by Colin Wilson
When Persephone is rescued from hell by the hero Triptolemos, Dionysus is suddenly reborn, for he is the spirit of heroism in human beings, which also creates men of genius. The reborn Dionysus takes Persephone, goddess of fertility, to be his bride, symbolizing the union of male genius and heroism with female fertility.
Whether Schuré's reconstruction of the Orphic Mystery drama bears any resemblance to the original is an open question. But it obviously appealed to Steiner because of its message that Dionysus—the primal ecstasy that springs from the heart of creation (Steiner knew his Nietzsche)—is reborn out of human heroism and genius, and unites with the female principle to save the world. (It may be significant that Marie von Sivers played Persephone.) Annie Besant, a stately, silver-haired lady, was evidently greatly impressed, and made amiable remarks about ‘the land of great philosophers, poets and mystics’. For the German Theosophists, it was a moment of triumph to see their own leader standing as an equal beside the leader of the Theosophical Society, Madame Blavatsky's elected heir. Yet it was also the beginning of the split between Steiner and the Theosophists; it was at this congress that Annie Besant agreed that there should be a complete break between her own ‘esoteric group’ and Steiner's. It must have been obvious to her that what Steiner meant by esotericism had very little in common with the teachings of The Secret Doctrine.
Later that May, Steiner gave a lecture in Munich on ‘The Theosophy of the Rosicrucians’. It could be regarded as an explicit gesture of rejection of Madame Blavatsky's esotericism, for according to Steiner, the Rosicrucian epoch of human development—which began in 1413—was a period in which initiation ceased to be restricted to a few adepts, and would become available to men engaged in the everyday business of the world. For those who entertain doubts about Steiner's visions of Atlantis and Lemuria, his notions about Rosicrucianism are bound to increase their scepticism. Rosicrucianism actually made its appearance on the historical scene in 1614, with the publication in Kassel, in Germany, of a pamphlet called The Fame of the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross. This declared that a certain Christian Rosenkreuz had spent life wandering around the East in search of occult wisdom; having found it, he formed a Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross to preserve it; buried in an unknown tomb, surrounded by lighted candles, his body remained undiscovered for a hundred and twenty years. Then disciples opened the tomb, which was lighted by ‘another sun’ in the middle of the ceiling—an interesting anticipation of electric light—and found the body ‘whole and unconsumed’.
Rosenkreuz had been born in 1378, and had died, at the age of 106, in 1484; an inscription on the door of the tomb read ‘I will open after 120 years’. It was opened in 1604, as prophesied.
The opening of the vault, according to the pamphlet, would to be drawn of a general reformation presaging the appearance of a ‘divine light in the sky’ (presumably the Second Coming).
A second pamphlet, the Confessio, followed a year later, hinting at marvellous occult knowledge. According to the Fama, ‘interested parties’ only had to make their interest known, and they would be contacted. Many people hastened to proclaim their interest in pamphlets; but, as far as is known, no one was ever contacted. Then in 1616, a third Rosicrucian work was published, The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, a kind of allegorical novel, full of alchemical symbolism. It has since been established that the author of this work was a Tübingen clergyman named Johann Valentin Andreae, who later admitted that he had composed it as a ‘ludibrium’—a joke. He denied being the author of the two earlier pamphlets, no doubt to avoid the indignation of would-be Initiates.
One expert on the Rosicrucians, Christopher McIntosh,* has suggested that the pamphlets were the brainchild of an idealistic group of young men who dreamed of ‘a Europe free of religious dissension and basking in the light of the true Christian faith combined with science and learning’—a good summary of Steiner's own aims. Andreae wrote the Chemical Wedding in 1605, at the age of nineteen, and McIntosh speculates that the young idealists decided to resurrect its narrator, Christian Rosenkreuz, and make him the founder of a Brotherhood that might become a rallying point for the new religious revival. They were probably startled and shocked by the success of their hoax. Andreae himself published in 1619 a ‘Utopian’ work called Christianopolis. Rosicrucianism spread across Europe, rather like Freemasonry, and King Frederick-William of Prussia was initiated into the order in 1781. In England in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a Rosicrucian Society became the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, of which the poet W. B. Yeats was a member. In an essay on Christian Rosencrux (as he spelt it) Yeats wrote: ‘I cannot get it out of my mind that this age of criticism is about to pass, and an age of imagination, of emotion, of moods, of revelation, about to come in its place; for certainly belief in a supersensual world is at hand.’ Yeats is expressing the tremendous emotional hunger that helps to explain the immense success of Steiner's brand of Theosophy in the first decade of the twentieth century.
