# Supplements to Member Lectures

## GA 246 — 6 December 1914, Stuttgart

### 71. Redemption to the Redeemer

*The Inner Mission of Richard Wagner's Parsifal in Connection with the Task of the Fifth Cultural Epoch*

From Richard Wagner's poem “The Ring of the Nibelung” one can recognize how the ego, the self-consciousness of the fifth age, our age, was born out of the original wisdom of the Atlantean age, and linked to this is the task of becoming a free, independent, capable ego and bringing the intellect to its highest development. The intellect must first be linked to egoism, to being special, which on the other hand gives man personal freedom, which makes him strong for the physical plan. Man originally received the impulse of freedom through the will of the gods. Wotan, the gods led man in renouncing love. In the “Ring” it says: “Whom I love, I leave to himself, he stands or falls, his lord is he.”

The principle of freedom must be there in order to give people the opportunity to find their way back to the divinity of their own free will, completely independent of any higher divine will or any divine influence. Intellectual knowledge was born out of wisdom, out of the originally pure flame, which is represented in the Rhine River. The intellect is represented in gold, which was originally pure, pure power in the daughters of the Rhine. The ego of man with its thinking, feeling and willing is born out of the Rhine current, out of the soul: Man was always a part of God.

In the [E flat] major chord, Richard Wagner presents us with the creation and work of the Godhead in the world of spiritual forces. In the fundamental tone of the third, the fifth, which is already in motion, in the triad we have that which creates, weaves and works in figured motion. In this triad the divine lives and works and in this divine trinity the divine I itself lives and works; what underlies it is wisdom, is holy spirit. Divine wisdom pervades the astral plan. And today it works from the center of the earth in the densest forces to spiritualize the earth again, to dissolve that which is compressed, constricted by being special. The ring of egoism is dissolved again by those forces of love that came in through the deed of love that took place in the Mystery of Golgotha. Brunhilde knows about this. She knows that the love fire of the spirit purifies the ring from the curse, that this fire burns away egoism, that the gold, the intellect is purified from egoism, that it must be dissolved in wisdom. But selfless love is born out of wisdom. The ego is redeemed from the constraints of the earthly realm in the water and fire of the pure astral forces, the forces of the spirit, and it must be returned to the originally pure fire and water elements.

The personal ego should come to open itself to the divine like a blossom, as a blossom opens itself to the rays of the sun. The fifth age, which brings forth the mature ego, must find a connection to the divine if the further development of humanity is not to lead to a hardening of the ego. In the present development of time we have arrived at the point where, through the serious time in which we now stand, the trials are beginning which will lead us through purifications, which must lead us in such a way that our specialness gradually dissolves again. If we can sacrifice a little of our small special interests, our selfish ego interests, to the great interests of the world, then what must happen will be able to happen. The fifth cultural epoch should bring about an internalized Christianity that is free from those influences that are selfish in nature. True Christianity should show that it is possible for the human soul to rise above that which degrades the soul in thinking, feeling and willing. For the true man is degraded by the desires and passions of the lower nature on the one hand; but man also degrades himself when he degrades the best thing he possesses, the spirit, when he misuses it for low purposes, for purposes that only serve to increase his personal power. The killing of a Siegfried nature, the spiritual of a Baldur, was perceived as a deep tragedy by our Germanic ancestors. Siegfried-Baldur could not yet be armed to defeat the dark forces depicted in the Twilight of the Gods that bring it about. He could not yet defeat and see through the Ahrimanic that confronts him in Hagen; he could not yet conquer the egoistic-Luciferian within himself. For Siegfried should have recognized that he should have given the ring back to the Rhinemaidens; he should have finished hearing Lodge-Lucifer saying that the ring must be given back. We hear him to the end when we have learned to distinguish between good and evil and when the intellect returns to wisdom. But man should learn to resist Lucifer in his attempts. Lucifer, however, leads man back to recognizing wisdom in a negative way - by the fact that man forces himself on him, that man learns to see through him. Lucifer is dangerous where human passions speak: in thinking, feeling and willing; man must overcome him. He must overcome the egoistic ego-desire in thinking, feeling and willing.

