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

KRI2: Schubert

KRI 3: Dühring

KRI 4: von Hartmann

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 8: Laplace

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

Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) was an Italian general that contributed to Italian unification and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy, and in a previous incarnation was a teacher in the Hibernian Mysteries.

Aspects

Individuality and incarnations
- Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) was an Italian general, revolutionary and republican. He contributed to Italian unification and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy and is considered to be one of Italy's "fathers of the fatherland", along with Camillo Benso di Cavour, King Victor Emmanuel II and Giuseppe Mazzini. He is also known as the "Hero of the Two Worlds" because of his military enterprises in South America and Europe.
- Garibaldi was a teacher "at a very high stage of initiation" in the Hibernian Mysteries, and "was actually the leader of the colony that came over later into Europe." (1924-03-23-GA235) ... "who had come over with a mission from Ireland to Alsace where he taught in a centre of the Mysteries" (1924-04-09-GA240) - see full coverage and lecture extracts on Hibernian Mysteries
karmic relationships
- in the Hibernian mysteries, there was an obligation that the teacher is bound to help on his pupils in all future earth-lives, so karmic tie was forged they cannot separate from one another in certain incarnations. (1924-03-23-GA235, 1924-04-09-GA240, 1924-04-05-GA239, 1924-06-11-GA239). Garibaldi had been an initiatie teacher in Hibernia, and three other men (Cavour, Mazzini, Victor Emmanuel) had been his pupils, which explains the relationships and what happened historically (1924-03-23-GA235, 1924-06-11-GA239)

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 13: geometry teacher

KRI 14: Lord Byron

KRI 15: Marx

KRI 16: Engels

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 18: Hausner

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 21: soul related to 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 24: Ibsen

KRI 25: Wedekind

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 27: Hamerling

KRI 28: Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria - Emperor Nero

KRI 29: Voltaire

KRI 30: Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a French romantic writer and politician, and in a former earthly life was a high initiate of the Hibernian Mysteries.

Aspects

from KR lectures
- Victor Hugo in a former earthly life was initiated into a high grade of the Hibernian Mysteries (1924-05-25-GA239, 1924-05-29-GA236, 1924-06-10-GA239) - see full coverage and lecture extracts on Hibernian Mysteries
- Saturn sphere
connection with KRI 65 - Leo Tolstoj (inspiration for, and they also 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.

KRI 31: Eliphas Levi

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 34: Goethe

KRI 35:

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 41: Strindberg

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 43: Arnold Böcklin

Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) was a Swiss Symbolist painter. His five versions of the Isle of the Dead inspired works by several late-Romantic composers.

Rudolf Steiner described an earlier incarnation in the 9th century as a knight member of the Round Table of King Arthur, who lived a rather contemplative life and who had a a peculiarly penetrating vision and wonderful perception of the way in which the sun-influence played into the rest of nature. (1924-09-10-GA238)

Aspects

Böcklin's paintings had "a particularly strong" impression on Steiner when he first saw them in an exhibition in Vienna in 1882: "These paintings induced [Steiner] to occupy [himself] incessantly with the art of painting." (1913-02-04-GA250, 1990-GA291A Wiesberger, Paul Allen in his autobiography of Steiner)

Reference extracts

1898-01-15-GA029

Collected Essays on Drama 1889–1900: Vienna's Burgtheater Crisis

The public has been forced to understand Arnold Böcklin! Those who only a few years ago would shrug their shoulders as they walked past Böcklin's Pieta now stand before it in adoration, as they always did before the Sistine Madonna.

1900-06-30-GA029

Collected Essays on Drama 1889–1900: Los von Hauptmann

It is highly curious which three spirits Hans Landsberg chooses to characterize the intellectual signature of the present.
Nietzsche, Ibsen, Böcklin, that's the name of the triumvirate. In them the intellectual current of the present is most clearly reflected. According to a saying by Robert Schumann, there has always been a secret alliance of kindred spirits. Nietzsche, Ibsen and Böcklin seem to me to best embody the spirit of the age, which for most people is still the spirit of the future.
...
The fact that a large following follows him today is merely due to his unfortunate fate and the fact that his views can be translated into dazzling catchwords for thought-hungry writers and journalists. Böcklin, too, is basically such a lonely man, who has little connection with the spirit of the times. Of the three mentioned, only Ibsen can be used to characterize this "zeitgeist".

1903-08-01-GA034

But your science objects that the sun has no smile muscles. And in front of Böcklin's mermaids, it argues that a human body with a fish's tail is anatomically absurd. ... This kind of science is a tyrant!

1908-06-11-GA102

You will find this in the case of many of the older painters, less so in more recent ones. However greatly one may esteem Bocklin, the figure which hovers above his “Pieta” produces in everyone the feeling that at any moment it must tumble down, it does not support itself in space.

1908-08-04-GA105

He who has such a feeling for space knows why certain old painters could paint the floating angel forms in the pictures of Madonna in a way so wonderfully true to nature; he knows that these angels mutually support each other, just as the planets do in space by their power of attraction. It is quite different when we consider Bocklin's picture “Piety.” Nothing is said here against the excellence of this picture otherwise, but anyone who has preserved the living feeling for space has the sensation that those remarkable angel forms may fall at any moment.

1913-02-04-GA250

(Autobiographical lecture about childhood and youth years up to the Weimar period)

One particularly strong impression should also be mentioned, an impression at an art exhibition in Vienna, where the works of Böcklin were seen for the first time in 1888 by the man whose life is described here, namely “Pietà”, “In the Play of the Waves”, “Spring Mood” and “Source Nymph”. These were works that gave him an opportunity to engage with ideas about painting in a lasting way, because he naturally wanted to get to the bottom of the matter – in a similar way to Richard Wagner, where the starting point was the debates mentioned – and then to become particularly involved in this area of art, which later found its continuation in Weimar.

1924-09-10-GA238

[King Arthur]
During our recent stay in England during the Summer Course at Torquay in the West of England, not far from the place where Arthur was with his followers once upon a time (we were able to visit this actual place), a result of spiritual research was given to me, pointing to a belated working of this kind in a pre-Christian Christianity. For at this place it had indeed been preserved into a far later time. The content of the King Arthur Legend referred to later times by a scholarship which is not at all scholarly in respect of the real facts, reaches back in reality into a very early epoch, and it is indeed a deep impression which one may receive when one stands at that place, looking down into the sea, even as once upon a time the Knights of the Round Table looked out upon the sea from there.
Even today, if one is receptive to these things, one receives a very real impression which tells one what it was that the Knights of the Round Table of King Arthur did in their gigantic castle.
The last relics of the castle, the crumbling stones, the latest witnesses to its existence, stand there to this day. Gigantic is the impression of this place of ruins, entirely broken down as it is, and from there one looks out into the ocean. It is a mountainous promontory with the sea on either side. The weather changes almost hour by hour. We look out into the sea and watch the glittering sunshine reflected in the water. Then the next moment there is wind and tempest. Looking with occult vision at what takes place there to this day, we receive a magnificent impression. There live and weave the elemental spirits evolving out of the activities of the light and air, and of the foaming waves of the sea that turn and beat upon the shore. The life and movement and interplay of these elemental spirits gives even to-day a vivid and direct impression of how the sun works in its own nature in the earth, and meets with that which grows forth from the earth below by way of powers and spirits of the Elements. There we receive even to-day the impression: such was the immediate original source of inspiration of the twelve who belonged to King Arthur. We see them standing there, these Knights of the Round Table, watching the play of the powers of light and air, water and earth, the elemental spirits. We see too how these elemental spirits were messengers to them, bringing to them the messages from sun and moon and stars which entered into the impulses of their work, especially in the more ancient time. And much of this was preserved through the centuries of the post-Christian time, even into the 9th century of which I was just speaking.
It was the task of the Order of King Arthur, founded in that region by the instructions of Merlin, to cultivate and civilise Europe at a time when all Europe in its spiritual life stood under the influence of the strangest elemental beings. More than will be believed today, the ancient life of Europe needs to be comprehended in this sense. We must see in it on all hands the working of elementary spiritual beings, right into the life of man.
The Arthurian life, as I said, goes back into pre-Christian times, and before the Gospel came there, even in its oldest forms, there lived in it the knowledge, at any rate the practical instinctive knowledge of Christ as the Sun Spirit, before the Mystery of Golgotha.
[reference is made here to the Hibernian Mysteries]
And in all that the Knights of the Round Table of King Arthur did, this same Cosmic Christ was living, the Christ who though not under the name of Christ, was also living in the impetus with which Alexander the Great had carried the Grecian culture and spiritual life into Asia. There were, so to speak, later ‘campaigns of Alexander’ undertaken by the Knights of the Round Table of King Arthur into Europe, even as the real campaigns of Alexander had gone from Macedonia to Asia.
I mention this as an example, which could be investigated in the most recent times, to show how the worship of the sun, that is to say, the ancient worship of the Christ, was cultivated in such a place, though needless to say it was the Christ as He was for men before the Mystery of Golgotha. There all things were cosmic, even to the transition of the cosmos into the earthly Elements, the elemental spirits who lived in light and air and water and in the earth, for even in these there lived the cosmic forces. It was not possible at that time in the knowledge of these Elements to deny the cosmic principle that they contained. Thus even in the 9th century, in the paganism of Europe, there still lived much of the pre-Christian Christianity. That is the remarkable fact.
Moreover even in that time the belated followers of European paganism understood the Cosmic Christ far more worthily and truly than those who received the Christ in the Christianity that was spread officially under that name. Strangely we can see the life around King Arthur radiate into the present time, continued even into our time, placed into the immediate present by the sudden power of destiny.
Thus I beheld in seership ...

a member of the Round Table of King Arthur, who lived the life of the Round Table in a very deep and intense way, though he stood a little aside from the others who were given more to the adventures of their knighthood. This was ...

a knight who lived a rather contemplative life, though it was not like the Knighthood of the Grail, for this did not exist in Arthur's circle. What the knights did in the fulfilment of their tasks, which in accordance with that age were for the most part warlike campaigns, was called by the name ‘Adventure’ (Aventure). But there was one who stood out from among the others as I saw him, revealing a life truly wonderful in its inspiration.

For we must imagine the knights going out on to the spur of land, seeing the wonderful play of clouds above, the waves beneath, the surging interplay of the one and the other, which gives a mighty and majestic impression to this very day. In all this they saw the spiritual and were inspired with it, and this gave them their strength.

But there was one among them who penetrated most deeply into this surging and foaming of the waves, with the spiritual beings wildly rising in the foam with their figures grotesque to earthly sight. He had a wonderful perception of the way in which the marvellously pure sun-influence played into the rest of nature, living and weaving in the spiritual life and movement of the surface of the ocean. He saw what lived in the light nature of the sun, borne up as it were by the watery atmosphere as we can see to this day, the sunlight approaching the trees and the spaces between the trees quite differently than in other regions, glittering back from between the trees, and playing often as in rainbow colours.

Such a knight there was among them, one who had a peculiarly penetrating vision of these things.
I was much concerned to follow his life into later time to see the individuality again. For just in this case something would needs enter into a later incarnation of a Christian life that was almost primitive and pagan, that was Christian only to the extent that I have just described. And this in fact was what appeared, for that Knight of the Round Table of King Arthur was born again as Arnold Böcklin. This riddle which had followed me for an immensely long time, can only be solved in connection with the Round Table of King Arthur.