As an ironical footnote to Steiner's Rosicrucian revelations, we may note that one of his followers, Max Heindel, moved to America and wrote a book called The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception or Mystic Christianity, largely borrowed from Steiner; it became the basis of the American Rosicrucian Society, one of the most successful organizations of its kind. Even the crumbs from Steiner's table could feed multitudes.
Throughout 1908 Steiner continued to travel and lecture throughout Europe, and at an Annual General Meeting in October, Marie von Sivers was able to announce that, since the spring, the number of Steiner groups had increased from twenty-eight to thirty-seven. When Steiner stood up to speak, he began by announcing that it was his painful duty to expel a certain Dr Vollrath from the Society; it seemed that Dr Vollrath had formed a Literary Section without consulting Steiner, and had been guilty of various other acts of independence. Steiner followed up this excommunication with a lecture on the meaning of self-denial, renunciation, and sacrifice. After the meeting, a reception was given by Frau Eliza von Moltke, wife of the chief of the army General Staff. General von Moltke was quoted as saying that all great philosophies had a gap—except Rudolf Steiner's Theosophy.
The chief event of the following year, 1909, was the publication of Steiner's book Occult Science—an Outline, regarded by many as his most important work. It repeats many of the things said in Theosophy and Knowledge of Higher Worlds; but its central section, a long chapter entitled ‘The Evolution of the World and Man’, goes a great deal further than the earlier books in describing man's evolution on Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, and so on. It should be born in mind that his earlier work on this topic—Cosmic Memory—had been published piecemeal in his magazine, and so had only been read by the faithful. This open publication, in a form available to the general public, may therefore be regarded as a gesture of supreme self-confidence. But a short postscript reveals that he is not wholly unconcerned about his critics. He offers an excellent summary of the kind of things they might say, accusing him of ‘inconceivable ignorance of the rudiments of science’. Does that mean, asks Steiner, that he himself would dismiss the critic as an ignoramus? By no means, for he can quite understand how such a critic feels. All the same, he must inform him that he, Dr Steiner, has studied physics and chemistry, the philosophy of Kant, and has written books on Goethe, not to mention a defence of Haeckel. So let no one mistake him for a member of the lunatic fringe. He ends by remarking that ‘anyone acquainted with supersensual research’ will recognize that he has tried to communicate only ‘what is permitted’, although it is possible that, in the future, he may be allowed to say more.
In other words, Steiner was telling his critics that if they didn't like what he had to say, they knew what they could go and do…Such an attitude was bound to exasperate even the open-minded, an attitude that is betrayed by Maurice Maeterlinck in the final paragraph of his remarks on Steiner in The Great Secret: ‘When all is taken into account, we realize once more, as we lay his works aside, what we
realized after reading most of the other mystics: that what he calls “the great drama of [occult] knowledge”…should rather be called the great drama of essential and invincible ignorance.’ If a man as tolerant and undogmatic as Maeterlinck could become so irritable, it is hardly surprising that less broad-minded critics should feel that Steiner was a kind of pestilence that ought to be stamped out. As Steiner's hold over the faithful continued to increase, so did the resentment of people who felt that the Steinerites were a crowd of besotted lunatics enslaved by a confidence trickster. And this, it must be admitted, was to some extent his own fault. His fellow ‘occultist’ Gurdjieff, who had just embarked on his own career as a teacher in Russia, took care that his own esoteric teaching should remain secret, and so never incurred the resentment that eventually inflicted such blows on the Anthroposophical movement. Steiner could easily have done the same thing: used his books to spread the idea of ‘spiritual development’, and reserved the ‘cosmological’ teachings for the faithful. In retrospect, it seems that his failure to do so was his greatest single mistake.
