The Gospel of John and the Three Other Gospels

GA 117a — 9 January 1910, Stockholm

The European Mysteries and Their Adepts Druid and Drotten Mysteries

Presentation by Markus Uppling

After pointing out that man is by no means the simple being that the external, sensual eyes can see, the hand can grasp and the mind can comprehend, the speaker emphasized that the human ego is clothed not only in its physical body but also in an astral and an etheric body, and thus belongs not only to the physical world but also to the astral and etheric worlds.

Now he wonders: can a person know anything specific about these spiritual worlds, and are there really methods for research in these worlds? The speaker answered these questions with an unconditional 'Yes'. What then are these methods? The same ones that our ancestors used for this purpose, and which have always been referred to by the name of “initiation,” although with today's higher development of the human being, the attainment of the various degrees of initiation can only proceed entirely within the human being, without the use of all the external aids that were necessary in the past.

The part of the human being that needs to be strengthened and developed here is the astral body. We know, the speaker said, that during sleep the astral body, together with the ego, leaves the physical body and the etheric body and goes into the astral world to get the forces from which our life is to be built the following day. But for most people, the astral body is still a chaos, without structure and without organs of perception. It is therefore important to develop spiritual eyes and ears in it, so that it is able to store the impressions of the spiritual world, just as the physical body stores the impressions of the sensory world. The means for this are meditation and concentration of the life of feeling, imagination and will.

The first step on the path to initiation is imagination. As an example of the exercises required here, the speaker mentioned the exercise with the image of the black cross wreathed with red roses. The disciple is told to absorb this image within himself and to pay attention to the feelings it awakens in him. He is then told to banish from his consciousness the images of the roses themselves and of the cross itself, and to retain only the memory of how his soul was active in creating these images. Hundreds of other images the disciple must work on in his soul in the same way.

But in this way he gradually acquires new inner sense organs and can, for example, feel the “harmony of the spheres” of which the Pythagoreans spoke; and this sounding is not a fantasy, but a real reality. In this way, the human being has risen to the second degree of initiation, to the stage of inspiration.

To reach the third and final degree of initiation, the degree of intuition, the person must practice forgetting even the aforementioned inner soul work. After that, he must wait. If images now arise within him, these are impressions from the spiritual world, and the person has gained the gift of intuition. If such images do not arise, the student must continue his exercises. Through intuition, the human being will be able to grasp his own eternal soul. He can see his own incarnations and can prophetically say what influence what is happening today will have on future incarnations.

Initiation did not always happen in this way, however. In earlier times, an external apparatus was needed to make the impressions on the soul strong enough to develop the person to the point of inspiration and intuition.

The Greeks thus had two types of mysteries: the Dionysian and the Apollonian. The Dionysian mysteries originated in Egypt and aimed to have the student, blind and deaf to everything outside, delve into his own inner self and experience as powerfully as possible all the affects of the astral life, such as lust and fear, terror, anxiety and superhuman joy. In this way, strong spiritual powers were to be developed in him. The external apparatus used for this purpose consisted of underground passages and the like in the initiation temples. And even today, the plan of these arrangements can be found in the Egyptian pyramids.

The other kind of Greek mystery was the so-called Apollonian mystery. Here, too, external devices were used; but here the goal was to lead man to the spiritual not by feeling and thinking within himself, but by empathizing and thinking with the great nature. The radiance of the sun, the melancholy of autumn, the mysticism of the winter solstice and many other natural phenomena were the means used for this purpose. The everyday was lost for man, and behind the veil of the sensory world he began to recognize the spiritual world as a reality.

It is interesting to study the mysteries that existed in Northern and Central Europe in pre-Christian times and at the same time as the Palestine event. In Central Europe we had the Druid mysteries. These took place in the sacred forests at midnight on Christmas Eve, for example. And by letting his senses merge with the great nature, the Druid could gain a real insight into what man is and can become. And as the content of the world stood alive before his soul, the great “All-Father” and, opposite him, the “All-Mother, the soul, and this not as an abstraction, but as realities.

In Northern Europe, we have the Drotten Mysteries, which are a preparation for receiving the Christian Mysteries. The Drotten Mysteries prepared directly for initiation through intimate soul methods. Their practitioners believed that man had not yet come so far that he could ascend into the spiritual world; therefore, his soul must first be born. For this purpose, thirteen men participated in the mysteries at once, with one acting as a guide and the remaining twelve as helpers. Each of these twelve helpers sought to bring a single soul power to a very special height in order to allow all these powers to unite in the mystery like rays into the soul of the thirteenth. Under the influence of this, he was inspired and was able to reveal his perceptions from the spiritual world in words. There he saw the perfect human being as an image of the divinity itself. But then he saw the archetype of this human being, and as the last thing he saw what unites the image and the archetype - the holy trinity, of which our thinking, feeling and willing are only a weak image. In powerful images, he saw the stars as spiritual beings and saw himself living in this being. Through the Drotten Mysteries, man became a wanderer in the spiritual world.

Today's man can, if he wills, rise up into the spiritual world. Because of the fact that these initiates have lived, we now have bodies that are capable of becoming an instrument for the spiritual.