THE ROSICRUCIAN MYSTERY
 

                In a beautiful passage of his Outline of Occult Science, Rudolf Steiner sums up as follows the quintessence of the Rosicrucian teaching, the wisdom of the Holy Graal, which forms the content of this book:--

       “. . . The ’Cosmos of Wisdom’ evolves into a ’Cosmos of  Love.’  Out of all things that the ‘I’ of man can unfold within, Love shall become.  As the all-embracing ‘pattern of Love,’ the sublime Being of the Sun--the Being whom we were able to name in describing the Christ-evolution -- manifested Himself.  Into the inmost heart of man’s being the seed of love was thereby planted.  Thence it will flow into the whole of evolution.  Just as the Wisdom, formed before, is manifested in the forces of the outer, sense-perceptible world of the Earth--in the ‘forces of Nature’ that prevail today--so in the future Love itself will be revealed in all phenomena, as a new force of Nature.  It is the secret of all future evolution, that knowledge, and also all that man does out of true feeling for evolution, is the sowing of a seed which must ripen into Love.  So much as comes into being of the force of love, so much is done creatively towards the future. . . . The Wisdom, prepared through Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, works in the physical, in the etheric and in the astral body of man; in the ‘I’ it is made inward.  From Earth-evolution onward, the ‘Wisdom of the outer World’ becomes inner Wisdom in Man.  And when in man it is made inward, it becomes the seed of Love.  Wisdom is the necessary forerunner of Love; Love is the outcome of Wisdom re-born within the ‘I.’ ”#

In the first Mystery Play, described by Rudolf Steiner on the title page as A Rosucrucian Mystery, this theme of the growth of Love as Wisdom re-born in the I of man is developed, as it were, through countless golden threads.  The four Mystery Plays are so filled with wisdom that as their writer said the spiritual teaching he could give in countless lectures was contained in them, for those who would take pains to draw it forth.  We find it ever more as we read and ponder them again and again, and above all as we see them performed on the stage, as we are now privileged to do at the Goetheanum.  It can at best be one among the many golden threads which with all reverence we touch in the following remarks, concerning the theme of Wisdom and Love as it appears in the first play, The Portal of Initiation.*

The keynote of the play is given in the Mystery Sayings communicated by Benedictus at the close of the third and of the seventh scenes.  In the third scene, where Johannes has withstood the tests of suffering, of solitude and perplexity, Benedictus gives these words which are to lead him consciously into the spiritual world.  Having explained to Johannes the trials and experiences he has undergone, he concludes as follows:

“I was allowed to lend thee treasures of Wisdom which gave thee strength to hold thyself upright, even when thou hadst lost belief in thyself.  The Wisdom which thou hadst attained by effort was more steadfast then the belief once lavished on thee.  Thou art found ripe, and thou canst be set free.  Thy friend has gone before and thou wilt find her in the spirit.  I can but show thee the direction: Kindle thy soul’s full power by the words which through my lips will give thee the key to the heights.  These words will lead thee on even when nothing more that eyes of sense might see can guide thee.  Will to receive them with all they heart:--

                “The weaving essence of the Light rays forth through realms of Space to fill the world with Being.  The blessing of Love warms through the centuries of Time to call all worlds to Revelation.  And Spirit-messengers, they wed the weaving essence of the Light with Soul’s revelation; and when Man with these twain can wed his very self, he is alive on Spirit-heights.”# 

The following, the fourth, fifth and sixth scenes, represent the content of Johannes’ meditation and experience in the world of souls.  The seventh, where he joins Maria in Spirit-land, is as it were an Initiation-scene in Heaven; it is the true counterpart of the scene of trial on Earth, scene three. How many of the words, spoken in anguish and perplexity in the former scene, re-echo wondrously transformed in the seventh!  At the opening of the scene we see Maria with her friends of soul: Philia, Astrid and Luna; and with the adopted child, who too is interwoven in the Karmic skein with her and Johannes.  Johannes comes to her from afar; so they find one another in the spiritual world and recognise in the eternal light of evolution the bond of destiny that has united them through many lives.  Benedictus does not appear until the end, and he expressly says that so it must be:-- “Now ye have found yourselves in the spirit realm, I too may be once more at your side.  For though it was granted me to lend you the force that carried you into this realm, yet I myself could not bring you.  Such is the law I must obey.”  At the close of this speech he gives the word of power, resounding as a metamorphosis of the Mystery Saying of the third scene:--