1990 - GA291A - Hella Wiesberger

in essay: 'Rudolf Steiner's path to painting', a biographical sketch by Hella Wiesberger

dated 1990 because this was the first publication of volume GA291A, the essay may date from before

This question accompanied him throughout his life, ever since he saw pictures by the then hotly controversial Arnold Böcklin for the first time at an art exhibition in Vienna, in the Tuchlauben, probably in 1882. Böcklin was, on the one hand, hymned with praise and, on the other, criticized harshly.
The four pictures on display there — “Pieta,” "The Play of the Waves,“ ”Spring Mood,“ and ”The Spring Nymph" — had made an extraordinary impression on him, above all because he perceived them as a living protest against the model painting of the time, which he considered a artistic aberration born of a materialistic worldview [a malady arising from the materialistic worldview].
Now he saw that something was emerging in Böcklin that could lead away from model painting. And that was what determined him to devote himself “permanently to ideas about painting” from then on, and to engage “very particularly” in the field of pictorial art. What had begun in Vienna was later continued and intensified in Weimar.
...
During his first two visits to London in the summers of 1902 and 1903, he was inspired by the color creations of William Turner, that “magnificent painter” who seemed to him “even more significant” than Böcklin.16 He later remarked that Turner, through his intense experience of the phenomena of light and darkness, had advanced form design entirely out of color.
He was particularly impressed at that time by a painting by Antoine Wiertz, which he had seen on his return journey from London in the summer of 1902 in the Wiertz Museum in Brussels. When he was back in Berlin and gave a private aesthetic lecture to a small circle of people about some of the paintings he had seen, he spoke for over two hours, focusing in particular on the painting by Wiertz.18

KRI 44: Tycho Brahe - Julian the Apostate

see: Individuality of Julian the Apostate

KRI 45: monk Chartres - friend Steiner female author

KRI 46: Froschhammer

KRI 47: Heinrich von Ofterdingen

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 51: unnamed Jewish Cabbalist Rabbi

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 54: apostle Lazarus-John - Christian Rosenkreutz

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 - Hypatia

Marie Steiner-von Sivers is an incarnation of an important Individuality through which the Michael impulse worked across various incarnations, including the teacher in the Orphic mysteries teacher of Pherecydes of Syros (teacher of Pythagoras), Hypatia, and Albertus Magnus (then teacher of Thomas Aquinas).

Rudolf Steiner explains how archangelic beings such as archangel Michael work through and behind individualities such as Alexander, Aristotle, Hypathia, and 'use' or work through such human beings "as an instrument" (1910-12-29-GA126). For more background, see Commentary to Discussion Note 1 below.

Previous incarnations

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

multiple incarnations in the Northern stream of development and probably the Hibernian mysteries: "a certain Celtic occult training undergone in earlier incarnations" (1910-12-27-GA126)
not named incarnation
- Orphic mysteries teacher of Pherecydes of Syros (who died 520 BC) (1910-12-27-GA126), of whom is said: "Pherecydes of Syros is ... spoken of as the teacher of Pythagoras ... many of the teachings of Herakleitos, Plato and later sages can be traced back to him" (1909-08-26-GA113)
Hypatia (unknown - died 415AD)
- neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire
- daughter of mathematician Theon of Alexandria (335-405 AD) (1910-12-27-GA126)
- death
  - the key person behind the killing of Hypatia, following a conversation with Rudolf Steiner told by Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz, was an bishop in Alexandria who come from "Mexican mystery contexts and played a major role in what is happened in this antithesis to the Mysteries of Golgotha" and who was later incarnated as Fra Bartolomeo di San Marco (see Greek mysteries#1925-03-03 - Rudolf Steiner in conversation to Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz)
Albertus Magnus (approx 1200 - 1280)
- German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop
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.
- 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

Aspects

question by Marie von Sivers to Rudolf Steiner at the so-called 'Chrysanthemum Tea' on 17 November 1901 about a western esoteric movement
process of karmic recognition
- first by von Sivers to Rudolf Steiner already in 1902 (see below, quoted from 2012 - Rahel Kern and Brien Masters)
- in 1906 Steiner gives von Sivers a mantram 'Behold the sun at the midnight hour ...' which totally awakens something in her (Marie Steiner, 1935)

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

1901-11-17-GA262 - Chrysanthemum Tea gathering

Rudolf Steiner recounted the event later in GA262 'Mein Lebensgang' (The Story of My Life), Chapter 35

There was a small gathering at the home of Count Brockdorff in Berlin. Suddenly Fraulein von Sivers turned to me and asked, ‘Why have you never spoken of Christ in your lectures?’

In the same section of 'The Story of My Life' in GA028), Steiner describes his recognition that this question marked a threshold moment, a turning point in his public mission. He perceived that Marie von Sivers had, in that moment, acted as the representative of the Michaelic stream, calling forth the Christ-revelation in Steiner's public work.

This was the moment I had inwardly awaited. Only now could I begin to speak of the Mystery of Golgotha, because someone had asked it out of spiritual responsibility and true esoteric intuition.

1910-12-27-GA126

[incarnation in Orphic mysteries as teacher of Pherecydes of Syros]
There again we have a projection on the physical plane of earlier, more spiritual conditions. In the Orphic Mysteries of ancient Greece there was a wonderful personality, one who was initiated in the Mystery-secrets and was among the most loveable, most interesting pupils of these Mysteries, well prepared by a certain Celtic occult training undergone in earlier incarnations. This individuality sought with deepest fervour for the secrets of the Orphic Mysteries. The pupils of these Mysteries had to live through in their own soul what is described in the myth of Dionysos Zagreus, who was dismembered by the Titans but whose body was carried away by Zeus into a higher life. How, as the result of a certain path taken in the Mysteries, man's life is surrendered to the outer world, how his whole being is torn in pieces so that he can no longer find his bearings within himself—this was to become an actual, individual experience in the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries.
When in the ordinary way we study animals, plants and minerals, what we learn is merely abstract knowledge because we remain outside them; but anyone who wishes to obtain knowledge in the occult sense must train himself to feel as if he were actually within the animals, plants and minerals, in air and water, in springs and mountains, in stones and Stars, in other human beings—as if he were one with them. all. Nevertheless, a pupil of the Orphic Mysteries had to develop the inner strength of soul which would enable him, re-established as a self-based individuality, to triumph over the disintegration of his being in the external world. When all this had become an actual human experience, it represented in a certain sense one of the very highest secrets of Initiation. And many pupils of the Orphic Mysteries had undergone such experiences, had lived through this disintegration in the world and, as a kind of preparation for Christianity, had therewith attained the highest experience within reach in pre-Christian times.
Among the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries was the loveable personality of whom I am speaking, whose earthly name has not come down to posterity, but who stands out clearly as a pupil of these Mysteries. Already in youth and then for many years, this person was closely connected with all the Greek Orphics during the period preceding that of Greek philosophy—a period of which no account is given in books an the history of philosophy. For what is recorded of Thales and Heraclitus is an echo of what the Mystery-pupils had accomplished in their way at an earlier period. And one of the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries was the individual of whom I have just spoken, whose pupil in turn was Pherecydes of Syros, referred to in the lecture-course given at Munich last year: The East in the light of the West.
[incarnation in 4th century in Alexandria as Hypathia, daughter of mathematician Theon]
Investigation of the Akasha Chronicle reveals that the individuality of that pupil of the Orphic Mysteries was reincarnated in the 4th century A.D. We find this individuality amid the activity and life of those gathered together in Alexandria, the Orphic secrets now transformed into personal experiences of the loftiest kind. It is very remarkable how all the Orphic secrets were transformed into personal experiences in this new incarnation. At the end of the 4th century, A.D., we find this individuality reborn as the daughter of a great mathematician, Theon. We see how there flashes up in her soul all that could be experienced of the Orphic Mysteries through vision of the great mathematical, light-woven texture of the universe. All this was now personal talent, personal genius. These faculties had now to be of so personal a character that it was necessary even for this individuality to have a mathematician as father in order that something might be received from heredity.
Thus we look back to times when man was still in living connection with the spiritual worlds, as was this Orphic pupil; and we see the shadow-image of this pupil among those who taught in Alexandria at the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century A.D. This individuality had as yet experienced nothing that enabled men at that time to see beyond the shadow-sides of Christianity at its beginning. For all that had remained in this soul as an echo of the Orphic Mysteries was still too powerful to enable any Illumination to be received from that other Light, the new Christ Event. What arose round about as Christianity, represented by men of the type of Theophilus and Cyril, was in truth of such a nature that this Orphic individuality, working now with personal faculties, had things far greater, far richer in wisdom to say and to give than those who represented Christianity in Alexandria at that time.
Theophilus and Cyril were both filled with the deepest hatred of everything that was not Christian in the narrow ecclesiastical sense in which these two bishops, in particular, understood it. Christianity had assumed in them such an entirely personal character that these two patriarchs levied hirelings in their service; men were collected from far and near to form bodyguards for them. Their aim was power in its most personal sense. They were utterly obsessed by hatred of what originated in ancient times and yet was so much greater than the new that was appearing in caricatured shape. The deepest hatred was directed by the dignitaries of Christianity in Alexandria against the individuality of the reborn Orphic pupil. The fact that she was branded as a black magician will not therefore surprise us. But that was enough to incite the whole mob of hirelings against the noble, unique figure of the reborn pupil of the Orphic Mysteries. She was still young, but in spite of her youth, in spite of the fact that she was obliged to undergo much that in those days, too, imposed great hardships an a woman during a long period of study, she found her way upwards to the light that outshone all the wisdom, all the knowledge existing in those days. And it was wonderful how in the lecture halls of Hypatia—for such was the name of this reincarnated Orphic pupil—the purest, most luminous wisdom in Alexandria was presented to the enraptured listeners. She drew to her feet not only the Pagans, bat also Christians of deep and penetrating insight, such as Synesius. She was an influence of outstanding significance, and the revival of the old Pagan wisdom of Orpheus transformed into personality could be experienced in Alexandria in the figure of Hypatia.

1910-12-29-GA126

SWCC

And now it will no longer be incomprehensible to you that in the first of these lectures I said: what was incarnated at an earlier time appears in the physical world later on like a shadow-image.
Beings of the higher hierarchies streamed into the individuality of a man belonging, let us say, to the early Greek world, so that
when we say
“he was incarnated” we must not see this self-contained being only, but standing behind him an individuality of a higher hierarchy.
That is the picture we must have of Alexander, and of Aristotle, in the Greco-Latin epoch. We follow their individualities back into the past.

From Alexander we must go back to Gilgamesh and say: in Gilgamesh is the individuality who then, projected as it were on the physical plane, appears as Alexander; behind this individuality is an archangel [editor: original says 'fire spirit'] who uses him as an instrument.

And if we go back from Aristotle, we see the powers of the old clairvoyance working in Eabani, the friend of Gilgamesh.

Thus we see how both old souls and young souls, with the old clairvoyance behind them, are placed right out on the physical plane in the Greek epoch.

This confronts us vividly in the great woman mathematician Hypatia, in whom all the mathematical and philosophical wisdom of her time lived as personal ability, as personal erudition and wisdom. This was all embraced in the personality of Hypatia. And we shall understand that this individuality had to be born as a woman in order to bring together in a delicately concise form all that she had earlier received from the Orphic Mysteries—in order to impart to everything she had learnt from the Inspirers of those Mysteries the stamp of a personal style.

