The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy
GA 54
XIV. The Children of Lucifer
1 March 1905, Berlin
A week ago, I spoke before you about the idea of Lucifer. In connection with the last talk, I would like to explain something about the same idea and its significance for the human evolution and I may connect with an excellent piece of art, with The Children of Lucifer (1900) by Édouard Schuré (1841-1929, French writer, theosophist).
Someone who regards theosophy only as a sum of teachings and dogmas or the Theosophical Society only as a sect that deals with particular religious-philosophical or other ideas and aims at a corresponding lifestyle that is maybe somewhat surprised about the subject of this talk. However, who regards theosophy as something that one has to regard as deepening of our whole spiritual life, even more, as deepening of our whole culture, finds it comprehensible that theosophy is not only looked for within the narrow borders,, but in all regions, in all branches of life and, hence, also in art above all.
Many people have a point of view that leads them to believe that theosophy is something unworldly, even somewhat life-hostile. Those who believe in such a way have not yet adopted the real basis of the theosophical world movement.
Just a piece of art like Édouard Schure's The Children of Lucifer shows us that the living creating of the artist not only is not impaired by the theosophical deepening, but that the true theosophy and the true theosophical life is just able to inspire art in the most eminent sense and give it exceptionally strong impulses.
Indeed, I would like to link to this drama The Children of Lucifer. However, if we just embark on the mode of formation of this dramatic poetry in our time and on the peculiar structure of the spirit out of which this piece of art has arisen, we are able to look deeper at the theosophical life at the same time.
Schuré has probably drawn the best forces of his work just from the theosophical worldview, and he belongs certainly to the most exquisite authors in the theosophical field. Who wants to find access to the theosophical life from any other point of view than that of the known compendia and smaller manuals can do it with the help of Schuré's works. Already the characteristic how Schuré came to that which should inspire his mind to express artistically what we have in The Children of Lucifer is theosophically extremely interesting.
It is told to us in the fine monument he erected in honour of somebody who had influenced his soul life the conceivably deepest. An extremely interesting fact of the modern cultural life confronts us here. Édouard Schuré published a book and provided it with an introduction that comes from a personality who had deeply looked into the secrets of existence. It is a book in which one recognises the artist. In this book a spirit breathes, which differs from that which we can find, otherwise, in similar writings, a spirit that has immediately processed and taken up real theosophy in himself as life. Schuré calls this personality—Marguerita Albana Mignaty (1827-1887), who wrote about Corregio (Antonio Allegri da C., 1489-1534. Italian painter)—his leader during her life, he calls her the spirit of his soul after her death. One cannot express that more appropriately than he did if one looks into the psychology of Schuré's creating.
In the last third of the 19th century it was granted to some deeper inclined natures to look into true spiritual life once again, after one had understood the word spirit hardly as anything else than a sum of abstractions long time, after one did not connect, actually, anything real with the word spirit long time.
If—on one side—we delve into Schuré's creating and—on the other side—into the mind of that personality which he calls his leader, we are immediately recalled of that which was understood within the Greek mystery view in the aurora of our western cultural life by the concepts of god and of the divine life. The word theosophy originated later. The first to use it was the apostle Paul. However, it was a common property of all deeper recognising people. We need to get involved only in that which existed within the spiritualised Christianity as theosophy, as a divine concept, as a concept of the divine life, and you are able to grasp the fact of the spirit immediately in another way than it is possible with the modern concepts, as they are still quite usual. The Greek understood by god, by the divine being still nothing else than such a being that surmounts the human being, indeed, concerning his qualities, concerning his abilities, but that is similar to the human being. He calls the human being a becoming god, and he understands any god in such a way that he has once gone through the school of humanity. If the Greek looked up at his god, he said to himself, the gods once went through the sufferings and joys, the experience of life, which I have to go through now. They once went through this school of life, which I have finished now, and I soar those spheres of creating later, on which the gods are today.—The Greek calls his gods older brothers in the entire cosmic evolution, and regarded the human being himself as a draft that should become the same once as the gods are today.
