The Christian Mystery
GA 97
29 July 1906, Landin
XXIV. The Secret of the Grail in the Works of Richard Wagner
There are some occult and spiritual-scientific truths I want to consider in connection with Richard Wagner's Parsifal.185See Rudolf Steiner's lectures given in Berlin on Richard Wagner and mysticism (in German, in GA 55) and on 22 and 19 March 1906 (in German, in GA 54).A strange, deep link exists between the phenomenon of the great artist Richard Wagner and the spiritual movement called Theosophy today. People are gradually beginning to realize that Richard Wagner and his works represent a great sum of occult power. But something else will also emerge in future, and that is that there is much more to the Richard Wagner phenomenon than he himself could possibly know. It is a mystery connected with many important figures, particularly artists, that a power lives in them of which they themselves have no knowledge.
If on the one hand we understand that there was much more to Richard Wagner than he himself was aware of, we must not forget, on the other hand, that he was not able to reach the ultimate level of wisdom, and that Richard Wagner's art therefore shows itself in quite a peculiar light to the occultist. When it comes to his works, one has to say to oneself that there is much more to them, something mysterious which lies behind it all.
It is indeed interesting to see the deeper currents in the background. Richard Strauss186Strauss, Richard (1864–1949). See Thomas, W. Richard Strauss und seine Zeitgenossen S. 46, 72, 75; München 1964. said on one occasion that it was possible to see much more in Richard Wagner than people usually do. He put it more or less like this: ‘People who insist one should not look beyond Richard Wagner's work seem to me to be like people who also do not want to go beyond the flower they see. They will never know the secret of the flower. And is much the same with people who cannot think of anything further in the case of a great artist.’
Richard Wagner tackled subjects of tremendous significance. You keep finding names in his works that relate to very ancient sacred traditions. In Parsifal he achieved something that is closely bound up with the power that had such a strange influence in the last third of the 19th century.
To understand his figures and themes we must first cast an eye on profound secrets of human evolution, going back a few thousand years in history. All his life Richard Wagner made profound studies of human affairs and the secret of the human soul. In his youth he sought to explore the secret of reincarnation. The draft of a play he was working on in 1856 shows this. It was called The Victors.187Die Sieger. Entwurf, Zurich, Mai 1956, in Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen Band 11, Leipzig 1911. Wagner wrote to Mathilde Wesendonk from Paris in early August 1960: 'Only deep-thinking assumption of the transmigration of souls showed me the comforting point where everything finally comes together at one level of redemption, when the different lives lived, running separately but side by side in time have touched one another in understanding. According to the beautiful Buddhist belief the simple explanation of the absolute purity of Lohengrin is that he is a continuation of Parsifal who fought to gain his purity. In the same way Elsa would be at Lohengrin's level when reborn. The scheme for my Sieger has just presented itself to my mind as the final conclusion of Lohengrin. Here Savitri (Elsa) is wholly at Ananda's level. All the terrible tragedy of life would thus lie merely in the separateness of time and space. These, however, live only in our minds and have no reality beyond them. Someone with perfect clairvoyance would thus be able to explain even the greatest most tragic pain as mere error on the part of the individual. I believe this to be so. And in all truth it is wholly a matter of the pure and noble, which in itself is painless? Richard Wagner an Mathilde Wesendonk. Tagebuchblätter und Briefe 1853–1871. 36. Auflage S. 242. Berlin 1909. Wagner stopped work on it later on, for he could not find a musical solution to the problem of the ‘victors’. A dramatic solution would have been perfectly possible. The story of the play was as follows. A young man in far distance India, Ananda by name, a Brahmin by caste, was loved by a girl called Prakriti who belonged to the lowest caste. Ananda became a pupil of the Buddha. He did not return Prakriti's love, which cast her into deep sorrow. Ananda withdrew from the world to dedicate himself to the religious life. A Brahman then told the girl why her fate was the way it was. In an earlier life she, a member of the Brahman caste, had rejected the love of this same young man, who was then of the lowest caste. Hearing this she, too, turned to the Buddha, and both of them were then pupils of the same teacher.
Wagner had intended to work on this theme in 1856. A year later the subject he had failed to deal with came to him in another way. He conceived the great idea of his Parsifal in 1857. It is a strange story of how the whole mystery of Parsifal came to Richard Wagner at one particular moment.188‘Lovely spring weather came; on Good Friday I woke up for the first time in this house to full sunshine. The small garden had grown green, the birds were singing, and I was finally able to sit on the parapet of the little house and enjoy the much longed-for quiet that held such promise. With my heart full of this, I suddenly said to myself that it was Good Friday and recalled the significance this reminder had held for me once before, in Wolfram's Parsifal. I had never taken the poem up again since that time in Marienbad when I developed the ideas for Meistersinger and Lohengrin. Now its ideal content came to me overwhelmingly, and with the Good Friday idea in mind I rapidly produced the outline for a whole dramatic piece, in three acts, and immediately made a few quick notes of it.' Wagner R. Mein Leben III. Band S. 133f Miünchen 1915. It was on Good Friday 1857 in the Wesendonk Villa on the Lake of Zurich. He saw nature outside growing, shooting and sprouting. And at that moment he understood the connection between nature coming to new life and Christ's death on the cross. That is the secret of the holy grail. From that moment, Richard Wagner lived with the idea of presenting the secret of the holy grail to the world in music.
To understand this unusual experience we must go back a few thousand years in history. Richard Wagner put down his beautiful thoughts on human evolution in writing under the title ‘Heroism and Christianity’.189Wagner R. Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen in 10 Banden, hersg. W. Golther. 10. Bd S. 275ff: ‘Ausfiihrungen zu Religion und Kunsf, 2. 'Heldentum und Christentum’. Leipzig o. J. Let us first of all consider the kind of teaching given in occult societies in the 16th or 17th century. There have been mystery centres at all times. The knowledge taught there was at the same time religion, a religion that was also wisdom. It is not possible to really understand the mysteries unless one understands that there is a world of the spirit.
The different realms of nature lie spread out around us—minerals, plants, animals and human beings. We consider the human realm to be the highest of the four. Just as there are realms around man that are lower than he is, so there are higher spirits above him, at many levels. The different levels of spirits that are above man have always been called ‘gods’. Wisdom was taught in the mystery centres in a way that made human beings able to commune with the gods at a conscious level. Such people would always and wherever mystery centres existed be called ‘initiates’. They were not merely given words of wisdom but experienced realities within those mysteries. Today's mystery centres are of a different kind than those of antiquity and medieval times.
An important mystery centre existed in a region of northern Spain at the time when the crusades began and a little before that. The mysteries of those times were called ‘late Gothic mysteries’. Their initiates were called Tempelisen or Tempeleisen or Knights of the Holy Grail. Lohengrin was one of them. The community of these Knights of the Grail was rather different from another knightly community. This had its seat in Britain, in Wales. All the stories of King Arthur and his Round Table have to do with this other initiate community.
In very early times, long before Christianity, a large population moved from west to east on this earth. This was a very long time ago. There was a time when Atlantis existed in a region that is now part of the Atlantic Ocean. Our far distant ancestors, the Atlanteans, lived there. The whole population of Europe and Asia, all the way to India, were descendants of the Atlanteans. Conditions of life on Atlantis were very different from those in which people lived later on. Atlanteans lived in a completely hierarchic system guided by such initiates. All government and rule came from the initiates in those times. One famous initiate school was in the north of present-day Russia. Its initiates were called trotts. Other schools were in western Europe, their initiates known as druids. All social institutions to control the masses of humanity came from these initiates.
Let us take a look at those very early schools. What kind of secret was taught in them? It is only the form of the teaching that changes with time. It is truly remarkable that the mystery which Richard Wagner experienced inwardly was taken to its highest development in those schools. It is the connection between nature coming alive in spring and the mystery of the cross.