Why did the sword Nothung not protect Siegfried from Hagen's malice? In the four individual works - “Rheingold”, “Walküre”, ‘Siegfried’ and “Götterdämmerung” - there is a descent to solidified earth until the human being becomes a personal ego. Siegfried descended to the last phase, to the personal ego. The old wisdom was lost to him, he did not yet possess a new one, which is why he could not yet defeat the forces that bring danger to the personal ego. He had, so to speak, the last remnants of the old wisdom that he still had at the transition from tribal consciousness to the personal ego - this is also lost to him, it is no longer of any use to him. People who have fully experienced the fourth phase - Siegfried did not, he is a man of the transitional period - no longer have this consciousness, it has become dark in us. We do have Grane, the steed, the earthly wisdom. But this does not protect us sufficiently from the dark forces. And even the sword of old powers of initiation, old wisdom and knowledge, which now return to Siegfried, cannot protect Siegfried from the dangers of the now emerging intellect - that is why he had to succumb to the dark forces. The spiritual and light of old perishes - the treacherous intrigues of Hagen triumph. But he too meets his fate, he too must take the path back to catharsis, to purification, through the Rhinemaidens who drag him into the depths, and this leads into the depths of his own soul. Baldur-Siegfried must be overcome by the dark forces that have their seat in egoism. And humanity would have fared badly if the Mystery of Golgotha had not occurred, if it had not entered the wonderful pure shell of Jesus of Nazareth, which the great Master Zarathustra-Jesus worked through and spiritualized, the Christ-Jesus. The Christ-Jesus had to die like Baldur, like Siegfried died. But he, the Christ, overcame the dark forces. Therefore, for all times of development through the Mystery of Golgotha, we now have the guarantee, through the powers that have been placed in us since then, to overcome the dark powers that have their seat in egoism through the powers of the higher ego that has been placed in us, germinally, by awakening it - to become master over egoism. It is only unjustified egoism that becomes terrible to us, as it manifests itself as sensuality, lust for power, megalomania or vanity of the personal ego.

This is what we must learn from Richard Wagner: nowhere in occult training has there been more danger since the Mystery of Golgotha than where this egoism speaks. If we overcome it, and we can overcome it, we go through the occult training without danger. But we are free to decide which paths we want to take. We have been given the thinking to be able to act freely from our own insight.

But we should also keep our thinking free from ahrimanic and luciferic influences with regard to the moral element, then it can come to recognize the paths to take. If we want to realize the truly human, we must learn to look at our soul in its three parts in courageous self-knowledge in relation to the moral, from our ego, and learn to see through the dangers and the good in thinking, feeling and willing. The Christ triumphed over the dark powers in the Mystery of Golgotha, over everything that entered man through the Fall. The fall into sin was necessary in order to lead man to freedom and either to open himself up to the divinity or to continue being special.

The Godhead gave us the ability to think so that we could learn to distinguish between good and evil. But in order to do this, we must think thinking through to the end if we really want to learn to distinguish between good and evil. Thinking is brought to an end by realizing that it must open itself up to the Godhead. To do this, thinking must be purified, for the purification of the soul forces gives rise to the spirit self, Manas. God-wisdom, which is a part of the divine self, emerges. Wisdom, which is a unity with the spirit of life, the spirit of spiritual love and the spirit man, which is spiritual will. This is what we must understand, that Godly wisdom is something we can attain if we truly walk the paths that first lead to the liberation of thought from egoism. Otherwise we follow the paths that lead to ego-hardening. However, full God-wisdom can only be attained by purifying the whole soul of selfishness, including in feeling and willing.

The task of the fifth cultural epoch is firstly to develop the mind and secondly to free the mind from egoism. The purification of the will consists in gaining the good will that leads up to the wisdom of God, for: “Blessed are those of good will.” Godliness is the end of this path, which, however, leads the will more and more to difficult trials. But ultimately, spiritual thinking, spiritual willing and godliness must result from the purification of thinking, feeling and willing.

