In the Mystery Dramas, we can find a rich source of practical, genuine spiritual knowledge that is not portrayed as such anywhere else in Rudolf Steiner’s lectures or publishing activity. Although described differently in many lectures, for all the themes I chose for this article, the final piece of the puzzle is set in one’s mind only with the help of the Mystery Plays. I will share with you some of the most important things I have learnt from them so far that help me ‘digest’ my spiritual experiences and also cope with everyday life.
Imaginative Clothing and Imaginative Language
‘Benedictus:
Thou know’st those pictures have no real being;
Their content only strives to make its way
Into the soul and takes pictorial form.’
(The Soul’s Awakening, Scene 11)
When we have authentic spiritual experiences, we are completely outside the physical body. That means the physical senses fall asleep and the world around us clouds itself, opening a new, objective world. This can happen in meditation, when we elevate, and the head chakra opens, revealing a new world previously inaccessible. This first world we encounter is referred to in Anthroposophy as the imaginative world, the elementary world or the lower astral. In Theosophy, it is called the Soul World. Elevating oneself directly from a meditative state, however, requires considerable practice, determination, and dedication, often spanning years or even multiple lives. It requires at most a practical and moral discipline, because what is immoral in oneself veils itself in gravitational forces that pull one back from entering this world. We know, from Rudolf Steiner, that this requires that the disciple loosens, through exercise, their etheric body and becomes more and more ‘split’: the physical body and a part of the etheric body remaining in the meditative room, and the astral body with the I and a part of the etheric body continuing the journey in the Spiritual. At first, the I-consciousness is in the etheric body. So, the first condition for the beginning of a genuine spiritual experience is to make oneself able to leave one’s body and the bodily senses behind. In the Mystery Dramas, this is the point where Johannes Thomasius’s journey begins, with imaginations in the elementary or imaginative world.
When we are in the imaginative world, whether we rise directly from meditation, as described above, or wake up fully conscious in a dream-state while we are still sleeping, we are first surrounded by our own beings —the elementary beings of our own soul. We know from Rudolf Steiner that what is kept inside us on Earth — our thoughts, feelings, passions, desires, etc. — in the imaginative world we find around us, creating our environment. In the spiritual world, even starting with the imaginative one, every process and being is of a thought-substance, including ourselves; therefore, everything takes an imaginative clothing. And here is when, in fact, the confusion starts. For instance, we can see in the imaginative world (or in our dreams, because dreams are made of the same thought-substance) specific people from our biography; however, this doesn’t necessarily mean we are meeting them there. The imaginative communication at this stage is unlikely to be about them. It might be, and it’s often the case that the living reality beyond the imaginative clothing is entirely ours.
Allow me to give you an example: If, in a dream-like state, I see my good friend, Helena, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the spiritual communication is about Helena. I can observe that, if I am diligent, my Luciferic double, for instance, also has some characteristics similar to my friend’s personality. So, what is presented in the elementary world under the image of my good friend Helena is, in fact, my Luciferic double. It is like that because parts of our soul have characteristics similar to specific people we know in real life, and there are karmic reasons behind this mystery, reasons best portrayed in Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas.
But it can also be that I meet, in fact, the real Helena. So, which Helena is it that I meet here? Is it my Luciferic double or my good friend from real life? The answer that Rudolf Steiner gives is that at this point of Initiation, one cannot know for sure. One must raise oneself to a higher state of Inspiration to objectify their perceptions. He also mentions in the various commentaries he offered about the plays that in the first two Mystery Dramas, everything that Johannes Thomasius lives is filled with (imaginative) illusions. He gives the temple in Scene 5 of The Portal of Initiation as an example of complete imaginative illusion; the temple doesn’t exist there at all. It is often like that, and it is important for the candidate to Initiation to encounter illusion and overcome it. We can observe that Johannes Thomasius, at the beginning of the journey, perceived parts of his own soul as figures of real-life friends. This is also a significant achievement, the capacity to dwell into another person’s soul. But it is not the only thing he perceived; he also encountered Capesius and Strader spiritually, clothed imaginatively as themselves but in a different form than they were on Earth. He saw Capesius younger than he was and Strader older. These, however, as Rudolf Steiner tells us in his commentaries, were the real souls of Capesius and Strader.
The most important thing we need to know about the imaginative world is that everything reveals itself not merely as one image or a symbol, but as an imaginative language. There are higher beings that cloak themselves completely from us; they hide their own beings, and what is received from them is only the communication. Take, for example, the audio calls in the physical: you don’t see the person who speaks, but you recognise them through specific characteristics, like the tone of their voice. The same in the imaginative world, a being can be identified only in the course of the imaginative communication by certain unique characteristics that are revealed in the interaction, but that doesn’t mean that one should mistake the communication with the being of the communicator.
I have always said in posts, articles and presentations that the most common mistake is made regarding the Guardian of the Threshold. Rudolf Steiner tells us that the Guardian of the Threshold hides himself completely, especially at the beginning of the Initiation, allowing only his communication to be revealed. For the Guardian to communicate with us, he must present everything as an imaginative transformation of his own being. Therefore, what we see imaginatively in the Guardian is the corpus of his communication. He talks in imaginations, and we perceive them as if they are his own being. These imaginations change, sometimes in the same experience, depending on the content of the communication. So, what we perceive as the magnified being of ourselves, or our Double, other times an Angel or an Archangel, Michael or Christ, or frowning people from our biography, even Lucifer and Ahriman at times, can, in fact, be the Guardian. The Guardian, the Archangel of the Gate who hid the spiritual world from us after the Original Sin and concealed his being with it, never reveals himself imaginatively but only communicates symbolically. His communication is not about him, but about us. If he wants to show us our double, he will portray the double before us; if he wants to speak about Christ, this is what we will see; if he speaks of Michael, we will see Michael. We learn to read about ourselves in the transformation of his own being, and we also learn about him in the thoughts, feelings and deeds he impels in us. Think of it like this: If I want to communicate to you in images but hide myself entirely in the communication, the only way is the imaginative transformation of my own being. We must overcome the materialistic mindset and never mistake his being with what he is communicating. The same precaution must be taken about everything we encounter imaginatively.
In the Mystery Dramas, we observe that the Guardian borrows Maria’s form as imaginative clothing twice. In Scene 2 of The Soul’s Awakening, Johannes finds himself longing for the passionate love he had with Maria before their Initiation. Here, the Guardian takes the guise of Maria, severely frowning at him as a spiritual reproach as soon as he allows himself to be carried away by nostalgia for a lost passion, thus letting Lucifer slide in. Johannes knows by now that this figure appearing before him as Maria is not Maria, but the Guardian. The Guardian must oppose Lucifer’s attempt in Johannes’ soul to win him back, as this would be a tremendous setback, considering that not long before Johannes had escaped from the prison Lucifer had held him in for at least five incarnations (including the current one).
‘(Maria appears as a thought of Johannes.)
Maria here before me! but how strange!
She must not thus reveal herself to me!
This stern cold spirit-face, this dignity
That chills my earthly feelings—
’tis not thus Johannes will or can Maria see
Draw nigh to him. ‘Tis not Maria—this—
Whom by kind fate’s decree wise powers have sent.
(Maria disappears from Johannes’ vision.)’
(The Soul’s Awakening, Scene 2)
The same thing happens later to Strader. Since he is not so advanced as to understand the imaginative language, Benedictus, the Initiate, must teach Strader how to interpret the imaginations:
‘Strader:
Thou didst speak gravely, and Maria spoke
Right harshly to me also, when ye two
Showed yourselves to me at my life’s abyss.
Benedictus:
Thou know’st those pictures have no real being;
Their content only strives to make its way
Into the soul and takes pictorial form.
Strader:
Yet it was hard to hear these pictures say:
‘Where is thy light? Thou rayest darkness out,
’Midst light thou dost create the baffling gloom.’
So spake the spirit through Maria’s form.
Benedictus:
Because in thine ascent thou hadst attained
To higher levels on the spirit-path,
The spirit, which had led thee to itself,
Used darkness as a symbol to depict
The state of knowledge which was thine before.
This spirit chose to use Maria’s form
Because thy soul itself so fashioned it.
The spirit, my dear Strader, at this hour
Works mightily within thee and will lead
Thee with swift flight to lofty grades of soul.’