The first thing pupils had to understand was that all power of bringing forth that lies outside the animal and human realms may also be seen in the plant world. In spring, the divine power of creation sprouts forth from Mother Earth. It had to be understood that there is a connection between the power that comes forth when the earth covers itself with a green carpet and the power of divine creation. The pupils would be told: ‘Out there you see a power in the flowers as they open that condenses in the seed. Countless seeds will come from the chalice of the flower, and put in the soil they will bring forth something new. One can now feel with the whole of one's being that the events that happen out there in nature are nothing else but the processes that also happen in the human and animal worlds, but in the plant this happens without desire and is wholly chaste.’
The infinite innocence and chastity slumbering in the flower chalices of plants had to live in the hearts of the pupils. They were then told: ‘The sunbeam opens the flowers. It brings forth the power from those flowers. Two things come together—the opening flower and the sunbeam. Other realms—the animal and human worlds—are between the plant world and the divine realm. All these realms are only the transition from the plant world to the divine realm. In the divine realm we see once again a realm of innocence and chastity, as in the plant world. In the animal and human worlds we see a realm of desire.’
And then the teachers would speak of the future: ‘The time will come when all lusts and desires shall vanish. Then the chalice will open from up above, just as the chalice of a flower opens, and it will look down on the human being. Just as the sunbeam enters into the plant, so will man's own purified power unite with this divine chalice.’
We can invert the flower chalice in our minds, letting it bend down from above, from heaven, and we can invert the sunbeam, so that it rises from the human being to the heavens. This inverted flower chalice was shown to be a reality in the mysteries and called the holy grail. The real chalice of a plant is the inverted holy grail. Everyone who gains occult knowledge comes to know that the sunbeam represents something known as the ‘magic wand’. The magic wand is a superstitious version of a symbol that represents a spiritual reality. In the mysteries this magic wand was known as the bloodstained lance. We are shown the origin of the grail on the one hand and of the blood-stained lance on the other, the original magic wand known to true occultists.
I am just touching on things of great profundity, significant truths that took place in that belt in northern and western Europe. Richard Wagner sensed a great deal of all this, as did his friend the Comte de Gobineau,190Gobineau, Joseph Arthur, Comte de (1816–82), considered the 'intellectual father, of Nietzsche and the actual inventor of ‘super-man’ and ‘supermorality’. His Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines, 4 vols, was published in 1853–55; translated in 1915 and published in English as The Inequality of Human Races. a deep thinker.
To say what lies at the base of the mysteries of which I have been speaking, it was knowledge of the fluid that streams in animal and human veins. Quite rightly, Goethe wrote ‘Blood is a sap of very special kind’ in his Faust.191Faust 1, verse 1740. Many things are connected with the blood. We shall understand what blood signifies if we grasp and understand the tremendous revolution that has occurred in the mysteries. In earlier times, it was known among the European people that important things depend on the way people are related by blood. Because of this, progress and development was never left to chance in those times. All these things were arranged out of occult wisdom. It was known that if the development of small tribal communities was limited to that community, with no one coming in from outside, individuals born within that community would have special powers. The consequences of letting different kinds of blood come together were known in the mysteries. They also knew exactly which tribe was right for a particular area. They knew that common blood was the source of specific human powers.
When the ancient bonds of blood relationship were broken, something also happened in the mysteries. Purposes which before had been achieved by means of blood relationship were now replaced with two specific spiritual preparations in the great mysteries. The lesser mysteries had the outward symbols of these—bread and wine. The two preparations were substances which had an effect in the spirit that was similar to the physical effect of the blood in our veins. When the ancient clairvoyance had gone, these two preparations took its place. Having learned all of theosophical wisdom, initiates would then be given these symbols from the chalice of Ceridwen.192Ch. W. Heckethom wrote in Geheime Gesellschqften, Geheimbilnde und Geheimlehren S. 60 (Leipzig 1900): Druid culture encompassed all religious and philosophical study known in those lands at the time. The principal deities may be said to have been male and female, the great father and the great mother Hu and Ceridwen, in every respect the same as Osiris and Isis or Bacchus and Ceres, etc. See Rudolf Steiner's public lecture given in Berlin on 6 May 1909, ‘The European mysteries and their initiates’ (GA 57) (Anthroposophical Quarterly 1964: 9:1). The purified blood could then be given to human beings from the chalice opening up from above. This is the true mystery, which at the time remained with a very small body of people.
In other parts of Europe the mysteries fell into decline and were then made profane in a disgusting, repulsive manner. Their symbol of the offering was a dish in which a bleeding head was placed. It was thought that something might be aroused in a human being on seeing this head. It was black magic that was being performed, the opposite of the mystery of the holy grail.
It was known at that time that the element which streams upwards in the chalice of the flower also lived in the human blood. It had to become pure and chaste again, like the sap of a flower. In the degenerate mysteries this was given a crude, materialistic form. In the north, people needed the sublimated blood as a symbol, and in the Eleusinian Mysteries the wine of Dionysus and the bread of Demeter. The cup of the grail made into something abhorrent, with the bleeding head, may be found again in the story of Herodias and the head of John. She was laughing at the mystery made profane.
The true secret of the great mysteries went to the Tempeleisen in northern Spain, guardians of the Grail. King Arthur's knights were more concerned with worldly affairs, but it was possible to prepare the Tempeleisen to receive an even more sublime secret, the great secret of Golgotha, the mystery of world history.
Christianity had its origin in the most mixed of nations, the Galileans, who were wholly alien to and outside all blood community. The redeemer founded his kingdom entirely outside the old blood community, beyond all blood bonds. The sublimated blood, purified blood, sprouts from the sacrificial death, the purification process. The blood that gives rise to wishes and desires must flow, it has to be sacrificed, it must run.
The sacred vessel with the purified blood was taken to Spain, to the Tempeleisen on Montsalvatch. Titurel, the ancestor, received the grail; before, it had been longed for. Now the overcoming of the blood had happened. The purely physical nature of the blood had been overcome by the spirit.
You can only understand what happened on Golgotha if, unlike a materialist, you know blood to be composed not only of material elements. It is indeed highly remarkable that Richard Wagner was only able to find the sacred mood for his Parsifal because he knew that it was not only a matter of the Redeemer's death but of the blood which had been purified and was a little bit different from ordinary blood. He himself spoke of the connection between the Redeemer's blood and the whole of humanity: ‘Having seen that the blood of what is known as the “white race” had a special capacity for conscious suffering and pain, we must now recognize the saviour's blood as the essence of suffering consciously willed, divine compassion that flows for the whole human race as its source and origin.’193See ref. 189, 10. Bd S. 282.
Richard Wagner also wrote: ‘The blood in the redeemer's veins must thus have flowed forth as the result of the utmost endeavour of the will, a divine sublimate of the human race itself to save that race which in its noblest parts was falling into decline.’
It was because the redeemer had come from the greatest mix of nations that his blood was the sublimate of all human blood, human blood in its purified form.
Richard Wagner approached the great original mystery in a way hardly anyone else had dared to do. It is the very vigour he brought to this that made him a great artist. He should not be taken for an ordinary musician but someone with profound insight who sought to recreate the deep secrets of the holy grail for modern humanity. Before Richard Wagner wrote his Parsifal, people in Germany knew little about the mysteries and the figures which Richard Wagner then presented.
The initiation into the mysteries was in three stages, through which the individual had to go. The first stage was known as ‘dumbness’, the second ‘doubt’, the third ‘godliness’. In the first stage the human being would be taken away from all prejudice in the world, and told of the power in his own soul, his own power of love, so that he might see the inner light shine out. The second stage was that of doubt. This state of doubting everything came at the second stage of initiation. At a higher level it was then elevated to become inner godliness. In this third stage the initiand was guided to be consciously with the gods.
