Background to the Gospel of St. Mark
GA 124
2 February 1911, Koblenz
XIII. The Voice of the Angelos and the Speech of the Exousiai
Let us take as a starting-point these words in St. Mark's Gospel: ‘Behold I send my Angel (messenger) before thee who shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one preaching (crying) in the wilderness.’ In the original text the words are: It is a voice of one crying in the solitude.
Anyone who reads these words with an open mind will at first be at a loss for an explanation. He will regard them more or less as a phrase or at most as allegorical. For what would be the point of preaching in a wilderness? It would be usual, surely, to go where there are plenty of people, not into a wilderness!
In the light of Spiritual Science the depth of the wisdom contained in every word of the Holy Scriptures is revealed in this passage. We shall find that every word in the original text is at its proper place, and moreover is only then intelligible.
What is meant by the words: ‘I send my Angel before thee, who shall prepare thy way before thee’? We know that the Bible is here referring to John the Baptist. But to understand why the word ‘Angel’ is used we must go back to conditions in an earlier period of our Earth's evolution and consider what ranks of Beings belonged to it. We know that on our physical Earth too there is a certain hierarchical order of which the mineral kingdom is the lowest stage; then come the plant and animal kingdoms and, at the highest stage, man. Beyond man is the hierarchy of the Angels, Archangels and Archai (Spirits of Personality, or Principalities); then the hierarchy of the Exousiai (Spirits of Form, or Powers), the Dynameis (Spirits of Movement, or Mights, also Virtues), and the Kyriotetes (Spirits of Wisdom, or Dominions); then the highest hierarchy of Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim.
All these hierarchies too are involved in a constant process of evolution. Just as we are nowadays passing through the human stage of evolution on the Earth, the Angels passed through the human stage (though in a different form from ours) during the Old Moon evolutionary period, the previous condition of our planet. They are therefore a stage ahead of us. Just as one of our tasks on Earth is to lead and guide our children, so the task of the Angels is to lead and guide humanity. But because it is impossible for them to incarnate in the forms of earthly existence, to be able to help us they must allow their wisdom to flow into the bodies of the purest, most highly developed men, in order that the divine truths may be proclaimed to humanity through their mouths. In such a case we may say: the Angels clothe themselves in maya.
This becomes still more intelligible if we go back to times of remote antiquity and picture the seven Rishis of India. If we had looked at their outer forms we should have seen simple men, perhaps peasants. The essential core of their being was concealed within them. Clairvoyantly, however, we should have seen them in flaming auras, from which warmth radiated into their surroundings. But in order that the greatest cosmic wisdom might penetrate into them it was necessary for all the seven to be together. Divinity played upon them as if they were a scale of seven tones. The language they spoke would have seemed to us nothing but unintelligible sounds.
It is hardly possible nowadays to form any idea of the nature of language in those ancient times because our own, by contrast, is a conglomeration of lifeless ideas which we employ to reach a logical conclusion. In the days of the Rishis it was the sound that caused pictures to rise up before the inner eye. What, then, was the original source of language? The wise men, the sages, of ancient times, brought it down from the stars. For them the Zodiac was the script of the Godhead in the heavens. The zodiacal constellations created the consonants, the planets created the vowels, and according to how the planets altered their courses in the Zodiac the sages interpreted the various meanings of the heavenly wisdom.
The bodies of the Rishis were maya, enshrining the inmost core of Divinity.
If we direct the light gained from Spiritual Science upon the words of the Bible, all the bleakness with which materialists are so prone to invest them, disappears. We understand the real meaning of the words which say that God sent an Angel in advance, to prepare the way of the one who was to come. The Angel is a more highly developed Being of the hierarchy of the rank immediately above man, a Being who sheathed his spirit in the maya of a human body—in this case in the body of John the Baptist, the reincarnated Elijah. If we are to understand the words of the Bible truly, it is only a matter of shedding the right light upon them and interpreting them literally.
Theologians are baffled by the words about the voice of a preacher in the wilderness, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. What can this mean?