(The Soul’s Awakening, Scene 11)
Lucifer’s Prisons and Ahriman’s Spells
‘Capesius and father Felix both
Conceal dark meanings in transparent words…’
(The Soul’s Awakening, Scene 3)
One of the most incredible teachings of the plays is the restless fight Lucifer and Ahriman wage over the human soul. We find out that during the night, in the depths of our unconsciousness, while we abandon ourselves to the hierarchies (so we think), Lucifer and Ahriman plot our imprisonment in their realms. They work directly through us, if our souls are unprepared and have no means to oppose, or through others close to us. Our dear ones are often tools for their daily deceit, sometimes even clairvoyant friends who teach us or others Anthroposophy, people who we believe at least in the beginning of our esoteric road to be above us, our teachers or spiritual older brothers, they too don’t even know that during sleep are set up by Lucifer or Ahriman to oppose the real spiritual work that would harm these cosmic beings. So, people —even those who appear to have the most potent spiritual allure, followers, books, spiritual initiatives and schools of Initiation —continue, unconsciously and without a clue, the plan of Lucifer and Ahriman in their daily lives. Not everything that appears highly spiritual in real life is equally so in the spiritual world.
What do these cosmic fallen beings want with people, anyway? Lucifer wants to create a planetary body composed entirely of fantasy imaginations. He wants a humanity that will live completely in a fantasy life on a fantasy planet. We already know from Rudolf Steiner that this is occultly called the Eighth Sphere, a cosmic body created by Lucifer and Ahriman out of the Old Moon’s substantiality they wrested away before Pralaya, and melded with the imaginative substance of the new mineral sphere. The Eight Sphere is thus a planet of densified imaginations, of nothing else than spectres and ghosts. Lucifer seduces and imprisons souls in his realm. The souls he sometimes seduces are, nevertheless, advanced from the clairvoyant point of view, but they have fallen in their Initiation process because they misused cosmic love (or occult knowledge, which is spiritually the same) and perverted it into passions or earthly indulgences in this incarnation or a previous one. These souls that are held by Lucifer by the collars of their passions and desires, no matter how spiritual or clairvoyant they appear in an incarnation, how many followers they have, etc., are still tributary to Lucifer until they manage to transform the egotistic love or passion into altruistic love and pure knowledge. This means that as long as they cannot redeem the burning passions, Lucifer will always have something on them.
Ahriman and his hordes want to conquer the physical world and fill it with regiments of humans without souls — egoless humans, ‘locusts’ (as they are called in the Apocalypse), pure automatons, empty physical and etheric bodies to be incorporated by his troops. Ahriman wants to densify the Earth until it becomes a mechanistic robotic hierarchical society, where human bodies will be bred to host his demons (see, for instance, The Matrix as the utmost Ahrimanic imagination; while you are there, in the famous imaginations of the 90s, you can also check in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the episodes where they present the Borg). Ahriman does not need human souls per se, but only their life forces, because his intelligent creations of death need to consume life.
Almost everyone in the plays falls into Lucifer or Ahriman’s traps, depending on their level of Initiation and their entire evolution, which extends over the incarnations and the periods in the Spiritual between death and birth. The problem here is that, when it comes to Lucifer and Ahriman, human beings are always at a disadvantage because Lucifer and Ahriman can see one’s soul in all their incarnations and the projected future as karmic consequence, whereas for human beings on the path of Initiation, this information only unveils slowly before one’s spiritual eyes. They have too much intel about us, long before we gain it for ourselves. They deceive, they lie, and they are allowed to use their macrocosmic powers to trap microcosmic humans in their realms. But there will always be there for us spiritual beings that guide our souls, Initiates, teachers of humanity, that we meet spiritually when the time is right and also, as the plays very well portray, friends more advanced on this road, karmically linked to us or appointed to us by the spiritual powers, which will help in times of need.
The most impressive thing in the plays must be Lucifer’s fight for Johannes’ soul and Ahriman’s for Strader’s, both of which lead to karmic derails and sudden deaths.
Lucifer’s Prisons
The karmic consequence of sexual desire at Initiation: Johannes gives love a bad name
To understand fully how far Lucifer goes with his plans, we must start with Johannes’ spiritual history as presented in the plays. Although Johannes Thomasius appears to be the first in the karmic group to wake up spiritually, and thus one would expect him to be the most advanced, he is actually the youngest soul from the cosmic point of view among the members of the karmic group and the only one who, in his earlier incarnations, did not receive Initiation. The other members of the group are old souls who received Initiation in times before the Mystery of Golgotha, except for Maria, whose failed initiation in Ancient Egypt needed to be repeated around the Mystery of Golgotha in the Hibernian Mysteries. Not only is Thomasius the least advanced in the group when analysed from a broader perspective, but on his path of Initiation, he encounters karmic debris in the Spiritual world that confuses him profoundly and prompts Benedictus, Maria, Theodora, and the Guardian to fight for his soul. These pieces of karmic debris, these unjustified copies of life, are not common aspects of the modern Initiation, Rudolf Steiner teaches us; they are very specific and unique because their existence in the spiritual world is unjustified. It would be wrong to think that everyone meets on the path of Initiation the same debris, derails, hindrances and Luciferic confusion that Johannes Thomasius meets. In other words, we see that Johannes Thomasius has unresolved karmic problems that are not merely abstract notions but realities that invade and suffocate the spiritual world, deeply affecting his and others’ lives.
The way Lucifer and Ahriman take hold of one’s soul depends on one’s predisposition and the vulnerabilities towards them that one carries from previous incarnations, which remain unresolved at the moment of their temptation. Lucifer takes hold of Thomasius through a defective quality of his love. We see in him a burning passion that has accompanied him since his incarnation in Ancient Egypt (around 2000 BC). He was then embodied as a female and fell in love with a neophyte-to-be (Maria, in the current incarnation). The Egyptian woman was not ready to give up the love she nurtured for the neophyte and decided to be around the Temple at the moment of the Initiation. Her burning thoughts towards the neophyte proved themselves poisonous in conjunction with the grave omission of the hierophant (Capesius). Here is what happened (I must warn the reader that this is not immediately obvious from the plays; one needs to represent things imaginatively and also link more scenes together): At the moment of the split of personality that occurred in the process of Initiation, the hierophant (Capesius) refused to think the thoughts that would guide the neophyte (Maria) in the Spiritual. He did it because he realised that the I will separate from the group-I in the near future and the old mysteries will soon decay. However, the split of personality during an Initiation is not exactly the moment the hierophant is allowed to change his mind about the Initiation, no matter how justified, and we see in the dramas that Capesius (back then the hierophant) encounters the consequences of that decision three incarnations later, when he becomes senile at the end of his life. Little did he know that there was, however, someone around the Temple who was firmly guiding thoughts toward the neophyte in the moment of Initiation. It was the lover the neophyte left, the Egyptian woman – Johannes in current incarnation. These thoughts took the place of the thoughts the hierophant refused to think. Therefore, a conjunction of dire circumstances, confusion, and egotistic decisions led to an unclean, passionate love being raised in the Spiritual through a ritual of Initiation. The karmic consequences of what happened in the Ancient Temple remain, especially for Johannes, Maria and Capesius. A part of it, the passion of the Egyptian woman – Johannes, takes the form of his Double, and the most problematic part of it, the passionate imaginations raised across the Threshold by the power of the old ritual, creates a shadowy ghost in the Spiritual, which Rudolf Steiner names ‘The Spirit of Johannes Thomasius’ Youth’.
Johannes Thomasius carried this burning passion into subsequent incarnations, which, in his case, are no fewer than five, presented in the dramas. His karma is linked to Maria’s, and although she is the one who was initiated first in their series of incarnations together (in a life that came immediately after Egypt, in Hibernian Mysteries), their evolution depends on each other because their connection is reciprocal.
‘Benedictus
[…] For Fate itself hath so united you,
That ye together may unfold the powers
Which needs must serve divine creative work.
And as ye journey on the path of souls
Wisdom will teach you that the loftiest tasks
May be achieved for the weal of men
When souls that gave each other spirit certainty
Unite in faith to do salvation’s work.
My spirit-guidance hath united you
To realise each other: now do ye
Unite yourselves to do the spirit’s work. […]’
(The Portal of Initiation, Scene 7)
Johannes is an artist, and the culture of 19th-century Vienna graciously covers up passionate, egotistic love, melding it with the culture. (The 21st-century Hollywood does the same; they taught us to be happy at the end, when the actors kiss.) To the exterior, he appears an elevated young spiritual man filled with ideals. He discovers Spiritual Science through Maria, his karmic love, and with whom he falls in love again when they meet in this life, abandoning the relationship he had at the time. The woman whom she abandoned for Maria couldn’t handle the breakup, and later she died. Officially, this is the first victim made by Lucifer through Johannes Thomasius’ Double.