Perceval—pass through the vale—that was the name given to such initiands in medieval times.194Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1170–1220) interpreted the name he gave to the hero of his epic poem V. 140.16 f. in this way. Parsifal had to learn all this from experience. Richard Wagner's strange genius made him feel this on that Good Friday in 1857, feel the thread that had to run through the whole of Parsifal's development.
The Tempeleisen represented the inner, the true Christianity as against the Christianity of the Churches. It is evident everywhere in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal that he wanted to show the spirit of that inner Christianity side by side with the Christianity of the Churches.
Remnants of the old profaned mysteries still existed in the Middle Ages. Everything that comes under this heading was epitomized in the name Klingsor. He was the black magician, in opposition to the white magic of the holy grail. Richard Wagner also showed him in opposition to the Tempeleisen.
Kundry is Herodias brought back to life. She symbolizes the power that brings forth nature, a power that can be both chaste and unchaste, but without direction. Chastity and lack of chastity have the same root, and it is a matter of ‘as the question, so the answer’. The productive power that shows itself in the flower chalice of the plant, going up through the other realms, is the same as in the Holy Grail. It merely has to go through purification in the purest, noblest form of Christianity, as we see it in Parsifal.
Kundry had to remain a black magician until Parsifal redeemed her. The whole confrontation between Parsifal and Kundry has the odour of the most profound wisdom. More than anyone else, Richard Wagner made it possible for people to take this in without knowing it. Richard Wagner was a missionary whose mission it was to give something full of significance to the world, without humanity being aware of this truth.
Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote his Parzifal as a plain and simple epic. That was sufficient in his day. People who had some degree of clairvoyance at that time understood Wolfram von Eschenbach. In the 19th century it was not possible to show the profound significance of the process in dramatic form. But there is a way of helping people's understanding without words, without concepts or ideas. This is through music. Wagner's music holds all the truths contained in Parsifal. The strange music written by Wagner would create quite specific vibrations in the ether bodies of those who listened to it. The ether body is connected with all the profound motions of the blood. Richard Wagner understood the secret of the purified blood. His melodies hold the vibrations that have to be in the human ether body when it becomes purified in the way that is necessary so that the secret of the grail may be received.
The strange way in which Richard Wagner was writing his books can only be understood if one goes into the realities that were behind Wagner. He knew very well that the human will receives a very special illumination from the spirit. He wrote that initially the will was a crude, instinctive element, but it gradually came to be refined. The intellect casts its light on the will and the human being becomes aware of pain and suffering, and this leads to purification. Referring to the ideas of his friend the Comte de Gobineau he wrote: "One cannot fail but realize the unity of the human race when reviewing its parts, and we are justified in saying that at its noblest it is the capacity of bearing pain and suffering in full awareness. In the light of this we ask where the outstanding nature of the white race lies, since we certainly must put it high above the others. With beautiful certainty, Gobineau perceives it to lie not in any exceptional development of its moral quality as such, but in a greater store of the fundamental characteristics from which those qualities arise. It would have to be sought in the fiercer yet also more delicate sensitivity of the will which reveals itself in a rich organization, in conjunction with the more astute intellect this requires; it will then be a matter of whether the intellect, under the impulses of a will that has great need, advances to clairvoyance, casting its own light back on to the will, and in this case subjugate it to become moral drive?
Richard Wagner was here speaking of the actual process in which the intellect casts its reflection on the will, and the human being become clairvoyant in the process.
Richard Wagner's work was to give religious depth to art and ultimately profound understanding of Christianity. He knew that Christianity was best presented through music. By rising to the inmost secrets of the world order we will on the one hand gain knowledge, but on the other also true godliness. There is a way of human development that teaches us the significance of this fact relating to Christianity.
Das Gralsgeheimnis im Werk Richard Wagners
In Anknüpfung an Richard Wagners Kunstwerk «Parsifal» will ich einiges über okkulte und geisteswissenschaftliche Wahrheiten bringen. Es besteht ein merkwürdiger, tiefer Zusammenhang zwischen der bedeutungsvollen künstlerischen Erscheinung Richard Wagners und der heutigen geistigen Bewegung, welche man Theosophie nennt. Daß Richard Wagner und sein Kunstwerk überhaupt eine ungeheure Summe von okkulter Kraft verkörpern, das ist etwas, was nachgerade zum Bewußtsein der Menschheit kommt. Aber es wird in der Zukunft noch etwas anderes klar werden, nämlich, daß wir in Richard Wagner eine Erscheinung haben, in der noch viel mehr lebte, als er selbst wissen konnte. Das ist das Geheimnis vieler bedeutender und besonders künstlerischer Erscheinungen, daß in ihnen eine Kraft lebt, von der sie selbst nichts wissen.
Wenn wir uns auf der einen Seite klarmachen, daß in Richard Wagner viel mehr lebte, als ihm selbst zum Bewußtsein kam, dürfen wir auf der andern Seite nicht vergessen, daß er doch bis zur letzten Stufe der Weisheit nicht hat vorrücken können, und daß sich daher für den Okkultisten Richard Wagners Kunst ganz besonders ausnimmt. Man muß sich bei Richard Wagners Kunstwerken sagen: In alldem lebt viel mehr — etwas Geheimnisvolles, was noch dahintersteht.
Es ist höchst reizvoll, im Hintergrunde die tieferen Strömungen zu sehen. Daß man in Richard Wagner viel mehr, als gewöhnlich geschieht, finden könne, hat Richard Strauß einmal gesagt. Er führte dazu etwa folgendes aus: Diejenigen, die immer behaupten, man dürfe nichts hinzudenken zu dem, was Richard Wagner geschaffen hat, kommen mir vor wie Menschen, die bei einer Blume auch nichts hinzudenken wollen. Solche Menschen kommen aber nie hinter das Geheimnis der Blume. Ähnlich ergeht es denen, die bei einem großen Künstler sich nichts hinzudenken können.
Richard Wagner hat sich besonders an Stoffe von hoher Bedeutung herangemacht. Immer findet man bei ihm Namen, welche an uralte heilige Traditionen anknüpfen. Was er im «Parsifal» erreicht hat, hängt innig zusammen mit der Kraft, die so merkwürdig im letzten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts gewirkt hat.
Wir müssen in tiefe Geheimnisse der Menschheitsentwickelung einen Blick tun, um seine Gestalten und Motive zu verstehen. Zu diesem Zweck wollen wir in der Geschichte um einige Jahrtausende zurückgehen. Richard Wagner hat zeit seines Lebens die allertiefsten Studien über den Menschenzusammenhang und das Geheimnis der Menschenseele getrieben. Er suchte in seiner Jugend das Geheimnis der Reinkarnation zu erforschen. Daß er sich damit beschäftigt hat, zeigt sich in einem Entwurf zu einem Drama, den er 1856 ausgearbeitet hat. Dieses Drama heißt «Die Sieger». Wagner gab die Ausführung dieses Dramas später auf, weil das Problem der «Sieger» für ihn musikalisch nicht lösbar war. Dramatisch allein wäre es für ihn vollkommen lösbar gewesen. Das Drama hatte folgenden Inhalt: Ein Jüngling im fernen Indien, Ananda mit Namen, aus der Brahmanenkaste, wird von einem Tschandalamädchen, aus der untersten Kaste, mit Namen Prakriti, geliebt. Ananda wird ein Schüler des Buddha. Er erwidert die Liebe der Prakriti nicht. Sie ist dadurch in die äußerste Betrübnis versetzt. Ananda zieht sich von der Welt zurück und widmet sich dem religiösen Leben. Dem Tschandalamädchen wird dann durch einen Brahmanen Aufklärung zuteil, warum sie dieses Schicksal hat. Sie hat in einem früheren Leben als Brahmanin die Liebe desselben Jünglings, der damals in der Tschandalakaste war, verschmäht. Unter dem Eindruck dieser Lehre wendet auch sie sich dem Buddha zu, und nun werden sie beide Schüler dieses einen Lehrers.