  “The weaving essence of the Light rays forth from Man to Man to fill the world with Truth.  The blessing of Love warms Soul by Soul to work Salvation of all worlds.  And Spirit-messengers, they wed Men’s works of blessing with the aims of Worlds.  And when these twin can wed the Man who finds himself in Man, then Light of Spirit rays through Warmth of Soul.”#

The secret of the Holy Graal, Wisdom and Love--the quintessence of Rudolf Steiner’s Occult Science--is contained in these two sayings of Benedictus.  We may describe them as the Mystery words of the Creation and of the Resurrection respectively:  of Genesis and the Apocalypse, the Alpha and the Omega of earthly life.  In the former saying we are told of the Light of the World that weaves creatively throughout all space.  It is the spiritual light of which we hear again, for example, in the fifty-two Calendar Verses:  “That Spirit-Light of inner deeps, which weaving in the fields of Space displays the working-wise of Gods. . . . “t   This light is filled with tender wisdom.  The choir of the Gods, the music of the spheres pervades it.  The key to a new Physics is contained in the first five lines of this saying:  spiritual Light--the Light of Wisdom, and spiritual Warmth--the warmth of Love--the primal secrets of Space and of Time.

And now the metamorphosed saying:--Where the first saying tells of the Light that rays through realms of Space to fill the world with Being (Sein--existence), here we are told of Light that rays from Man to Man to fill the world with Truth.  And where the former saying tells of the blessing of Love, warming the cycles of Time, the second speaks of the blessing of Love that warms Soul by Soul--one soul by contact with another.‡  The thought is here expressed that in the mutual relations men establish on the Earth there lives the seed of a creative power.  The world of matter on the Earth--truly a world of ‘woven light’--is crumbling and decaying.  The time will come when it will be no more.  An empty void will appear at the place of matter, where man now feels the firm support of reality beneath his feet--the ‘real existence’ of the world of sense.  But as the old existence, woven as it was out of the light of the Creation, dies, a new reality shall arise through Man.  For at the turning point of evolution, into this world of semblance, nothingness and death, there came the Christ, the original ‘Light of the World,’ which was in the Beginning.  He brought into this earthly world a renewed Fulness as of ‘inner Light’ that can be born in hearts of men and can arise as Being renewed, into a new cosmic existence.  The threads of this Christ-light are woven between man and man.  The choir of the Gods, the music of the Spheres is born again as the relationships of destiny are unraveled between soul and soul; as they become relationships of ordered beauty:  Wisdom re-born in the might of Love.

This thought runs like a Leitmotiv through the first Mystery Play: a Leitmotiv for which the key is given in the Mystery Sayings pronounced by Benedictus in the third and seventh scenes.  The theme is woven around the central figures of Johannes and Maria:  their mutual relationship.  When they have stood their trial and realized their mission, Benedictus in solemn words interprets to them what they have undergone by one another.

                    “Karma united you together to unfold the forces that must serve the Good.  And as ye wander on the path of souls, Wisdom herself will teach you that highest things can be achieved when souls who have given one-another Spirit-certainty unite in faithfulness unto the world’s salvation.”#

                “Souls who have given one-another Spirit-certainty” . . . this is the central message of the seventh scene. 

Johannes has been describing his experiences on the way of Initiation--the rich and manifold experiences that formed the content of the three preceding stages.  And yet, he adds, he could not tell if it was reality, or but a dream; if he was only spinning out the content of his own self, or if objective spiritual being touched his vision.  Then he beholds Maria herself in her eternal being, and his doubts are dispelled:--

                “Not until now, when before thee in spirit I may stand, is my light fulfilled.  In thee, even my sensely sight took hold of Reality so firmly that it is certainty for me here too, in Spirit-land: no magic figment stands before me.  It is the true Reality of Being wherein I met thee there; wherein I find thee here again.”#

From the world of Maya, the world of the senses, man carries with him into the spiritual world the only sure criterion of reality: it is the experience which he has gained in the growth of love towards other human beings.  The love between Johannes and Maria is no sentimental, merely personal afflatus.  It is mature; it has sustained them through life after life, through many doubts and troubles, in multiple and difficult relationships to other human beings of their circle.  Through trial and faithfulness in trial, their love has grown to be the touchstone that it is.  It is so for Maria too.  Her words re-echo and reinforce what Johannes has just spoken.  She reminds him how the climax of his solitude and pain was brought about by the conversations he heard (in the first scene of the Play) when at a critical moment of his inner life destiny gathered around him these many souls who were related to him in Karma and who expressed so many different shades of the archetypal being of mankind.  And she continues:--