John the Baptist baptised with water. In this baptism the whole body was plunged into the Jordan as part of the rites of Initiation. Why was this done? Because the etheric body of a spiritually developed man was to be loosened for a short time from the physical body; the man then experienced what one who is dying experiences when his etheric body is loosened from the physical. A picture of his present incarnation back to his birth is unrolled before him in all detail as a kind of panorama and he feels and knows that outside his body of flesh he is a spiritual being.
Anyone who had returned to his physical body after this experience during baptism was henceforth inwardly different from other men: he felt as if he were standing alone with this expansion of knowledge, separated from the rest of humanity; he felt that men could no longer understand him, that he was isolated, as it were in a ‘wilderness’, in solitude. And in this state of deepest inner isolation he became aware of the ‘voice of one crying’—his Angel. In this case the guiding Angel was clothed in the person of John the Baptist. That is the meaning of the passage in the Bible about the voice calling, or crying, in the wilderness.
Later in St. Mark's Gospel, where Christ is proclaiming the highest wisdom in the schools, the words are: ‘And they were astonished at His teaching: for He taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.’ What does speaking ‘with authority’ mean? Just as Angels are the guides of individual men and Archangels of whole peoples, so there are other, still higher Beings who are the guides of the forces and powers of nature. These are the sources upon which men of genius draw to create their masterpieces. The works of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, give expression to the powers of nature.
To picture where these powers of nature are made manifest let us imagine that we are standing on the heights of a Swiss mountain. If we are fortunate enough to be there at sunrise, we shall be overwhelmed by the magic and sublimity of this spectacle of nature, and we shall feel pervaded through and through by the mighty forces radiating from it and revealing to us the power of Almighty God. We watch how from the glimmering grey of dawn the first delicate colours of the rising sun appear, how the peaks of the snowcapped mountains are suffused with rosy mauve, and our eyes are dazzled by this spectacle of greater and greater brilliance. We see how the rays call forth colours which seem to stream from every side, filling more and more of the space around us, until finally the sun appears in all its splendour, kindling life and radiating warmth into the lowest valleys. In this majestic manifestation of nature we are actually beholding the confluence of spiritual forces and these forces are the Beings of the Hierarchies we have learnt to know as the Exousiai, the Powers, or Spirits of Form. In the original text the words are: ‘He taught as the Exousiai teach.’ Christ spoke with the powers of these Beings. In John the Baptist it was the Angel, the Being of the rank immediately above man, who spoke. In Christ it was the Exousiai, who as I have said, speak through events of nature. It was their forces in the body of Christ which enabled Him to teach ‘with authority’.
John the Baptist had received the highest Initiation connected with the constellation of Aquarius. In old maps of the Zodiac the sign depicting Aquarius is a man stooping down with the arms held in a particular position. This illustrates the words in St. Mark's Gospel: ‘There cometh after me one mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.’
Dreizehnter Vortrag
In welcher Art müssen wir an die Theosophie herantreten, wenn wir ihre tiefsten Wahrheiten verstehen wollen?
Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage wollen wir unsern Ausgangspunkt bei einem Ausspruch im Markus-Evangelium nehmen: «Siehe, ich sende meinen Engel vor dir her, der da bereite deinen Weg vor dir. — Es ist die Stimme eines Predigers in der Wüste.» — Im Urtext heißt es: Es ist eine Stimme des Rufers in der Einsamkeit.
Wenn ein unbefangener Mensch diese Worte liest und sie erklären sollte, so weiß er zunächst nicht viel damit anzufangen. Er betrachtet sie mehr oder weniger als eine Phrase oder höchstens als eine Allegorie. Denn was soll ein Prediger in einer Wüste verkündigen? Der geht doch gewöhnlich nicht in eine Wüste, sondern dorthin, wo viele Menschen sind.
Beleuchten wir nun einmal diese Stelle mit den Ergebnissen der Geistesforschung, so wird uns die ganze Tiefe der Weisheit offenbar, die in jedem Wort der Heiligen Schrift niedergelegt ist. Wir werden erfahren, daß jedes Wort im Urtext an seiner richtigen Stelle steht und auch nur dann verstanden werden kann.