Diesen Stoff hat Wagner 1856 skizziert und ausarbeiten wollen. Was ihm damals nicht gelungen ist, das stand in anderer Weise schon ein Jahr danach vor seiner Seele. 1857 faßte er die große Idee zum «Parsifal». Es ist merkwürdig, wie in einem Augenblick das ganze Mysterium des «Parsifal» in Richard Wagners Seele hineingezogen ist. Es war am Karfreitag 1857 in der Villa Wesendonk am. Zürichsee. Da sah er hinaus in die aufkeimende, aufsprießende und blühende Natur. Und in diesem Augenblick wurde ihm der Zusammenhang zwischen der aufsprießenden Natur und dem Tode Christi am Kreuze klar. Dieser Zusammenhang ist das Geheimnis des Heiligen Gral. Von diesem Moment an ging durch Richard Wagners Seele der Gedanke, er müsse das Geheimnis des Heiligen Gral in musikalischer Form in die Welt hinaussenden.
Wenn wir dies eigentümliche Erlebnis in Richard Wagners Seele verstehen wollen, dann müssen wir in der Geschichte um einige tausend Jahre zurückgehen. Seine schönen Gedanken über die menschliche Evolution hat Richard Wagner in seiner Schrift «Heldentum und Christentum» niedergelegt. Wir wollen dazu zunächst die Form der Lehre, die innerhalb Europas zu allen Zeiten bis zum 16.oder 17. Jahrhundert in Mysteriengesellschaften erteilt wurde, in Betracht ziehen. Mysterien hat es zu allen Zeiten gegeben. In den Mysterien bekam man ein Wissen, welches zu gleicher Zeit Religion war, und eine Religion, welche zu gleicher Zeit Weisheit war. Den richtigen Begriff von einem Mysterium kann derjenige überhaupt nicht bekommen, der nicht den Begriff von einer geistigen Welt hat.
Um uns her haben wir in Stufen ausgebreitet die verschiedenen Naturreiche, Mineralien, Pflanzen, Tiere und Menschen. Wir betrachten das Menschenreich als das höchste unter diesen vier Reichen. Wie es Reiche um den Menschen herum gibt, die unter ihm stehen, so gibt es auch über den Menschen hinaus höhere Wesen in vielen Stufen. Man hat von jeher die in verschiedenen Stufen über den Menschen hinausragenden Wesenheiten als Götter bezeichnet. Durch die Art der Weisheit, wie sie in den Mysterien den Menschen mitgeteilt wurde, wurde der Mensch in einen bewußten Umgang mit den Göttern gebracht. Einen solchen Menschen bezeichnete man immer, wo es Mysterien gab, als einen Eingeweihten. Er erhielt nicht bloß eine Wortweisheit, sondern erfuhr Tatsachen, die er innerhalb der Mysterien erlebte. Auch heute noch gibt es Mysterien, doch sind sie anderer Natur als jene in den alten Zeiten und im Mittelalter.
In der Zeit, als die Kreuzzüge beginnen, und etwas vorher, finden wir in einer Gegend im Norden von Spanien ein wichtiges Mysterium. Die damals vorhandenen Mysterien nannte man die späteren gotischen Mysterien. Die in diese damals eingeweiht wurden, nannte man die Tempelisen oder Tempeleisen oder die Ritter vom Heiligen Gral. Zu diesen gehörte auch Lohengrin. Die Gralsritter stellen in ihrer Gemeinschaft etwas vor, was verschieden ist von einer andern Ritterschaft. Diese andere Rittergemeinschaft hatte ihren Sitz in England, in Wales. Alles, was im Mittelalter von König Artus und seiner Tafelrunde erzählt wird, knüpft an diese andere Einweihungsgemeinschaft an.
In Urzeiten, lange vor der Entstehung des Christentums, bewegte sich ein Menschenstrom auf der Erde von Westen nach Osten. Sehr lange Zeit ist das her. Einstmals befand sich in der Gegend des Atlantischen Ozeans die Atlantis, wo unsere weit zurückliegenden Vorfahren, die Atlantier, gewohnt haben. Alles, was Europa und Asien, bis nach Indien hin, bevölkert hat, waren Nachkommen der Atlantier. Diese Atlantier lebten unter ganz andern Bedingungen als denjenigen, unter denen die Menschen später lebten. Sie lebten ganz hierarchisch unter der Leitung solcher Einweihungsschulen. Alles Regieren und Herrschen ging damals von Eingeweihten aus. Eine berühmte Einweihungsschule war im Norden des heutigen Rußland. Die Eingeweihten dort nannte man Trotten. Andere Einweihungsschulen gab es im Westen Europas, wo die Eingeweihten die Druiden hießen. Um Ordnung in die Menschenmassen zu bringen, gingen von diesen Eingeweihten alle sozialen Einrichtungen aus.
Wir sehen nun in diese allerältesten Schulen hinein. Was für ein Geheimnis wurde da gelehrt? Nur die Formen solcher Lehren ändern sich zu verschiedenen Zeiten. Höchst merkwürdig ist es, daß da das Geheimnis, welches Richard Wagner empfunden hat, zur höchsten Entfaltung gebracht worden ist, nämlich: wie die im Frühling sprießende Natur mit dem Geheimnis des Kreuzes zusammenhängt.
Es handelt sich darum, daß der Mensch sich zunächst klarmacht, daß alle Kraft der Hervorbringung, die außerhalb des Tier- und Menschenreiches liegt, auch im Pflanzenreich zu sehen ist. Im Frühling sprießt die göttliche Schöpferkraft aus der Mutter Erde hervor. Erkennen muß man, daß ein Zusammenhang besteht zwischen der Kraft, die hervorkommt, wenn die Erde sich mit einem grünen Teppich bedeckt, und der göttlichen Schöpferkraft. Den Schülern wurde gesagt: Da draußen seht ihr in den sich öffnenden Blütenkelchen eine Kraft, die sich in den Samenkörnern konzentriert. Unzählige Samenkörner werden aus der Blüte hervorkommen, die, in die Erde gelegt, Neues hervorbringen können. Jetzt fühlt man ganz und gar, daß das, was draußen in der Natur vor sich geht, nichts anderes ist, als was auch im Menschen- und Tierreich vor sich geht, was aber bei der Pflanze ohne Begierde, ganz keusch vor sich geht.
Die unendliche Unschuld und Keuschheit, die in den Blütenkelchen der Pflanzen schlummert, sie mußte durch die Seele der Schüler ziehen. Weiter wurde ihnen gesagt: Die Blüten öffnet der Sonnenstrahl. Er holt die Kraft aus den Blüten heraus. Zwei kommen sich da entgegen, die sich öffnende Blume und der Sonnenstrahl. Zwischen dem Pflanzenreich und dem göttlichen Reiche stehen andere Reiche, das Tier- und Menschenreich. Alle diese Reiche sind nur ein Übergang vom Pflanzenreich zum göttlichen Reiche. Im göttlichen Reiche sieht man wieder ein Reich der Unschuld und Keuschheit wie im Pflanzenreich. Im Tier- und Menschenreich sehen wir ein Reich der Begierde.
Aber dann wurde in die Zukunft verwiesen: Schwinden werden einstmals alle Lüste und Begierden. Es wird dann von oben herunter der Kelch sich öffnen, so wie der Kelch der Blume sich öffnet, und herab zum Menschen schauen. Wie der Sonnenstrahl sich in die Pflanze senkt, so wird des Menschen eigene geläuterte Kraft sich mit diesem göttlichen Kelch vereinigen.