For Steiner, 1909 was a crucial year in the history of the German Theosophical movement, being the beginning of a new seven-year cycle. Steiner attached great importance to seven-year cycles—in the history of movements as well as of individuals. He was later to declare that the year 1909 was the beginning of ‘a very special time’, in which those who wished to be close to Christ could achieve it in ‘a quite different way from that of previous times’. This was because there was a ‘new action of Christ in the etheric world’. This may also explain why, during 1909, he became increasingly outspoken against the ‘orientalizing’ tendencies of the Theosophical Society.
The year 1910 was as hectic as previous years, beginning with lectures in Scandinavia, then in Berlin, then in Cologne, Stuttgart, and Munich, then in Vienna; after this he travelled through Italy to Sicily, and lectured in Rome on ‘The Intervention of Great Personalities who share in our Earth Evolution’. There he met a British painter named Harry Collison, who became an Anthroposophist and went off to found Societies in America, Australia, and New Zealand.
On his return from the Italian tour, Steiner spent a few weeks dashing off a play called The Portal of Initiation, a ‘Mystery drama’ which was presented in August at the Munich congress, preceded by Schuré's Drama of Eleusis. Steiner designed the set and costumes, dictating the colours in accordance with Goethe's colour theory. All the actors were amateurs, trained by Marie von Sivers. The play was performed before an audience of two thousand people. Drama critics were not invited.
It is difficult to speak with detachment about the four Mystery dramas (for Steiner was to write another one in each of the three succeeding years). For Wachsmuth they are ‘the blest fruit of the interplay of spiritual vision and artistic formative power’. Stewart Easton emphasizes their kinship with the older Greek tragedies, particularly those of Aeschylus, except in the length of the speeches. The non-Anthroposophist is bound to find them over-long, incredibly tedious, and at times painfully naive. People stand around and argue at enormous length about ‘dry, prosaic reason’ and the need for spiritual vision, and utter comments like: ‘With your last words I am in full agreement’, or ‘The weight of this objection I can feel.’ A scene may begin with words like:
‘Good morning, Sophia. I hope I am not disturbing you?’
‘Not at all, Estella, you are very welcome.’
Or:
‘Dear mother, I would so much like to hear the story from you, of which Cilli so often spoke, some time ago…’.
Schuré's Mystery drama has power, economy, and action; Steiner's plays ramble on gently, like a Steiner lecture converted into a Wagner libretto—but, unfortunately, without the music. No doubt Wachsmuth and Easton are right when they insist that they should be judged by their content, not by their literary quality. But the need to make such allowances underlines one of the basic problems of esoteric movements: that the very nature of their belief tends to irritate and repel non-believers because it seems to involve a deliberate suspension of their critical faculties. It would be pleasant to be able to say: ‘I cannot accept most of Steiner's ideas, but his Mystery plays are nevertheless an exciting and moving experience.’ In fact, the Mystery dramas constitute a gulf between believers and non-believers instead of a bridge. Whatever their underlying content, they are ‘serious’ in quite the wrong way. The major character is a spiritual teacher named Benedictus, obviously Steiner himself. Most of the other characters are his disciples. Ahriman, Lucifer and various spirits also appear—the tone is often reminiscent of Faust, but a Faust without poetry and without the concentration. For the non-believer the whole atmosphere has a flavour of Sunday school. It is not Steiner's sincerity that is in question here, but his judgement.