Was soll nun gesagt werden mit den Worten: «Ich sende meinen Engel vor dir her, der da bereite deinen Weg vor dir»? — Wir wissen, daß hier die Bibel auf Johannes den Täufer weist. Nun müssen wir aber, um zu erklären, weshalb da der Ausdruck Engel steht, noch einmal zurückgehen in die früheren Entwickelungszustände unserer Erde und sehen, welche Wesenheiten ihren Anteil daran genommen haben. Wir wissen ja, daß es auf unserer physischen Erde auch eine hierarchische Gliederung auf verschiedenen Entwickelungsstufen gibt, wovon die unterste Stufe das Mineralreich ist; dann kommt die Pflanzenwelt, dann die Tierwelt und als oberste Stufe der Mensch. Höher hinauf über den Menschen ragt die Hierarchie der Engel oder Angeloi, der Erzengel oder Archangeloi, der Archai oder Geister der Persönlichkeit, der Exusiai oder Geister der Form oder Gewalten; weiter hinauf die der Mächte oder Dynamis, der Herrschaften; dann die der Throne, Cherubim, Seraphim.
Auch alle diese Hierarchien sind in einer steten Entwickelung begriffen. So nun, wie wir unsere Menschheits-Entwickelungsstufe auf unserer Erde durchmachen, so hat die Hierarchie der Engel, die gleich über uns steht, ihre Menschheitsstufe während des unserer Erde vorangehenden planetarischen Zustandes, während des Mondenzustandes, durchgemacht, wenn auch in anderer Form, als wir sie heute durchmachen. Sie sind uns also eine Stufe voraus. Und wie wir auf Erden die Führer und Leiter unserer Kinder sind, so haben die Engel das Amt, unsere Menschheit zu leiten und zu führen. Da die irdischen Formen ihnen nun keine Gelegenheit bieten, sich darin inkarnieren zu können, so müssen sie, um uns helfen zu können, ihre Weisheit einfließen lassen in die Leiber der höchst entwickelten, reiinsten Menschen, damit durch ihren Mund der Menschheit göttliche Wahrheiten verkündigt werden. In solch einem Fall können wir sagen: Sie hüllen sich in Maya.
Wir können uns dies noch deutlicher machen, wenn wir uns bis in das graue Altertum zurückversetzen und uns die sieben indischen Rishis vor den Geist stellen. Würden wir ihre äußere Gestalt betrachten, so würden wir nichts anderes vor uns sehen als schlichte, einfache Männer, ja, als Bauern vielleicht, aber in sich bergend ihren inneren Wesenskern. Hellseherisch würden wir sie aber erblicken in einer großen strahlenden Aura; aus ihrem Innern heraus würden Wärmeflammen sich ergießen in ihre Umgebung. Damit aber die größte kosmische Weisheit in ihren Wesenskern eindringen konnte, mußten alle sieben zusammen beieinander sein. Gleich der Skala von sieben Tönen eines Instrumentes, wurden sie berührt von der Göttlichkeit. Und die Sprache, die sie redeten — für uns würden es unverstehbare Laute sein.
Wie war denn in dieser uralten Zeit die Sprache? Wir können uns heute kaum einen Begriff davon bilden, denn unsere heutige Sprache ist im Gegensatz zu jener eine aus Begriffen philiströs zusammengesetzte, von Logik durchzogene. Zur Zeit der Rishis war der Klang dasjenige, was, wenn er ertönte, Bilder aufsteigen ließ vor dem inneren Auge. Woher stammt denn eigentlich die Sprache? Aus welchem Urgrund kam sie? Die alten Weisen hatten sie heruntergeholt aus den Sternen. Der Tierkreis war für sie die Zeichenschrift am Himmel, die Schrift der Gottheit. Der Tierkreis vergegenwärtigte die Konsonanten, die Planeten die Vokale, und je nachdem sie ihre Bahn veränderten innerhalb des Tierkreises, lasen die Weisen den verschiedenen Sinn der himmlischen Weisheit.
So waren also die Körper der Rishis auch Maya, welche den inneren göttlichen Wesenskern verhüllte.