We see, therefore, how in the successive incarnations of human beings influences from the spiritual world bring about modifications.
I can do not more than intimate that the individuality who incarnated as Hypatia, who brought with her the wisdom of the Orphic Mysteries and gave personal expression to it, was called upon in a subsequent incarnation to take the opposite path: to bear all personal wisdom upwards again to the divine-spiritual. Hypatia appeared at the turn of the 12th and 13th century as a significant, universal spirit of later history, one who had a great influence upon the knowledge that brings together science and philosophy.
Thus we see how the powers operating in the course of history penetrate into the successive incarnations of particular individualities.
Observing the course of history in this way we actually see a kind of descent from spiritual heights until the Greco-Latin cultural age, and then again an ascent. During the Greek age - and it has continued, naturally, into our own time - there is a gathering together of material to be acquired purely from the physical plane and then. a carrying up of it again into the spiritual world. For this, spiritual science should provide an impulse—an impulse that was already alive instinctively in a personality such as Hypatia, when she was incarnated again in the 13th century.

1935 - Marie Steiner

The reference and quote below are from Hella Wiesberger: 'Marie Steiner-von Sivers : ein Leben für die Anthroposophie' Band 1, page 233. This quote also appears in Kern and Masters' book: 'Kindling the Word', page 170

background: Rudolf Steiner had composed the mantric verse 'Behold the Sun at the Midnight Hour', which Marie von Sivers recited along with a lecture that he gave at Christmas 1906.

Marie Steiner writes how this important this was in her life:

The moment when, at Christmas, he gave me the first mantram that he had composed: 'Behold the sun at the midnight hour ...' belongs to the turning points, to the milestones of my life, and I had to find the strength within myself to encompass the fullness of this experience, to intone the sounds of each word and convey their impact that was as if carved into stone.

In the period 1922-1924 Rudolf Steiner would further describe this process from the ancient Mysteries, see Schema FMC00.662 and Mystery School tradition#beholding the Midnight Sun

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."

2012 - Rahel Kern and Brien Masters

in 'Kindling the word' (the karmic background of Marie Steiner-von Sivers)

[Chapter 4, from p33-34]
According to a letter written to Eduard Schuré in August 1907, "It was as early as 1902, a year when their collaboration began, when she had a decisive reincarnation experience in relation to her friend and teacher"
...
the experience of her former incarnation was "confirmed by Steiner, who was greatly alarmed ... and by a thousand small details"
...
... it seems very clear that in the triangle Rudolf Steiner, Marie von Sivers, Eduard Schuré there lives a karmic vibrancy ...
[Chapter 4, from p161]
Wilfried Hammacher ... quotes from a notebook of Rudolf Steiner in which it becomes clear that 'the scholastic' whose identity he could 'do no more than intimate' in 1910 was Albertus Magnus

Discussion Notes

Note 1 - A cosmic being working through Marie Steiner

Introduction

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)

2022 - Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

excerpt from 'Marie Steiner-von Sivers: 'A Cosmic Being', see youtube.com/watch?v=IQvC-wykrzs at 20' onwards

.... what was really interesting to me was I picked up this little booklet called 'Marie Steiner, her place in world karma' by Hans Peter von Manen ... and we hear that, when Steiner ... around the time he was writing his autobiography right ... one time they were in Stuttgart and they were visiting Emil Molt (founder of the first Waldorf school) and ... Emil Molt asks: ... Frau dr Steiner ... is she also going to bring forth some of her biographical essays and Steiner [editor: apparently, so it is said] responded to this by saying
"oh no it would not be possible, because she 'a cosmic being'
... other people had heard steiner speak about this and say that he said 'a cosmic being was indwelling in her'

2022- Robert H.

In this context, the following is also interesting: Rudolf Steiner said about Marie that it was impossible to write a biography about her because she was “a cosmic being.” I have only found two publications in which this idea was taken up and examined in more detail:
first by
Hans Peter van Manen: 'Marie Steiner, Über ihre Stellung im Weltenkarma' (Marie Steiner, On Her Position in World Karma),
and then many years later by
Wilfried Hammacher: 'Marie Steiner Lebensspuren einer Individualität' (Marie Steiner, Traces of an Individuality).
It is known that Marie asked Rudolf Steiner the question about Christian esotericism during the famous Chrysanthemum Tea. This is taken up in the Mystery Drama, The Gate of Initiation. There Benedictus says that he had to wait with his task until he encountered a “God-being” in a human being, only then could he take on his task. It is clear that RS is referring to Marie when he speaks of this “God-being” that “dwells in a human being's flesh.”
In one of his last letters before his death, he writes to her, “In spiritual judgment, I can agree only with you.” We know that Marie was often initiated into the Hiberian mysteries, where the two pillars of art and science stood, and she stood for art in anthroposophy.
...
It is to HPv Manen's credit that he took up this topic, because he was actually more of a follower of Ita than of Marie. It is also typical that Peter Selg does not mention this in his great biography of Marie Steiner. Of course, Marie was not an angel; on the contrary, she was definitely a “difficult person.”
I read Hammacher's biography of Marie and Hammacher is an ardent follower of Marie, has almost a Luciferian touch, but is nevertheless very insightful and detailed. I would not have thought that after 50 years of studying anthroposophy, I would still hear completely new things.
[asked about details]
... Cosmic being - a Gotteswesen, a spiritual being overshadowing Marie. PvManens book is very small indeed, it was a lecture and has been translated into English. The more elaborate from Hammacher isnt translated I think.
Marie's incarnations are

in Hibernia (several times),

Orphic, teacher of Pheredykes,

Hypatia,
all these incarnations come from RS, van Manen added one more.

2024- Robert H.

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

Commentary

The author could not find more details about the 'hearsay' statement mentioned above, and does not question it, but would like to offer this perspective.

The answer to this 'riddle' is not a riddle at all, and one can take the following excerpt from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner as a basis. The longer excerpt with link is mentioned above, below is a shortened extract with the relevant parts highlighed.

1910-12-29-GA126

... beings of the higher hierarchies streamed into the individuality of a man belonging ... to the early Greek world ...
when we say 'he was incarnated' we must not see this self-contained being only, but standing behind him ... an individuality of a higher hierarchy.
That is the picture we must have of Alexander and of Aristotle ... [and] ... this confronts us vividly in ... Hypatia ...
We see, therefore, how in successive incarnations of human beings ... influences from the spiritual world bring about modifications. ...
Thus we see how the powers operating in the course of history ... penetrate into the successive incarnations of particular individualities.

The statements above are to be understood in context of

on the one hand, what is explained on Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls (and how this underlies and relates to History),
- and more specifically: Impulses from waves of reincarnating souls#Impulses through important Individualities
on the other hand, an understanding that is essential for a grasp of the spiritual scientific worldview, namely
- what is illustrated here: Overview of the spiritual hierarchies#Interwoven nature with Schema FMC00.661 and Schema FMC00.661A .. that is, that Man is made up of the higher hierarchies, and that the Third Hierarchy plays a crucial role in the human soul, which can be also be intuited from illustration Schema FMC00.132
- more specifically, read the commentary to Schema FMC00.471A on Archangel Michael which makes the link to The Michaelic stream and what Rudolf Steiner truly describes in the Karma lectures of 1924.

.

Note: the above is a typical example of a potential 'narrative' using the FMC wiki site materials, and to show the beauty of the links laid out above would probably be greatly helped by a short youtube movie with voice-over to point out the links that are made. It's true that to 'see' what is said required an in depth knowledge of the topic pages and section contents, as well as the Schemas, and that the occasional reader can not be expected to have this. This creates an obvious gap. However, the earnest student is able to study these and discover for him/herself.

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

The poet Albert Steffen (1884-1963) joined the Theosophical Society in Germany in 1910 and Anthroposophical Society in 1912 and became its president after the death of Rudolf Steiner until his death in 1963. He was a key figure in the split in the Society in 1935 by expelling Ita Wegman, Elisabeth Vreede and other followers, and making the Anthroposophical Society less esoteric and more institutional and conservative.

In a letter to his wife Marie, Rudolf Steiner wrote on 1925-02-27-GA262 that "Steffen must be understood by looking back at him as Giotto" and also discussed that there was significant karma in the fact Steffen joined the movement.

Aspects

incarnations
- Albert Steffen (1884-1963)
  - was a poet, painter, dramatist, essayist, and novelist. He joined the Theosophical Society in Germany in 1910, and the Anthroposophical Society in 1912 and became its president after the death of its founder, Rudolf Steiner, in 1925. Steffen was chief editor of the society's journal, Das Goetheanum, from 1921 to 1963.
  - Steffen wrote many plays (Hiram and Solomon, Manes' Experience of Death), novels (Oasis of Humanity, The Renewal of the Association), and essays (The Artist Between West and East).
  - Steffen played a central and pivotal role in the split of the Anthroposophical Society after Rudolf Steiner’s death in 1925. The split was not caused by him alone, but his actions and leadership style were crucial in shaping the direction and division that followed. In summary, it is said that
    - (a) his spiritual-poetic leadership clashed with others who emphasized esoteric rigor, and
    - (b) following conflicts with Ita Wegman, Elisabeth Vreede, and others he aligned with conservative factions to expelling Wegman, Vreede from the Executive Council in 1935 (and their supporters along)
    - (c) He steered the Society toward a less esoteric focus, maybe more literary-mystical
    - (d) The Anthroposophical Society became more institutional and conservative under Steffen’s presidency.
- Giotto di Bondone (ca 1267-1337), or short Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages.
  - Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel, in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel, which was completed around 1305. The fresco cycle depicts the Life of the Virgin and the Life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance.
  - "Steffen must be understood by looking back at him as Giotto." (1925-02-27-GA262)
various
- confusion and discussion around Fra Bartolomeo di San Marco - see Matile & Meister and Meyer below. In short: Matile & Meister attacked Meyer and his publication of Polzer-Hoditz with the accusation of forgery. Related to Steffen however there is no substance and there can be no real debate on the mis-interpretation of the statement by Steiner to Polzer-Hoditz on 1925-03-03
  - Fra Bartolomeo (1472-1517) was an Italian Renaissance painter of religious subjects. He fell under the influence of Savonarola, which led him to become a Dominican friar in 1500, renouncing painting for several years. He was friends with Raphael and each influenced the other. Note here is a note that in an earlier incarnation he 'came from Mexican mystery contexts ... and was the bishop who had Hypatia killed'; see Greek mysteries#1925-03-03 - Rudolf Steiner in conversation to Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz)

Reference extracts

1925-02-27-GA262

... That karma also brings other people close to me is just karma. And the illness has now shown how this karma is incisive. But you have struggled to understand; that is a blessing for me. I can only feel and think together with you. And it was already a deprivation for me that I could not present the last pages of the Steffen essay to you before they went to press (yesterday). Because I only allow you to judge my inner competence.
... I understand that the “roughness of the work” has upset you so much. And of course you are absolutely right when you speak of the woman's lack of understanding as you do. I had to bear in mind his spiritual treatment of poetic problems when writing about Steffen.
Steffen must be understood by looking back at him as Giotto. The entire turn from Cimabue to Giotto is the turn from bright spiritualism, from spirituality in color, conception and form to naturalism; and only in Raphael and the great ones remains something of what was lost and only in Cimabue is something preserved. All this is expressed in Steffen's psyche. He works with the forces that arise from the turn of the century, and approaches reality in a way that is almost unique in the twentieth century. G. had beauty before him, but he had outgrown it. That idealizes his naturalism. Steffen had artlessness all around him; that materializes the spiritualism that slumbered in him from the beginning.
And the fact that Steffen is with us: I see a significant karma in that too.
That he doesn't understand Gyges is not surprising, because he has a hard time empathizing with foreign art in general. And Rhodope is so very different from what Steffen can see in the nature of a woman.