This gives another relation to the divine than that which only looks up at something divine, only foresees something in the beyond. As well as here in the physical world for the Greek the external physical realms establish, the sensory physical realms, from the mineral, to the plant and animal realms up to the human realm, the hierarchy, the sequence of the gods outranked the human. He considered the realms beyond the human one as the world of the gods. He did not call that which the Greek should experience in those schools—which were cult sites at the same time, which one called mysteries—abstract, only scientific knowledge of some higher principles, of some forces of nature. The Greek did not understood it symbolically but as something real that the human being associated with the gods in the schools. The mystery pupil did not feel towards the gods, unlike the child feels if it looks up at the adult who has already reached what it itself reaches in a future life epoch. Something completely real was this experience to the Greeks. Hence, theosophy was for those, who coined the word first, not knowledge of the gods, but the knowledge that was obtained in this peculiar way by the contact with the higher spiritual beings. Anybody who was initiated into the mysteries not only obtained knowledge, but he was enabled to associate with the gods, with the spirits, as well as he associates here on our earth with human beings. One called natural knowledge that knowledge that the human being acquires with the senses.
However, one called that knowledge, which one received from the gods, divine knowledge: theosophy. I know very well that the most people of those who think from the modern point of view regard such a phrase, as I have just used it, as nothing but an only poetic picture, as a symbol or something extremely fantastic and superstitious. It is neither this nor that; it is something that the human being can really experience. The human being can bring himself to turn his look to the spiritual beings outranking him as he directs his look to the sensuous beings. These spiritual beings avoid the sensuous eye, like all senses, because they have accomplished the stages of spirituality and do no longer have any existence for the senses. The mysteries of the Greeks aim at this: a development of the human being to get contact with the higher beings.
In the last third of the 19th century, it was granted, as I said, again to some deeper natures to understand something of that which is meant, actually, with such a thing. Above all, a person was part of it like Marguerita Albana. However, I would like to say that such a personality was not initiated by means of that big spiritual art which somebody had to go through who wanted to maintain the contact with the gods within the Greek mysteries. Such a personality was an initiate by nature as there are poets by nature. However, I cannot get involved further in the fact that a soul, which is initiated by nature in the former stages of existence, is already over some experiences, so that that which it experiences now is only recollections of former stages of existence. However, the possibility to behold in the higher world, transforming particular lower forces of our existence, forms the basis of such a spiritual person like Marguerita Albana. What does that mean?
Any means of higher knowledge are transformations of subordinated forces. What still the undeveloped human being had in far-away prehistoric time as undeveloped vague senses can be transformed into the eye which opens the splendour of the sunlight to us. On the other hand, visualise once how imperfect the organ of the ear is on the lower developmental stages! All higher organs that open the marvellous nature round the human being are transformations, metamorphoses of lower forces. Human forces can also today be transformed into higher senses.
Thus, some human beings were equipped with higher senses just in the last third of the 19th century. That is why they could behold into the spiritual environment. What other human beings have only in abstractions or notions, the reality of the divine existence, was to them as certain as the sensuous things to the other human beings. Such personalities could give information of the higher worlds. Just such persons could inspire the receptive nature of Édouard Schuré to the nicest and biggest. Édouard Schuré combined soul, mind, and deep esoteric knowledge with a real Schillerean diction and strength of language in this drama, whose translation you can receive from Marie von Sivers here. The drama The Children of Lucifer is something that is created not only out of the spirit of the present, as it is embodied in few people now, but it is created almost out of the spirit of the next human future. In this work, those who have the disposition and talent may develop something according to the highest and most significant theosophical ideas. Édouard Schuré just realised what took place in the Greek mysteries and in those acts of consecration.