                “Nearest of all thou standest to my soul, to whom thou hast been faithful in thy pain.  Therefore to me the lot is fallen to fulfil the consecration that has grant ed thee the light of Spirit.  The Brothers serving in the Temple have awakened thee to Spirit-vision.  Yet that the things thou seest are the truth, this thou canst only recognise if in the Spirit-land thou canst find again a being to whom thou wert united, already in the worlds of sense, in deepest being.  Therefore the brothers sent me here before thee. . . . “#

 And she goes on to describe her own experience as she preceded him.  She too could find herself with inner certainty in Spirit-land, by virtue of her union with him:--

                “Then, in the moment when I felt released from the body of the senses, I could turn to thee the vision of my spirit. Not only the figure of Johannes stood before me.  I saw thee as the woman who had followed me in olden time and linked her destiny with mine. So did the Truth of the Spirit come to me here through thee, who already in the world of sense art united to me in my deepest being. Thus I had conquered Spirit-certainty and was endowed to give it thee. . . .”

It is the answer of the cosmos to their own experiences when Benedictus speaks to Maria and Johannes the words of Wisdom, “that highest things can be achieved when souls who have given one-another Spirit-certainty unite in faithfulness unto the world’s salvation.”

*

In a strange way, the sayings of Lucifer and Ahriman in Johannes’ meditation at the beginning of the fourth scene are woven into the composition as regards this Leitmotiv of ‘Spirit-certainty’ of ‘Truth’ and ‘Being.’  Lucifer’s saying begins and ends with the refrain:

“O Mensch, erkenne dich,                                               “Oh man, know thyself,

 O Mensch, empfinde mich.”                                                Oh man, feel me.” #              

Ahriman’s likewise; only the dich and mich are reversed.  The cadences though  not the actual words of this refrain re-echo in the beginning of Maria’s speech to Johannes in Spirit-land, in the seventh scene:--

“Du hast empfunden mich,

Du hast erfuhlet dich. . . .”­             

Ahriman claims the light of the Earth for himself.  He speaks of the ’light condensed’--condensed into the beauty of the world of sense.  “I work this beauty in the light condensed”--”Ich wirke diese Schonheit in dichtem Licht.”   Dr. Steiner once referred to the use of the word dicht in this passage.  A poet in the German language is Dichter in this passage: one who consenses into this world the realities of Spirit and of Imagination.  Such is the poetry--i.e., the creation--of the Gods, whereby, out of the ’baseless fabrie’ of the weaving light,

“The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

  The solemn temples, the great globe itself”

and  all things of this world are formed, which in due time shall dissolve again

   “And like the insubstantial pageant faded,

   Leave not a rack behind. . . .”±      

Ahriman claims for his own this fair world of woven light condensed.  He would not have it fade again into the spirit.  He would make all things permanent.  This world, he declares, shall give man certainty.  Man shall suck strength of truth  from Ahriman’s firm fastness--from the solid ground of earthly matter.§   But in the further course Johannes sees this firm ground of Earth quiver and tremble in a cosmic tempest as a very outcome of the spirit-emptiness of man.  “Spirits must break whole worlds,” says the Spirit of the Elements to the two learned men, Capesius and Strader, “if your vain works of time shall not bring wastage and death to the eternities.” # 

                “Ye ween that ye are building proud temples to the truth; yet the result of your labours is to unchain Storm-titans  in the primal deep.”  Ahriman’s certainty is after all ephemeral.  He lives in hatred and in fear.  With jealous care he guards in man the very qualities--the blindness to the spirit-world, the satisfaction with the world of sense--which leave the spirit-beings of the Earth an-hungered.+   

The certainty which man believes himself to have when he feels “the firm ground beneath his feet”--the certainty he owes at first to Ahriman--this he must lose when the dread moment of the Threshold comes.  And yet--he must derive his certainty out of the world of sense.  Not in the way of Ahriman, but in the way of Christ.  Christ came into this world.  His Fulness came into the empty world of Maya.  His coming realized--so Rudolf Steiner never tried to repeat--the very sense, the very meaning of the Earth.  The Christ-light weaves salvation between soul and soul.  The human beings who experience His light, learning in stress and turmoil of this life to love one another truly--they achieve Spirit-certainty which will serve them not here alone but in the Spirit-world and for all future time.  Nay more, not only for Man but for the Universe itself this Spirit-certainty, achieved in love, is the firm ground for the future.