Heinz Matile and Andreas Meister

document: 'On the so-called "Notes by Ludwig von Polzer-Hoditz based on conversations with Rudolf Steiner",

PDF downloadeable from: asteffen.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ludwig_polzer.pdf

Regarding Text III: Rudolf Steiner "was lying in bed and speaking somewhat heavily," Polzer-Hoditz remarks about the conversation on March 3, 1925. And further: "He sent for me to talk to me ...
...
The following passage can be found in Text III:
"And certainly the nose can be a very special feature for the spiritual researcher. And it is precisely among painters and poets ... that we find exemplary noses.
However that does not mean that every poet must be a reincarnated Giotto.
Fra Bartolomeo di San Marco was also an important poet and painter who continued the school of Giotto."
Without a doubt, this refers to an allusion to Albert Steffen.24 It should first be noted that Fra Bartolommeo (1472-1517) did not continue the school of Giotto (~1266-1337). Fra Bartolommeo was influenced by Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo; there can be no question of a continuation of the Giotto school, which had been established a century and a half earlier.
Nor can he be described as a poet-painter.25 But it was not only his lack of knowledge of art history that proved fatal to the forger; he was also unlucky in other respects: Rudolf Steiner's reference to an earlier incarnation of Albert Steffen can be found in a letter to Marie Steiner dated February 27, 1925, just four days before the statements about Fra Bartolommeo in question, thus confirming precisely what is disputed in the above passage.26
The statements immediately following about incarnations further back in time are slander of the worst kind: Fra Bartolomeo (and thus Albert Steffen) is said to have been the bishop in Alexandria who had the philosopher Hypatia killed. In addition, he is said to have come from "Mexican mystery circles" and to have played a major role in events that were "like a counter-image to the mysteries of Golgotha." This is a kind of karmic character assassination, the intention of which is all too clear.
Thomas Meyer was clearly uncomfortable with this monstrosity, which Lindenberg had already described as “a catastrophe of judgment not to recognize this filth as filth.” He therefore resorted to pointing out that Steiner had made "certain remarks that are difficult to interpret about the individualities of the painters Fra Bartolomeo and Giotto."
For March 3, 1925, they would indeed have been difficult to interpret, since Rudolf Steiner's reference in a letter to Marie Steiner only a few days earlier was unlikely to have been known to anyone else at the time! Decades later, however, when this reference had at least become known through rumours but was not confirmed – the letter has only been published with the relevant omissions to this day – the suspicion unfortunately fell on fertile ground for all those who were reasonably "in the know" and had a corrupting effect.

1994 - Thomas Meyer

In the Appendix of his book (see reference below in section on Polzer-Hoditz), goes into allegations of forgery by Matile and Meister.

In the EN edition this is pages 532-534

Heinz Matile, president of the Albert Steffen Foundation, published, together with Andreas Meister, a kind of extract of all previous theories of forgery. The essay is entitled "On the so-called 'Notes by Ludwig von Polzer-Hoditz after conversations with Rudolf Steiner.'" This essay can be found as a PDF under "Texts about Albert Steffen" on the Steffen Foundation website (http://www.steffen-stiftung.ch/pdf/ludwig_polzer.pdf).

The extract below is a computer translation from a german copy found in the public domain on the internet. It is added because it adds further referencing.

Commentary: Meyer agrees here that Steiner never implied to say Steffen was Fra Bartolomeo in an earlier incarnation, but he strongly disagrees with the tone and accusations of forgery. Seemingly Matile and Meister read something into this statement of 1925-03-03 by Polzer-Hoditz as part of their attack on the whole of Polzer-Hoditz's information.

2. Albert Steffen and Giotto / Fra Bartolomeo
The biggest questions are raised by the passage in the conversation of March 3, 1925, which – after only an indirect allusion to Albert Steffen – deals with the Renaissance painter Fra Bartolomeo (1472–1517).
The fact that Rudolf Steiner, in a letter to Marie Steiner dated February 27, 1925 (now published in GA 262), clearly states that Steffen had a karmic relationship with Giotto (1266–1377) is, of course, incompatible with Steffen's embodiment as Fra Bartolomeo.
According to Steiner and Steffen, Albert Steffen was not Fra Bartolomeo, regardless of what is said in the discussion about the karmic background of Fra Bartolomeo.
The objections raised by Matile and Meister regarding authenticity are the most significant, indeed the only ones of real relevance. Nevertheless, I cannot see any evidence of forgery in the discrepancies in this important passage. It may be a case of Polzer's inaccurate memory or confusion within complex circumstances, which he may not have recorded until many years later or had recorded by his friend Michaelis.
Regarding Rudolf Steiner's letter to Marie Steiner dated February 27, 1925, to which Matile/Meister refer with great emphasis, I would like to add the following comments in view of the deeper implications of the karma revelation expressed therein: Marie Steiner was probably the first and only person to whom Rudolf Steiner referred to Albert Steffen's Giotto background.
After Steiner's death, she made a reference to this to Albert Steffen based on the letter of February 27, 1925, which he immediately understood and confirmed on the basis of his own observations. Marie Steiner then read the letter to him.

Communicated to the author by Heinz Matile on January 15, 1992.

This letter dated February 27, 1925, containing Rudolf Steiner's statement concerning Steffen, later played a role in the lawsuit (won in 1951) that the estate association founded by Marie Steiner before her death (1948) against the General Anthroposophical Society, which was chaired by Albert Steffen, because the latter disputed the estate association's indisputable rights to Rudolf Steiner's literary estate. It also contains a passage documenting Rudolf Steiner's high regard for Marie Steiner's judgment. The letter was therefore also submitted to the judge, although the reference to karma relating to Steffen was covered up (see Rudolf Steiner Estate Administration News, No. 4, October 1952). Traces of this covering can still be seen on the original today. It is not without tragedy that the heirs of Rudolf Steiner's literary estate, appointed by Marie Steiner, had to assert their rights against Albert Steffen with, among other things, a letter that touched on Steffen's karmic past, into which Marie Steiner, alongside Rudolf Steiner, was probably the first person within the anthroposophical movement – apart from Steffen himself – to gain insight.
A similar tragedy befell Polzer's views on karma, which he published in his book Das Mysterium der europäischen Mitte (The Mystery of the European Center). Both Marie Steiner and Albert Steffen failed to recognize the significance of this work.
At a deeper level, the tragic conflicts within the AAG were based not least on personal karma insights, unprocessed karma messages, or simply karma speculations. The extent to which Steffen himself was a victim of taking a realization of karma too personally is shown, among other things, by his behavior at the end of the process that was decisive for the future of the anthroposophical cause in the world: Steffen made a harsh accusation against the representative of the estate, Dr. Paul Jenny, regarding the fact that Rudolf Steiner's letter of February 27, 1925, containing the passage concerning him – about which he had apparently not been informed – had been presented to the judge. Marie Steiner had assured him that it was to be published only after his death.
However, she left no instructions to that effect. Paul Jenny wrote to Steffen on June 24, 1952: "After the trial before the Solothurn High Court on June 17, you stopped me at the exit of the courtroom and addressed me—not, however, about the anthroposophical matter, as I had expected at that moment from the chairman of the Anthroposophical Society, but about yourself in connection with Rudolf Steiner's letter to Mrs. Marie Steiner dated February 27, 1925." (ibid., p. 78).
As far as speculation about karma is concerned, certain speculations about Steffen's karmic background should be mentioned in this context. These were triggered by a particular interpretation of the Bartolomeo passage in the Polzer/Michaelis records and were only silenced when the relevant passage from the letter of February 27, 1925, was published in full for the first time in the second edition of GA 262 in 2002. If this passage from the letter had been published in the first edition in 1967 – four years after Steffen's death – all speculation concerning Albert Steffen in connection with the Bartolomeo passage in the Polzer/Michaelis notes under discussion here would have been rendered moot. The Bartolomeo passage would have been commented on accordingly in the first edition of the Polzer biography

KRI 73 - Helmuth von Moltke

Aspects

incarnations
- Pope Nicholas I (ca. 800-867), called Nicholas the Great, was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 858 until 867. Nicholas I asserted that the pope should have suzerainty over all Christians, even royalty, in matters of faith and morals. His claims of supremacy over territories outside his jurisdiction, the incorporation of the filioque in the Constantinopolitan Nicene creed, and his pressure on Bulgaria to remain under Roman rule, provoked tensions between Rome and Constantinople, leading to his excommunication by the Greeks at the fourth Council of Constantinople.
- Helmuth von Moltke (1848-1916)
  - also known as Moltke the Younger, was a German general and Chief of the Great German General Staff. Moltke led the German Army from 1906 to 1914 during the opening months of World War I. In 1914, following disagreements with the Kaiser, Moltke was dismissed from his post.
  - When Moltke died, Steiner maintained contact, receiving communications that he passed on to Moltke's wife, Eliza. (see 'Light for the New Millennium' by T.H. Meyer under 'Further reading' below
  - family relationships linking to anthroposophical movement
    - Countess Ella v. Moltke, née Countess Bethusy-Huc (1856-1924) member of the Berlin branch since July 1906. Sister-in-law of General Helmuth v. Moltke. She was the wife of Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (1907–1945), a prominent German jurist and a key figure in the anti-Nazi resistance group known as the Kreisau Circle. Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was a great-grandnephew of Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke, the famous Prussian general known for his leadership during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871).

KRI 74 - Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz

Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz was a close personal student of Rudolf Steiner who, together with Walter Johannes Stein, worked for the idea of a social threefold structure.

Steiner hinted to Polzer-Hoditz he should investigate the Roman emperor Hadrian and told him about the latter's visits to Egypt, where he was a high priest and architect to the female pharaoh Hatshepsut. Note both Hatshepsut and Hadrian were builders of large-scale construction projects.

Aspects

incarnations
- high priest and probably architect of Amun-Re in the entourage of Queen Hatshepsut (see 1923-01-01 below)
  - for timing and background:
    - Hatshepsut (ca. 1505–1458 BC) was the sixth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, ruling from c. 1479 BC until c. 1458 BC, and the Great Royal Wife of Pharaoh Thutmose II. Hatshepsut's reign was a period of great prosperity and general peace. One of the most prolific builders in Ancient Egypt, she oversaw large-scale construction projects such as the Karnak Temple Complex, the Red Chapel, the Speos Artemidos and most famously, the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari.
    - Hatshepsut, frequently connected herself with the god Amun-Re, a prominent deity in the Egyptian pantheon, particularly through her title "God's Wife of Amun" and claiming divine parentage.
    - for an excellent impression, see Franciszek Pawlicki: 'The Main Sanctuary of Amun-Re in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari'.Note though that Edfu (see Steiner quote below) lies below Deir el-Bahari so this is most probably not the temple meant.
- Hadrian (76-138)
  - Roman emperor from 117 to 138
  - special interest in architecture and public building projects: known for building Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Britannia. In Rome itself, he rebuilt the Pantheon and constructed the vast Temple of Venus and Roma. In Egypt, he may have rebuilt the Serapeum of Alexandria.
  - continued Trajan's policy on Christians; they should not be sought out and should only be prosecuted for specific offences, such as refusal to swear oaths. Hadrian laid down that accusers of Christians had to bear the burden of proof for their denunciations or be punished for calumnia (defamation).
  - relation with Antinous (ca. 111 – ca. 130), a Greek youth, had become the favourite of Hadrian by 128, also lover of Hadrian who after his death deified Antinous and founded an organised cult devoted to his worship. Antinous became a symbol of male homosexuality in Western culture, appearing in the work of o.a. Oscar Wilde and Fernando Pessoa .
- Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz (1869-1945)
  - from 1917 to 1919 Count von Polzer-Hoditz und Wolframitz, was an Austrian officer, landowner, anthroposophist, and publicist
  - At the suggestion of his father, a member of the Theosophical Society, he heard Rudolf Steiner give a lecture in Vienna for the first time in 1908. In 1911, he and his wife also became members; later, he was one of Steiner's closest students. In 1917, Ludwig Ritter von Polzer was the first person besides Otto Lerchenfeld and Walter Johannes Stein to be introduced to Steiner's idea of a social threefold structure.
  - In 1935, attempted to prevent the split in the Anthroposophical Society; when he failed he left in 1936 and worked as freelance journalist and lecturer until his death.
Rudolf Steiner took the initiative .. more than once suggesting to the Count that he concern himself with the personality whom he had been in a former incarnation (Thomas Meyer, 1994)