You all know that also within the German cultural life in the last third of the 19th century a breath was to be felt that originated from a kind of understanding of the Greek mysteries. Richard Wagner (1813-1883, German composer) and his circle was inspired by the spirit of the Greek mysteries in certain ways. We still have to speak something about this chapter in the next talks. You know also that one of those spirits who were close-knit with Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, philosopher), wrote his first work about the Greek tragedy and that he wanted to show how this Greek tragedy came into being from an ancient spiritual life. He did not go as far as Édouard Schuré, not into the mysteries, however, to the gates of the mysteries when he wrote the work The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1869).
Two words faced his mind: the Apollonian, on the one side, and the Dionysian, on the other side. What did Nietzsche mean with these words? He understood two spiritual currents by them.
The Dionysian, he says, is that which completely lives in that element of the human cultural life, which is at one with the cosmic spirit all around. The Dionysian is to Friedrich Nietzsche a rapture that the human being experiences if he completely penetrates his being with that core of the highest spiritual life, which flows through the whole universe. Nietzsche anticipated such a thing that the Pythagoreans called music of the spheres, something of that old choir of which also Goethe speaks while he lets his Faust begin with the words:
In ancient rivalry with fellow spheres
the sun still sings its glorious song,
and it completes with tread of thunder
the journey it has been assigned.
Nietzsche anticipated something of that mysterious hearing and listening to that which flows through the universe, which makes the planets dance around the sun, which animates the spheres. He anticipated that in this dance something divine enjoys life and that the human beings can penetrate themselves with the breath of the divine, and that the human being then feels at one with the whole universe. Then, Nietzsche thinks, the human being lives in a kind of rapture, then he experiences what flows through the whole universe, then an echo of that god whom the Greek calls Dionysus lives in him.
As to Nietzsche, this god is that who poured out into the material world round us who is buried in the material world and who celebrates his resurrection then in the human mind, in the human soul. So that the disciple of Dionysus accomplishes his songs, his inspirations under the influence of this god and allows to flow out what one calls the immediate Dionysian art arisen from the divine. Thus, the Dionysus dancer and Dionysus singer was the representative of the divine Dionysian principle in the world. Nietzsche regards this Dionysus drama as the original drama, the later drama originated only from the fact that an image was created, a quiet, dreamlike image of the original Dionysian rapture. The Dionysus disciple receives what arises before his senses, and he can mirror this in serene Apollonian kind. Thus, the Apollonian art is something that was created afterward as an image of the Dionysian art. It is the image, the notion of something that lived in old Greece. Nietzsche pointed already to the primeval times, in which the Dionysus disciples did not only speak of the god, but lived the divine in their movements, in their voices and works as the original artists. Any later art appeared to Nietzsche only as a late echo of this old art. Any science appeared to him only as a shadowy image of the forces represented once by the human beings.
In Richard Wagner's art, Nietzsche saw a renewal of that great art which connects the human beings again with the divine. Therefore, it was clear to Nietzsche that Richard Wagner could not bring human figures on the stage, but that he needed supernatural figures which did not show only what happens in this world, but also what works behind this world in spirit. As well as in the Dionysus drama the Greek artist was able to do it, Richard Wagner's figures, put down on the stage, had also to have outgrown the usual human in the sense of Nietzsche, so that they can embody something about which the human being can say, they are there to that which comes once. In his book Le drame musical. Richard Wagner, son Suvre et son idée (1875), Schuré also created out of this spirit which was round Wagner, and he represented the idea of the musical drama greatly; for Marguerita Albana had introduced him in the true spiritual world, in the spiritual reality. Inkling became reality to him, and with it, he could find the key to the inside of the Greek mysteries. Better than someone else, he was capable to illumine what took place within the holy mysteries of Greece. In his work Sanctuaires d'Orient (1898), he was able to rebuild the so-called Greek original drama with great ingenuity. What was now the Eleusinian original drama?
It is a reproduction of an experience which cannot be experienced at all within the sensuous world which can be experienced only if the human being himself develops to that level where higher senses awake in him where he realises that all physical principle, which he get to know, are real thoughts of the beings whom the Greeks called gods. As well as the human being creates with his thoughts today, and as he puts his thoughts into his works, his older brothers, the gods, put their thoughts into the world of existence.