Wenden wir nun dieses Licht, das die Geisteswissenschaft uns gewährt, auf unsere Bibelworte an, so vergeht jede Banalität, welche die Materialisten so gerne in dieselben hineinlegen wollen. Wir verstehen jetzt in des Wortes wahrster Bedeutung, was es heißt: Und Gott sandte einen Engel voraus, um ihm, der da kommen sollte, den Weg zu bereiten. - Mit dem Engel ist wirklich eine höher entwickelte Wesenheit gemeint aus der ersten über uns stehenden Hierarchie der Engel oder Angeloi, ein Wesen, das seinen Geist in die Maya des menschlichen Körpers gesenkt hatte; in diesem Falle also in den Körper Johannes’ des Täufers, welcher die Inkarnatiion des Elias war. Man muß die Bibelworte nur richtig beleuchten und sie dann wörtlich nehmen, wenn wir sie richtig verstehen wollen.
Und weiter heißt es in den Bibelworten: Es ist eine Stimme eines Predigers in der Wüste. — Es ist ein Rufer in der Einsamkeit.
Hiermit wissen die Theologen ebenfalls nichts anzufangen. Ja, was heißt denn, Rufer in der Wüste oder Einsamkeit zu sein?
Wir wissen, daß Johannes mit Wasser taufte. Und zwar bestand die Wassertaufe darin, daß bei der Einweihung der ganze Mensch untergetaucht wurde in den Jordan.
Weshalb geschah dieses? Es geschah darum, daß der Ätherleib eines geistig entwickelten Menschen sich für einen Moment loslösen sollte vom physischen Leibe; denn dann erlebte der Mensch dasselbe, was ein Sterbender erlebt beim Loslösen seines Ätherkörpers. Er sieht dann nämlich in allen Einzelheiten seine jetzige Inkarnation bis zu seiner Geburt, gleichsam als ein Panorama, sich vor seinen Blicken aufrollen, und er fühlt und weiß, daß er außerhalb seines fleischlichen Körpers ein geistiges Wesen ist.
Kam er nun, nach diesem Erlebnis bei der Taufe, wieder herauf in seinen physischen Leib, so hatte er eine Erfahrung gehabt, die ihn innerlich von allen andern Menschen unterschied: Er fühlte sich sozusagen alleinstehend mit diesem erweiterten Wissen, abgesondert von der übrigen Menschheit, die ihn nicht mehr begriff. Er fühlte sich vereinsamt, gleichsam in einer Wüste, allein in der Einsamkeit. Und in seiner tiefsten inneren Abgeschlossenheit vernahm er die Stimme eines Rufers: seines Engels.
Dieser führende Engel sollte sich hier in die Person Johannes des Täufers kleiden. Solches war der Sinn der Stimme in der Wüste im Bibelwort.
Weiter lesen wir im Markus-Evangelium die Stelle, wo der Christus in den Schulen die höchste Weisheit verkündet, und wo es heißt: «Und sie entsetzten sich über seine Lehre, denn er lehrte gewaltiglich und nicht wie die Schriftgelehrten.»
Was heißt es: gewaltiglich reden? Wer sprach aus seiner Leiblichkeit heraus? So wie die Engel und die Erzengel Leiter der einzelnen Menschen und die Erzengel besonders Führer des ganzen Volkes sind, so sind wieder andere höhere Wesenheiten Lenker und Leiter der Naturkräfte, der Naturgewalten. Aus diesen Naturkräften heraus schöpfen auch die Genien der Kunst. Wir finden sie hineinstrahlend in Leonardo, in Michelangelo, in Raffael: Sie schöpften aus der göttlichen Natur heraus.