Reference extracts

1923-01-01 - Rudolf Steiner to Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz

the below is also quoted from Thomas Meyer: 'Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz: Ein Europäer' (1994), Chapter 29: 'You should occupy yourself with Hadrian'

It seemed that Steiner wanted to respond to Polzer's silent inner questioning, when he went on:
Look, Hadrian also bore within himself the thought of a Building of the Word, but it could only be a caricature of the Word, as he wanted to save the old mysteries. He sought honourably for a renewal of the Mysteries and even came near to Christ. That is why he even went to Egypt, far beyond Edfu up the Nile. Egypt caused memories to rise up in his soul but they blinded him with the power of the sentient soul's world of images. Antinous sacrificed himself [for Hadrian] but he could give him no more answers from the other side.
and then followed the direct indication to Polzer:
You should try to occupy yourself with Hadrian and in doing so, think about Egypt.
This Polzer would do, but only years later ... ... Steiner went on to describe the Egypt that Hadrian had then encountered
There is [in Egypt] the terraced temple of Hatshepsut where you have deep inside a holy grotto with a representation of Isis and the boy Horus, which works like an archetypal image of the Virgin and the Jesus child.
Hadrian too came to this grotto and indeed, immediately after [visiting the city of] On ... here [in this grotto] there was repeated what he had once experienced more than 1000 years before, in the time of Thutmoses Pharaohs in the blossoming of the Raphael-Mercury-Hermes the first female pharaoh reigned and built her wonderful temple.

At that time he went as a high priest of Amun-Re in the entourage of Queen Hatshepsut to the city of On, when the queen brought the architect from the site of the oracle to the Sun initiates

Note: the city of On is known today as Heliopolis or Ain-Shams (see www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/02/11/the-ancient-city-of-on/), present day Cairo.

1994 - Thomas Meyer

In the Appendix of his book (see reference below), goes into allegations of forgery by Matile and Meister. The extract below is a computer translation from a german copy found in the public domain on the internet. It is added because it adds further referencing.

Heinz Matile, president of the Albert Steffen Foundation, published, together with Andreas Meister, a kind of extract of all previous theories of forgery. The essay is entitled "On the so-called 'Notes by Ludwig von Polzer-Hoditz after conversations with Rudolf Steiner.'" This essay can be found as a PDF under "Texts about Albert Steffen" on the Steffen Foundation website (http://www.steffen-stiftung.ch/pdf/ludwig_polzer.pdf).
...
Matile and Meister consider it impossible that Polzer could have received a direct karmic reference to this personality from Steiner before Hadrian's dream in 1928 (see p. 321f.). Otherwise, he would not have been able to say: "I had never thought of Hadrian before." They quote the following passage from the conversation records of March 3, 1925:
"When I asked the doctor why he kept referring me to these connections, he replied: 'Because it concerns you so directly. But you didn't want to know anything.'"
[editor: see p 221 in the EN version of Meyer's book for this passage]
Matile and Meister consider this statement to be inauthentic, because they believe that "Polzer-Hoditz was certainly not a man who easily forgot what Rudolf Steiner told him." They thus know more than Polzer himself. In his autobiographical work Schicksalsbilder aus der Zeit meiner Geisteschülerschaft (Images of Destiny from the Time of My Spiritual Discipleship), which was only discovered after the first edition was published, Polzer writes in dramatized form about two of his conversations with R. Steiner: About the conversation in September 1924, which does not appear in the records in question but is mentioned by Polzer in his memorial publication for Ita Wegman ( see p. 736ff.), he writes:
"He: I didn't want to tell you anything personal about your fate because it once seemed to me that you shied away from such knowledge in order to experience your fate in complete freedom.
Me: What I said to you then was not meant in that sense. It was selfconsciousness that got the better of me."
This dialogue could also refer to the one from March 1925 (see above, p. 666f.); Polzer would then have moved it forward by a few months in retrospect. In any case, it presupposes that Steiner actually attempted to make karmic allusions, which Polzer did not take up. One such hint can be found in the New Year's conversation of 1923: "You should study Hadrian and think about Egypt."
It is not, as Matile and Meister simply assume, a question of whether Polzer "forgot," but rather that he apparently did not want to relate Steiner's actual hints to himself. The sentence from 1928 should also be interpreted in this sense: "I had never thought of Hadrian before." This does not prove, as Matile and Meister hastily conclude, that Polzer had never heard of Hadrian from Steiner , but rather that he had never previously related what he had heard to himself

KRI 75 - Walter Johannes Stein

Aspects

Incarnations
- Dom Francisco de Almeida or Almeyda (ca. 1450-1510), was a Portuguese nobleman, soldier and explorer. He distinguished himself as a counsellor to King John II of Portugal and later in the wars against the Moors and in the conquest of Granada in 1492. In 1505 he was appointed as the first governor and viceroy of the Portuguese State of India (Estado da Índia). Almeida is credited with establishing Portuguese hegemony in the Indian Ocean with his victory at the naval Battle of Diu in 1509. Before Almeida returned to Portugal he lost his life in a conflict with indigenous people at the Cape of Good Hope in 1510.
- Walter Johannes Stein (1891-1957)
  - friend of Eugen Kolisjo who met Rudolf Steiner in 1912 and became his student and Waldorf school teacher. He moved to the UK in 1933 and worked with Daniel N. Dunlop
  - wrote: 'The Ninth Century and the Holy Grail' (in EN 2009)
Stein's inward awakening to his previous death (time of the Portuguese discoveries in the East) was conformed by Rudolf Steiner as a genuine reality (Johannes Tautz, 1990, see p 169)

Reference extracts

Rudi Lissau and Bodo v. Plato - profile of W.J. Stein

see: dokumentationen.kulturimpuls.org/biografien/671, further biographical info in 'Further reading' section below

.. the highly intelligent Walter Johannes Stein managed to fail his exams. He thus became a classmate of Eugen Kolisko, who soon became his closest friend—a friendship that was to last until Kolisko's early death in 1939. When Stein's mother wanted to “convert” her son to theosophy, he rejected her, but promised to read a book if she would stop pressing him. His mother gave him Steiner's “How Does One Achieve Knowledge of Higher Worlds?” Stein immersed himself in the book and even took it with him to school. Kolisko saw it on their way to school together. He borrowed the book and read it in one night. Both were hooked (cf. Tautz 1989).
His high school years passed without further problems, and after graduating, Stein began studying mathematics, physics, and philosophy in Vienna. At the same time, he studied Steiner's writings. In 1913, he heard a lecture by Steiner in Vienna, was deeply impressed, and became his personal student. Steiner gave him some advice regarding his studies: “Read the philosophical works of Berkeley, who denied the existence of matter, and those of Locke, who wanted to base everything on the sensory world. Then write a theory of knowledge of spiritual science, avoiding both of these one-sided points of view [...]. Learn about the richness of the world through Aristotle and about the act of cognition as such through the philosophy of Fichte.” (Hahn 1957, No. 42, p. 202)
...
In 1918, he obtained his doctorate with a thesis on epistemology entitled “Historical-critical contributions to the development of modern philosophy.” In his dissertation, Stein implemented the advice given to him by Steiner.
...
When it became clear in the summer of 1919 that efforts to bring about social reform were not succeeding, Stein was among the first teachers at the Stuttgart Waldorf School – not, however, in his familiar subjects of mathematics and physics, but as a teacher of German and history. He immersed himself in the field of history with his characteristic enthusiasm; he planned a large-scale work on world history, of which a volume on the 9th century was published in 1928, which remained controversial both at the time and later. As a teacher and human being, Stein became one of the most influential figures for the students of this new school. In addition to his friendship with Eugen Kolisko, he developed close relationships with his colleagues Herbert Hahn, Karl Schubert, and Caroline von Heydebrand. He also had a productive and close relationship with Maria Röschl and Ernst Lehrs.
...
Rudolf Steiner characterized him in 1922 after a congress in The Hague: "Dr. Stein has grown into anthroposophical thinking and research from his youth onwards as a matter of course, thanks to an inner affinity with it. He is a sharp thinker and courageously presents anthroposophy as the self-revelation of his own personality [...] You [the listeners] must come to the conviction that anthroposophy is a conscientiously founded matter of knowledge and life." (Steiner 1921/22, p. 309)
Steiner's death in 1925 was a profound turning point in Stein's life, above all because he could no longer discuss with him the numerous questions that were burning within him as a result of his intensive spiritual development. His unconditional commitment, and even more so his spirited and often fierce dedication to the views represented by Ita Wegman within the General Anthroposophical Society after 1925, had an unfortunate effect. This increasingly led him into irresolvable confrontations. He gave up his tasks and functions in the German Anthroposophical Society in 1928 – he had been a member of its executive committee since 1923 – and left the Stuttgart School in 1932 after 13 years of service.
He accepted a position in England. There, Daniel Nicol Dunlop was looking for a colleague for a research office of the World Power Conference, which had been founded in 1924. This far-sighted and responsible man of the world and occultist had already recognized the need to manage the Earth's energy sources consciously, that is, globally and socially. He chose Walter Johannes Stein as a colleague and partner for this enormous undertaking.

2011 - Harrie Salman, book review of Vergunst book 'Knot of Stone'

from New View magazine (Fall 2011, pp.78-80), see also: www.knotofstone.com/francisco-d%E2%80%99almeida-and-walter-johannes-stein/

Note Nicolaas Vergunst book 'Knot of Stone: the day that changed South Africa’s history' is a novel, a historical murder mystery novel

Francisco d’Almeida and Walter Johannes Stein
Francisco_de_AlmeidaIn 1510 Francisco d’Almeida, former Viceroy of Portuguese territories in India, was on his way home when he and his men went ashore to take in water and food at present-day Cape Town. According to historical sources, he was killed in a skirmish with the Khoekhoen (Hottentots) and buried on the beach. His grave has never been found. The skirmish took place at Aguada de Saldanha, the name then used by the Portuguese for Table Bay.
While such an ignominious death seems unlikely for a high-ranking officer in the company of veteran soldiers, it passed into official history and has never been questioned. After this incident, fearing more attacks, the Portuguese did not care to take possession of Africa’s southernmost coast. It was only in the mid-17th century that Dutch settlers established themselves at the Cape.
Some four centuries on, in 1924, the German Waldorf School teacher Walter Johannes Stein (1891–1957) had an inner vision in which he saw this event and recognised the victim as his own earlier incarnation. In the same year Rudolf Steiner confirmed this insight—formally identifying Stein with Almeida.
In his “retrospective vision”

Stein saw how Almeida, a knight and confidante of kings, had been ritually killed by his own men. He understood that this death was an execution carried out at the request of the Spanish-orientated Order of St James (Ordem de Sant’Iago), for whom Almeida had once served as a commander-in-arms.