Let us get into the mind of such a Greek mystery pupil who has been initiated. He said to himself if he could have spoken with our words: look at a piece of art, at a machine, what are they? They are works of human beings, formed according to human thoughts. If you stand before the piece of art, before the machine, you see also the artist, the mechanic through their work, and I understand the work if the principles are disclosed. What are these principles? They are what lived first in the head, in the spirit of a human being.
The thoughts of the mechanic, of the artist are crystallised as it were in the material tool, in the marble piece of art. As I look from the piece of art and from the machine at the artist and at the mechanic, the Greek artist looked from the earth at the higher beings. If he wanted to understand the principles that build up an animal, he said to himself, thoughts of beings of divine nature are therein. As well as the thought of the mechanic is in the machine, the thoughts of a creator, of a god are in the animal, in the crystal, in the starry heaven.—This god is to him a being to whom he feels related, who is on a level that the human being himself reaches once. The Greek regarded the god as a being, which has arisen from a human level, and the human being is a being that once attains a divine level. Thus, he associated with the gods in the mysteries. He associated with the gods like with older brothers, and the feeling, which expresses itself in it, is something quite natural. One has only to settle in such a kind of thinking. From such a kind of thinking, the mystery pupil looks up at those beings that are slumbering, as it were, or are embodied in their thought in the whole nature surrounding us.
The mystery pupils saw the slumbering divine thoughts in the whole nature. The being of the divinity poured out into it, and the human being is there only, so that in him these divine thoughts can recover their very own existence. All thoughts in the soul of the human being are the resurrection of the god in the world. Placed in the universe in such a way, the own human life appears as an after-image of the descent, the suffering and death of the godhead and the grave of the godhead in the matter. The human being is called to redeem the gods again from the matter. This is the way of Dionysus, the way that all gods have taken. Thus, the gods live in their thoughts.
Theosophy calls Dionysus the last-born of the gods. You know that in the legend he is a son of Zeus and a mortal mother, Semele. One says that his divine father snatched him from his mother when Zeus struck her with a streak of lightning. Then, however, the mother of the gods, Hera, became inflamed with jealousy against this child not stemming from her. She set the titans against the child who tore it and scattered the pieces all over the world. Pallas Athena saved its heart only and brought it to Zeus who formed Dionysus anew.
We realise that this god was there already before, and we realise that this divinity has a special relation to the world. What is it? It was shown in the mysteries as the creator of that in the human being, which humanity attained last. The human being appears partially as originating from the hands of the gods. In the first years of his life he also faces us in such a way, because he has not yet formed own existence. Bit by bit he matures and becomes independent. Then he works and forms on his own existence. More and more the strength awakes in him that makes him the creator of his innermost being, the creator of his soul strength and mental power. Now one says within the mystery schools that as it were the last step in the life that the human being receives from nature or from God is connected with the god Dionysus.
There we touch one of the deepest secrets of the Greek mysteries, namely the sexual maturity of the human being. The time, when he comes out of the undifferentiated sexual life to the differentiated one of man and woman, is still the last step which nature accomplishes with the human being leading him to this maturity, where in him the desire awakes for the other sex. What he then makes of this desire, how he refines it, how he penetrates it with soul, and what he makes of love in spiritual respect, this is the own work of the human being. The last step that the gods accomplish with the human being is that they develop him to the young man and woman during puberty. The force that expresses itself everywhere in nature, in any knowledge, in any sensuousness and in all mental forces on the different levels, the mystery pupil also recognises it now in the proclivity of one sex for the other.