*        

If this be so, then we aver that the true values for the Universe are contained in the simple everyday relationships of men.  The heavenly city, the cosmos of the future, is prepared not only in the palaces, cathedrals, council-chambers, but in the crofter’s cottage, in the sailor’s cabin, in the workshop, in the mine, in farm and homestead.  “So much,” says Rudolf Steiner, “as comes into being of the force of love, so much is done creatively towards the future.”  It is the theme of the Shepherds and the Kings.  The coming of the Saviour was seen not only in the ’wise heads of Kings,’ but heralded to ’simple shepherds’ hearts.”

This theme of the Shepherds and the Kings also pervades the Rosicrucian Mystery.  The Kings--the representatives of ancient Wisdom--are there in the two Temple-scenes as the three:--Benedictus, Theodosius, Romanus, with the mysterious fourth, the ’mixed King,’ Retardus.  The Shepherd mood is brought into these scenes by Felix Balde and by ’the other Maria.’  These two play the cardinal part in the ’plot’--if for a moment we may call it so--of the first Mystery Play.  Balde appears in the Temple in the simple garb of his mountain home--just as he is in ordinary life.  In the dramatis personae at the beginning, he is revealed as ’a bearer of the Nature-spirit.’  He carries in his soul a light of Nature.  He is not learned, nor is he initiated; yet there is untold wisdom in his speaking.  Capesius, in his learned phrase, could make nothing of him.  “He speaks of beings of the Sun that dwell in stones; of demons of the Moon that mar their work.  He tells of the number-sense of plants.  Who listens to him, will not long make meaning of his words.”  But Benedictus answers, “One can also feel as though powers of Nature were seeking in these words to reveal their being’s truth.”  To Benedictus, every word of Felix Balde is of untold value.#· 

Balde appears in the spiritual scenes in his ordinary earthly garb, because in his earthly life a spiritual light shines through him; and, we may surely add, because of his simplicity.  ’The other Maria,’ as she appears in the Temple scene with which the Play begins, seems at first sight in complete contrast to this.  As a human character, in the long conversation scene with which the Play begins, she is a simple kindly lady, devoted to good works.  Her friend Maria tells how she had lived a normal, strenuous life as wife and mother, until her husband’s early death had left her broken down with grief and exhaustion; then, how renewed life and strength had come to her at last through spiritual science.  This life and strength gave her the power to heal and comfort others.  So she herself describes it:--

                “The magic warmth of the words to which I listen here pours out into my hands and is like balm when my hand touches those whom grief has stricken.  It changes on my lips into true words of comfort for hearts beset with pain.  I do not ask after their source; for I behold their truth when living life they lavish through me.”†  

Such is the ’other Maria’ in her outer life.  When she appears again ’in form of soul’ with Capesius and Strader and the Spirit of the Elements in the fourth scene, it is as a strange and eerie being, born out of the very rocks, a figure swathed in dark and silvery green.  Her voice bespeaks the quiet patience and solemnity of Mother Nature, the tolerant long-suffering of Earth; her words are woven-round with eerie, elemental music.  And it is thus that she appears in the Temple-scenes.  There is a riddle in these two appearances:  the ’other Maria’ as she is in ordinary life, and in these scenes in the soul-world, or in Johannes’ meditation.  What and who is ‘the other Maria’?  Why does the simple, very sociable and kindly lady of the opening scene appear in her soul’s aspect as a well-nigh elemental being, born of the rock, united with the ancient depths of Nature?  Moreover, there are strange plays upon words.  Why is she named ’the other Maria’?

In the fourth scene, Capesius and Strader are seeking to find their way again to the great Mother, Nature.  It is at this point that the other Maria appears to them out of the rock.  She chides them gently for their intellectual pride.  Capesius would fain enlist her help.  “Translate,” he begs, “into thy language our questing for the values true of Life, so that great Mother Nature may give answer.  For we ourselves are powerless to ask in words that she can hear.”  The other Maria thereupon describes herself as the ’lowlier sister’ of that great Being.  She, then, is Mother Nature’s handmaid.  When sparkling light reflects from rock and water, when the abundant life of colour weaves around, when happiness of creatures fills the air with notes of joy, then it is she who on this Earth’s horizon gladly reflects to human sense the being of the ancient Mother who prevails in the Earth-depths.‡