Stein remembered too that, as Almeida, he had been wounded in the siege of Moorish Granada when it fell to the Spanish in 1492. During this campaign he recuperated in the house of a Muslim nobleman who, subsequently, gave him an unknown Aristotelian treatise about the secret properties of nature. After being nurtured back to health, Almeida left Granada with this precious book and a mysterious pearl, also a gift. The latter was apparently an alchemical reliquary. Though bound by oath to submit such things to the Order, he made them available to the German alchemist Basilius Valentinus. For this act of ‘betrayal’, the Order issued an unofficial request for Almeida’s execution.

Various publications by and about Stein drew the attention of other researchers of spiritual history to Almeida. Through anthroposophical channels Stein’s investigations into the circumstances around Almeida’s death also reached Cape Town. Rachael Clayfield, a priest of the Christian Community, investigated Stein’s claims and shared the fruits of her research in the early 1980s. Among those Rev. Clayfield spoke to was Nicolaas Vergunst, a young man of Dutch descent and born in Cape Town.
[Vergunst]
After a career with the national museums of South Africa, Nicolaas Vergunst started his own research into Almeida’s murder. This has resulted in a fine and well-documented novel, entitled Knot of Stone: the day that changed South Africa’s history, published in September 2011. The book commemorates the death of Almeida and attempts to unravel the mysteries around this death and its long-term implications. The genre of this kind of mystery literature has been made famous by books of Umberto Eco, Dan Brown, Paulo Coelho and others. Readers will find in Knot of Stone an eloquently written and fascinating book that surpasses others in this genre; offering a lot of well-grounded spiritual facts instead of esoteric fantasies.
The story is presented as a journey initiated by the chance discovery of Almeida’s bones. A South African archaeologist, Jason Tomas, and a Dutch historian, Sonja Haas, are brought together by a professor of anthropology, a former Jewish exile, who is himself well informed on matters of spiritual history, including the views of Rudolf Steiner. Once the action moves to Europe—where sites relating to Almeida’s life and the Grail story are revisited—a Russian collector and Dutch educator enter the story to bring in more anthroposophical background.Laurence Oliver, c.2001
The psychiatrist Laurence Oliver, a new spiritual source from South Africa with whom the author has been acquainted since 2004, has provided new and essential confirmation of Stein’s earlier claims. With his clairaudient faculties, Dr Oliver offered further karmic background to other events and personalities in western history—both before and since Almeida’s murder. His messages help to create a context to otherwise isolated pieces of information. Knot of Stone thus became a splendid example of a new genre—the karmic novel.
“Knot of Stone is a fine example of a new genre—the karmic novel.” Harrie Salman, 2011. From a lecture by Nicolaas Vergunst at the Noord-Zuid Oost-West conference, hosted by the Stichtse Vrije School in Zeist, the Netherlands, on 11 June 2016. Several delegates share a link to Walter Johannes Stein, himself a Waldorf teacher in the 1920s, who relived the murder of Viceroy D’Almeida in a conscious dream. See comments below for more images from the author’s powerpoint presentation.
With more and more spiritual information becoming available since the beginning of the 20th century, books that elucidate spiritual history have become necessary. Stein himself, a man of deep spiritual insights, wrote such a book about the 9th century in relation to the Grail stories, commenting: “The history of the Grail is the history of the world. And the history of the world is the history of East and West.” (1928)
Stein often spoke about the polarity between East (Asia) and West (Europe), a polarity which permeates the Grail story of Wolfram von Eschenbach. The search for the kingdom of the enigmatic Prester John of India—known from the Grail story and from his mysterious letters—not only motivated the Portuguese discoveries of the 15th century, but lay behind Almeida’s secret mission in India. All this comes to new life in Knot of Stone.
From 1933, when he emigrated to England, and until his death in 1957, Stein played a prominent role in British Anthroposophy. He became well-known to the general public through the rather dubious books of Trevor Ravenscroft, in which he was to be featured posthumously. In Knot of Stone we meet Stein and some of his earlier incarnations again.
To propel his plot, Nicolaas Vergunst introduces a dossier containing crucial clues which assist the reader in his or her own quest. This dossier’s contents—articles, postcards, maps, handwritten notes and biographical lists—are interspersed throughout the text to produce a handsome publication of some 450 pages.
Central to Knot of Stone is the idea of the ‘eternal return’; namely, that we return to live again and again with the same friends, family and foes. This is demonstrated via several tabulated karmic biographies. The reader will certainly not take all the karmic information given in the book for granted. Also in this area of research mistakes can be made and people with clairvoyant or clairaudient faculties can be misled by spiritual beings trying to spread lies. For this reviewer, the information received by Dr Oliver (and presented in the book) about Jesus and Maria Magdalene having a son is a clear example of this phenomenon. As in all literature about spiritual matters, the readers are asked to develop their inner sense of truth.
In the case of Almeida, the information about his karmic biography receives a clear context and thus makes sense to readers who wish to judge matters themselves. Other karmic biographies, however, such as those of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Constantine, Charlemagne, Winston Churchill and Dag Hammarskjöld, miss such a context. They require further elaboration, a deeper understanding of karma, and confirmation from other sources, perhaps even another novel. To this end, the author is already preparing a sequel, Seeing Double: alternative portraits of history.

KRI 76: Daniel Dunlop

Daniel Nicol Dunlop (1868-1935) was a 'theosophist-turned-anthroposophist' of whom Rudolf Steiner spoke highly of him, and said he was "connected to all the ancient mysteries" and had also worked in "an inner circle of the Knights Templar". No earlier named historical incarnations are known.

Aspects

relation with contemporaries William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) and George William Russell (AE) (1867-1935)
the Isis theme in Dunlop's life

Reference extracts

T.H. Meyer - short bio of Daniel Dunlop

extract from: dokumentationen.kulturimpuls.org/biografien/414

The first personal encounter with Rudolf Steiner took place in London in the spring of 1922. While Josef van Leer was trying to interpret, Rudolf Steiner took Dunlop's hand under the protection of the tablecloth hanging down from his side and held it for several minutes. Dunlop, who since his first conscious involvement with occultism had nurtured the desire to meet a true initiate in the physical body, later wrote: "The first encounter brought the immediate realization: Here is the knower, the initiate, the one who carries the spirit into his time." (Meyer 1996, p. 154) Shortly after this encounter, on the anniversary of the death of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, whom he still revered, he resigned from the Theosophical Society. The following autumn, he proposed to Steiner the idea of anthroposophical summer schools and a series of public congresses in the world's major cities to strengthen the momentum of Central Anthroposophy. Thus, through his initiative, with the assistance of Eleanor Merry, the summer schools in Penmaenmawr (1923, GA 227) and Torquay (1924, GA 243) first came about. The Penmaenmawr event, which When the subject of initiatory knowledge was addressed, Rudolf Steiner said in retrospect: "In an extraordinarily energetic and inner-insightful, I might say esoteric way, Mr. Dunlop took this summer school [...] in hand. From the very beginning, what we have never seen fulfilled before was fulfilled in Penmaenmawr." (GA 260, 30.12.1923, or: Meyer 1996, p. 169)
In September 1923, Harry Collison was elected General Secretary of the British Society at the suggestion of English members—Rudolf Steiner himself, according to Ita Wegman, would have nominated Dunlop for the position. Dunlop was already making preparations for the first World Power Conference (WPC), the first international conference after the war, in which Germany also participated. Opened by the Prince of Wales in July 1924, he was the first to participate in the conference. Thus, at the end of 1923, he did not travel to Dornach, where the Anthroposophical Society was to be re-founded as a "General" Society. Dunlop saw Steiner again in Torquay and then in London. Steiner spoke in a similar vein to the previous year about the Torquay summer school, saying of both courses: "They were organized in such a way that one could feel an occult sense of home." He spoke of them as "something that will be inscribed in a special way in the Golden Book of the Anthroposophical Movement." He described Dunlop as a "sensitive, far-sighted anthroposophist."
Upon their farewell in London in August 1924, Rudolf Steiner said to him: "We are brothers." (Meyer 1996, p. 208)

T.H. Meyer - short bio of E.C Merry

extract from: dokumentationen.kulturimpuls.org/biografien/463

On a January evening in 1922, she first met Daniel Nicol Dunlop in London, the person she "truly loved and truly knew." He was reading a lecture by Rudolf Steiner to an anthroposophical group. While Dunlop was reading, Eleanor Merry had an inner vision: she witnessed "a soul rising to the vision of Isis." Dunlop later confirmed to her: "Yes, this is something that is intimately connected with my entire life." (Meyer 1996, p. 174)
...
When D.N. Dunlop was preparing the Penmaenmawr Summer School (GA 227), he had a determined, strong organizational support in Eleanor C. Merry. Further discussions with Rudolf Steiner took place there. He pointed her to the new painting technique he had developed, which she immediately adopted. He also gave her important advice about Dunlop. He was connected to all the ancient mysteries and had worked in an inner circle of the Knights Templar – "make the bond with him as strong as you possibly can." And in response to her question about why so much bad gossip was circulating behind Dunlop's back, Rudolf Steiner simply explained: "When there is someone I love as much as I love Mr. Dunlop, jealousies are always inevitable." (Meyer 1996, p. 165)

Eleanor C. Merry

in 'Erinnerungen an Rudolf Steiner und D. N. Dunlop' (1992), (also quoted p 138 of T.H. Meyer's biography of Dunlop, EN version 2014)

Rudolf Steiner said to me that he was connected with all the ancient mysteries

and also mentioned one specific incarnation to have taken place during medieval times

.. that of a member of a secret society among the Templars

(also quoted p 279 of T.H. Meyer's biography of Dunlop, EN version 2014)

KRI 77 - Wilhelm Rath

Wilhelm Rath (1897-1973) is best known for his research and translations of the Friend of God from the Oberland, Bernard Silvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and John of Hildesheim. Together with Ernst Lehrs he contributed significantly to the organisation of the youth conference in which Rudolf Steiner held the lecture cycle “The Younger Generation” and which led to the founding of an Esoteric Youth Circle.

Aspects

potential earlier incarnation (source: oral tradition)
- Johannes Tauler (ca 1300-1361) - see also Schema FMC00.089 (carrier of copy astral body of Christ-Jesus)
- discussion on source:
  - strange there is only one datapoint by someone born 1929. One would expect more people to have known or reported this, but these datapoints do not seem to exist.
  - The Present Age magazine within their “Karmic Calendar” feature, several issues (e.g., Vol. 6 Nos. 7/8, 5, 11/12) list the entry “Wilhelm Rath – Johannes Tauler (acc. to Jürgen Schriefer)”, indicating that according to Schriefer, Rath had a karmic link to Tauler, but without any further info.