How does the human being perceive any way, the Greek mystery pupil asked himself, how does any being perceive anyway? If we imagine an animal eating the plants instinctively, which are useful and necessary for its prosperity, it is a kind of perception. Nevertheless, it is a higher level of percipience if our eye turns to the light and soaks it up as it were. Sensuousness is percipience, vision is percipience, and it is percipience if one sex inclines towards the other. Then the transformation of the lower forces to higher and higher ones takes place. The last step which nature, or God, spoken in the freer sense, has undertaken with the human being can also be transformed. Sensuousness changes into love. It spiritualises itself; it ensouls itself. Dionysus was the god who represented this strength of sexual maturity to the Greek of the mystery. Dionysus did not only have this function with it, because the sexual maturity is still connected with something quite different. Dionysus is understood as the last-born of the gods only with it.
If we look at the human being as he faces us today, we have a being before us in which the more astute human being—and someone who embarks on the theosophical worldview is led to this deeper look bit by bit—sees something that has become man and woman gradually. You need only to read Plato and to take him seriously in order to understand the Greek kind of view and you find how he points to a time when there was not yet man and woman, while the human being was still man and woman at the same time. The biblical legend points also to such an undifferentiated human race, and the Fall of Man is nothing else than the symbolic representation of the sexual differentiation. If we understand that the human being, as he faces us, originated from a bisexual being, we say to ourselves, in the course of evolution, the human being acquired his one-sided sexuality. He developed from the double sexuality to uni-sexuality. He lost half of his productive power. This half has awoken on the other side as the strength of our soul, as the strength of our mind. So that the human being became unisexual—a deeper look into nature shows this—, the human being became productive spiritual-mentally because he has given away half of his physical productive power.
Thereby the human being became capable of self-consciousness and could say to himself “I”, he is an independent being that—if we may express ourselves figuratively—was dismissed from the hands of the gods and became his own creator. Thus, it is connected in the development that the human being feels that strength which forms, indeed, the basis of his egoism that makes him, however, a free, self-conscious being. Hence, on every stage the emancipation of the human being recurs where sexuality finds its further development in any way.
The god Dionysus is the last-born of the gods. That means that the Greeks imagined that he developed the human being up to his present independence. Zeus, Cronus, the older gods, created the human being up to the point when he was a double-sexual being that lived in a vague consciousness, when he was not able to say “I” to himself, when he was without self-consciousness and without freedom. The creator of independence is Dionysus. With it, the divine principle poured out uniformly into the whole nature up to the point when the human being became independent. Then the human being faces us in countless individuals.
Let me illustrate this. If we put back ourselves in the time when the human being was not yet independent when he was still a double-sexual being with dim consciousness. There one could say, as well as my hand is a limb of my own organism, the human being was a limb of the whole divinity in those days. His consciousness still rested in the bosom of the divine consciousness. One could still see through the human being to the divine soul. Now, after the human being became independent, was separated from the divine consciousness, this soul is divided in as many individuals as there are human beings. This was greatly symbolised in the divided god Dionysus, who was dismembered by the Titans. Pallas Athena was the symbol of the human wisdom. We felt her with our hearts, with our higher minds as the common consciousness of the whole humanity. While we feel at one again, a mind of the same kind develops in the whole humanity, the heart of the god Dionysus is saved and again carried upwards to the dwelling of the gods. Thus, the Greek imagined that the god Dionysus led the human beings up to the separation of the sexes and, finally, to sexual maturity. One regarded the proclivity of one sex to the other as one of many forces, which come from the god Dionysus. Then two spiritual currents work on the human being, who stands in the world as a creature of the god Dionysus. These spiritual currents are the starting point of our own culture.
One current is that where the spirit works in the external, serene form and in wisdom to develop the beauty of the external form and the order in the sensuous urge. It should not work fiercely and irregularly, by which Dionysus brought the human being up to the present level, but it should comply in harmony and order. One sees this principle of the external formal creation of Dionysus best of all in the Greek and Roman art, in the Greek beauty and in the Roman statecraft. They introduced order and beauty in the social life of the human beings created by Dionysus as independent beings. The soul which animates and ensouls this urge was refined and deified by Christianity; everything that regulates the human community in such a way that not blind urge, but spiritualised, deified urge prevails is caused by the understood Christianity. Spirit and love are two currents in the human development.