Yet the same word--that of the ’lowlier’ and the ’higher sister’--recurs in the eleventh scene, where the context makes it plain that Maria herself is referred to as the other Maria’s ’higher sister.’  We are reminded here that the name Maria, from its occurrence in the New Testament, is a Mystery Name.  St. John’s Gospel, as Dr. Steiner has pointed out, does not name the Mother of Jesus.  The ‘Virgin Sophia’ is the name that is not named, and in the other Gospels, in place of this name, the name Maria stands.  The word Maria, Dr. Steiner tells us, is akin to Maya.  Here then we have again the mystery of Wisdom--Sophia--who goes through the realm of Maya and the bitterness of Death, to rise again transformed in Love.  If we remember now what Dr. Steiner told in later lectures, of the Madonna-Imagination and the true Being that is called Natura,+we find that we are on the way to solve the riddle.  Maria herself can only be true to her Mystery-name--I.e., to her deepest being--insofar as she finds the true way from Wisdom into Love.  And, that she does so, is clear if we recall the specific nature of her ‘holy earnest vow’ which becomes the very corner stone throughout the latter portion of the Four Mystery Plays.  ‘The other Maria,’ even in her human character, possesses as an elemental gift that which Maria must achieve on the conscious path of Initiation.  Therefore she is ‘the other’; therefore Maria can be described as her ‘higher sister’ (scene eleven), while she herself appears to Johannes in the soul-world as the ‘lowlier sister’ of great Mother Nature.  Thus are the cosmic, archetypal themes and the human, individual characters woven together in the ‘Mystery.’  All life, and we but knew it, is a Mystery in this sense.  We are the mystery players on the stage of life; our archetypes will be revealed ‘in the course of action.’

  So is the archetype of ‘the other Maria’ revealed as ‘the soul of Love’; and in this way she stands beside the Brother Theodosius who represents ‘the spirit of Love,’ in the Temple scenes.  The other Maria and Felix Balde enter the Temple side by side, as sister and brother in their spiritual functions.  The whole course of the play is now made to depend upon them.  Retardus, whose name bespeaks his function (the ‘mixed King’ of Goethe’s Fairy Tale), will not allow the three brothers, Benedictus, Theodosius and Romanus, to proceed with Johannes’ initiation, and he gives this as his reason:--

                “The Earth herself has not yet made it known to us by any means that she desires new Initiates.  So long as the Beings, who though uninitiated can unbind the Spirit from realities of sense, have not set foot in our council chamber, so long it is for me to curb your zeal.  They first must bring the message that the Earth feels need of new Revelation.”*#

Felix Balde and the other Maria enter at this point.  They are ‘the beings who though uninitiated can unbind the Spirit from realities of sense.’  Moreover the composition of the play is such that while Theodosius and Romanus appear as brother kings with Benedictus:  Theodosius representing the spirit of Love, and Romanus that of Will in Action; so Felix Balde and the other Maria represent complementary aspects of one and the same spiritual mission.  Through them, the spirits of the Earth reveal their need.  Balde declares that the Spirit-powers in the depths of Earth are an-hungered.

                “The light that shines in human beings as the fruit of knowledge is destined nourishment for the powers who serve cosmic evolution in the dark depths of Earth.  Now for a long time past they have had to hunger, wellnigh unsustained.  The learning that springs nowadays in human brains may serve the surface of the Earth; into the depths it cannot penetrate. . . .”  And he continues: “So long as on the Earth only those human beings find a hearing who are unmindful of their spirit’s origin, so long will ancient powers starve in the deep ores of Earth.”

The other Maria addresses Felix Balde in the plainest words:--

                “I hear from thy words, brother Felix, that thou dost deem the time is past, when it was ours to serve this Earth-existence by calling into life, out of our own life’s depths, Spirituality and Love without initiation by the Wisdom-light.”  And she continues to explain their several natures: “In thee the Spirits of the Earth arose to give thee Light of knowledge without learning.  In me, Love could hold sway--Love that begets itself in human life.”  “Henceforth,” she adds, “in union with the Brothers who do service of Initiation in the Temple, we will work fruitfully in human souls.”

Retardus recognizes now that is is overcome.  His day is ended.  Deep secrets of life are contained in this dramatic moment, as between Retardus and the two simple beings who have come to aid the Brothers in the Temple.

                What is Retardus’ function?  We hear it in his own words in the fifth scene:--

                “I give to man out of myself that portion which makes the truths of sense appear to him as the highest, so long as Spirit-wisdom might daze his sight. . . .  Therefore may faith still lead him to the Spirit; and may the aims of his be guided still by cravings that grope blindly in the dark.”