Slowly but surely, Johannes approaches the Threshold, and over the course of the dramas, we see how Maria, spiritually awakened before him, guides him in his life and spiritual world. Then, the moment comes when the spiritual powers demand that Maria set Johannes free so he can rightfully attain his Initiation.
‘Benedictus
[…] Fate doth not decree
That ye shall be no longer outward friends;
But this it doth demand with strict decree—
Johannes’ freedom in the spirit-realm.’
(The Soul’s Probation, Scene 2)
‘Maria:
Bethink, Johannes, how the One Soul must—
A personality apart from all—
Evolve from out the womb of time.
Love serves to knit together separate souls
Not kill their individuality.
The moment is upon us, when we twain
Must test our souls, and find the spirit-path
That each must follow for its separate good.’
(The Soul’s Probation, Scene 3)
Johannes doesn’t understand or accept his freedom because the knowledge he has gained so far is intrinsically linked with the natural force of love that acts in the will. He uses this force for spiritual knowledge, being unable to separate the sexual, instinctually creative force from the force of pure cognition. In the hollow created by Maria’s absence, Lucifer insinuates himself gracefully.
‘For Lucifer, since first the Earth began
Hath ever sought for men who have acquired
Wisdom divine through instincts that were false.’
(The Guardian of the Threshold, Scene 5)
Without Maria’s help this time, Johannes advances on his way to Initiation. He obtains access to contemplate yet another of his incarnations. In this incarnation, he is male and works as a miner for the Templars, but his friend, the monk (Maria in male incarnation), incites him to oppose them. He falls in love with a girl (Theodora in the current life) just to find out she is his sister. Their father (Capesius) had left them to serve the Templars, and soon their mother died. So, they were separated from a young age and knew nothing of each other. Thomasius, in that incarnation, had many reasons to hate the Templars (the older souls), for his father’s abandonment and for his lost incestuous love. He never forgave his father (Capesius) and still carried the instinctual love for his sister (Theodora), which he even brought into another incarnation.
Now, Lucifer understands very well the love of blood, which is nothing but self-love, pure egotism projected on another, and when he feels threatened that Maria and Benedictus can turn Johannes against his plans, he decides that it’s time to collect old debts. But this doesn’t happen without Johannes’ free will. In Scene 12 of The Soul’s Probation, Johannes decides to follow Lucifer willingly. It is tragic to see how Johannes is revolted by the difficulty of Spiritual Science, and by the path it opens, which brings suffering and restrains compared to what Lucifer promises. Johannes decides that he is not ready to give up the instinctual force of knowledge when approaching the Spiritual, which, on Earth, is the instinctual force of love that lies deep in his passionate nature. So, Johannes chooses Lucifer.
Lucifer keeps his promise and offers Johannes knowledge, just like he always did, so Johannes continues his journey in the Spiritual unpreoccupied to purify his sexual impulses, being unaware of the harm they bring. Now, Lucifer prompts his first big attack: he redirects the natural karmic force of love that Johannes had in the past for Maria to Theodora. The natural instinct that used to obey the karmic rules is now derailed by Lucifer, thus derailing Johannes’ karma, Theodora’s and everyone else linked to them.
Rudolf Steiner explains:
‘Johannes Thomasius now enters the objective spiritual world for the first time. This means that he is able to bring in with him all the possibilities of erring of which the soul is capable, especially his strange relationship to Theodora. Johannes enters the higher world, burdened with all the slag of his lower self, but even so, confronting the higher world. If I may use a shallow term for it, I would have to say that Johannes Thomasius falls occultly in love with Theodora.’ (GA147, 30.08.1913)
Thedora was in this life a born clairvoyant and a sensitive soul. She feels Johannes haunting her spiritually, burning her. His love for her was destructive, devouring, unjustified spiritually, outside the laws of karma. As a result, her physical body deteriorates, and she dies. Her death, however, doesn’t put an end to his spiritual stalking, because by now Johannes is in the objective spiritual world, fully clairvoyant himself. He also haunts clairvoyantly Theodora after death, deluded in his self-savouring state.
Only now do we understand the power of Lucifer’s deceit:
‘Capesius (spoken as in a trance):
According to the strict decree of
Fate Thomasius and Theodora ne’er
Could meet in earthly passion in this life.
‘Twould be indeed opposed to cosmic laws
If one desired to make the other feel
Aught that was not on spirit only based.
Within his heart Thomasius doth break
The stern decree of mighty powers of Fate:
That he must never harbour in his soul
Thoughts that might bring to Theodora harm.
For he doth feel what he ought not to feel
And, through his disobedience he doth form
E’en now the powers which can deliver o’er
His future life unto the realms of dark.
When Theodora had been forced to come
To Lucifer, she learnt unconsciously
That through the Light-bearer, Thomasius
Was filled with sensual passion for herself.
Maria, who had been by Fate’s decree
Entrusted with Thomasius’ spirit-life,
And Theodora, at the same time met
Within that realm which fights against the gods—
Maria from Thomasius had to part,
And he through strength of this false love was forced
To be in bondage unto Lucifer.
What Theodora thus experienced
Became consuming fire within her soul
And working further caused her all this pain.’
(The Guardian of the Threshold, Scene 5)
Let’s recapitulate the actions of Lucifer so far: Lucifer knows what lies concealed in the will of men —the creative force of karma, which carries the imaginations of what needs to happen, including the relationships between people. He instigates these images and perverts them by instilling unjustified fantasies into the souls of those who sleep too deeply during the night, to nurture further his densified imaginations in the Eight Sphere. Then he derails karma, distracting them with urgent instinctual needs and burning fantasies. With the same instincts, the same perversion of the sexual energy, some people become clairvoyant, and others lose themselves in materialism and lust. But one thing is clear: when one’s karma is derailed, people die, because the divine plan cannot happen anymore in the current life.
So, we may ask ourselves: What inner strength did Johannes need to resist Lucifer in his case? He needed the most difficult thing to acquire when one starts developing spiritual abilities: humility. The greed for the spiritual – the need for things to be easy and to be offered without effort to the clairvoyant for his spiritual savouring – is not only unrealistic, but in itself a lust that Lucifer will use to destroy any progressive action. With the help of Lucifer, people become clairvoyant at the expense of other people’s lives. We must know the real cost when we indulge or appreciate the clairvoyance developed without exercising thinking. Clairvoyance of thinking is different from clairvoyance of the will; one is pure, the other is not.
Johannes managed to escape Lucifer’s prison only when he remembered karma and admitted that he was, in fact, in love with himself. The power of remembrance is something that often escapes us from Lucifer or Ahriman’s claws, because they both hide relevant memories from us to blackmail our morality.
Further understanding of the Luciferic influence in Johannes’ Initiation: Johannes’ Double, Spirit of Youth and the Other Philia
Let’s explore the notion of humility further. Our language has lost the word’s spiritual meaning. Greek, however, still carries the true spiritual sense of the word humility. Ταπεινοφροσύνη (tapeinophrosyne), the Greek word for humbleness, composed of tapeinós (low, humble) and phrēn (mind), implies a meekness of the mind. In contrast, the word in other languages doesn’t refer to the mind (thinking) specifically, but more to one’s character. But when we refer to humility in this context, we find it as a state of mind that must be cultivated through spiritual practice, which implies an exercised capacity to restrain the will in thinking – thought control. We can observe in the dramas that whenever someone thinks something, that reality is invoked and immediately appears. Johannes needed a work of the mind, and less overconfidence in his disordered habitual thinking. He needed to question his judgment deeply, as it still carried the pride that modernity breeds. The fact that he couldn’t do this brought yet another unjustified being into the objective Spiritual, the Other Philia.
Philia is the Greek concept of brotherly love or friendship. Esoterically, it is born from the ‘altruistic universal’. Philia is the name of the spiritual force of thinking, which is, at its origin, creative. It originates from the fiery Words of the Seraphim in the Holiest of the Holies, flows as potent thoughts through the light of the Cherubim, and forms through the powers of the Thrones. The Other Philia, in contrast, is merely a shadow in comparison. But the Other Philia offers another ‘way’ to higher knowledge, through another force derived from the cosmic love, imperfect and corruptible, especially to Lucifer, diluted but accessible. It is an intermediate way to perceive spiritually one’s higher self through habitual (instinctual) thinking when the disciple has not yet developed the power to behold the threefoldness of the higher self, Philia, Astrid and Luna.