Man kann den Blütenkelch der Blume geistig umkehren, so daß er von oben, vom Himmel, sich nach unten neigt, und man kann den Sonnenstrahl umkehren, so daß er vom Menschen sich zum Himmel erhebt. Diesen umgekehrten Blütenkelch, wie es als Tatsache in den Mysterien dargestellt wurde, nannte man den Heiligen Gral. Der wirkliche Blütenkelch der Pflanze ist der umgekehrte Heilige Gral. Das, was der Sonnenstrahl darstellt, lernt jeder kennen, der Okkultismus kennt, und zwar in dem sogenannten Zauberstab. Der Zauberstab ist das abergläubisch ausgeprägte Symbol für eine geistige Wirklichkeit. Diesen Zauberstab nannte man in den Mysterien die blutige Lanze. In dieser Darstellung sieht man den Ursprung des Gral auf der einen Seite und der blutigen Lanze auf der anderen Seite, den ursprünglichen Zauberstab des wirklichen Okkultisten.
Dies sind kleine Andeutungen von ungeheurer Tiefe, bedeutungsvolle Wahrheiten, die sich auf dem Gürtel im Norden und Westen Europas abgespielt haben. Richard Wagner hat vieles von diesen Wahrheiten geahnt, ebenso sein Freund, der tiefsinnige Graf Gobineau.
Wenn man das ausdrücken soll, was den bis jetzt erwähnten Mysterien zugrunde liegt, so war es die Kenntnis dessen, was in Tier- und Menschenadern fließt. Ganz mit Recht heißt es in Goethes «Faust»: «Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft.» Blut ist dasjenige, an dem vieles hängt. Wir werden verstehen, was Blut bedeutet, wenn wir uns darüber klar werden und begreifen, was für eine große Umwälzung sich in den Mysterien vollzogen hat. In alten Zeiten der europäischen Bevölkerung hat man gewußt, daß etwas ganz Besonderes davon abhängt, wie die Menschen in Blutsverwandtschaft zueinander stehen. Daher wäre in den damaligen Zeiten niemals die Fortentwickelung dem Zufall überlassen worden. Es wurden alle diese Dinge aus der okkulten Weisheit geregelt. Man wußte: Wenn in kleinen Stammesgemeinschaften die Fortentwickelung so abgeschlossen war, daß kein außerhalb derselben Stehender hineinkam, so waren bei den daraus hervorgehenden Menschen gewisse höhere Kräfte vorhanden. Man kannte in den Mysterien die Folge des Zusammenwirkens von verschieden geartetem Blut. Man wußte auch genau, welcher Stamm für eine Gegend paßte. Man wußte, daß in dem gemeinsamen Blute der Träger bestimmter Menschenkräfte gegeben ist.
Als die uralte Blutsverwandtschaft durchbrochen wurde, ging in den Mysterien etwas Besonderes vor sich. Was ehemals durch die Blutsverwandtschaft erreicht worden war, wurde nun ersetzt durch zwei bestimmte geistige Präparate in den hohen Mysterien. In den niederen Mysterien waren die äußeren Symbole dafür vorhanden. Diese äußeren Symbole waren Brot und Wein. Was als jene zwei Präparate vorlag, es waren Stoffe, die geistig etwas Ähnliches bewirkten wie physisch das Blut in den Adern. Als das alte Hellsehen verlorenging, wurde dies also ersetzt durch den Genuß dieser Präparate. Wenn man die ganze theosophische Weisheit gelernt hatte, bekam man damals diese Symbole aus der Schale der Ceridwen. Das war es, was als geläutertes Blut aus dem von oben herab sich öffnenden Kelch den Menschen gegeben werden konnte. Es ist dies, was als das eigentliche Mysterium besteht, dann auf eine sehr kleine Körperschaft übergegangen.
In andern Gegenden Europas sind die Mysterien verfallen und auf eine abscheuliche, abstoßende Weise profaniert worden. Da findet man als Symbol des Opfers eine Schale, in die ein blutendes Haupt gelegt wurde. Man hatte die Meinung, daß in dem Menschen durch den Anblick dieses Hauptes etwas erweckt werden könne. Was da vorgenommen wurde, war schwarze Magie. Es war der Gegensatz zu dem Geheimnis des Heiligen Gral.
Man wußte damals, daß das, was im Blütenkelch nach oben strömt, im menschlichen Blute lebt. Das mußte wieder rein und keusch werden wie der Blütensaft. In den entarteten Mysterien hat man das in eine grobe materialistische Form gebracht. Im Norden brauchten sie als Symbol in den Mysterien das sublimierte Blut und in den eleusinischen Mysterien den Wein des Dionysos und das Brot der Demeter. Das abscheulich gemachte Gralsgefaß mit dem blutenden Haupte finden wir wieder bei der Herodias mit dem Haupt des Johannes. Sie lacht über das profanierte Mysterium.
Das eigentliche Geheimnis der hohen Mysterien ist übergegangen auf die Tempeleisen im Norden Spaniens, die Gralshüter. Während die Ritter des Artus sich mehr mit den weltlichen Angelegenheiten befaßten, konnten die Tempeleisen vorbereitet werden, ein noch höheres Geheimnis aufzunehmen, nämlich zu verstehen das große Geheimnis von Golgatha, das weltgeschichtliche Mysterium.
Das Christentum ist hervorgegangen aus dem allerstärksten Völkergemisch, den Galiläern, aus denen, die ganz fremd draußen stehen, außerhalb aller Blutsgemeinschaft. Der Heiland ist derjenige, der mit seinem Reiche ganz und gar nicht mehr fußt auf der alten Blutsgemeinschaft, der jenes Reich begründet, das jenseits aller Blutsgemeinschaft liegt. Das sublimierte Blut, das Blut, das geläutert ist, sprießt aus dem Opfertode, dem Reinigungsprozeß, hervor. Das Blut, das Wünsche und Begierden erzeugt, das muß rinnen, geopfert werden, hinfließen.
Das heilige Gefäß mit dem geläuterten Blut wurde nach Europa zu den Tempeleisen auf dem Berge Montsalvatsch gebracht. Titurel, der Ahnherr, hat den Gral empfangen, vorher war er ersehnt worden. Jetzt war die Überwindung des Blutes vor sich gegangen. Es war das rein Physische des Blutes durch das Geistige überwunden worden.
Nur wenn man das Blut nicht bloß, wie der Materialist, als aus chemischen Bestandteilen zusammengesetzt ansieht, kann man verstehen, was sich auf Golgatha vollzogen hat. Es ist im höchsten Grade bemerkenswert, daß Richard Wagner nur dadurch die fromme Stimmung zum «Parsifal» finden konnte, daß er wußte: Es handelte sich nicht allein um den Tod des Erlösers, sondern um das Blut, das gereinigt war, das etwas anderes war als das gewöhnliche Blut. Er spricht selbst von dem Zusammenhang des Erlöserblutes mit der ganzen Menschheit: «Fanden wir nun dem Blute der sogenannten weißen Rasse die Fähigkeit des bewußten Leidens in besonderem Grade zu eigen, so müssen wir jetzt im Blute des Heilands den Inbegriff des bewußt wollenden Leidens selbst erkennen, das als göttliches Mitleiden durch die ganze menschliche Gattung, als Urquell derselben, sich ergießt.»
Ferner sagt Richard Wagner: «Das Blut in den Adern des Erlösers dürfte so der äußersten Anstrengung des Erlösung wollenden Willens zur Rettung des in seinen edelsten Rassen erliegenden menschlichen Geschlechtes, als göttliches Sublimat der Gattung selbst entflossen sein.»
Weil der Erlöser aus der größten Völkermischung hervorgegangen ist, war sein Blut das Sublimat alles Menschenblutes, das Menschenblut in der gereinigten Gestalt.
Richard Wagner ist an das Urgeheimnis herangegangen wie kaum ein anderer. Gerade die Kraft, mit der er dies tat, macht ihn zum großen Künstler. Man darf ihn nicht bloßals einen gewöhnlichen Musiker nehmen, sondern man muß ihn als einen tiefen Erkenner sehen, der für die moderne Menschheit die tiefen Geheimnisse des Heiligen Gral wieder verkörpern wollte. Bevor Richard Wagner den «Parsifal» gedichtet hat, wußte man in Deutschland nicht viel von den Mysterien und den Gestalten, die Richard Wagner dann gebracht hat.