When we gain the good will, which should already be started now, then we purify the ego from egoism, then we ourselves become a part of merciful love by connecting with that which is itself merciful love, by allowing our small ego to become an image of the great ego. And this spiritual love will always be connected with wisdom.

This is all given in “Parsifal”. True Christianity must blossom from the fifth, the Germanic cultural epoch. What descends ever deeper from the spiritual worlds to the matured ego, what sinks ever deeper, connects ever more with the matured ego, that is what we call grace. The difference between Parsifal and Siegfried is that Siegfried could not protect himself against the dark forces of Hagen. Parsifal is similar to Siegfried in the first part. Parsifal enters the territory of the Grail with his purity, his innocence; to mankind he appears as a gate, for how could the world understand that this gate is wiser than they are? Perhaps such a gate, more than the world can, could know the deep meaning of the words that Wotan addressed to Mime where he, as a wanderer, takes refuge with Mime: “Many a man thought he was wise, only he did not know what he needed.” Such a Parsifal soul seems childlike to us. Parsifal could not have entered the Grail region without this childishness, which is the world's folly, but which it needs.

What is the Grail region? In a way, it is the same as the forest in which Siegfried slays the dragon. It is the elemental-astral world in which the Grail Castle is sought. Klingsor, the opponent of the Grail Brotherhood, is an entity similar to the powers that can unfold their effectiveness in the egoism of man, just as Alberich and Hagen were.

Amfortas is initially not so advanced that he would be able to defeat Klingsor. Great sanctuaries are kept in the Grail Castle, of which Amfortas is the guardian. The sacred spear is snatched from Amfortas by Klingsor during the battle, so that Amfortas succumbs to the seductive woman, who is an evil entity that can act as an evil force in the soul and also works in the egoism of man. She can be called Venus or Paradise, for Lucifer and Ahriman are interwoven and intermingled in her. Richard Wagner describes Kundry in such a way that she serves the Knights of the Grail when she is conscious during the day, and when she is conscious at night, when her ego is not free, when she is under the compulsion of Klingsor due to the dishonesty of her ego, she is unintentionally enslaved to Klingsor at night. Thus she appears as the soul that wavers back and forth between good and evil and is no longer master of evil. Amfortas wanted to defeat the sorcerer, the black magician, with the divine powers of the spear, but fell victim to Kundry's violence. He was therefore not mature, had not reached the full height of purification of the ego. He was not yet able to overcome egoism, which has its seat in covetousness. He lacked the purity of the ego.

One was to come, “the pure gate, knowing through compassion”. But this one was to bring the full strength and maturity of the ego. Parsifal had killed a swan. This swan-killing has a lot to say. After all, the personal ego has still killed the spiritual, which is represented in the swan, through its egoism. Parsifal learns what it means to kill in the breaking gaze of the swan. He learns to have compassion and love for the animal world, to which man is indebted; he recognizes what it means to cause pain.

A second lesson he has to learn from the questions Gurnemanz asks him. Parsifal does not know the answers. But to the “Tell me what you know, for you must know something”, he replies: “I have a mother, Herzeleide is her name.” Without this mother, a person cannot enter the Grail region, indeed, he cannot get there without going through trials that bring him heartache. So what is Herzeleide, the mother? Kundry knows it, she tells him that his mother has died out of grief over his departure. This is something that every human being does, unknowingly. Every one of us has run away from this mother. The original legend tells how Parsifal learns from the hermit that no one has abandoned his mother. Parsifal has left his mother Sophia, the divine wisdom that is always connected with heartache. The latter is the old pre-Christian wisdom, the mother of the personal ego. This divine wisdom dies when the human being gains the personal ego. We have left the old divine wisdom, we have not yet received the new divine wisdom; we must first attain it. We must take the mother to us in a new way. This is said of John, the disciple whom the Lord loved. On the cross he takes to himself the mother, the divine wisdom, which is now a new, temporary wisdom, but which is regained with heartache. Siegfried did not fully experience the personal realization of his ego. Parsifal, on the other hand, has this personal ego, even though he is a hair's breadth similar to Siegfried. He initially arrives in the Grail region completely ignorant of this new wisdom. Parsifal is in the fifth sub-age. Siegfried is in the transition from the third to the fourth cultural epoch. Parsifal had to leave his mother, the old wisdom, in order to become independent. Man is led out of the old wisdom to the personal ego. Parsifal had many names, but he no longer knows any of them. He had gone through many incarnations in which he always had different names, but he no longer knows any of them. The personal human no longer knows that he has been there many times and has always had different names.

