note also how the lives as a woman have different qualities to the stories and life impulse, eg [F] and [H]. Interesting also that unlike incarnations given by Daskalos, or cases of Rudolf Steiners KR lectures, there are no notable historical figures mentioned here, but on the other hand there are multiple lives born in a family of Rishis, like [B] and [G].

[A] - [not timed] a dream story that "has to do with my past lives and was like a replay of what happened" - incarnation as an extremely rich merchant named Dhana living a life of pleasure seeking and extravagance in the then-cosmopolitan city of Pataliputra, now Patna (Ch. 4).
- assumption here is that this was an early incarnation that may have set in motion the path of the soul seeking for the spirit, however this is purely a hypothesis
[B] - incarnation around -3100 BC as Indumati, daughter of a Brahmin rishi – short meeting with Krishna (Ch. 6)
[C] - incarnation in the 6th century BC as Mooka, born in the lowest caste and a burner of dead bodies. A harsh life when his wife died young and his young daughter drowned. Meeting with Gautama Buddha. (Ch. 19)
- the Buddha: “I am not your personal guru. He waits for you in the Dronagiri mountains in the Himalayas. After many births in this world and the hidden realms, you will be born in the Himalayas near Badrinath in a family of yogis and will become his disciple, but you will have to be reborn as a result of certain karmas.”
- the above refers to incarnation [G]
[D] - [reference only] "reborn in a wealthy family" .. also reference to current incarnation, but in between "you will have to be reborn as a result of certain karmas” (end Ch 19 - no further details (tbc))
- the wealthy family may possible refer to incarnation [E], but it may be likely it refers to another incarnation between 6th century BC and 9th century AD for which no details are given
[E] - incarnation around 9^th century as Rawal Deoraj, warrior of the Bhati clan - first contact with Sri Guru Babaji (end of Ch. 11)
[F] - incarnation in 18th century as Moti, Muslim daughter of Afghan nobleman and queen/begum of Nawab (ruler) in south of India - meeting and initiation by Sadashiva Brahmendra of Nerur (birth unknown to approx. 1756) (Ch. 11)
[G] - born in orthodox Brahmin family which would migrate from Benaras [=Varanasi] to the Himalayas, near Badrinath - disciple of Sri Guru Babaji (end of Ch 11 - with no further details given there). This can be linked to what is described in the Epilogue:**"a hundred years ago" (so approx. 1820s) Madhu, a 19 year old yogi, from a distinguished family of Vedic scholars from the holy city of Varanasi, and a pupil of Sri Guru Babaji (Epilogue)
- "This young yogi .. came from a distinguished family of Vedic scholars from the holy city of Varanasi. His ancestors had been disciples of a legendary yogi called Sri Guru Babaji. This young man’s father, himself a disciple of Babaji, had handed over his son to the great yogi at the age of nine."(Epilogue)
[H] - Incarnation in the 19th century as Sashikala, a courtesan in Calcutta ("just before I was born a boy in a Muslim family in Kerala") - meeting Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) (Ch. 23)
[I] - current incarnation as Sri M (also Sri Madhukarnath, born Mumtaz Ali Khan, also Madhu in AHM) - born 1949 in a Muslim family in Trivandrum, Kerala - pupil to his personal guru Sri Maheshwarnath**left home at age nineteen to find his master in the Himalayas, met Maheshwarnath Babaji near Badrinath and stayed with him for three-and-a-half years (period around 1968-1972). Started his teachings in 1998 (aged 49).

Notes:

Varanasi is 1000 kms away from Badrinath, but only 250 from Patna.
Benaras is the same as Varanasi. (The name Varanasi was spelt Baranasi in Pali, which ultimately gave birth to the name Banaras. The different spellings such as Benares and Benaras were in active use during the British regime in India, but these forms of the name are now lost. The name Banaras is still widely used.)
from the above: the Individuality currently incarnated as Sri M therefore had direct contacts (in previous lives with) .. Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Sri Guru Babaji, Sri Ramakrishna; and in the current with Sri Maheshwarnath, Krishnamurti, ..

KRI 89: Apollonius of Tyana

Apollonius of Tyana (ca 40-120) originates from the city of Tyana and, in search of wisdom, travelled the world to India and Egypt.

Rudolf Steiner and other historical sources describe him as a high adept. Steiner however points out by comparison how a human adept is different from a being like Christ-Jesus.

Aspects

comparison of the life of Apollonius with that of Jesus (1921-03-28-GA203)
similarities: wonders, healing, raising from the death
statement or rumours about the fact Apollonius would have appeared after his death (o.a. Philostratus)

Lecture references

Apollonius' letter to Valerius

https://classicalanthology.theclassicslibrary.com/2013/02/05/apollonius-letter-to-valerius-contributed-by-kelly-zeppou/

There is no death of anyone, but only in appearance, even as there is no birth of any, save only in appearance. The change from being to becoming is considered birth, and the change from becoming to being is considered death, but in reality no one is ever born, nor does one ever die. It is simply visible at one time and then invisible; the former through the density of matter, and the latter because of the subtlety of being – being which is ever the same, only subject to differences of movement and state.