Reference extracts

2015-12 - Francois De Wit

https://www.vrijgeestesleven.be/vanaf70/b90/b90a.html

Wilhelm Rath had read Steiner's book on mysticism, “Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geistesleben” (GA007). Among other things, it discusses Johannes Tauler, the German mystic who was born around 1300. He was a disciple of Meister Eckhart and became a Dominican priest. In his hometown of Strasbourg, he was a pastor and confessor, as well as the inspiration behind a group of “Gottesfeunde” (Friends of God), twelve men and women who had withdrawn from the world and voluntarily dedicated their lives to God in poverty. They supported each other and formed a spiritual community, living scattered throughout Strasbourg, Basel, and Swabia.
At a certain point in his life, Tauler was approached by an unknown layman, the “Gottesfreund vom Oberland” (Friend of God from the Oberland). This man brought about a kind of enlightenment in him, a spiritual rebirth, as a result of which his words from then on had a very strong inspiring effect on the people who listened to his sermons.
Rudolf Steiner says: “This is told to us symbolically: about forty people fell down during his sermon and lay there as if dead.”
This kind of brotherhood of friends of God in the 20th century became an ideal for Wilhelm Rath. Apparently, the same ideal lived on in others, because in the end, twelve remained from a larger group, and in 1923 they went to Rudolf Steiner as the twelve founders of this “Jugendkreis” (Youth Circle).
Who they were and what they became:
...
[editor, these included a.o. Wilhelm Rath (1897-1973), Ernst Lehrs (1894-1979), Daniël van Bemmelen (1899-1982), Herbert Hahn (1890-1970), .. ]

2016-06 - Francois De Wit

extract from: www.vrijgeestesleven.be/vanaf70/b92/b92aa.html#015

Why was Wilhelm Rath so fascinated by the figure of Johannes Tauler?
The musician Jürgen Schriefer (1929-2014) passed on the following oral tradition:
Rudolf Steiner said the following to an acquaintance of Wilhelm Rath: “Before he dies, he must know that he was Tauler.”
When Rath heard this, he said: “I suspected as much.”
Johannes Tauler and the Gottesfreunde
GOTTESFREUNDE was the name given to the members, clergy and especially lay people, of a mystical movement in the 14th century that had its centers on the Rhine (Cologne, Strasbourg, and temporarily Basel) and enjoyed sympathy as far afield as the Netherlands and Italy. Impressed by the poor conditions of the time, people gathered around proven leaders in order to jointly, albeit not in an organized manner, achieve the perfection of “friendship with God”: self-denial, “Gelassenheit” (surrender to God), ‘the birth of God in the soul’, spiritual freedom, the apostolate and works of mercy.
Among them were the spiritual leaders Johannes Tauler and Henricus van Nördlingen; the Dominican Margaretha Ebner; and the merchant-writer Rulman Merswin. The latter is probably also the author of a number of spiritual treatises and letters, which were distributed under the pseudonym “grosse Gottesfreund aus dem Oberlande” (great friend of God from the Oberland). These writings are characteristic of the weak points of this otherwise exemplary movement: a certain desire for visions, prophecies, and other mystical phenomena, as well as an exaggeration of the contrast between a flourishing lay spirituality and the decline of the secular clergy.
( Source: Theological Dictionary, 1958, published by Romen en Zonen, Roermond-Maaseik. )

Tauler's name also appeared in De Brug 40: in the article on spiritual economy, it was said that he had received a kind of copy of the I of Christ Jesus.

Christiane Haid - short bio Wilhelm Rath

extract from biographien.kulturimpuls.org/detail.php?&id=545

Rath was a member of the committee ”Freien Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft" (founded in 1923 out of dissatisfaction with the entrenched A.V. in Germany – fdw) and led the Berlin branch until Easter 1924. He participated in the Weihnachtstagung and was also active as a lecturer.
Although he was not a farmer, he was allowed to participate in the “Landwirtschaftlichen Kurs” (GA 327) in Koberwitz in the summer of 1924. Until the end of the 1920s, he was responsible for the secretariat of the Freie Anthroposophische Gesellschaft and led anthroposophical study groups in many places, eventually also in the Ruhrgebiet. Together with Maria Röschl, he was responsible in 1924 for distributing the second edition of the Jugendkurs, which at that time was only available to a limited group of people.
In 1927 and 1928, he was active in editing the circulars of the Section for the Spiritual Aspirations of Youth.
After Rudolf Steiner's death, there was uncertainty among the members about how to continue with the meditative exercises. Many members sought faster and more promising ways to gain access to the spiritual world and came under the influence of people who seemed to offer progress in this direction. Through his encounter with Erna Benthien, a woman with mediumistic abilities, Wilhelm Rath's way of working and his spiritual attitude took on a style in the late 1920s that his colleagues in the Committee of the Free Anthroposophical Society found incompatible with anthroposophy. The board in Dornach also asked for clarification. And so, at the urging of his colleagues, Wilhelm Rath decided in the summer of 1930 to resign from all his positions within the Freie Anthroposophische Gesellschaft and to leave both the School of Spiritual Science and the Anthroposophical Society.
...

KRI 78: Felix Peipers

KRI 79: Ludwig van Beethoven

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 84: Cicero - William Ewart Gladstone

Marcus Tullius Cicero (103 BC - 43 BC)
- Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics.
William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898)
- was a British liberal politician and leader of the Liberal Party. In a career lasting over 60 years, he was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for 12 years, spread over four non-consecutive terms beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894 when he resigned aged 84 years.

source:

According to Alfred Meebold, a personal student of Rudolf Steiner, Gladstone was Cicero.

Alfred Meebold (1863-1952)
- came to Rudolf Steiner aged 40 and for a long time was among Rudolf Steiner's followers, traveling to hear his lectures and lecture series
- profile: dokumentationen.kulturimpuls.org/biografien/458
- wrote oa
  - Der Weg zum Geist, auto-biography (1917 and 1920, München)
  - Kurs zur Einführung in die Anthroposophie Rudolf Steiners, 6 lectures in Vienna, 1931. (1936)

KRI 85: Brunetto Latini - Carus

Aspects

incarnations
- Brunetto Latini (1220-1294) was an Italian philosopher, scholar, notary, politician and statesman. He was a teacher and friend of Dante Alighieri.
- hypothesis: Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869) was a German physiologist and friend of the writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe, he was a many-sided man: a doctor, a naturalist, a scientist, a psychologist, and a landscape painter.

Reference extracts

1924-07-13-GA237

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.

1924-07-19-GA240

The individualities who, as I said, were around Alanus ab Insulis, and those who within the Dominican stream had established Aristotelianism in Europe, were united, too, with Brunetto Latini, the great teacher of Dante. And in this host of souls there were very many of those who, having again descended to the Earth, are now coming together in the Anthroposophical Society.

1924-08-24-GA240

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.
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.

1999 - Ekkehard Meffert

article 'Carl Gustav Carus und Brunetto Latini, der Lehrer Dantes' in: Der Europäer Jg. 4 / Nr. 1 / November 1999

PDF link: perseus.ch/PDF-Dateien/carus2.pdf

introduction by Thomas Meyer

An essential element in the life of C.G. Carus was his friendship with King John of Saxony (1801–1873), who was a great admirer of Dante and who, under the pseudonym Philalethes, published a comprehensively annotated German translation of the Divine Comedy. R. Steiner pointed out the karmic connection between King John and Dante. Carus himself, according to karmic symptomatology, was closely connected with Dante's important teacher Brunetto Latini. Brunetto Latini is a central figure in the spiritual history of humanity in modern times. Rudolf Steiner repeatedly referred to him, his initiation into nature, and his connection with the impulse of the School of Chartres, particularly in 1924

article by Meffert, short extracts only

Under the pseudonym “Philalestes” (friend of truth), Prince Johann was an outstanding translator and commentator on Dante's “Divine Comedy.” Between 1821 (Carus's first stay in Italy) and 1849, he translated and published “Inferno,” “Purgatorio,” and “Paradiso.”
Prince Johann gathered a circle of Dante scholars around him in Dresden (the Dresden Dante Academy), which included C.G. Carus, Ludwig Tieck, Carl Förster, and Carl Friedrich von Ruhmor. Dresden also became the intellectual Florence of the North. In 1865, King Johann assumed the patronage of the newly founded German Dante Society in Dresden.
Carl Gustav Carus, as the king's first personal physician, was also a close friend and shared his deep love for Dante's intellectual world.
...
As a spiritual researcher, Rudolf Steiner confirmed the karmic connection between Dante in the 13th century and King John of Saxony in the 19th century.
Just how real such connections were for Steiner is shown by the fact that when a branch of the Theosophical Society was founded in Dresden in 1909, he linked it to Dante as its patron saint at the inauguration.

2010 - Thomas Meyer

'In memoriam Ekkehard Meffert (1940-2010)'; in: Der Europäer Jg. 14 / Nr. 12 / Oktober 2010

For the Europäer, he wrote articles about Carus and Goethe (October 1999) and about the complicated connection between Nikolaus von Kues (also known as Cusanus) and Nikolaus Kopernikus (September 2001).
...
A keen sense of karmic realities Ekkehard Meffert also had a keen interest in fates as difficult to understand as those of Kaspar Hauser and Anastasia, one of the daughters of the last Russian tsar.
He followed with great interest the ultimately refuted attempts to use questionable genetic analysis to .... the identity of both the heir to the throne of Baden and the Tsar's daughter. Several anthroposophists were convinced of Anastasia's controversial identity as the Tsar's daughter, from Anna Samweber to Astrid Bethusy-Huc and Monica von Miltitz to the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Altenburg; Monica von Miltitz even offered her a home in Unterlengenhardt (near Bad Liebenzell) for a time.
...
In particular, the new, subtle elaboration of the karmic connection between Carus and Brunetto Latini went beyond his previous portrayals of Carus. Similar to what had happened earlier with Besant, an enriching exchange now took place in connection with Carus.
As we know from Rudolf Steiner, Brunetto Latini had a significant spiritual connection to the former individuality of the Roman poet Ovid. This connection helped him in his unusual initiation into nature.
As we know from Rudolf Steiner, Brunetto Latini had a significant spiritual connection to the former individuality of the Roman poet Ovid. This connection played a helpful role in his unusual initiation into nature, as Brunetto himself describes in the Tesoretto. One day, he discovered that Carus kept a diary, which he gave the remarkable title “Tristia.” This was the name Ovid had once given to his last collection of poems, which he wrote in exile on the Black Sea. Meffert was delighted by this insignificant detail, for he had a keen sense of what Rudolf Steiner once called “the apparent insignificance of life.” Every anthroposophically oriented biographer who wishes to work creatively with the realities of reincarnation and karma must learn to pay attention to such “insignificances.”

wikipedia pages for Carus

the following observations, below quotes from the EN and DE pages

"When the King of Saxony, Frederick Augustus II, made an informal tour of Britain in 1844, Carus accompanied him as his personal physician".

-> See also KRI 86 Dante and King Johann von Sachsen (1801-1873).

Carus' translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy

and from the DE page

Carus was a contemporary of Goethe and belonged to the Romantic generation. His friends included Caspar David Friedrich, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt, Ludwig Tieck, Ida von Lüttichau, and King John I of Saxony. Together with Novalis, he is considered part of a philosophical group known as “magical idealism,” which belongs to the German Idealism movement.

KRI 86: Dante - King King John of Saxony

Aspects

incarnations:
- Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet and author of the Divine Comedy
  - Brunetto Latini became Dante's teacher, and the spirituality of the Commedia proceeds from the teachings which Latini gave to his pupil Dante ... the inspiration of the teachings of Chartres .. of Brunetto Latini ... of Dante, enabling cosmic things to live in Dante's poem—all these things are connected with the impulse that proceeded from that super-sensible Congress in the 9th century A.D. (1924-09-10-GA238)
  - "a personality like Dante cannot be born of homogeneous blood". Specifically: three consecutive layers of the third Celtic, fourth Roman and fifth Germanic cultural ages, work together. (1916-12-17-GA173, see: Descent influencing generations to incarnation#1916-12-17-GA173)
- incarnation in the 19th century 'initiate come down from height'
  - candidate (source see below): King Johann von Sachsen - King John of Saxony (1801-1873)

Reference extracts

1905-10-18-GA093A

see: Clairvoyant research of akashic records#1905-10-18-GA093A

1912-08-26-GA138

In the successive epochs of human evolution we find one remarkable phenomenon. I could give examples of what I have just told you of the confusing way in which initiates on reincarnating sometimes appear to have come down from their heights.
You would probably be much surprised if I told you, for instance, in what way Dante was reincarnated in the nineteenth century.
But it is not my task here to discuss further this result of my own investigation and what was established for me. Rather have I to bring forward with strong proof the things known to everyone conversant with occultism, letting everything else recede into the background and stating nothing that is not generally recognised where bona fide occultism is upheld.