Und wollen wir uns vergegenwärtigen, wo wir diese Naturgewalten zu suchen haben, so versetzen wir uns für einen Augenblick in Gedanken auf Bergeshöhen, sagen wir auf irgendeines der Schweizer Gebirge. Wenn wir dann das große Glück haben, dort einen Sonnenaufgang erleben zu dürfen, so werden wir überwältigt werden von dem Zauber und der Erhabenheit dieses Naturereignisses, wir werden uns durchschauert fühlen von den gewaltigen Kräften, die uns da entgegenstrahlen und die uns Gottes Allmacht verkünden. Wenn wir sehen, wie aus dem Dämmergrau des anbrechenden Tages die ersten zarten Farbentöne der aufgehenden Sonne heraufsteigen, wie sie die Spitzen der Schneeberge in Purpurglut tauchen, und unser Auge allmählich geblendet wird durch das immer glanzvoller und glanzvoller werdende Schauspiel, wie dann die Strahlen immer mehr Farbentöne hervorzaubern, die gleichsam von allen Seiten herzu strömen und immer umfangreicher werden, bis die Sonne endlich in ihrer ganzen lodernden Pracht, lebenweckend, wärmespendend ihre Strahlen bis in die tiefsten Täler niedersendet, dann erblicken wir in diesem majestätischen Naturereignis nichts anderes als geistige Kräfte, die hier zusammenfließen. Und diese Kräfte sind diejenigen Wesenheiten, die wir in den Hierarchien kennengelernt haben als Exusiai oder Gewalten oder Geister der Form. Im Urtext heißt es: Er lehrte wie die Exusiai. Christus hatte die Gewalten zur Verfügung, er sprach durch sie, in der Form der Gewalten. Durch Johannes sprachen die Engel, die eine Stufe über der Menschheit stehen; durch Christus sprachen die Kräfte der Gewalten, die so, wie es geschildert wurde, in den Naturereignissen sprechen. Also diese Kräfte waren es, die den Leib des Christus durchglühten, die ließen ihn predigen «gewaltiglich».
Johannes der Täufer hatte die höchste Einweihung erhalten, welche geschah im Zeichen des Wassermanns. Wenn man die alten Zeichen des Tierkreises sieht, so erblicken wir im Zeichen des Wassermanns eine Figur, die sich niederbeugt mit einer gewissen Haltung der Arme. Sie bezieht sich auf die biblischen Worte: Es kommt einer nach mir, dem ich nicht genugsam bin, daß ich mich vor ihm bücke, um die Riemen seiner Schuhe zu lösen.
Thirteenth Lecture
How should we approach Theosophy if we want to understand its deepest truths?
To answer this question, let us take as our starting point a statement in the Gospel of Mark: “Behold, I send my angel before you, who will prepare your way before you. — It is the voice of a preacher in the desert.” — In the original text it says: It is the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
When an unbiased person reads these words and tries to explain them, he does not know what to make of them at first. He regards them more or less as a phrase or, at most, as an allegory. For what is a preacher to proclaim in a desert? He does not usually go to a desert, but to places where there are many people.
Let us now examine this passage in the light of spiritual research, and the whole depth of wisdom contained in every word of Holy Scripture will become apparent to us. We will learn that every word in the original text is in its proper place and can only be understood there.
What is meant by the words, “I will send my angel before you to prepare your way before you”? We know that here the Bible refers to John the Baptist. But in order to explain why the word angel is used here, we must go back to the earlier stages of our Earth's development and see which beings played a part in it. We know that on our physical earth there is also a hierarchical structure at various stages of development, the lowest stage being the mineral kingdom, followed by the plant world, then the animal world, and at the highest stage, the human being. Above humanity stands the hierarchy of angels or angeloi, archangels or archangeloi, archai or spirits of personality, exusiai or spirits of form or powers; further up are the powers or dynamis, the dominions; then the thrones, cherubim, and seraphim.
All these hierarchies are also in a state of constant development. Just as we are now going through our stage of human development on Earth, so the hierarchy of angels, which stands immediately above us, went through its stage of humanity during the planetary state that preceded our Earth, during the lunar state, albeit in a different form than we are experiencing today. They are therefore one step ahead of us. And just as we are the guides and leaders of our children on Earth, so the angels have the task of guiding and leading humanity. Since earthly forms do not offer them the opportunity to incarnate, they must, in order to help us, pour their wisdom into the bodies of the most highly developed, purest human beings, so that divine truths may be proclaimed to humanity through their mouths. In such a case, we can say that they envelop themselves in Maya.
We can make this even clearer to ourselves if we go back to ancient times and picture the seven Indian Rishis before our mind's eye. If we were to look at their outer appearance, we would see nothing more than simple, unassuming men, perhaps even peasants, but harboring their inner essence. With clairvoyant vision, however, we would see them in a great radiant aura; from within them, warm flames would pour out into their surroundings. But in order for the greatest cosmic wisdom to penetrate their core, all seven had to be together. Like the scale of seven tones of an instrument, they were touched by the divine. And the language they spoke would be incomprehensible sounds to us.