The present development and that of the last millennia face the poet of The Children of Lucifer. He considers what Greek spirit and Roman statecraft created as a living and uplifting principle of the Dionysian human being and on the other side the deepening of the principle of love by Christianity. Now we also understand how Édouard Schuré got around to processing these ideas in a piece of art that he called The Children of Lucifer.
In Dionysia, a city of Asia Minor, the following happened. This city had a cult that was dedicated to the god Dionysus. These Dionysian mysteries were celebrated in Dionysia and had there a mystery site. Then this Dionysian current was intermingled with the second current. It was in the fourth century of the Christian calendar. It was the Roman world domination and made those who were worshippers of Dionysus, who knew that a spark of a divine soul lives in them, members of the Roman statecraft. Now the Greek spirit and the Roman statecraft conflicted with each other. The original spirit must revolt. Why must it revolt? It must revolt because the external form wants to integrate the independent. This can easily become an external order. That which should make order, harmony, and unity easily becomes that which suppresses and subjugates the human freedom and independence. This also applies to the Roman spirit—which was born out of the Dionysian spirit—in the fourth century. These two currents of the human spirit face us in Dionysia: on one side the spirit, on the other side the stiffened state formalism. These are two currents that extend via the Dionysian mysteries to Christianity, which should spiritualise the drive of the human being to the other human being, which should refine the actions of Dionysus and put them in a higher light purifying the mere desire.
However, it degenerated in that time, in the fourth century, to an external formalism that subjugated and suppressed what it should refine. Thus, we look at the subjugating Caesar on the one side and on the other side at the subjugating Christian priest who does not get love out to refine it, but to deaden it. We see how in Édouard Schuré's drama two persons as representatives of the Greco-Roman spirit meet, on one side a young man, who is called Theokles first and then Phosphorus, and on the other side a virgin who was consecrated to the service of Christianity as chaste sacrificial virgin. We see Phosphorus revolting who wants to originate the Dionysian human being in the highest refinement against the solidifying, the Caesar principle, and on the other side the Christian virgin who is not so spiritualised that she is world-enraptured but so spiritualised that she herself is called to work and create in this immediate world. These two persons deepen each other. How nicely, greatly and tremendously the development of these persons is shown. Phosphorus sees the Caesar principle subjugating his hometown on the one side, the Christian principle subjugating it on the other side. On one side, he sees the divine Caesar, on the other side the merely good, world-enraptured shepherd and those who should adore him. He is led to an old person, whom one calls the old man of the unknown god in Greek.
It is a big transformation that our Phosphorus experiences. In a distant canyon, he looks for a landmark, and he encounters one of the temples, which were considered as initiation temples. He meets an old priest there, one of the sages of the unknown god. Which god? That god whom one does not confess whom one does not revere in this or that figure. That god who does not answer if one asks him because everybody must answer to himself what is not to be put into words what lives, however, as a spark in every human being. As true as it is that the human being becomes aware of the divine spark, he can also realise that he is on the way to the big god all his life through. This god forms the basis of that which lives in the stars which is in the human breast, and what still forms the basis of everything that the human being performs on his higher level. For he is not a god of the past, but a god of the future, not a god of the thought of the past or the present, but a god of the thoughts, which the human being once is able to think as the highest on the current developmental level.
That is why he is called the unknown god because the human being cannot serve a god who gives him a completed existence, but because he wants to serve a god who can stand there in perfect figure only in the future. Therefore, the free human being adheres to the divine spark in his breast; therefore, he adheres to that which exists as the dismembered Dionysus at first in the world outdoors. Then he cannot find strength from anything else than from this separated divine spark, the strength of the upward development, then, however, he also knows that this upward development is connected with the passage through knowledge and suffering, with the passage through the bad because the human being is detached, according to his inner spirituality, from the divine. Hence, free forces must emerge in him to lead back this spark to divinity. If we had remained in the bosom of the gods without splitting in the sense of the Dionysus legend, the divinity itself would lead us to godliness. Thus, we appear like apostatised sons of god. This strength in us, which should lead us as sons of Dionysus to this godliness, is Lucifer's strength, the luciferic principle, that light, which the human being freely kindles in himself, in order to find the whole god as a part of the divine being once.
