The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Easter Event at the Goetheanum

[ 1 ] The event in Bern was immediately followed by the one that took place at the Goetheanum itself. My topic was: Easter, a piece of mystery history. I tried to show how the roots of Easter lie in the mysteries. How, prompted by the mysteries, festivals were celebrated in ancient times at which the image of the god of life force and beauty was sunk into the sea—or in some other way—amid expressions of mourning, and then, after about three days, was brought back to the light of day amid joyful celebrations. Such festivals did not symbolize something remote from human beings, but rather presented the participants with the fact that, after passing through the gate of death, human beings begin a new – spiritual – life after a few days. The cult ceremony was intended to present to the human eye what one experiences supersensually immediately after death. In the earliest times, this representation did not yet refer to the reawakening of nature in spring. It merely represented something that humans experience as a being transcending nature.

[ 2 ] Only later, when the mental images present in an older instinctive spiritual vision had faded, did the connection to natural events take place. People looked at the material processes that take place in the resurrection of life in spring in order to find in them images for the resurrection of the spiritual human being after physical death.

[ 3 ] Through the Mystery of Golgotha, what previously could only be shown in images before human perception became a historical event. With this image, people's gaze was directed toward the cosmos, that is, toward space. And behind this direction were the experiences of the initiates in the mysteries. Through spiritual exercises, they enabled their souls to see into the spiritual world. Into the spiritual world for which the stars and their movements are the outer manifestation. There they became aware of how the formation of that entity in the human being, which he carries with him into physical earthly existence at birth – or conception – is under the influence of the forces that form the spiritual part of the moon. But they also recognized how the spiritual part of the sun intervenes in human beings during their earthly life in such a way that they can transform what was formed at birth. Through their initiation, they felt themselves transported with their souls to the sun.

[ 4 ] What they gained through this transfer to the sun, human beings have been able to gain since the Mystery of Golgotha by directing their soul's gaze to this mystery. Previously, this gaze was directed into the spatial cosmos; since the founding of Christianity, time has taken the place of space. The soul's gaze can be directed toward what happened on Golgotha. What previously had to be sought outside the earth could now be found in earthly events themselves. The ancient mysteries lose their solar splendor before the radiant star of Golgotha. They find their fulfillment in it.

[ 5 ] To look into the world-historical destiny of the ancient mysteries means to deepen the meaning of Easter, which for contemporary human beings can represent their demise and new dawn. In striving for this deepening, anthroposophy itself becomes imbued with the idea of resurrection; it is a message of this resurrection. As such, it becomes a matter of the heart rather than just an idea. In this way, the Goetheanum's Easter event sought to carry forward the impulse of the Christmas Conference.

[ 6 ] We were very pleased that, despite the unfavorable circumstances, this event was able to bring together numerous members of the Society at the Goetheanum. May this be followed by the further satisfaction that the visitors to our Easter celebration will carry the spirit of the Goetheanum back to their local branches of the Anthroposophical Society. This will bring the unified spirit into the Society that it needs and that the Christmas Conference sought to inspire in the hearts of its members.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 7 ] 32. In the head of man, the physical Organisation is a copy, an impress of the spiritual individuality. The physical and the etheric part of the head stand out as complete and self-contained pictures of the Spiritual; beside them, in independent soul-spiritual existence, there stand the astral and the Ego-part. Thus in the head of man we have to do with a development, side by side, of the physical and etheric, relatively independent on the one hand, and of the astral and Ego-organisation on the other.

[ 8 ] 33. In the limbs and metabolic part of man the four members of the human being are intimately bound up with one another. The Ego-organisation and astral body are not there beside the physical and etheric part. They are within them, vitalising them, working in their growth, their faculty of movement and so forth. Through this very fact, the limbs and metabolic part of man is like a germinating seed, striving for ever to unfold; striving continually to become a ‘head,’ and—during the earthly life of man—no less continually prevented.

[ 9 ] 34. The rhythmic Organisation stands in the midst. Here the Ego-organisation and astral body alternately unite with the physical and etheric part, and loose themselves again. The breathing and the circulation of the blood are the physical impress of this alternate union and loosening. The inbreathing process portrays the union; the out-breathing the loosening. The processes in the arterial blood represent the union; those in the venous blood the loosening.