Man unterschied bei der Einführung in die Mysterien drei Stufen, durch die der Mensch hindurchgehen mußte. Die erste Stufe war die Dumpfheit, die zweite Stufe war der «Zwîfel, die dritte Stufe war die «Saelde». Die erste Stufe war die, auf welcher der Mensch von allem Vorurteil der Welt hinweggeführt wurde, hingewiesen wurde auf die Kraft seiner eigenen Seele, seine eigene Liebeskraft, damit er das innere Licht leuchten sehen konnte. Die zweite Stufe war der Zwîfel, Zweifel. Dieser Zweifel an allem kommt auf der zweiten Stufe der Einweihung, und er wird auf einer höheren Stufe hinaufgehoben in die innere Seligkeit = Saelde. Dies war die dritte Stufe, das bewußte Zusammenführen mit den Göttern.
Perceval - dringe durch das Tal! -, so wurden im Mittelalter solche Einzuweihende genannt. Das alles mußte Parsifal erfahren als Erlebnis. Durch eine merkwürdige Genialität hat Richard Wagner das an jenem Karfreitage 1857 gefühlt, was als der leitende rote Faden durch die ganze Entwickelung des Parsifal hindurchgehen mußte.
Die Tempeleisen waren die, welche das innere, das wahre Christentum vertraten gegenüber dem Kirchenchristentum. Man kann überall im «Parzival» des Wolfram von Eschenbachsehen, wie er den Geist des inneren Christentums hinstellen wollte neben das Kirchenchristentum.
Es bestanden im Mittelalter noch Überreste der alten profanierten Mysterien. Alles, was dazugehört, das wird zusammengefaßt unter dem Namen Klingsor. Er ist der schwarze Magier gegenüber der weißen Magie des Heiligen Gral. Richard Wagner hat ihn auch den Tempeleisen gegenübergestellt.
Kundry ist die wiedererstandene Herodias. Sie symbolisiert diejenige Kraft, die die Hervorbringungskraft der Natur ist, die beides, keusch und unkeusch sein kann, aber ungeleitet. Dem Keuschen und dem Unkeuschen liegt ein Einheitliches zugrunde, und es kommt hierbei darauf an, «wie man in den Wald hineinruft». Die Produktionskraft, die sich in den Pflanzen in den Blütenkelchen zeigt, durch die andern Reiche hinauf, ist dieselbe wie in dem Heiligen Gral. Sie muß nur die Läuterung empfangen in der reinsten, edelsten Form des Christentums, wie es sich im «Parsifal» zeigt.
Kundry mußte eine schwarze Zauberin bleiben, bis Parsifal sie erlöste. Die ganze Gegenüberstellung des Parsifal mit der Kundry atmet den Duft tiefster Weisheit. Richard Wagner hat mehr als ein anderer dafür gesorgt, daß man das aufnehmen konnte, ohne davon zu wissen. Richard Wagner war ein Missionar, der der Welt das Bedeutungsvolle übermitteln sollte, ohne daß die Menschheit diese Wahrheit wußte.
Wolfram von Eschenbach hat ein schmuckloses Epos geschrieben, den «Parzival». Das genügte für seine Zeit. Es gab damals Menschen, die eine gewisse Gabe der Hellsichtigkeit hatten, die Wolfram von Eschenbach verstanden. Aber die tiefe Bedeutung jenes Vorganges den Menschen im Drama deutlich zu machen, war im 19. Jahrhundert nicht möglich. Doch gibt es ein Mittel, zum Verständnis zu wirken, auch ohne Worte, ohne Begriffe, ohne Idee. Das Mittel ist die Musik. Die Wagnersche Musik enthält alles das, was an Wahrheiten im «Parsifal» liegt. Die Zuhörer empfangen durch die eigentümliche Wagnerische Musik in ihrem Ätherleib ganz besondere Schwingungen. Darin liegt das Geheimnis der Wagnerschen Musik. Man braucht die Dinge gar nicht wirklich zu verstehen, aber man bekommt ihre wohltätigen Wirkungen durch den Ätherleib. Der Ätherleib hängt mit allen Wallungen des Blutes zusammen. Richard Wagner hat das Geheimnis des gereinigten Blutes verstanden. In seinen Melodien liegen die Schwingungen, die im Ätherleibe des Menschen sein müssen, wenn er sich so läutert, wie es nötig ist, um das Geheimnis des Heiligen Gral zu empfangen.
Die eigentümliche Art, wie Richard Wagner in seinen Schriften schreibt, ist nur dann ganz zu verstehen, wenn man sich auf das einläßt, was hinter Wagner stand. Er war sich klar darüber, daß der menschliche Wille eine ganz besondere Beleuchtung vom Geiste aus empfängt. Er sagte, der Wille ist zunächst das Grobe, das Instinktive; dann verfeinert sich das immer mehr. Der Intellekt wirftsein Licht auf den Willen, und der Mensch wird leidbewußt, und durch das Bewußtsein des Leidens wird eine Läuterung herbeigeführt. Anknüpfend an seinen Freund, den Grafen Gobineau, sagt er: «Ist beim Überblick aller Rassen die Einheit der menschlichen Gattung unmöglich zu verkennen, und dürfen wir, was diese ausmacht, im edelsten Sinne als Fähigkeit zu bewußtem Leiden bezeichnen, in dieser Fähigkeitaber die Anlage zur höchsten moralischen Entwicklung erfassen, so fragen wir nun, worin der Vorzug der weißen Rasse gesucht werden kann, wenn wir sie durchaus hoch über die andern stellen müssen. Mit schöner Sicherheit erkennt ihn Gobineau nicht in einer ausnahmsweisen Entwicklung ihrer moralischen Eigenschaft selbst, sondern in einem größeren Vorrate der Grundeigentümlichkeiten, welchen jene entfließen. Diese hätten wir in der heftigeren, und dabei zarteren, Empfindlichkeit des Willens, welcher sich in einer reichen Organisation kund gibt, verbunden mit dem hierfür nötigen, schärferen Intellekte, zu suchen; wobei es dann darauf ankommt, ob der Intellekt durch die Antriebe des bedürfnisvollen Willens sich bis zu der Hellsichtigkeit steigert, die sein eigenes Licht auf den Willen zurückwirft und in diesem Falle durch Bändigung desselben zum moralischen Antriebe wird.»
Richard Wagner spricht hier von dem eigentlichen Vorgang der Abspiegelung des Intellekts auf den Willen des dadurch hellsichtig werdenden Menschen.
Es handeltsich bei Richard Wagners Schaffen um eine religiöse Vertiefung der Kunst, zuletzt aber um ein tiefes Verständnis des Christentums. Er wußte, daß in der musikalischen Gestalt das Christentum am besten zum Vorschein kommen kann. Durch die Erhebung zu den inneren Geheimnissen der Weltenordnung erlangt man auf der einen Seite das Wissen, aber auf der andern Seite auch die wahre Frömmigkeit. Es gibt eine menschliche Entwickelung, welche die Bedeutung dieser Tatsache des Christentums erkennen lehrt.
The Secret of the Grail in Richard Wagner's Work
In connection with Richard Wagner's work of art “Parsifal,” I would like to share some insights about occult and spiritual scientific truths. There is a strange, profound connection between Richard Wagner's significant artistic phenomenon and today's spiritual movement known as theosophy. The fact that Richard Wagner and his work embody an enormous amount of occult power is something that is gradually coming to the consciousness of humanity. But something else will become clear in the future, namely that in Richard Wagner we have a phenomenon in which much more lived than he himself could know. This is the secret of many significant and especially artistic phenomena, that a power lives in them of which they themselves know nothing.