The strength that works in him is the light. Lucifer, the bearer of light, is the teacher and leader who bears the light in the human being and in the whole humanity. All those who develop such an attitude like Phosphorus are the children of Lucifer. Thus, they are not anti-Christian. They are so minded that they say: in Christ, the god appeared who became a human being who descended and enjoyed life in the human body. However, the human being has to develop so that he unfolds the god in himself in such a way that the deified human being meets the incarnate god that the human being who ascends from below finds a similar being. As Christ is now that who descended the deepest from above as the revealing god, Lucifer is the god whom the deified human being meets. Christ and Lucifer belong together, understood in the right sense. Thus, we find Phosphorus, while any Caesarism cannot keep him by any suppression of the free Dionysian principle in the world from rushing to the temple of the unknown god to receive the light that carries him upwards to become a son of Lucifer that way.
As well as Phosphorus pursues this way and raises his mind up to that view which recognises Lucifer as the developmental principle, Kleonis develops from a Christian virgin to a universal principle. She should solely direct her love to the incarnate god. She develops to such a degree that she anticipates that love can be refined in the human being in such a way that the divine love of the incarnate god combines with the human love in the human nature itself. Thus, the Christian virgin soars the point where she can meet the unknown god. Christ has come to life in the Christian virgin because she joins not only in the view and in admiration with the divine, but achieves that she rises to the Christian love. Phosphorus has ascended to the point where the spirit shines to him in the light. With it, the mind of the man and the soul of the woman are on the same level. They now work together on the same level, namely in such a way that always instead of Dionysus the free human couple stands at first which embodies the inkling of a future which should still arise once. Christianity and Caesarism developed to that which unfolded in Dionysia: it subjugated and enslaved the human beings. However, they both stand there upright and freely.
They are expelled. They cannot save the old Dionysia. The old Dionysus, who perishes in Romanism and in the external Christian formalism at first, cannot host both who have got free; they are expelled. While they show the life of the future in the present, they must live in the present. They find the way to the unknown temple again. Where Phosphorus was consecrated, where the star of Lucifer appeared to him, the clear star of Lucifer appears to them in the hour of death, both ways uniting. Lucifer leads the human beings in freedom to the highest development, and we attain the cross of Christ, the symbol of redemption, if the incarnate god touches the deified human being.
Thus, both who got free have to save at death what they have achieved. They cannot save Dionysia. That is the course of human development. This was something that one already experienced in the Greek mysteries in a higher life: that life forever overcomes death, that death is only something apparent with the single human being and something apparent in the entire human culture. Thus, we anticipate at the end of Schuré's drama that that which they both gained in themselves has an everlasting significance beyond the grave. The whole drama ends magnificently, in the sure certainty that the spirit must overcome matter.
As well as death is the winner over life here, one can represent it only if one knows anything about the true and real life of the spirit and knows that death is only something apparent. Someone who does not know that everything dead is something apparent must say to himself, if death were anything real to the noble pair that gained freedom because it was expelled and driven out by the enslaved Dionysia that would perish which they both have taken along. For all those who remained in Dionysia are slaves of a dying human epoch. Apparently, nothing is left. If this semblance were reality, we could no longer believe anyhow in the fact that it has a significance if anybody has purchased a higher life with death. For then this drama would close with nothing. Solely the belief and knowledge that the spirit is real carries this drama, and that from the death of the freed couple a real spiritual blossom sprouts which later works and lives in humanity which has remained, which is planted in the whole spiritual human development. From the death of Kleonis and Phosphorus, a spiritual human flower grows which is there then.