In the comments about the Mystery Dramas in relation to Initiation (Secrets of the Threshold, GA147, especially lectures dated 29, 30 and 31.08.1913), Rudolf Steiner explains what I am merely paraphrasing in the following: Human beings live with their physical bodies in the physical world. When we extend ourselves, we leave our physical body behind and experience further in the etheric body, being surrounded by the elementary world. As we progress in our esoteric work and come to leave this second world, we come to what we know as the Threshold of the Spiritual. Here, sooner or later, we meet the Guardian of the Threshold. When we cross the Threshold, we live in our astral body, being surrounded by the objective spiritual world. In the objective spiritual, we meet for the first time the other self, the higher self, or our spiritual self. This higher self here, in this first spiritual world, is not experienced as one, but as a trinity which in the Mystery Dramas is Philia, Astrid, and Luna (or as we know them in the academic terminology of anthroposophy – thinking, feeling and will). It is a sign of pathology, Rudolf Steiner explains, not to experience yourself as a trinity here (which is like experiencing three different higher men that you have not met before), or to not recognise yourself in this trinity, or to be unable to maintain the trinity together. In the Mystery Dramas, we see that Johannes experiences his higher self primarily as a unity (through the Other Philia), while Capesius and Maria encounter only parts of the trinity (Capesius primarily through Philia, and Maria primarily through Astrid and Luna).
In the Class Lessons, the Guardian says:
‘O, see the Three
They are One
When you in earthly life
The human imprint bear.’
(Class hour 7, GA270)
In a way, we can say that the elementary world (the world before the Threshold) is subjective-objective, because one mainly experiences parts of oneself, even if objectively, and the first spiritual world (the world beyond the Threshold) is objective, because one experiences everything objectively, as independent realities, even parts of themselves. Between the elementary world and the first objective spiritual world, there is the abyss of existence. When crossing this abyss into the objective spiritual world, all the rules that applied in the elementary world no longer apply. The disciple cannot perceive, think, feel or will in the same way that they used to in the elementary world.
I am repeating this from Rudolf Steiner because it is relevant to the distinction between the Double of Johannes Thomasius and his Spirit of Youth. The Double is the experience of the elementary world before crossing the Threshold, while the Spirit of Youth is an interesting and entirely different composite that Johannes Thomasius encounters only in the objective spiritual world. While the Double is somehow justified to be in the elementary world (I will explain further why I say ‘somehow justified’), the Spirit of Youth is a shadow being, and its presence in the objective spiritual world is completely illegitimate.
I will warn the reader that what I am about to say is based on my own experiences, which I have been trying to explain to myself for years now, with the help of Rudolf Steiner. This is not complete research, and it doesn’t have the pretentiousness of being spiritually exact, because I myself am a disciple of the Guardian, not yet in the objective spiritual world. I have been struggling all my Anthroposophic life with an incredible lack of feedback from my older brothers and sisters, mainly because most people didn’t reach any level in Initiation. There are many anthroposophical authors who explain Rudolf Steiner through Rudolf Steiner, but very few who came to genuine spiritual experiences through Anthroposophy alone (not old traditions, not old clairvoyance), which they explain afterwards with Rudolf Steiner. This is because Anthroposophy today is imbued with the karmic detractors of Michael, people who came to Anthroposophy karmically to destroy it. In a way, it is courageous to publish incomplete research just to open the conversation, but this is what I’m doing.
Let’s start with the concept of the Double and how it can be experienced. In theory, the Double is a composite being of unassimilated Luciferic and Ahrimanic parts of our soul, to which Ahriman gives a human etheric form. The Double can only be experienced in the elementary world. In ‘Secrets of the Threshold’ (GA147), lecture 7, and in more lectures from ‘Esoteric Lessons, vol. II’ (GA266/II, see for instance 23 or 26.08.1911), Rudolf Steiner tells us that parts of our etheric and astral bodies can separate from us once we step out of the physical body, due to their resemblance and attraction to their kind, Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings. For instance, ambition will follow a Luciferic being of ambition, lie will follow an Ahrimanic being and so on. These unassimilated parts of our souls are living beings; they are in our etheric and astral bodies, and when the spiritual rejects them, they tend to gather around the archetypes they belong to, Lucifer or Ahriman. Now here comes the tricky part: While the astral body can fragment itself easily, the etheric body tends to extend, not to fragment. But in special circumstances, Ahriman can totally detach parts of the etheric body that he finds lost in the elementary world and mould out of them an independent form. Now you can ask: ‘What are you saying, Alexandra? According to Anthroposophy, the Double is an experience that everyone spiritually healthy has in the elementary world. Why do you say it’s happening in special circumstances?’ And I say: Yes, but the independent form of the Double, completely detached, like in the case of Johannes Thomasius, is not an experience that everyone has. Not everyone finds their Double wandering in the elementary world. I want to offer the reader another perspective, in contrast to Johannes Thomasius’s experience in the Mystery Dramas: When one is in the elementary world, one may not experience one’s Double as an independent being; one can experience it through the Guardian of the Threshold (see the article on my blog where I explain this and the first chapter of this post). This is precisely how the experience is described in GA10, ‘How to Achieve Knowledge of the Higher Worlds’; the Guardian of the Threshold intermediates the experience of one’s Double through spiritual reflection. The Guardian clothes himself with parts of the Double and parts of an older karma. These parts can be experienced as projected into the being of the Guardian, who then becomes the Teacher.
This process is also suggested in the Mystery Dramas. In Scene 4 from The Soul’s Awakening, two realities stand side by side: the independent Double and the Guardian of the Threshold that reflects for Johannes Thomasius unassimilated parts of himself that Ahriman couldn’t detach yet, which are also, in theory, parts of the Double. And interestingly enough, Ahriman mocks the Guardian to delude Johannes, referring precisely to the parts that he couldn’t detach, and which are embodied now by the Guardian. He says:
‘Ahriman:
Let not thyself be quite confused by him.
He guards the threshold faithfully indeed
E’en if to-day thou see’st him wear the clothes
Which for thyself thou didst patch up before
Within thy spirit from old odds and ends.
Thou as an artist surely couldst produce
Thy actors in a better style than this;
But thou wilt make improvements by-and-bye,
And e’en this clownish form can serve thy soul.
It doth not have to spend much energy
In showing thee that which it now still is.
Pay close attention to the Guardian’s speech:
Its tone is mournful and its pathos marked,
Allow not this: for then he will disclose
From whom to-day he borrows to excess.’
(The Soul’s Awakening, Scene 4)
But why did Johannes Thomasius have a detached part of himself as an independent being, walking and talking in the elementary world in the first place? The answer is simple: because his soul is coloured with the quality of desire, which is the influence of Lucifer from previous incarnations. In a way, we can say that these unassimilated parts of Johannes Thomasius become magnetised and they tend to unite with their kind through attraction. Once they detach, Ahriman grabs them and gives them form. But that doesn’t mean that the Double contains only Ahrimanic parts; it contains lost parts of the etheric body and sometimes also parts of the astral body, which are both Ahrimanic and Luciferic. The Double is a composite that Ahriman would like to keep for himself.
Now let’s move to the other composite, Johannes Thomasius’ Spirit of Youth. Rudolf Steiner tells us that while the etheric body doesn’t have naturally the tendency to fragment, this process is not unnatural for the astral body when we cross the Threshold in the objective spiritual world. Similarly to the process described above, here, parts of the astral body tend to connect with the archetypes to which they belong. But there is yet another experience: One here experiences karma that was not accessible previously, and much of this karma, gradually revealed to the disciple, lies unresolved in the depths of the being. When one’s inner being separates into one’s ordinary self and one’s other self, one becomes conscious of the unsolved karma, too. There is much karma that cannot be resolved in the current incarnation. Lucifer has access to the experience of unresolved karma, which lies in oneself only as potentiality, and he can isolate it. He can detach a part of the etheric body and fill it with unresolved karma, giving it another human form. In the Mystery Dramas, such a being is Johannes Thomasius’ Spirit of Youth.
I come now with another perspective from my personal experience, with the admission that I haven’t stepped into the objective spiritual yet. Normally, one could see the unresolved karma also with the help of the Guardian at the Threshold. One can experience a version of oneself if Initiation had not interfered in one’s life. One can see an image of an alternative self if one were not to be called in life to Initiation. In this case, karma would follow its normal course, cause and effect. One can experience this alternative self as a symbol of the life unlived that would have occurred in another timeline in which the spiritual path did not unfold. In this image, one may not have all the karmic details, though much can still be experienced, but one can, for sure, get an idea of how much things would differ. Still, this is not an experience of the causes (a typical and objective karmic experience), but of the karmic effects that cannot come to pass anymore. It might, however, happen that Lucifer wants to manipulate this image and create a temptation out of it: a temptation to return to normal life and leave Initiation. He can make this image very attractive and create a kind of longing, a regret, a form of nostalgia for this unlived life. This experience can be caustic for a candidate for Initiation if they are not prepared to confront Lucifer’s tricks. What Rudolf Steiner presents in the Mystery Plays is even more advanced, because Lucifer managed to isolate the experience of the life unlived and gave it an enchanted human form; it is experienced by Johannes Thomasius objectively as a haunting chimaera that contradicts the spiritual order.