The recovery of Amfortas is intertwined with the development of Parsifal. There are two paths, the Amfortas path and the Parsifal path, which humanity has before it. Both must unite if the recovery of the soul is to be achieved.

Amfortas appears to us as a sufferer who is mentally ill from the spear. What is the spear? “He who fears the point of my spear never passes through the fire.” The spearhead is to be feared by those who are not yet able to pass through the fire. Such a person is Amfortas. He falls prey to the element of desire, to Kundry, who dwells in the realm of desire. He must fear the tip of the spear, it wounds him. He suffers from it mentally and physically. The spear is portrayed to us as the divine spear of love, as the solar lance of the godhead. Like rays of sunlight that pierce the human being, the spearhead has a spiritual effect. The deity with its bright radiance illuminates man's own imperfections. However, it is not the deity who punishes man, but man judges himself; he comes to self-awareness through the light powers of the spear. Amfortas is in this situation. He has to realize that he, the chosen guardian of the Grail, cannot bear the divine because he is not sufficiently purified, because he cannot safely pass through the fires of passion. That is the wound, that he has to say to himself: I must reveal the sanctuary to those who are pure in the Grail Castle, and I am unworthy to do so. Klingsor used the creative powers of the spear in a selfish way, and that is the terrible thing. Egoism must not possess such powers, for that would be terrible for world affairs. This battle has not yet been fought out in world affairs and will continue until all people have decided for the good.

Parsifal must disappoint Gurnemanz by the fact that he is only now learning the lesson of compassion, the eightfold path. Parsifal should have asked the sick man an important question: “What is wrong with you, Oheim?” He should have had compassion and at the same time (because otherwise the question makes no sense) possessed the helping powers that lie in the spear. But he doesn't have it. He has to conquer it first. “He who was allowed to close your wound, I will let holy blood flow from him.” The spear carries the helping, healing powers within it. The address “Oheim” is intended to express the fact that Parsifal is in the Grail Castle with his spiritual relatives, i.e. his spiritual brothers. However, he does not know that Amfortas is his spiritual brother, a brother who is higher in spiritual rank and should therefore be addressed as Oheim. He therefore does not recognize his spiritual brother. Thus Parsifal also does not know that Titurel is his grandfather, Titurel, the aged builder of the Grail Castle, who is really there in the higher worlds, who can really be found if the gaze is directed there with clairvoyant recognition; he is always the great ancestor, the great master, of the Grail brothers. Through his innocence, Parsifal is allowed to enter the Grail Castle, to experience the mysteries, to see the sick king in his pain. The Holy Grail is revealed to him: “The holy blood glows”. He is allowed to experience the rejuvenating powers that are also transferred to him. As ignorant as he is, he can already experience the rejuvenating powers by seeing how the chalice glows, by receiving what radiates from the glowing chalice. He sees all this, but he cannot ask the question, he does not have the knowledge. Parsifal still has to learn “world experience”. He must learn to see through what Siegfried could not yet. He must defeat the deceitfulness of Klingsor and Kundry: Ahriman and Lucifer forces now approach him temptingly. By passing through the temptation, through the tempting forces, he is to gain what he does not yet possess but is now to acquire. Kundry is summoned by Klingsor. She appears as if she were not really physically present; she seems almost transparent, as if only her ego and astral body had appeared, dreamlike, asleep, as if her daytime consciousness were not present. Then she is artificially awakened under the spell of Klingsor. But one has the feeling that all this, the entire second act, is now taking place not on the physical but on the astral plane. Klingsor succeeds in waking her up so that she sinks into the depths with a horrible laugh in order to tempt Parsifal. Kundry suffers from this laughter. She once laughed this laugh when the Savior walked the Way of the Cross. Where there is frivolity in the soul, there is this laughter. And frivolity always laughs at the pure, the innocent, the spiritual. Parsifal does not fall for the flower girls, and at the moment when he could fall for Kundry, who approaches him in the most refined manner, Parsifal triumphs; at this moment compassion is born in him. Now he feels the terrible pain of Amfortas! He understands him, he now feels his way into the soul of the Grail King, into his pain-stricken soul, and cries out: "Amfortas! The wound, the wound, it burns in my heart!"