This view receives a certain support from a book on Steiner by a man who was to become one of his most important followers, Friedrich Rittelmeyer, a Protestant theologian. At the time he came upon Steiner's work—in 1910—Rittelmeyer was one of the most popular and influential preachers in Berlin. When asked to lecture on ‘religious striving in the present time’, he decided to make the acquaintance of Theosophy. Annie Besant's variety sickened him: ‘The spirit, as presented by them, was a mixture of ancient tradition and subjective emotionalism.’ He found Steiner altogether more interesting, but was thoroughly put off by Occult Science. ‘It upset me, for I simply could not wade through it. If I read for any length of time, a feeling of nausea came over me.’ Finally, in 1911, he attended a Steiner lecture, and was not impressed by the audience. ‘A certain passive, sensation-mongering mentality troubled me.’ Neither did Steiner impress him as a speaker; he found his style ‘round-about and involved’. He was grimly amused by the crowds of admiring disciples who thronged around Steiner after the lecture. It was not until he heard Steiner lecture on Goethe that he began to feel that ‘this was a kingly mind in the realms of knowledge’. Even so, he found the next lecture he attended a disappointment, and was irritated by Steiner's fur coat and flowing black tie. But Rittelmeyer, like Steiner, was obsessed by the figure of Christ, and it was Steiner's ‘Christology’ that eventually formed the link between them; Steiner was later to entrust to Rittelmeyer the organization of an Anthroposophical Christian Community.
The presentation—and design—of the Mystery dramas led Steiner to give new consideration to the problem of art in general and dramatic art in particular. Wagner had united music and drama. The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin was attempting something even more ambitious, a new art form that would involve music, drama, dance, and even colours blending on a screen—produced by a machine of his own invention called a ‘colour organ’. His music had a swooning, ecstatic quality, and seemed to be an illustration of his belief that some great apocalypse was at hand when spirit would finally overcome matter, and man would become a god. When he died, of blood poisoning, in 1915, he was working on his greatest project, a Mystery that would take place in a temple and involve hundreds of virgins dressed in white robes. In 1911, he was regarded as one of the most significant artistic figures of his time.
Another was the dancer Isadora Duncan; she also believed that feelings could be danced, and swayed gracefully around the stage with bare feet and wearing a Grecian tunic. A rather more systematic version of the same thing was the method developed by the Swiss composer Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, who taught his pupils music by training them in harmonious bodily movement; from merely performing gymnastics, his pupils would gradually learn to improvise body movements to express a whole symphony or concerto.
Steiner called his own version of the dance ‘Eurythmy’, insisting at the same time that it should not be confused with the art of dancing. Its aim was to ‘cause a person or group of persons to carry out movements which bring to expression the element of music and language in visible form, just as the organs of language and song do it in audible form. The whole human being or group of human beings becomes a larynx…’ Steiner was striving f
or the same kind of unity that Scriabin had dreamed of achieving in his own Mystery. And this, in turn, would be an integral part of a still greater unity of art, science, and religion—thus reuniting the three components that should never have become separated. Eurythmy was developed by a seventeen-year-old girl, Lory Smits—in close association with Steiner—in 1912 (although Steiner was toying with the idea as early as 1908), and was first presented in public at the Munich festival in the following years.
We can catch an interesting glimpse of the impression Steiner made on people during this period in the diaries of the young Franz Kafka, a writer who would acquire a worldwide reputation only after his death in 1924, at the age of forty. In 1911, when Kafka was in his mid-twenties, Steiner delivered a number of lectures in Berlin, and Kafka went to hear him. The tone is ironic; obviously, Kafka is inclined to feel hostile.
Theosophical lectures by Dr Rudolf Steiner, Berlin. Rhetorical effect: Comfortable discussion of the objections of opponents, the listener is astonished at this strong opposition, further development and praise of these objections, the listener becomes worried, complete immersion in these objections as though they were nothing else, the listener now considers any refutation as completely impossible and is more than satisfied with a cursory description of the possibility of a defence.
Continual looking at the palm of the extended hand. Omission of the period. In general, the spoken sentence starts off from the speaker with its initial capital letter, curves in its course, as far as it can, out to the audience, and returns with the period to the speaker. But if the period is omitted then the sentence, no longer in check, falls upon the listener immediately with full force.