In Johannes Thomasius, we see a candidate for Initiation who is far from being pure or prepared. Johannes Thomasius is, for me, a vivid example of how the Gods tolerate our shenanigans.
How Lucifer derails Capesius’ karma. How Rudolf Steiner built the character Capesius in relation to Karl Julius Schröer
‘Capesius and father Felix both
Conceal dark meanings in transparent words…’
(The Soul’s Awakening, Scene 3)
So far in my exposition about Lucifer in relation to the Mystery Dramas, I have tried to show how he can derail someone’s life to the extent that they end up not doing their task on Earth and completely miss an incarnation. It is a common misconception in Anthroposophy that only the Asuras can thwart karma; in fact, Lucifer and Ahriman, as cosmic beings, are perfectly capable of doing so as well, with the exception that they do it within the spiritual laws, meaning ‘with approval’ from the Gods. It is true that if Lucifer or Ahriman derail karma in one incarnation, it can still be restored in the next one; in the case of the Asuric influence, this might no longer be possible. We can see that Lucifer, which fellow Anthroposophists consider the lowest evil, can do much more harm than expected when it comes to modern Christian Initiation. While there is an objective degradation of evil and, indeed, the order is that Lucifer is less evil than Ahriman, which is less than Asura, when it comes to one’s biography, their actions must be seen as specific, personal. Each life is individual, and it might be that for your biography, your incarnation now, Lucifer is much more problematic than any of the Asuras. For Johannes, Capesius and Felix Balde from the Mystery Dramas, it wasn’t the Asuras that caused them problems and derailment in their mission; it was Lucifer.
One thing we learn for sure from the Mystery Dramas, and I need to spell it out to anyone ready to listen: Stop jumping for the highest evil in your thinking priorities, or in your life! Lucifer and Ahriman are not to be disregarded. We must also pause and take responsibility for the compulsiveness to rush for the highest things in thinking. For instance, if one says Lucifer, another comes to mention Ahriman and Asuras because they are ‘more’ dangerous, destructive, powerful, etc.; when one says the Lower Guardian, another feels the need to note that there are two Guardians, one even ‘higher’ than the other. We can play like that only in abstract thinking. As soon as one begins to work with these realities, the illusory pride of intellectual thinking, the need to always jump to something new, more interesting, bigger, holier, more important, more dangerous, etc., dissolves. If one never takes a genuine interest in learning about these cosmic beings, the first thing that appears as an experience when one finally has one is a tremendous anxiety that can disrupt one’s entire incarnation. We know that behind one’s anxiety is a hidden feeling of hate for spiritual knowledge that each of us has by design. And this hate is nurtured when one dismisses the reality before them to jump for the next best thing.
Lucifer is the first evil to have access to human beings. The first temptation, the Original Sin, came from Lucifer; we must at least credit him for his experience in the matter. Please never underestimate Lucifer and Ahriman, as their cosmic karma, their cosmic punishment, is to fight over the human soul relentlessly.
‘Lucifer:
I will fight!
Benedictus:
And, by fighting, you will serve the gods.’
(The Soul’s Awakening, Scene 10)
As a biography worker, in my professional experience, working one’s morality towards the Luciferic beings of the soul is never straightforward, sometimes even much harder than in the case of Ahrimanic beings. Firstly, because what is Luciferic in one’s soul is not easy to identify as evil. And secondly, when it is finally correctly identified, one cannot simply propose oneself to be morally better and then follow through with the action. In the case of Luciferic beings, one needs to be very specific, as each Luciferic flaw has its own antidote. For instance, if you are envious of someone (which is a Luciferic corruption), you cannot just think, for instance, ‘how immoral for me to be envious’ and expect the Luciferic being of envy to go away. Thinking directly of envy or jealousy (although they are not the same thing, they have the same behaviour and antidote) only prompts Lucifer to throw the envy into the etheric body, into Ahriman’s realm, where it becomes a tendency to criticise. In the etheric body, envy is much more hidden than before, when it was in the astral body, and also, as a prisoner to Ahrimanic beings, much more poisonous. One doesn’t even recognise it as envy anymore; one thinks that they are entitled to criticise because of the need to tell ‘the truth’. They don’t see anymore the vindictiveness of wanting to destroy another, which is evident in envy. When it comes to envy, as a remedy, one can either allure it with art or bore it with Spiritual Science. If one is an artist, one can create a piece of art whenever one feels envy; in this case, the Luciferic being behind envy is given another scope. Luciferic beings of the soul love art, and they engage in it; they are also instrumental in this field.
It is my experience that studying Anthroposophy academically, with a pencil in your hand and a student notebook, is also a good remedy for envy. By the third lecture of any of Rudolf Steiner’s cycles, the being of envy gets bored, and it lowers the vindictiveness. But one needs to be careful, because it doesn’t work the same way when one reads mystical authors. Some esoteric writings stir up these instinctual forces, especially if the elemental beings that one encounters in the writing are related in nature to the Luciferic beings of one’s soul. This is just to give you an example of how specific we must become to confront and, at times, even negotiate with Lucifer in ourselves. It is not easy, but we must spiritualise these karmic elementals as they belong to us and are our responsibility. Spiritualising these elementals, these composites of the soul, means purifying the astral body, and by doing so, we are one step further in developing our Manas, which we are supposed to develop in the fifth epoch anyway.
I showed in the previous parts of this post, following, of course, our subject, the Mystery Dramas, that Lucifer’s main actions are derailment and imprisonment. In this part, I will try to shed more light on the process, focusing this time on Capesius.
Rudolf Steiner tells us that Capesius in the plays had his zenith incarnation in Ancient Egypt. This is presented in The Soul’s Awakening, Scenes 7 and 8. In general, old souls who, in Anthroposophy, came as Platonists had their peak incarnation before the Mystery of Golgotha. But who is the most Platonist among Platonists? Plato himself! In one of the last public lectures (GA238, 23.09.1924), Rudolf Steiner reveals that the model for his Capesius character in the Mystery Dramas was Professor Karl Julius Schröer (1825-1900), who, in his previous incarnation, was nun Hroswitha, who was the reincarnation of none other than Plato.
To understand what Rudolf Steiner took from the ‘real’ Capesius to create the character of the Mystery Dramas, I will summarise aspects of Professor Schröer’s cosmic biography. We already know that Plato was the Greek philosopher whose ideas were to be churned by humanity in its evolution for thousands of years. Plato was one of the most important figures who ever walked the Earth. But for Plato, ideas were not abstract as today; they were active spiritual beings (Amschaspands) around Ahura Mazda (the old Persian terminology for what we know in Anthroposophy today as Christ). This personality reincarnated again in the 10th century as nun Hrotsvitha Gandeshemensis. In this female incarnation, Plato’s individuality adopted Christianity in a pure Platonic manner. Through nun Hrotsvitha, the spiritual Platonic substance unites with Christianity and with the Middle European-Germanic spirit. This unification could only be achieved at the time in a female incarnation. After nun Hrotsvitha enters the Spiritual World, she participates spiritually in the grand unification of the Platonists, teachers at the School of Chartres, and the Aristotelians of the Michael School. The grand unification of Platonists and Aristotelians in the Michael School in the 13th century is experienced by this cosmic individuality in a peculiar way: the male incarnation as Plato enters into conflict with the female incarnation as Hrotsvitha, as both contributed to the cosmic individuality. This conflict of incarnations was maintained when the cosmic individuality reincarnated as Karl Julius Schröer. In this personality, what comes from previous incarnations as Plato is at times completely suffocated and recoils when confronted with the 19th-century intellectualism. Karl Julius Schröer has all the capacities one would need to revolutionise the world of ideas once again; however, his cosmic individuality becomes shy in the face of abstract intellectualism and refuses to penetrate it. If Karl Julius Schröer had the masculine courage that came from the incarnation as Plato to break the walls of 19th-century intellectualism, he would have penetrated directly into the spiritual world, and he would have been the one to bring Anthroposophy to Earth, not Rudolf Steiner.
Here we stand before a marvellous image: Plato reincarnated as Karl Julius Schröer teaching once again, the young Aristotle reincarnated as Rudolf Steiner at the Technical University in 19th-century Vienna, while the Archangel Anthroposophia was waiting to descend on Earth. This time, the student has surpassed the teacher, and he needs to take the spiritual task into his hands. Due to this incapacity of Professor Schröer, the spiritual individuality began to withdraw in the Spiritual World, and the professor became senile.