Kundry tempts Parsifal by reminding him of his mother. She accuses him of having caused his mother's death, so that he exclaims: "Ha, what else have I forgotten? What was I ever mindful of? Only dull folly lives in me!" Kundry answers the tempting words: “Confession will turn guilt into repentance, knowledge in the mind will turn folly!” Kundry does not mean divine knowledge. Everything the temptress says is twisted, turned around in a sophistical way, twisted from white to black. However, she is not victorious; for it is precisely at this moment that victory is won, when Parsifal feels the pain of the other in his own body; when divine, merciful love is born in him. To feel this pain of others in our own bodies is what we are led to in the presence of wartime by having to practise the mantra:

> As long as you feel the pain,  
> Who avoids me,  
> Christ is unrecognized  
> Working in the being of the world.

As long as we cannot empathize with the pain of others, there is no true Christianity. So Parsifal does indeed become “worldly-wise” through Kundry, but in a way that Kundry certainly does not want. Now he has gained experience of the world, now he sees through Kundry's soul. Now he has conquered the Luciferian temptation, he has world experience, world clairvoyance, now he recognizes the wound that burns in Amfortas' heart. At Kundry's call for help, Klingsor commits a delusion, the most unwise thing he can possibly do: He hurls the spear at Parsifal, he gives it out of his hand. Parsifal grabs it and strikes the cross with it. With this sign, Kundry and Klingsor are defeated and the entire magic garden falls into ruins.

Parsifal knows about the cross that Siegfried has not yet been able to take up. He knows that one must take up the cross, the cross of purification of the whole human being, if one wants to become worthy of the spear and if one wants to partake in turn of the love of God, which is represented in the lance of the sun, the lance of love, the holy spear. The Godhead turns its sunbeams of love towards every being, but this love, which shines like sunbeams into the human soul, has an effect on the nature of man - although it does not do so - as when man receives wounds, as when these wounds, which the spear strikes, so to speak, are also healed by him. “The wound is healed only by the spear that strikes it.”

There are well-meaning but unrecognizing Christians who like to speak of the Saviour's love, who say: The Saviour is always loving. - But we must not forget that we cannot come to the Savior without preparation. That is why we must speak of the path that leads to him. Christ demands - and must demand - that we make an effort to purify our being. And when we approach him immaturely, he acts on us in his glory as one who judges us, even though he never judges. He affects us in this way solely through the glory of his appearance, which we have to compare with our imperfection, of which we often do not even know how great it is. What Amfortas had to go through in this way was experienced in the Palestinian period, and was in fact experienced by a man who first persecuted the Savior and his followers in ignorance: Saul. The light in which the voice of Christ resounds, which brings him self-knowledge, works in him like the spear that strikes the wound. This is how he knew that he was pursuing the spiritual. He knew that the Christ in us, the christened human being, could unite with the Christ outside of us. To do this, however, we have to do many, many things on our part. The Christ cannot dwell in a clouded soul without further ado.