We hear his dialogue with Capesius and Strader at the beginning of the eleventh scene.  He takes them to task for having failed him.  They were the kind of men on whom he relied, to keep mankind in the condition wherein ‘the truths of sense appear to them as the highest.’  What is it, in effect, that keeps men in this state?  We have but to consult our experience of life.  It is not the poverty of spirit.  If there were no spirituality in ordinary life and culture, men would feel starved in soul and spirit and would seek by every means to gain access to the spiritual world.  It is the spirituality of cultured life: philosophy and art, science and learning; it is the goodness of simple souls, spreading a bounty of life that comes from deeper sources; which to this day convince so many that they have no cause to seek for definite, explicit knowledge of the spiritual world--for an Initiate Science.  Capesius and Strader in their earlier phase (as it were, in their professional capacity) were good servants to Retardus, not for their lack but for their very richness in spirituality and genius.  Retardus himself claims to have thus endowed them.*

Thus in the middle period of human evolution, and above all in the fourth post-Atlantean age, when for a time the Mystery Wisdom was withdrawn from humanity on Earth, spirituality flowed into life through the native genius of great and courageous souls, and through the mother-wit and mother-love of human beings endowed in soul and spirit out of the deeper sources of great Mother Nature: the Felix Baldes, the ‘other Marias’ of this life.  But the day of Retardus is ended.  Even the learned men who took his part--Capesius and Strader--they now begin to follow, on the steep conscious path of Initiation, the very ones whom upon his behalf, as he declares, they were to have retarded.  And as the saviors there appear the shepherd souls--so we may surely call them--Balde, the simple man of the woods and hills, the man endowed with Nature’s wisdom; and ‘the other Maria,’ she with the soul of goodness, whose very words and touch convey a power of comfort.  They come, impelled by an inner voice wherein the Nature-Beings of the Earth are calling out their urgency; they come to join their forces to the Kings.  It is a mystic moment of the deepest import in the fulfilment of the Christ-impulse for the Earth.  A new day has dawned.

In the eleventh scene we hear more precisely what it is that the coming of Felix Balde and the other Maria can achieve for the fulfilment of Johannes’ and Maria’s initiation.  (We must conceive that this act represents far more than the Initiation of two individuals on their path of life; it means that the age of Initiation Science has begun once more, having been in abeyance since the decline of the ancient Mysteries.  It means that a new time is at hand, as expressed in Goethe’s Fairy Tale.  The Earth herself is clamoring for new Initiates.) --Theodosius says to the other Maria:

                “Thy destiny was intimately linked with thy higher sister’s life.”  (The higher sister, as we have seen, is Maria.)  “I could give her the Light of Love but not the Warmth of Love, so long as thou wouldst only let thy noble impulses arise to see them clearly in the full Light of Wisdom.  Into the essence of dark urge and feeling, even when it seeks the good, the influence of the Temple cannot reach.”

And in the further course Romanus says to Felix Balde:--

                “Long hast thou  held thyself aloof from the Temple.  Thou only wouldst admit illumination when Light in thine

                 own soul  revealed  itself.  Men of thy nature robbed me of the force to give my Light to souls on Earth. 

                 They only want to draw out of dark depths what they will bring to life.” 

And he continues:  “That thou hast found thy way into the Temple, will give me power to illumine Johannes’ and Maria’s will, till it no longer follows forces blind, but in the aims of worlds finds conscious guidance.”

The coming of the other Maria and Felix Balde into the Temple of Initiation has to do, therefore, with the uniting of Light and Love: it is to wed the good will of men, their ‘deeds of blessing’ with the ‘aims of worlds.’  The warmth of love and the light of love here come together.  A new Fulness can now be given to the content of Initiation.  The very substance of the Christ-Impulse--resurrected now out of the depths of Earth-Nature--shall fill the new initiate with elemental warmth.  The simple shepherd’s heart is united with the wise head of kinds.  The simple shepherd shall become a king in his own right; for the true kingship is initiation.  The kinds shall no longer be mere types of the Divine rays of power which from of old inform our human life; they shall be filled with the substance, with the inner warmth that springs from earthly life.  So we are led perhaps a little nearer to an understanding of the final words in the Mystery Saying of the seventh scene, which words shall be repeated in conclusion here:

                “And Spirit-messengers, they wed Men’s works of blessing with the aims of Worlds.  And when these twain can wed the            Man who finds himself in Man, then Light of Spirit rays through Warmth of Soul.”

From ANTHROPOSOPHY A Quarterly Review of Spiritual Science, No. 1. 1931 / Vol. 6. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Company,