In the Mystery Dramas, we see that Rudolf Steiner borrowed for Capesius’ character the split of personality that occurred in the second part of his life and the difficulty of the ancient superior incarnation to manifest plentifully in modernity. This is the problem with many of the Initiates of the past: they cannot bring the fruits of the ancient wisdom into modernity, and they often pass as commoners. Of course, for the character Capesius, Rudolf Steiner creates different karmic conditions than he found in Professor Schröer. Capesius from the dramas is a hierophant in Ancient Egypt in the period when the old mysteries started to decay. He sees the corruption of the souls and the intriguing politics as consequences of the group-I’s dissolution. We know that the group-I dissolution, the individualisation of the I, appeared in humanity gradually and differently in the East and West, around the Mystery of Golgotha. After the coming of the Christ in a physical body, the human I (individuality, memory and consciousness) started to be individual. This is what an Initiate such as Capesius foresaw for humanity 2000 years before the Mystery of Golgotha. He understands that what belonged to the group-I, to fathers and grandfathers, to the stream of shared memory and consciousness, will soon belong to each individual separately as Christ was approaching the Earth. But he still manages to fulfil his duties in the Temple until one day, when he saw an unprepared neophyte (an earlier incarnation of Maria) coming to Initiation. No one said anything because, politically, it was good to have someone who belonged to the Temple advising the King. He did not share his concerns with the Grand Hierophant (an earlier incarnation of Benedictus) as it wasn’t customary for his position; he only shared his views with those below his level (Felicia and Felix Balde in a previous incarnation), who remained strict to the custom. A hierophant’s role in Initiation was to think the creative Word that would spiritually act in the neophyte’s thinking, guiding them. In the past, this was necessary, but today the entire Temple moves into one’s I, and all the acts that priests of the past fulfilled are now fulfilled by the candidate for Initiation alone, through his I. This was Christ’s gift for humanity, the independence of the I. At the moment of Initiation, the hierophant refrained from thinking the Word, and the Initiation failed. He experiences the consequences of his act in the incarnation as Capesius in the 19th century, where his personality splits in the second part of his life, leaving him outside the real world, just as he damaged the neophyte in the Egyptian incarnation by refusing his task.
In the next incarnation in the late 14th century, Capesius, a married man with two small children, leaves his family to join the Templars. The mother of the children (Johannes and Theodora in an earlier incarnation) dies, and the children are adopted separately. Later, they fall in love as young adults, unaware that they are brother and sister. Even after the truth is revealed to everyone, Capesius and Johannes remain estranged for that incarnation because of the animosity seeded by a priest (Maria in an earlier incarnation), who was sent to dissolve the order and confiscate its possessions. The historical setting of the scenes presented as karmic memories in The Guardian of the Threshold is Italy, 50 years after the death of Toma Aquinas (Benedictus) and 10 years after the Templars’ martyrdom. Here is one of the few places in the dramas where Rudolf Steiner inserts pieces of his personal spiritual biography as Toma Aquinas. It is also the only place where he portrays the difference between the older souls, the Platonists, the Magi (Capesius, Strader, Felicia and Felix Balde, Theodora, etc.) and the younger souls, the Aristotelians, the Shepherds (Maria, Johannes, and Benedictus himself). If we are good observers, we can see that Rudolf Steiner used parts of his cosmic biography to portray aspects of both Johannes and Benedictus’ characters.
In the 19th century, Capesius was a historian, and here we can find a big part of Professor Schröer’s outward personality. Some dialogues in the first drama are conceived by imagining how Professor Schröer would respond to matters of Spiritual Science. The timidity and fear to think through, to penetrate maya and get to the pure thought, is what Rudolf Steiner describes as specific to Schröer. Capesius restricted his thinking to superficial intellectualisation, too, refusing to think further, while opening his soul to Felicia’s fairy tales. Professor Schröer was scared by the spiritually potent philosophy of his time, while drawn to literary images of love, pure but somehow immature, that couldn’t grow beyond the soothing feeling. Because Schröer’s relationship with Goethe in the incarnation as Plato (Goethe, back then, was a young artist influenced by Plato; they hadn’t met in that incarnation, but Plato got interested in him in the afterlife), Professor Schröer perceived Goethe as a parent while taking care of his testamentary work, treating it from a father-to-son point of view, not as a scientist-to-scientist relationship. His overview of Goethe is sweetened by his parental feeling coming from another life. Rudolf Steiner borrows the karmic connection Professor Schröer had with Goethe for his characters Capesius and Johannes in the mystery plays, even constructing a karmic relationship as such – Capesius is Johannes’ estranged father from another incarnation. In the Mystery Dramas, it is Johannes’ development that drives Capesius further into Spiritual Science, making him want what Johannes has been striving for. And it is Johannes who wants to learn history from Capesius, becoming his student.
In the Class Lessons comments (GA270, 15.02.1924), Rudolf Steiner mentions three paths to Initiation, different for each individual: the mysteries of space, the mysteries of time, and the mysteries of the human heart. He briefly mentions them without describing them. These types don’t refer to sets of exercises that one can follow, but to spiritual seeds that one carries within oneself throughout one’s life or through incarnations and can further develop for the entire humanity. Once developed through multiple incarnations in an individual, a spiritual seed grows into a quality that can later become common to the whole of humanity. Through my study of Anthroposophy and personal experiences, I came to understand Initiation in the mysteries of time more deeply. The character Capesius falls into this description.
The Initiation into the mysteries of time prepares today the transformation of human memory in such a way that men will remember not only the period between birth and death but also the immediate previous incarnation, and this will be a natural trait. Many people in the world already remember their immediate past incarnation. Many of the transitional personalities that I’ve encountered who don’t yet have a spiritual training are carrying seeds associated with the mysteries of time. But there is only one Threshold, and the passing is the same in all cases. So, everyone needs to meet the Guardian of the Threshold, nevertheless. However, the first characteristic that differentiates these transitional people from the rest of those called for Initiation is that they need to develop abilities regarding spiritual recollection.
In the case of Capesius, we can observe some characteristics in his life. Firstly, his external profession carries the sign of time: he is a historian. There is always something in one’s biography that offers a hint in this direction, for instance, someone is a clockmaker or works in the time business industry, such as time-related salary software businesses. Transforming the temperament comes with a special gift regarding the seeds we are discussing; when it comes to the transitional characters that follow the mysteries of time, the temperament that needs transformation is the choleric one. Another specificity of these types is that they come to karmic memories before developing other spiritual abilities. Normally, one must pass the Threshold into the objective spiritual to have karmic memories, like Johannes Thomasius. But if one follows the Mysteries of Time, the first spiritual experiences are karmic, like in the case of Capesius, sometimes they pop up in them without spiritual exercise. The initiatory waking up is through karma recollection.
A consequence of this special life training is the karmic conditioning to succeed. While the candidates for Initiation following the mysteries of space and mysteries of the human heart can return from the Threshold to normal life, to their families, everyday life, live in nature, etc., these people do not have that luxury because, in their case, the anomalies that might occur at the Threshold will invariably trigger mental illness or death. When the abilities of recollection are awakened, there is no turning back from Initiation in that incarnation. The Ahrimanisation of thinking that comes from formal education and academic life can be very detrimental to these types, as shown in the character Capesius. Like Professor Schröer, Capesius needs effort and courage to break the chains of maya in thinking. Since Initiation approached him later in life, the stuckness of his thinking made things impossible. Therefore, when he approached the Threshold, the Guardian decided to split Capesius’ personality permanently for this life, preventing the Ahrimanic beings nurtured by his academic activity throughout his life from entering the spiritual world. As a consequence, Capesius from everyday life on Earth came into conflict with the spiritual, fully clairvoyant Capesius:
‘Felix Balde:
These last few days I have most earnestly
Held converse often with mine inmost self
To try to clear my thoughts about this man.
Gladly I’ll tell thee all I know myself.
Capesius is living in true wise
The life of spirit-pupilship, although
From his behaviour it seems otherwise.
He is already destined by his fate
Much to accomplish in the spirit-life.
And only can fulfil the duties high
To which his soul hath been already called,
If he prepares his spirit for them now.
And yet it lay quite near his nature too,
Instead of seeking light on spirit-paths,
Unto false science to devote himself,
Which can just now make blind so many souls.
The solemn Guardian on the Threshold grim,
Which marks the world of sense from spirit-worlds,
Had duties of a most especial kind
When to the gate Capesius found his way.
To such an earnest seeker must the gate
Needs open, but behind him shut at once.