Philostratus: Life of Apollonius

8.26-31

[8.29] The memoirs then of Apollonius of Tyana which Damis the Assyrian composed, end with the above story; for with regard to the manner in which he died, if he did actually die, there are many stories, though, Damis has repeated none.
But as for myself I ought not to omit even this, for my story should, I think, have its natural ending. Neither has Damis told us anything about the age of our hero; but there are some who say that he was eighty, others that he was over ninety, others again who say that his age far exceeded a hundred. He was fresh in all his body and upright, when he died, and more agreeable to look at than in his youth. For there is a certain beauty even in wrinkles, which was especially conspicuous in his case, as is clear from the likenesses of him which are preserved in the temple at Tyana, and from accounts which praise the old age of Apollonius more than was once praised the youth of Alcibiades.
[8.30] Now there are some who relate that he^note died in Ephesus, tended by two maid servants; for the freedmen of whom I spoke at the beginning of my story were already dead. One of these maids he emancipated, and was blamed by the other one for not conferring the same privilege upon her, but Apollonius told her that it was better for her to remain the other's slave, for that would be the beginning of her well-being.
Accordingly after his death this one continued to be the slave of the other, who for some insignificant reason sold her to a merchant, from whom she was purchased. Her new master, although she was not good-looking, nevertheless fell in love with her; and being a fairly rich man, made her his legal wife and had legitimate children with her.
Others again say that he died in Lindus, where he entered the temple of Athena and disappeared within it. Others again say that he died in Crete in a much more remarkable manner than the people of Lindus relate. For they say that he continued to live in Crete, where he became a greater center of admiration than ever before, and that he came to the temple of Dictynna late at night. Now this temple is guarded by dogs, whose duty it is to watch over the wealth deposited in it, and the Cretans claim that they are as good as bears or any other animals equally fierce. None the less, when he came, instead of barking, they approached him and fawned upon him, as they would not have done even with people they knew familiarly.
The guardians of the shrine arrested him in consequence, and threw him in bonds as a wizard and a robber, accusing him of having thrown to the dogs some charmed morsel. But about midnight he loosened his bonds, and after calling those who had bound him, in order that they might witness the spectacle, he ran to the doors of the temple, which opened wide to receive him; and when he had passed within, they closed afresh, as they had been shut, and there was heard a chorus of maidens singing from within the temple, and their song was this. "Hasten thou from earth, hasten thou to Heaven, hasten." In other words: "Do thou go upwards from earth."
[8.31] And even after his death, he continued to preach that the soul is immortal; but although he taught this account of it to be correct, he discouraged men from meddling in such high subjects.
For there came to Tyana a youth who did not shrink from acrimonious discussions, and would not accept truth in argument. Now Apollonius had already passed away from among men, but people still wondered at his passing, and no one ventured to dispute that he was immortal. This being so, the discussions were mainly about the soul, for a band of youth were there passionately addicted to wisdom. The young man in question, however, would on no account allow the tenet of immortality of the soul, and said: "I myself, gentlemen, have done nothing now for over nine months but pray to Apollonius that he would reveal to me the truth about the soul; but he is so utterly dead that he will not appear to me in response to my entreaties, nor give me any reason to consider him immortal."

1911-10-07-GA131

The individuality in question is Apollonius of Tyana, and of him we speak as a really high Adept.
...
Apollonius of Tyana is an individuality who went through many incarnations; he won for himself high powers and reached a certain climax in his incarnation at the beginning of our era. Hence the individual we are considering is he who lived in the body of Apollonius of Tyana and had therein his earthly field of action.