That which the human being experiences by the light and what he recognises lives on. Schuré owes this certainty to the fact that the former Greek world had arisen in him due to Marguerita Albana. He owes to Christianity that he was not only an external artist, but also that he can have a deep look into the spiritual development of humanity. He has shown this sight in his book The Great Initiates. There he has spread out the historical tableau of humanity from Rama (seventh incarnation of Vishnu), Krishna, Hermes, Plato and other initiates up to Christ Jesus. He has shown this human tableau, this spiritual development.
With it, he has delivered a historical consideration which is theosophical in the most eminent sense and which has led countless people in Europe to the theosophical worldview. Out of the spirit of his consideration he created The Children of Lucifer, this little marvellous dramatic work in which in every line and in every scene theosophical spirit lives. Thus, the theosophical worldview becomes life; art becomes the expression of the theosophical spirit if the truth of the spirit is mirrored to us as beauty.
The human beings can create three things at first, Édouard Schuré says. At first, we are concerned with ontology. It leads us to the big principles of the world, but now we look at them—if we are deepened theosophically—not as anything dead, but as abstract divine thoughts. Then we are concerned with mysticism that leads us to the gods and higher beings whom we recognise as our older brothers. Then we are concerned with symbolism that shows us the god in the external sensuous picture and as a shadowy reflection in art. Thus, Édouard Schuré is a real theosophist and a real artist and shows more than all theosophical dogmatics what a theosophical world task consists in.
It is typical that under the title Lucifer the first theosophical journal appeared which we have renewed in our German magazine Lucifer-Gnosis where the whole way of thinking, the future task of the theosophical worldview has been expressed clearly, as it lives artistically in the drama with the title The Children of Lucifer. Only those who regard art as something external misjudge that in this piece of art something lives in the highest degree that has not missed the creative power because of its deepness. If this drama satisfies the artist completely, something of that impetus flows from this drama to the unknown god who works in us all and whose name theosophy just bears. Thus, this drama is the expression of that theosophical attitude which takes the true deepening and the human freedom seriously.
No one can be free in the highest sense of the word who does not find the divine in himself, who is not an associate, not a brother of the divine being. If the human being becomes this, he himself becomes a part of that force which is a bearer of the light that is Lucifer. Then he becomes a child of Lucifer. Those who understand something of the mysterious force working in the universe that one cannot see only with the eyes and perceived with instruments, of the forces that flow through the moral and religious life and work in our whole universe. Those who know a little bit about it speak of the forces that one calls the astral light.
The experts describe it in such a way that it flows through the space like other forces, like gravity, and works on the beings. The astral light flows through all beings; it lives in the higher animals and in the human being generally. If the human being does something and says, I act, or I am driven instinctively—it is in truth the astral light which works and lives in him. He can dedicate himself to this astral light, unconsciously, with dim consciousness. This always happens if passions and instincts press the human being. However, this does not happen if he becomes the bearer of own light if he connects himself with the force of Lucifer. Then he changes this astral light, this creative force in the world into a conscious, creative force in himself. Then he becomes a citizen in the higher spiritual worlds. If he leaves himself to the astral light with dim consciousness, he can say, indeed, the gods live, and they flow through me, but I am destined to emerge from unconsciousness, to let the light appear as something free, to illumine my actions independently with divine forces.
Everything that originates from the twilight of the consciousness, what the bearer of the light does not cause hampers our development. What leads to the aim and to the true human ideal is that which comes from the light, from the real knowledge. Therefore, the human being is only allowed to throw himself really into the stream of life if he has grasped the god in himself if the god is his leader. Theosophical attitude means waking the divine consciousness in oneself and becoming mortal with the aid of the forces which are in the own breast. Marguerita Albana whom Édouard Schuré calls his leader expresses that in a short saying which could be regarded as a motto of the theosophical attitude and which should also close our considerations today:
Trust in the god in your breast, and then leave everything that
is in you to the stream of life
(Crois au
Divin qui est en toi, et puis prête l'oreille au fleuve de
la vie).