What was language like in those ancient times? We can hardly imagine it today, because our language today, in contrast to theirs, is composed of concepts and permeated by logic. At the time of the rishis, sound was what, when it was heard, caused images to arise before the inner eye. Where does language actually come from? From what primordial source did it originate? The ancient sages brought it down from the stars. For them, the zodiac was the sign language of the heavens, the writing of the gods. The zodiac represented the consonants, the planets the vowels, and depending on how they changed their course within the zodiac, the sages read the different meanings of heavenly wisdom.
Thus, the bodies of the Rishis were also Maya, which veiled the inner divine essence.
If we now apply this light, which spiritual science grants us, to the words of the Bible, all the banality that materialists so eagerly want to read into them disappears. We now understand in the truest sense of the word what it means: And God sent an angel before him to prepare the way for him who was to come. The angel really means a higher being from the first hierarchy of angels or angeloi above us, a being who had lowered his spirit into the Maya of the human body; in this case, into the body of John the Baptist, who was the incarnation of Elijah. We just need to look at the Bible words in the right light and take them literally if we want to understand them correctly.
And further on in the Bible it says: There is a voice of a preacher in the desert. — There is a voice crying in the wilderness.
Theologians also do not know what to make of this. What does it mean to be a voice crying in the desert or in the wilderness?
We know that John baptized with water. And the baptism with water consisted in the whole person being immersed in the Jordan at the initiation.
Why did this happen? It happened so that the etheric body of a spiritually developed person could detach itself from the physical body for a moment; for then the person experienced the same thing that a dying person experiences when his etheric body detaches itself. He then sees his present incarnation in all its details up to his birth, as it were, unfolding before his eyes like a panorama, and he feels and knows that he is a spiritual being outside his physical body.
When he returned to his physical body after this experience at baptism, he had had an experience that distinguished him inwardly from all other human beings: he felt, so to speak, alone with this expanded knowledge, separated from the rest of humanity, which no longer understood him. He felt isolated, as if in a desert, alone in solitude. And in his deepest inner isolation, he heard the voice of one calling: his angel.
This guiding angel was to clothe himself here in the person of John the Baptist. Such was the meaning of the voice in the desert in the Bible passage.
Further on in the Gospel of Mark, we read the passage where Christ proclaims the highest wisdom in the schools, and where it says: “And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.”
What does it mean to speak powerfully? Who spoke from his physical body? Just as the angels and archangels are the leaders of individual human beings, and the archangels in particular are the leaders of the entire people, so again other higher beings are the guides and leaders of the forces of nature, the forces of nature. The geniuses of art also draw from these forces of nature. We find them shining forth in Leonardo, in Michelangelo, in Raphael: they drew from divine nature.
And if we want to visualize where we can find these forces of nature, let us transport ourselves for a moment to the heights of a mountain, say, to one of the Swiss mountains. If we are then fortunate enough to experience a sunrise there, we will be overwhelmed by the magic and sublimity of this natural event, we will feel shaken by the mighty forces that shine upon us and proclaim God's omnipotence. When we see the first delicate shades of color rising from the gray twilight of the dawning day, how they bathe the peaks of the snow-covered mountains in a purple glow, and our eyes are gradually dazzled by the ever more brilliant spectacle, how the rays conjure up more and more shades of color, which seem to stream from all sides and become ever more extensive, until the sun finally sends its rays down in all their blazing splendor, life-giving and warming, to the deepest valleys, then we see in this majestic natural event nothing other than spiritual forces flowing together here. And these forces are the beings we have come to know in the hierarchies as Exusiai or Powers or Spirits of Form. The original text says: He taught like the Exusiai. Christ had the Powers at his disposal; he spoke through them, in the form of the Powers. Through John spoke the angels who stand one step above humanity; through Christ spoke the forces of the powers, which, as described, speak in natural phenomena. So it was these forces that glowed through the body of Christ, enabling him to preach “powerfully.”
John the Baptist had received the highest initiation, which took place under the sign of Aquarius. When we look at the ancient signs of the zodiac, we see in the sign of Aquarius a figure bowing down with a certain posture of the arms. This refers to the biblical words: “There is one coming after me, whom I am not worthy to bow down before, to loosen the straps of his sandals.”