If, on the one hand, we realize that there was much more alive in Richard Wagner than he himself was aware of, we must not forget, on the other hand, that he was unable to advance to the highest level of wisdom, and that Richard Wagner's art is therefore particularly exceptional for occultists. When considering Richard Wagner's works of art, one must say: there is much more alive in all of this — something mysterious that lies behind it.
It is extremely fascinating to see the deeper currents in the background. Richard Strauss once said that one can find much more in Richard Wagner than usually happens. He explained this as follows: Those who always claim that one should not think anything beyond what Richard Wagner created seem to me like people who do not want to think anything beyond a flower. But such people will never discover the secret of the flower. The same is true of those who cannot think anything beyond a great artist.
Richard Wagner was particularly drawn to subjects of great significance. His works always feature names that are linked to ancient sacred traditions. What he achieved in “Parsifal” is closely connected with the power that had such a remarkable effect in the last third of the 19th century.
We must look into the deep mysteries of human development in order to understand his characters and motives. To this end, let us go back a few millennia in history. Throughout his life, Richard Wagner conducted the most profound studies of human relationships and the mystery of the human soul. In his youth, he sought to explore the mystery of reincarnation. His preoccupation with this subject is evident in a draft for a drama he wrote in 1856. This drama is called “Die Sieger” (The Victors). Wagner later abandoned the production of this drama because the problem of “the victors” was musically unsolvable for him. Dramatically alone, it would have been perfectly solvable for him. The drama had the following content: A young man in distant India, named Ananda, from the Brahmin caste, is loved by a Chandala girl, from the lowest caste, named Prakriti. Ananda becomes a disciple of Buddha. He does not return Prakriti's love. This causes her extreme grief. Ananda withdraws from the world and devotes himself to religious life. The Chandala girl is then enlightened by a Brahmin as to why she has this fate. In a previous life as a Brahmin, she spurned the love of the same young man, who was then in the Chandala caste. Under the influence of this teaching, she also turns to the Buddha, and now they both become disciples of this one teacher.
Wagner sketched this material in 1856 and wanted to develop it further. What he did not succeed in doing at that time was already in his mind in a different form a year later. In 1857, he conceived the great idea for “Parsifal.” It is remarkable how, in a single moment, the entire mystery of “Parsifal” entered Richard Wagner's soul. It was Good Friday 1857 at Villa Wesendonk on Lake Zurich. He looked out at the burgeoning, sprouting, and blossoming nature. And in that moment, the connection between the sprouting nature and the death of Christ on the cross became clear to him. This connection is the secret of the Holy Grail. From that moment on, the thought passed through Richard Wagner's soul that he must send the secret of the Holy Grail out into the world in musical form.
If we want to understand this peculiar experience in Richard Wagner's soul, we must go back several thousand years in history. Richard Wagner recorded his beautiful thoughts on human evolution in his writing “Heroism and Christianity.” Let us first consider the form of teaching that was imparted in mystery societies throughout Europe until the 16th or 17th century. Mysteries have existed throughout the ages. In the mysteries, one gained knowledge that was at the same time religion, and a religion that was at the same time wisdom. Those who do not have a concept of a spiritual world cannot possibly grasp the true meaning of a mystery.
Around us, we have the various kingdoms of nature, minerals, plants, animals, and humans, arranged in stages. We consider the human kingdom to be the highest of these four kingdoms. Just as there are kingdoms around humans that are below them, there are also higher beings in many stages above humans. Beings that tower above humans in various stages have always been referred to as gods. Through the kind of wisdom imparted to humans in the mysteries, humans were brought into conscious contact with the gods. Wherever there were mysteries, such a person was always referred to as an initiate. He did not merely receive verbal wisdom, but experienced facts that he learned within the mysteries. Mysteries still exist today, but they are of a different nature than those in ancient times and in the Middle Ages.
At the time when the Crusades began, and somewhat earlier, we find an important mystery in a region in northern Spain. The mysteries that existed at that time were later called the Gothic mysteries. Those who were initiated into them at that time were called the Templars or Knights of the Holy Grail. Lohengrin was one of them. The Knights of the Grail represent something in their community that is different from other knighthoods. This other knightly community was based in England, in Wales. Everything that is told in the Middle Ages about King Arthur and his Round Table is linked to this other initiatory community.
In ancient times, long before the emergence of Christianity, a stream of people moved across the earth from west to east. That was a very long time ago. Once upon a time, Atlantis was located in the Atlantic Ocean, where our distant ancestors, the Atlanteans, lived. All the people who populated Europe and Asia, as far as India, were descendants of the Atlanteans. These Atlanteans lived under conditions that were very different from those under which people later lived. They lived in a hierarchical society under the guidance of such initiation schools. All government and rule at that time emanated from initiates. A famous school of initiation was located in the north of present-day Russia. The initiates there were called Trotten. Other schools of initiation existed in Western Europe, where the initiates were called Druids. In order to bring order to the masses, all social institutions emanated from these initiates.
Let us now take a look at these most ancient schools. What secrets were taught there? Only the forms of such teachings change at different times. It is most remarkable that the secret which Richard Wagner sensed was brought to its highest development there, namely: how nature sprouting in spring is connected with the secret of the cross.
It is a matter of man first realizing that all the power of creation that lies outside the animal and human kingdoms can also be seen in the plant kingdom. In spring, divine creative power springs forth from Mother Earth. One must recognize that there is a connection between the power that emerges when the earth is covered with a green carpet and divine creative power. The students were told: Out there, in the opening calyxes, you see a power that is concentrated in the seeds. Countless seeds will emerge from the flower, which, when placed in the earth, can bring forth something new. Now one feels completely that what is happening outside in nature is nothing other than what is also happening in the human and animal kingdoms, but in plants it happens without desire, completely chastely.
The infinite innocence and chastity that slumbers in the calyxes of plants had to pass through the souls of the students. They were also told that the sunbeam opens the flowers. It draws the power out of the flowers. Two things come together here: the opening flower and the sunbeam. Between the plant kingdom and the divine kingdom there are other kingdoms, the animal and human kingdoms. All these kingdoms are only a transition from the plant kingdom to the divine kingdom. In the divine kingdom we see again a realm of innocence and chastity, as in the plant kingdom. In the animal and human kingdoms we see a realm of desire.
But then reference was made to the future: all lusts and desires will one day disappear. Then the chalice will open from above, just as the chalice of the flower opens, and look down upon man. Just as the sunbeam descends into the plant, so will man's own purified power unite with this divine chalice.
One can spiritually reverse the calyx of the flower so that it bends down from above, from heaven, and one can reverse the sunbeam so that it rises from man to heaven. This inverted calyx, as depicted in the mysteries, was called the Holy Grail. The real calyx of the plant is the inverted Holy Grail. Anyone familiar with occultism knows what the sunbeam represents, namely the so-called magic wand. The magic wand is the superstitious symbol of a spiritual reality. In the mysteries, this magic wand was called the bloody lance. In this depiction, one sees the origin of the Grail on one side and the bloody lance on the other, the original magic wand of the true occultist.
These are small hints of tremendous depth, meaningful truths that have played out in the belt of northern and western Europe. Richard Wagner sensed much of these truths, as did his friend, the profound Count Gobineau.
If one were to express what underlies the mysteries mentioned so far, it would be the knowledge of what flows in the veins of animals and humans. Goethe's “Faust” quite rightly states: “Blood is a very special juice.” Blood is what many things depend on. We will understand what blood means when we become clear about it and comprehend what a great upheaval has taken place in the mysteries. In ancient times, the European population knew that something very special depended on how people were related to each other by blood. Therefore, in those days, further development would never have been left to chance. All these things were regulated by occult wisdom. It was known that when development in small tribal communities was so closed that no one from outside could enter, certain higher powers were present in the people who emerged from them. In the mysteries, the consequences of the interaction of different types of blood were known. It was also known exactly which tribe was suitable for a particular area. It was known that the common blood contained the bearers of certain human powers.