The means he used in former times to win
Power for himself within the world of sense
Could no more help him in the spirit-realms.
He best prepares himself for service high
Which he one day must render to mankind
When he ignores our presence and our talk.’
(The Guardian of the Threshold, Scene 5)
This split only benefited Lucifer, who held the spiritual Capesius hostage until Maria and Benedictus fought for him, claiming him back from Lucifer’s claws (The Guardian of the Threshold, Scene 6). By doing this, Maria, the priest who once estranged a son from his father, repented spiritually, restoring karma. For a short period in the third drama, Capesius was more in touch with life after the split, under Benedictus’s guidance. But Lucifer and Ahriman never abandon the fight for the human soul, so Lucifer attacks once more, and his attack estranges Capesius for his entire incarnation.
Here is one example of how Lucifer acts, in a way that strikes two souls with one shot (The Soul’s Awakening, Scene 2): He tempts Joannes to live out the nostalgia for the egotistic love he had for Maria, even though Maria, by this moment, became his wife. He is nostalgic for the passion he once lived, the old love. This is the nostalgia for Lucifer, inflicted by Lucifer. He then makes Capesius witness this, giving him a clairvoyant spiritual perception into Johannes’ soul. When Capesius realises that his perception was accurate, as Johannes confirmed, he experiences pride for the newly acquired qualities of his clairvoyance, which can now penetrate other people’s spiritual reality, not only his own. He decides he no longer needs Benedictus, the teacher, because his clairvoyance has reached another level. He compares Benedictus’ complicated teachings with Felix Balde’s solitary clairvoyance, and he concludes that the latter is a model for him from now on because the quality of one’s clairvoyance can suffer when people decide to engage in life and live their karma. He renounces living his karma, choosing to remain outside of life. Thus, Capesius is derailed by Lucifer.
At the end of the list of things that I learned about Lucifer from the Mystery Dramas, I would like to mention the way Lucifer speaks through other people. Both Lucifer and Ahriman speak through others, opposing spiritual work or anything that could harm them. However, Lucifer and Ahriman talk differently, and their discourse can be correctly identified with exercise: Lucifer conceals his intentions, while Ahriman speaks as the double voice of the messenger that only the addressee hears. When Lucifer talks through others, the addressee can perceive more in that discourse. The communicator doesn’t lie in the words but in their intentions. There is a hidden agenda one perceives, something at stake, although it is never clear what. Lucifer sneaks behind the messenger and tries to manipulate the addressee. One cannot see the purpose of the manipulation; they can only perceive its quality.
In Scene 3 from The Soul’s Awakening, Strader’s work is opposed from all sides by Lucifer and Ahriman talking through other people. The most disappointing, however, is when he hears his friends, Capesius and Felix, talking about the futility of his endeavours, which was the spiritual mission Strader couldn’t accomplish. He perceives the Luciferic quality of their words, but he can’t perceive the purpose, the agenda. He is forced to say for the first time:
‘Capesius and father Felix both
Conceal dark meanings in transparent words…’
(The Soul’s Awakening, Scene 3)
Ahriman’s double voice and Strader’s spiritual mission. How Rudolf Steiner built the character Strader.
When observing how Lucifer and Ahriman communicate through others, we see that Lucifer often stays in the background like a shadow, with a manipulative, hidden agenda concealed in speech. When Lucifer’s influence is felt behind someone’s words, it gives the impression that part of the conversation is missing, as if we are not hearing the full story. This was precisely the reason Strader said:
‘Capesius and father Felix both
Conceal dark meanings in transparent words…’
(The Soul’s Awakening, Scene 3)
Meanwhile, Ahriman speaks aloud in a mocking, defiant tone that only the listener perceives. He can double someone’s speech as a commanding voice heard in the background. Suddenly, a different door opens in communication, revealing another set of intentions and even other communicators: demonic beings opposing spiritual evolution. Since this ‘second voice’ is directed only at the listener, only they can hear it. I’m sure we’ve all experienced moments when someone spoke to us, and we perceived a second voice mocking or defying us behind their words, sometimes entirely independent of the actual words. If a friend observes the conversation and we ask about their impression, they might say the message was respectful, perhaps even friendly, and that the person was well-meaning. We might even be accused of imagining things.
Ahriman’s double discourse can insinuate itself subtly into everyone, and it is important to understand that, most of the time, the communicator is completely oblivious to it, and other witnesses may remain unaware as well. Ahriman’s scope is to oppose everything that has an evolutive spiritual aspect, a social initiative, a collaboration, or even karma between people properly fulfilling. An illustrative example of the process is portrayed in the Bible, when Ahriman concealed himself behind Peter’s words and prompted Christ to say, ‘Get behind Me, Satan’ (Matthew 16:23, Mark 8:33).
In popular culture, for instance, in The Lord of the Rings, we see Galadriel activating the second voice (her dark side) to persuade Frodo to give her the ring. This second voice is heard spiritually only by Frodo, while a different communication takes place physically with everyone else.
Dark lodges have always known this, and they use the spirit of language to distort everything into double-binding, deliberately creating the Ahrimanic effect of the second voice. They work through either the double meaning of words or through the semantic similarities that create double-binding. Wordplay is essential in magic discourse, but this can only be done by manipulating the spirit of language.
Let me give you some examples:
- In Cathy O’Brien’s book, Trance-Formation of America, we learn that one of her escorts read aloud the ‘Service Entrance’ sign on a door with a specific accentuation to sound as ‘Serve us, en-trance’.
- I recently saw the trailer for the upcoming Dune 3 movie, in which Timothée Chalamet sings the war song of Arrakis, repeating the fictional word ‘e-liz-nid’, which, in the secret language of the Dune universe, Chakobsa, means ‘destiny’. Through repetition and the song’s effects in the trailer, the invented word sounds like ‘LSD’. I wasn’t the only one to notice this; the internet reacted as well.
- The far-right Romanian politician, Călin Georgescu, uses anagrams of words to create a magic effect in his discourses and artificial mental links. In the 2023 Christmas message, he associated the Vlachs with Valhalla, a historical inaccuracy he weirdly emphasised. However, it was never intended to be accurate; it was only intended to create a magical association, through the Romanian spirit of language, between the ancestors of Romanians and a supposedly holy war (Valhalla is the heaven of the warriors in Norse mythology). Another association he made recently was speculating on the formation of the Romanian word ‘apocalipsă’ (En: apocalypse). He claimed it is formed by ‘apucă lipsa’ (En, ‘apucă’ means ‘grab’ and ‘lipsă’ is ‘lack’ [of something]) with the possible magical suggestion ‘grab the void’ or even ‘grab the economic shortage’. Georgescu is widely criticised for his nonsensical delirium, but I haven’t heard anyone point out that this is a known form of mass manipulation taught in ceremonial magic lodges. And it gets even worse, as we can see in Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas: the more one mocks these things, the more one is affected in the night by a more profound and occult hypnosis.
Before studying the Mystery Dramas, I was unaware of the double voice. Without them, the processes described in the examples I gave above would not have been grounded in practical observation or a solid understanding. Scene 8 from The Guardian of the Threshold opened a new sense for me, enabling me to notice more such processes in life, literature, and popular culture. As we recreate the scene in our imagination, we see how souls who enter the spiritual world unconsciously at night are each tested by Ahriman, and those who are ‘ahrimanically inclined’, so to speak, are set up for his purposes in day consciousness. We see that Ahriman arranges it so that only Strader can hear him when it suits him and conceals himself to hide his own agenda, as he tries to allure him like a modern-day businessman. Strader is repulsed by how Ahriman searches the souls to see whether they can be useful to him, disregarding and mocking everyone. Ahriman’s approaches Strader in a manner that reminds us of the business slogan of the 20th century: ‘nothing personal, just business.’ Funnily enough, this expression originated in the 1920s, and it’s attributed to a notorious mafia accountant who rationalised the killings for his boss.
The Strader character is an esoteric mystery, unveiled only in artistic form as a ‘heads-up’ for the centuries to come. We know that at the end of the 19th century, Michael and his angels gained an important victory over Ahriman and his hordes. The Dark Age was over, and Michael began his solar reign for approximately 350 years in 1879. As a consequence, the possibility of recovering the cosmic intelligence that slipped away from Michael from the Mystery of Golgotha onwards gained real spiritual impetus. For the first time in history, the recovery of the fallen cosmic intelligence wrested by Ahriman and bound into technology could be achieved by certain personalities without mystical or religious help, solely through pure thinking. Through pure thoughts directed into technology, into devices, these personalities, chosen by the spirit in accordance with their karma, would have the possibility of unlocking the spirit bound there by Ahriman and giving it free to everyone. Thus, the energy used by machines was to be freed, spiritualised, no longer to be considered a limited resource, rationalised within a financial system.