1912-09-15-GA139

2011 - Crispian Villeneuve

excerpt taked from the book 'Rudolf Steiner: The British Connection : Elements from His Early Life and Cultural Development' (2011)

Meffert records that Steiner subsequently informed Wegman, Steffen and Scholl that the Italian poet reincarnated as King John of Saxony.

wikipedia

from German page Johann_(Sachsen)#Leben

In addition to his political work, Johann was also interested in literature. Under the pseudonym Philalethes (“friend of truth,” hence his nickname “Der Wahrhaftige,” or “the truthful one”), he translated Dante's Divine Comedy into German, a translation that is still recognized today, with significant parts of it written at Weesenstein Castle and Jahnishausen Castle.

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.

KRI 90 - Euphorbos - Pythagoras

Aspects

incarnations

Aithalides, born in Thessaly, taking part in the expedition of the Argonauts (source: biography of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertios)
Pyrrhos, fisherman on Delos (Greek isle) (source: biography of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertios)
Hermotimos, initiate in Ionia (source: biography of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertios). Note: Ionia was an ancient region encompassing the central part of the western coast of Anatolia, now Turkey.
Euphorbos in Samos (Greek isle), "a Trojan hero, mentioned in Homer" who had fought on the side of the Trojans (1912-04-17-GA143;biography of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertios)
Pythagoras (see below)
"reincarnated as one of the three Wise Men of the East" (1909-05-31-GA109) - see: Epiphany#Three kings or three magi

Pythagoras

around 600 BC, pupil of Zarathas or Nazarathos in the Chaldean Mystery-school, the Individuality of Master Jesus or Zarathustra (1909-05-31-GA109, 1909-09-19-GA114) .. taught Pythagoras during the Babylonian captivity (1910-01-05-GA117A)
- "The Individuality of Master Jesus, in his incarnation in the sixth century BC, had instructed the sages and magi of Chaldea .. so that in the Chaldean Mystery Schools of Babylon, Chaldeo, Assyria .. they looked forward with longing to the next appearance of their great teacher and leader, for they knew the secret of his reincarnation, expecting it to occur at the end of six hundred years. ... The secret of the coming incarnation of Zarathustra was known in the Chaldean Mysteries .. and he himself led the Magi .. they followed in his track .. the Magi followed the ‘Golden Star,’ Zoroaster, to the place where he was to reincarnate" (1910-09-06-GA123; see Individuality of Master Jesus#1910-09-06-GA123).
travelled the world in search of and to gather wisdom and "in course of his great journeys been initiated into the secrets of the most diverse Mysteries" (1910-GA013); also:
- "Apollonius of Tyana .. had within him the urge to become wise, and therefore he set out on travels, as once upon a time Pythagoras had done, in the same situation." (1921-03-28-GA203)
- "Pythagoras on his travels studied with great intensity what could be learnt by listening to the speech of the metals in the mines of Asia Minor, and a great deal of what he learnt made its way into what then became Greco-Roman culture." (1923-11-30-GA232)
- "It is in truth no mere superficial account that relates how Pythagoras and others wandered far and wide in order to attain their knowledge. Men went about the Earth in order to receive what was revealed in its manifold configurations, in all that they could observe from the different forms and shapes of the Earth in different places; and not of the Earth in its physical aspect alone, but of the Earth too as soul and spirit." (1923-12-26-GA233)
"... it was said that Pythagoras learned geometry from the Egyptians, astronomy from the Chaldeans, other sciences from the Greeks, but that he learned the worship of the gods and the wisdom of nature from the magicians of the Zarathustra religion" (1910-12-11-GA069B); also: "geometry and surveying, both of which Pythagoras learnt from the Egyptians, who ascribed all this knowledge to the primordial wisdom of Hermes" (1911-02-16-GA060)
see also
- Tetractys
- Schema FMC00.109 (illustration group souls of humanity)

Reference extracts

1909-05-31-GA109

[Zarathustra] .. was reborn as Zarathas or Nazarathos, and he became the teacher of Pythagoras, who himself was reincarnated as one of the three Wise Men of the East and became one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.

1909-09-19-GA114

Thus six hundred years before our era, Zarathustra was born again in ancient Chaldea as Zarathas or Nazarathos, who became the teacher of the Chaldean Mystery-schools; he was also the teacher of Pythagoras and again acquired profound insight into the phenomena of the outer world. If we steep ourselves in the wisdom of the Chaldeans with the help, not of anthropology but of anthroposophy, an inkling will dawn in us of what Zarathustra, as Zarathas or Nazarathos, taught in the Mystery-schools of ancient Chaldea.

1910-GA013 An Outline of Esoteric Science: The Evolution of the Cosmos and Man

The guardians of the oracles controlled inner powers that were connected with fire and other elements. They may be called Magi. What they had preserved for themselves from ancient times as heritage of supersensible knowledge and power was, to be sure, insignificant in comparison with what the human being had once been able to do in the far distant past. In the Pythagorean school of wisdom the after-effects of the great doctrines and methods of the wisdom of primeval ages appeared. In his wide journeying Pythagoras had been initiated into the secrets of the most varied mysteries. The life of man between birth and death—in the post-Atlantean age—had, however, its influence also upon the body-free state after death.

other translation

In the Pythagorean School of Wisdom the mighty wisdom-teachings and methods of primeval times worked on. Pythagoras himself had in course of his great journeys been initiated into the secrets of the most diverse Mysteries.

1910-12-11-GA069B

... it was said that Pythagoras learned geometry from the Egyptians, astronomy from the Chaldeans, other sciences from the Greeks, but that he learned the worship of the gods and the wisdom of nature from the magicians of the Zarathustra religion.
So they revered those people in the followers of Zarathustra, who are called the Magi, who understood something about how to see through the world of the senses into the spiritual, who knew that one does not come to the spiritual through mere mystical immersion into one's own inner self, but how to make the outer carpet of the senses transparent.
In short, those who said of Pythagoras that he had learned the worship of the gods from Zarathustra saw in the followers of the Zarathustra religion – if I may express it thus – “specialists” with the right view of the spiritual world, with the right worship of the gods.

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.

1913-11-06-GA063

Diogenes Laertius (Greek biographer, third century AD, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers) tells that once Pythagoras who was considered as a very wise man by the ruler of Phlius, Leon, was asked by him how he positioned himself in life, how he felt in life.
Pythagoras is said to have said the following:

life seems to me like a festival. People come who take part as fighters in the games; others come to make profit as traders; but there is a third sort of people, they come only to look at the thing.

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].

Draft work areas

Note: sources below to be checked & validated:

.

Pythagoras received his initiation in the Egyptian mysteries, but he transformed these teachings and gave them a new direction... He was one of the first to transplant the mystery wisdom into philosophical concepts. (1905-10-03-GA093A) ... a reincarnated individuality carrying Egyptian-Chaldean mystery wisdom into the Greek world (1909-09-17-GA060) having “received the Egyptian and Chaldean mysteries, and transformed them into something comprehensible for the Greek mind.” (1907-06-21-GA089)

KRI 91 - Karl König

Aspects

incarnations

Karl König (1902-1966) was an Austrian paediatrician who founded the Camphill Movement
- bio see: www.karlkoeniginstitute.org/en/karl-koenig-biography.asp
hypothesis/possibility:
- Albrecht von Wallenstein (1583-1634) Duke of Friedland, a Bohemian military leader and statesman who fought on the Catholic side during the Thirty Years' War.
  - Wallenstein's death as an example of prophecy, in this case by Kepler on request of Wallenstein himself (1911-11-09-GA061)
  - Rudolf Steiner extensively discusses the Wallenstein trilogy of dramas by Friedrich Schiller (completed the trilogy in 1799)
    - "Schiller said to himself: there must be something more comprehensive that goes beyond birth and death. He tried to understand which role the great transpersonal destiny plays in the personal. We have often mentioned this principle as the karma principle. In Wallenstein he describes the big destiny which crushes or raises the human being. Wallenstein tries to fathom it in the stars. Then, however, he realises again that he is drawn by the threads of destiny, that in our own breasts the stars of our destinies are shining." (1905-05-04-GA053). Note, 'coincidentally' that Rudolf Steiner 'drops the name' Paracelsus in this same lecture.

Reference extracts

1911-11-09-GA061

Keeping to well-known personages, let us take the case of Wallenstein. Wallenstein wished to have his horoscope drawn up by Kepler—a name honoured by every scientist.
...
From a letter on the subject written by Kepler at the time it is obvious that he did not favour such procedure on account of the many possible consequences. Nevertheless he undertook to do what Wallenstein asked—it was in the year 1625—and gave further details about Wallenstein's future; above all he said that according to the new reading of the positions of the stars, the constellation that would be present in the year 1634 would be extremely unfavourable for Wallenstein.
...
He did not therefore consider them dangerous for Wallenstein's plans. The prediction was for March 1634. And now think of it: within a few weeks of the period indicated, the causes occurred which led to the murder of Wallenstein.

2006 - Peter Selg

in 'Karl König's path into anthroposophy: reflections from his diaries' (see Further reading section below)

Numerous further notes show how intensively König's morning awakening experiences were connected to the destinies of the Thirty Years War and with Wallenstein. Thus he had noted on Oct 14, 1944:
"Wake up in the morning with an impression of Paracelsus' death. [1541-09-24] Know that he was reborn as Wallenstein" [1583-09-24]. ... "
More than ten years later, on Feb 9, 1955 ... this experience ... surfaced again
"I wake up at 4 AM but there is no seizure. The stabbing in my heart aches and is painful, and then I instantly know that it is the same stabbing carried out by the senior butler; the whole problem opens up and I am able to recognize the karma; but have the strength to leave it open and not become fixed about it. But the Thirty Years War is once again so close, as if it happened yesterday"
Two weeks later this experience is amplified once more and further background is revealed .. he records this as follows:
"A strange night . Wake up at 3 AM without pain but with great anxiety. Powerful experience of Wallenstein's death and how he did not take on the battle against the three beasts, consequently bringing about his fall through the outer deed of murder. "

KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities

Illustrations

KRI 1: Vischer

KRI2: Schubert

KRI 3: Dühring

KRI 4: von Hartmann

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 8: Laplace

KRI 9: Woodrow Wilson

Aspects

Reference extracts

KRI 10: Garibaldi

Aspects

Further reading

KRI 11: Lessing

Further reading

KRI12: Haeckel

Lecture coverage and references

KRI 13: geometry teacher

KRI 14: Lord Byron

Further reading

KRI 15: Marx

KRI 16: Engels

KRI 17: Amos Comenius

Further reading

KRI 18: Hausner

KRI 19: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer

Aspects

Reference extracts

Further reading

KRI 20: Pestalozzi

Further reading

KRI 21: soul related to Pestalozzi

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 24: Ibsen

KRI 25: Wedekind

KRI 26: Friedrich Hölderlin

Aspects

Inspirational quotes

Further reading

KRI 27: Hamerling

KRI 28: Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria - Emperor Nero

KRI 29: Voltaire

KRI 30: Victor Hugo

Aspects

Further reading

KRI 31: Eliphas Levi

KRI32 - Schiller

Lecture coverage

KRI 33: Heine

Lecture coverage

KRI 34: Goethe

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