When the ancient blood relationship was broken, something special happened in the mysteries. What had formerly been achieved through blood relationship was now replaced by two specific spiritual preparations in the higher mysteries. In the lower mysteries, the outer symbols for this were present. These outer symbols were bread and wine. What existed as those two preparations were substances that had a spiritual effect similar to that of blood in the veins. When the old clairvoyance was lost, it was replaced by the consumption of these preparations. Once one had learned all theosophical wisdom, one received these symbols from the bowl of Ceridwen. This was what could be given to people as purified blood from the chalice opening from above. This is what constitutes the actual mystery, which then passed on to a very small body.
In other parts of Europe, the mysteries fell into decay and were profaned in a hideous, repulsive manner. There, the symbol of sacrifice is a bowl into which a bleeding head was placed. It was believed that something could be awakened in people by the sight of this head. What was being done there was black magic. It was the opposite of the mystery of the Holy Grail.
At that time, it was known that what flows upward in the calyx lives in human blood. This had to become pure and chaste again, like the sap of the flower. In the degenerate mysteries, this was expressed in a crude, materialistic form. In the north, they used sublimated blood as a symbol in the mysteries, and in the Eleusinian mysteries, the wine of Dionysus and the bread of Demeter. We find the abominably made Grail vessel with the bleeding head again in Herodias with the head of John. She laughs at the profaned mystery.
The true secret of the high mysteries has been passed on to the Knights Templar in northern Spain, the guardians of the Grail. While the Knights of Arthur were more concerned with worldly affairs, the Knights Templar were able to prepare themselves to receive an even higher secret, namely to understand the great mystery of Golgotha, the mystery of world history.
Christianity emerged from the strongest mixture of peoples, the Galileans, those who stood completely outside, outside any blood community. The Savior is the one who, with his kingdom, no longer bases himself on the old blood community, who establishes that kingdom which lies beyond all blood community. The sublimated blood, the blood that has been purified, springs forth from the sacrificial death, the purification process. The blood that generates desires and cravings must flow, be sacrificed, flow away.
The holy vessel with the purified blood was brought to Europe to the Temple Iron on Mount Montsalvatsch. Titurel, the forefather, received the Grail, which had been longed for before. Now the overcoming of blood had taken place. The purely physical aspect of blood had been overcome by the spiritual.
Only if one does not view blood merely as a combination of chemical components, as the materialist does, can one understand what took place on Golgotha. It is highly remarkable that Richard Wagner was only able to find the pious mood for “Parsifal” because he knew that it was not only about the death of the Redeemer, but about the blood that had been purified, that was something other than ordinary blood. He himself speaks of the connection between the blood of the Redeemer and all of humanity: “If we found the blood of the so-called white race to possess a particular capacity for conscious suffering, we must now recognize in the blood of the Savior the epitome of conscious willing suffering itself, which pours forth as divine compassion through the entire human race, as its original source.”
Richard Wagner further states: “The blood in the veins of the Redeemer may thus have flowed as the divine sublimation of the species itself, as the utmost effort of the will seeking redemption to save the human race succumbing in its noblest races.”
Because the Redeemer emerged from the greatest mixture of peoples, his blood was the sublimation of all human blood, human blood in its purified form.
Richard Wagner approached the primordial mystery like hardly anyone else. It is precisely the power with which he did so that makes him a great artist. He should not be regarded merely as an ordinary musician, but must be seen as a profound connoisseur who wanted to re-embody the deep mysteries of the Holy Grail for modern humanity. Before Richard Wagner wrote Parsifal, people in Germany knew little about the mysteries and figures that Richard Wagner then brought to light.
In the introduction to the mysteries, a distinction was made between three stages that a person had to go through. The first stage was dullness, the second stage was doubt, and the third stage was “Saelde.” The first stage was that in which man was led away from all the prejudices of the world and made aware of the power of his own soul, his own power of love, so that he could see his inner light shining. The second stage was doubt. This doubt about everything comes at the second stage of initiation, and it is raised to a higher stage of inner bliss = Saelde. This was the third stage, the conscious union with the gods.
Perceval – penetrate the valley! – this is what those who were to be initiated were called in the Middle Ages. Parsifal had to experience all this. Through a remarkable genius, Richard Wagner felt on that Good Friday in 1857 what had to be the guiding thread running through the entire development of Parsifal.
The Templars were those who represented inner, true Christianity as opposed to church Christianity. Throughout Wolfram von Eschenbach's “Parzival,” one can see how he wanted to place the spirit of inner Christianity alongside institutional Christianity.
In the Middle Ages, remnants of the old profaned mysteries still existed. Everything that belongs to them is summarized under the name Klingsor. He is the black magician as opposed to the white magic of the Holy Grail. Richard Wagner also contrasted him with the Temple Iron.
Kundry is the resurrected Herodias. She symbolizes the power that is the creative force of nature, which can be both chaste and unchaste, but unguided. There is a unity underlying the chaste and the unchaste, and it depends on “how you shout into the forest.” The productive power that manifests itself in the calyxes of plants, rising through the other realms, is the same as in the Holy Grail. It must only receive purification in the purest, noblest form of Christianity, as shown in “Parsifal.”
Kundry had to remain a black sorceress until Parsifal redeemed her. The whole juxtaposition of Parsifal and Kundry exudes the scent of deepest wisdom. Richard Wagner, more than anyone else, ensured that this could be understood without knowing it. Richard Wagner was a missionary who was supposed to convey the meaningful to the world without humanity knowing this truth.
Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote an unadorned epic, “Parzival.” That was enough for his time. There were people at that time who had a certain gift of clairvoyance and understood Wolfram von Eschenbach. But making the deep meaning of that process clear to people in the drama was not possible in the 19th century. However, there is a means of promoting understanding, even without words, without concepts, without ideas. That means is music. Wagner's music contains all the truths found in Parsifal. Through Wagner's unique music, listeners receive very special vibrations in their etheric bodies. That is the secret of Wagner's music. You don't really need to understand things, but you receive their beneficial effects through your etheric body. The etheric body is connected to all the surges of the blood. Richard Wagner understood the secret of purified blood. His melodies contain the vibrations that must be present in the etheric body of a person who has purified themselves as necessary to receive the secret of the Holy Grail.
The peculiar way in which Richard Wagner writes in his writings can only be fully understood if one engages with what stood behind Wagner. He was clear that the human will receives a very special illumination from the spirit. He said that the will is initially coarse and instinctive, but then becomes increasingly refined. The intellect sheds its light on the will, and man becomes conscious of suffering, and through this consciousness of suffering, purification is brought about. Referring to his friend, Count Gobineau, he says: "If, when looking at all races, the unity of the human species is impossible to overlook, and if we may describe what constitutes this unity in the noblest sense as the capacity for conscious suffering, but also recognize in this capacity the predisposition for the highest moral development, then we must now ask where the superiority of the white race can be found, if we must place it high above the others. With beautiful certainty, Gobineau recognizes it not in an exceptional development of its moral qualities themselves, but in a greater supply of the basic characteristics from which those qualities flow. We would have to seek these in the more intense, and at the same time more delicate, sensitivity of the will, which manifests itself in a rich organization, combined with the sharper intellect necessary for this; whereby it then depends on whether the intellect, driven by the impulses of the needy will, rises to the level of clairvoyance, which reflects its own light back onto the will and, in this case, becomes a moral impulse by taming it.
Richard Wagner is referring here to the actual process of the intellect reflecting on the will of the person who thereby becomes clairvoyant.
Richard Wagner's work is about a religious deepening of art, but ultimately about a deep understanding of Christianity. He knew that Christianity can best come to the fore in musical form. By elevating oneself to the inner mysteries of the world order, one attains knowledge on the one hand, but also true piety on the other. There is a human development that teaches us to recognize the significance of this fact of Christianity.