So he works through his appearance alone to separate good and evil in us, even though he does not judge our most secret thoughts, feelings and emotions. But if we can bring a pure mind to him, we need not fear the shining through of the Christ sun, the holy spear. Christ is, so to speak, educationally active in us by illuminating the good and evil of our soul with his divine lance, the spear of love. We must therefore take into ourselves what he has to keep in order, the divine law of harmony, and realize it in us if we want to learn to bear the spear. The spear is taken in the sign of the cross. Parsifal is able to conquer the spear by defeating Kundry, the lower nature of desire. In doing so, he regains the helping, healing powers that belong to white, selfless magic, which must not fall into the hands of the selfish, black magicians. But Kundry sends a curse after him: "Mad, mad! So familiar to me - I consecrate you to him!" This curse has such an effect that Parsifal has to go through many more experiences. But then he appears armed in his armor. There we have the armor, the armour that Lohengrin possesses, the armor, the weapons of the spirit, the armor that consists of being armed to face the world and people, to see through them and to be able to resist the lower passions: Those powers of knowledge and world clairvoyance which defeat the error to which the soul is exposed from without and from within, which could conquer and attain new christened wisdom. Man does not know when he will be allowed to enter the Temple of the Holy Grail for the first time, nor does he know when he will be allowed to do so for the second time.

Kundry is allowed to undergo an awakening, to emerge from the long hibernation of her misguided ways. She is allowed to experience the conversion of her soul, which awakens from darkness and error. “Serve, serve.”

Parsifal has arrived at the holy source, which represents wisdom, the wisdom of God, which in fact cleanses him from error. The foot washing begins. The washing of the feet, which always means the “will to serve”. After Parsifal has been cleansed from a long wandering in the dust, he experiences a newfound relationship, an inner relationship to the plant world, to plant nature, to the soul of man in the magic of Good Friday. This is how the forest bird speaks to Siegfried, because Siegfried had this relationship with nature and its essence after Fafner was killed. When we have gained this relationship with nature, then we hear what nature is saying to us, then we become clairaudient. We find the Grail Castle within ourselves, but only if we build the temple ourselves, if we allow the supporting columns to arise in our souls with our own hands. In Twilight of the Gods we are told how Valhalla is destroyed by the moon fire of Loki. This means that the fire of Lucifer causes the decay of the physical body. The egoism of the passions brings about the decay of the human body, which leads to death. From now on, however, man should create a new temple out of his own strength by using the powers that have been placed within him since the Mystery of Golgotha, by recognizing his ego task in the right sense; then the new temple of the eternalized soul will arise. Parsifal is first allowed to atone for Amfortas, to bring him union with the Godhead. Thus the soul heals in purification. The Godhead wants our whole soul, our whole ego, and this ego must carry within itself the processed powers gained on the physical plane. This ego, which is capable on earth and has gone through purification, is called to become the bearer of the higher ego. Then, however, we must die, but we die in order to become. We die into the Christ, into the sacred wisdom hoard of the Rhine, which was originally with the Godhead, which was given to humanity in the Mystery of Golgotha, and which arises anew for us, as Richard Wagner expresses it, a holy grail in the rejuvenating powers of the Rose Cross. Man is the temple that the divinity wants to inhabit.

Jesus of Nazareth was such a temple. The ego-powers of Jesus-Zarathustra, which he had acquired in many lives on earth, worked into the spiritual shells of Jesus of Nazareth. That is why a personal ego should prepare itself, after it has worked through the soul, to become the bearer of the Godhead; for such a mature ego must be brought up from below, from the earth, to meet the descending Godhead. The ego of Jesus of Nazareth withdrew when the Christ entered. The personal ego should die to the personal, which means that we should give up what is transient and personal in us. Man must regain the childlikeness of the soul in order to be able to be the bearer of the ego, which is connected with the fall of childishness, of egoism. But then Paul's words are true: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

Did not the true man, true, holy humanity stand before humanity when it crucified Christ? “Ecce homo!” “Behold the man!”

One of Nietzsche's wonderful words, which he coined with regard to Richard Wagner's great inner cultural mission, is:

"And ask yourselves, ye generations of men now living! Was this written for you? Have you the courage to point with your hand to the stars of this whole celestial vault of beauty and goodness and say: “It is our life that Wagner has placed among the stars” - “Salvation to the Savior!”