‘Strader
[…]
It was my lot to make experiments
In matters from such questions far removed;
When suddenly there flashed across my mind
A thought which showed me where the right path lay.
Test followed close on test, until at last
Such powers were gathered there in front of me,
As in their full expression shall some day
Through application purely technical
Restore that freedom to humanity
In which the soul may find development.
No more shall men be forced to dream away
Their whole existence plant-like, fashioning
In narrow factory rooms unlovely things.
Industrial powers will be so dispersed
That every man shall have what he may need
To keep him in his work, in his own home
Arranged by him, as he may think it best.’
(Scene 1, The Guardian of the Threshold)
Rudolf Steiner has seen spiritually many such personalities whose soul structure would give them this possibility. He initially looked at Gideon Spicker (1840-1912) and created Strader’s biography for the Dramas after his biography. But Rudolf Steiner warned that his Strader character serves as an archetype; therefore, the personality of Gideon Spicker didn’t matter for the Strader character in the same way as the personality of Professor Schröer mattered for the Capesius character. In Strader’s character construction, the only thing that mattered was the common spiritual element in all personalities which have the mission to unbind the spirit from the machine and distribute it to the world. It is not a coincidence that what happened to Strader in the Mystery Dramas is very similar to what happened to Nikola Tesla in real life, and that, in a way, Strader is more Nikola Tesla than he is Gideon Spicker. But Nikola Tesla was not the only Strader in the last 150 years. The dark lodges of this world, filled with greedy industrialists, stole the work and ended the lives of many Strader characters who invented and patented one machine after another that, in greater or lesser degree, would achieve the same liberation of spiritualised life energy as the Strader machine was supposed to. According to the conspiracy theorist Steven Greer, the way to achieve free energy (zero-point energy) has already been discovered, but it is kept secret by the deep state from the ‘60s, which is exactly what Rudolf Steiner predicted would happen in the worst-case scenario he envisioned.
I need to make a refined remark here—something that truly challenged my beliefs and required me to reconnect with my unconventional thinking to understand it. Anthroposophists have discussed Strader for over a century, yet many remain unaware that personalities like Strader might completely reject spirituality and even despise Anthroposophy in its earthly form. Such a personality is often a scientist who either lacks access to the spirit through karmic relations or doesn’t fully grasp it, even when in contact with spiritual friends, as in Strader’s case. They access the spirit through Michael himself, in relation to mechanical devices. These individuals won’t find the spirit in spiritual forms, but behind machines at some point in their biography, and only if the spiritual world grants it. Accepting that Michael might select certain personalities for this unconventional purpose was the hardest thing for me to accept in relation to Strader’s character in the Mystery Dramas.
Let us delve further into the Strader character in the play and his importance to understand how the future of technology is created before our eyes. He is an engineer whose life diverged from the priesthood in his youth. Here, Rudolf Steiner hints at the shift in destiny when Michael’s reign began. He comes into contact with spiritualists but doesn’t truly grasp spiritual science. He understands natural science, but his mind cannot bridge the gap to the spiritual. His thinking is highly intellectual, yet his feelings are childlike. He only comprehends spirituality through outdated mystical images suitable for humanity before the consciousness soul epoch. He enjoys Felicia’s stories and is impressed by Theodora’s natural clairvoyance, indicating that his understanding of spirituality relies on naive imagery. As the years go by, Strader doesn’t progress much spiritually compared to the others. He continues his work as an engineer and inventor with more passion than before, and marries Theodora, the natural clairvoyant who, in the course of their marriage, loses her clairvoyance. In the seven years of marriage, through the power of love and the opening of the heart, Strader’s life changes dramatically: he discovers the spirit through rigorous thinking directed into machines, and his invention helps him progress spiritually in an unconventional way. Strader becomes more spiritual through his discovery and is now better able to understand the others in the karmic group.
‘Strader
[…]
And then flowed on these seven wondrous years.
I learned to feel how e’en mechanic skill
Which now I study, is enriched by souls
Whose attitude t’ward spirit-life is right.’
(Scene 4, The Guardian of the Threshold)
The sudden death of Theodora gains him a guide and devoted, unwavering help in the spiritual world. The Spirit of Theodora becomes an unrelenting fighter against Ahriman for his spirit and a tremendous aid to the entire group. From the spirit, Theodora guides Strader to be more receptive to Benedictus’ teachings.
Strader’s first spiritual experience in his initiation takes place in Ahriman’s realm. Unlike Johannes Thomasius, who spends many years in the elementary world before his first fully awakened experience, Strader encounters Ahriman right from the start and must consciously oppose him. Through this experience and subsequent ones as a new disciple of the mystical alliance, guided spiritually by Theodora, he gains illumination. Interestingly, the alliance’s leader is not only an esotericist but also an industrialist who recognises the spiritual significance of Strader’s work with his invention. He supports it and plans to implement it in his business as a model for future industrial projects, enabling the spiritualised machine to leave the experimental stage and enter Earth’s realm in practice. (This contrasts with Nikola Tesla’s case, where his ‘industrialist’ stole and concealed his most important findings, leaving them hidden to this day.) Towards the end of his life, however, Strader’s work faced strong opposition from members of the mystical alliance, factory managers, and even his closest friends, Capesius, Felix, and Johannes. Some were led astray by Lucifer, others manipulated by Ahriman during the night, and some simply failed to grasp the spiritual importance of his machine.
Reading in the book of destiny that Strader’s life is coming to an end and knowing that this will not serve him well, Ahriman used an atheistic soul, such as that of Ferdinand Reinecke (the name ‘Reinecke’ means ‘little advisor/counsellor’ and is closely associated with the cunning fox figure in German literature), to deliver the final blow. Ferdinand Reinecke, as he appears in the plays, would never, in full consciousness, serve Ahriman or any spirit, since he denied their existence and hated spiritual preoccupations; yet it is exactly his atheism that made him more vulnerable to these influences in the spiritual world during sleep. If we look around, we see that the world is full of Ferdinands Reinecke, atheists by day, slaves in Ahriman’s realm by night.
In the short time Strader had left to live, Ahriman needed to mark three things to grasp Strader’s soul: 1. Ferdinand Reinecke to convince Strader that his work was futile, 2. Strader to lose self-confidence in his initiation and work, and 3. Strader to forget Theodora before his death. The first two conditions were met. Ferdinand Reinecke delivered his final argument, and Strader gave up trying. Moreover, Strader met spiritually the third beast (which Anthroposophists know from the Class mantras), his own adversarial force of thinking that made him doubt himself, his initiation and his spiritualised machine. But the relationship with Theodora was too strong, and this saved Strader and his work from Ahriman’s grasp. Thus, Strader entered the spiritual world untouched by Ahriman. Even if the work didn’t properly enter the world, it still remained at the end of the fourth drama as a possibility to be picked up by another Strader-like nature in the future.
This is where Rudolf Steiner left his unfinished plays. They were intended to be seven, but he stopped after the fourth. According to his own words, he stopped because the personality Rudolf Steiner followed spiritually for the Strader character had already crossed the threshold, and Rudolf Steiner himself couldn’t find enough interest in his earthly character anymore, which paled in comparison to his cosmic character (see GA238, 18.09.1924, where Rudolf Steiner presents Gideon Spicke’s previous incarnation). He left it to us to follow, with our inner eyes, how the spiritual impulse dedicated to the field of free energy was trying to incorporate itself into Strader-like personalities. Even if free energy had already been brought to Earth (by Nikola Tesla or another Strader-like figure) and kept from everyone in materialistic, avaricious hands, as many testimonies today suggest, I believe Michael did not give up on finding a Strader-like personality who would wrest back from the dark lodges and greedy industrialists what they had already stolen from him twice.
I recognise you
I AM
Alexandra Vasilache
Main bibliography:
Rudolf Steiner, Four Mystery Plays (GA 14): https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA014/English/APC1925/GA014_index.html
Rudolf Steiner, Secrets of the Threshold (GA147), especially lectures 6 & 7 (for the comments on the Double, Spirit of Johannes Thomasius’ Youth and Other Philia): https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA147/English/AP1987/
Rudolf Steiner, Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas (from GA125): https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA125/English/AP1983/ThrMys_index.html
Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relations vol IV (GA238) lectures 18.09.1924 (for the karma of the ‘real’ Strader) and 23.09.1924 (for the karma of the ‘real’ Capesius): https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA238/English/APC1957/19240918b01.html https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA238/English/APC1957/19240923p01.html
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