1921-03-28-GA203

DE version

computer translation of excerpts

.. it is told about Apollonius of Tyana, how he already showed great aptitudes in his childhood, how he grew up with these great aptitudes, how he participated in the most excellent teachings that could be given at that time, as for example the teaching that had grown out of the Pythagorean school.
But then we are further told that Apollonius of Tyana set out on great journeys precisely for the attainment of knowledge, and we are told of his journeys, at first the less far-reaching ones, but then the long journey he made to the Indian sages. We are told how he learns to revere and admire the Indian sages there, how he has penetrated through them to certain sources of knowledge.
Then we are told how he came back again, how he, one would like to say, fired by what he looked at in these Indian sages, then taught again in Southern Europe in the most different way.
But then we are also told how he went to Egypt, how he first absorbed in northern Egypt what he could absorb there and how it seemed small to him, very small compared to what he had found in wonderful wisdom with the Indians. Then we are told how he went up the Nile, to the sources of the Nile, but also to the seats of the so-called gymnosophists
...
But it is also told how Apollonius of Tyana was already so saturated with Indian wisdom that he could distinguish between this and the lesser of the Egyptian gymnosophists. And then it is told how he returned again, how he then made his various miraculous journeys to Rome, where he was persecuted, where he was put in prison, and so on.
But what is interesting for us is the fact that these great journeys are attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, and that these journeys are associated with the constant expansion of his own wisdom. Apollonius becomes wiser and wiser by meeting the wisest people of his world at that time. He wanders, so to speak, from place to place. He seeks out those people who were in possession of the greatest wisdom of that time.
...
Therefore, what kind of person is Apollonius of Tyana? Apollonius of Tyana wants to become wise on Earth, although he does not live in such places - also the area near the Nile springs, where the Gymnosophists lived, was such a place, where one could become wise to a quite outstanding degree. He had only the urge for such becoming wise in himself. Therefore, he went on the journey, as Pythagoras once did, who was in the same case.
And thus we see how Apollonius of Tyana is in a certain sense a man who seeks in the vastness of the Earth that which is to fill Man with inner satisfaction, that which leads him to attain inner spirituality. For those times in which what I have now said about man's being bound to one place on earth was especially valid, these times lived in the time of Apollonius of Tyana more or less only in the afterglow. There was still something left in ancient India of what it once was, and Apollonius of Tyana got to know it. But he already represented the representative of a newer time, that man who is dependent on seeking in every place of the earth that which can be human wisdom in the highest sense. Only he is dependent on it to look for it on wide wanderings.
Here the mystery of Golgotha presents itself before us in such a way that we can say: through the fact that the Christ dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus of Nazareth at the same time became the being on earth who set the tone for this search, independent of the localization on earth itself. Thus Apollonius of Tyana and the Christ Jesus are the greatest opposites. Apollonius of Tyana is, so to speak, the contemporary of the Christ Jesus, who, according to his human condition, no longer lives in the old time, but already in a new time. But in this new time one can live only with the Christ impact. The Christ impact comes from Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth and Apollonius of Tyana are the two poles of people from the beginning of our era.

Discussion

Note 1 - Euphorbos > Pythagoras

1912-04-17-GA143

Thence the remarkable fact that Pythagoras, the great initiator of a certain line of Greek culture, in an earlier incarnation had fought as a Trojan hero on the side of the Trojans.
He himself says that he was a Trojan hero, mentioned in Homer, and that he recognized himself as an enemy of the Greeks because he recognized his shield. When Pythagoras says that he had been Euphorbos, anthroposophy teaches a full understanding of this assertion.
The Greeks, even the greatest among them, laid especial value on what the single physical incarnations meant for them.

Rudolf Steiner Handbook (RSH)

Steiner confirms the assertion of Pythagoras (570/560-~ 480 B.C.) that he fought in a former incarnation as Trojan (Euphorbos) against the Greeks (Iliad).

Remark: In the biography of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertios (second post-Christian century) in the eighth volume of his work “Lives and Opinions of Great Philosophers”, Pythagoras knows of four previous incarnations:

He took part as Aithalides (born in Thessaly) in the expedition of the Argonauts,
then he was born as Pyrrhos (fisherman on Delos),
as Hermotimos (initiate) in Ionia,
and as Euphorbos in Samos [lit. 2].

KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities

Illustrations

KRI 1: Vischer

KRI 5: Nietzsche

Aspects

Lecture coverage and references

1895-GA005 - Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom

GA065 - Nietzsches Seelenleben und Richard Wagner: zur Weltanschauungs-Entwicklung der Gegenwart

Discussion

Further reading and references

Steiner and Nietzsche

KRI 6: Harun al Rashid - Francis Bacon

Aspects

Illustrations

Reference extracts

KRI 7: Gebel al Tarik - Charles Darwin

Aspects

KRI 9: Woodrow Wilson

Aspects

Reference extracts

KRI 10: Garibaldi

KRI 11: Lessing

Further reading

KRI12: Haeckel

Lecture coverage and references

KRI 14: Lord Byron

Further reading

KRI 17: Amos Comenius

Further reading

KRI 19: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer

Aspects

Reference extracts

Further reading

KRI 20: Pestalozzi

Further reading

KRI 22: Emerson - Tacitus

Aspects

Illustrations

Reference extracts

KRI 23: Hermann Grimm - Pliny the Younger

Aspects

Reference extracts

1913-01-13-GA062

1913-04-10-GA062

KRI 26: Friedrich Hölderlin

Aspects

Inspirational quotes

Further reading

KRI 30: Victor Hugo

Aspects

Further reading

KRI32 - Schiller

Lecture coverage

KRI 33: Heine

Lecture coverage

KRI 36 - Eabani - Aristotle - Thomas Aquinas - Rudolf Steiner

KRI 37 - Gilgamesh - Alexander the Great - Reginald Piperno - Ita Wegman

Illustrations

Further reading

KRI 38 - Dionysus - Plato - Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim - Karl Julius Schröer

Aspects

Lecture coverage

Further reading

Plato

Hroswitha

Schroër

KRI 39: Swedenborg - Ignatius von Loloya

Aspects

Lecture coverage and references

1920-10-23-GA200

Further reading

Bios

KRI 40: Ovid - Laurence Oliphant

Aspects

Lecture coverage and references

1906-12-01-GA266/1

Further reading

KRI 42: Titius Livius - Walther von der Vogelweide - Ludwig Schleich

KRI 44: Tycho Brahe - Julian the Apostate

KRI 48: von Hertling - Cardinal Mazarini