Supplements to Member Lectures
GA 246 — 21 December 1916, Basel
75. Christmas at This Most Fateful Time
My dear friends!
Many people have become accustomed to celebrating every year the physical birth of the being that has entered earthly development in order to give this earthly development its meaning. If, in accordance with what we must again and again hold up to ourselves as the task of our spiritual-scientific movement, we do not want to lapse into a mere habitual celebration, as can be found in so many places now, then it will be appropriate to bring before our souls at this serious time some things that are connected with the meaning of the physical birth of the Christ-Jesus.
We have often seen in the mind's eye how in the Christ-Jesus two beings merge into one for human perception: the Christ-being and the human Jesus-being. Now there has been much controversy within Christian development, much dogmatic dispute about the meaning of the union of the Christ with the Jesus in the being whose physical birth is celebrated at Christmas. We can build on the fact that we know: In the Christ we recognize a cosmic, a supernatural being, a being that has descended from spiritual worlds in order to give meaning to earthly development by being born in a physical human being. And we recognize in the man Jesus the one who was predestined in a way known to us to connect as a human being with the Christ entity, to take it into himself after he had been prepared for it for thirty years.
Not only was there much contention, much dogmatic dispute about the way in which the Christ is connected to Jesus, but in the relationship of the Christ to Jesus lies at the same time a clue to significant secrets of the entire earthly development of humanity. And if you follow what has happened to date in order to understand something of this connection between the Christ and Jesus, and if you think about what still has to happen within human development in order to put this relationship in the right light, then you touch on one of the very great secrets of human knowledge and human life.
When the time approached when human development was to receive the Christ-being into itself, there was, however, like an inheritance from old clairvoyant times of wisdom, a possibility to form certain mental images and ideas about the whole height of the Christ-being. And at that time there was a wisdom of which mankind today often, one could say, speaks freely, but of which it can hardly form a mental image; there was that which through certain currents - basically counter-currents of the deeper Christian revelation - has until now been eradicated from the development of mankind, there was Gnosis, a wisdom into which much of the ancient knowledge revealed to mankind in atavistic clairvoyance had flowed. Everything that existed orally or in writing as gnosis was virtually stamped out by the development of Western dogmatic Christianity - after this gnosis, however, had endeavored to find an answer to the question: Who is the Christ?
Today, it can no longer be a question of returning to gnosis; gnosis is, of course, something that has faded away. And the fact that it has been stamped out with bluntness and stubbornness was indeed the result of evil, ignorance and hostility towards knowledge and wisdom ... but it was nevertheless the result of a certain necessity in earthly development. And it is only one of the many contemporary malice when the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is accused of wanting to rehash the old gnosis. This accusation is made by people who know nothing about Gnosticism and know just as little about anthroposophy. It is not a question of rehashing Gnosticism, but of recognizing that Gnosticism was something powerful, something great, something which, for the time that now lies nineteen centuries behind us, attempted to give a certain answer to the question: Who is the Christ?
Before the eye of the Gnostic, before his spiritual eye, stood the view of spiritual worlds ... In a marvelous way, the Gnostic imagined the world of spiritual hierarchies arranged one above the other. And how Christ descended through the world of the spiritual hierarchies in order to enter the shells of a mortal man - all this stood before the soul of the Gnostic. And this soul wanted to form a mental image of how the Christ arrived from spiritual heights and was received on earth. One gets the best mental image of what once was when one thinks that everything that entered the world after Gnosticism had been stamped out was small compared to the greatness of the Christ conception of Gnostic times. What lies behind the Gospels as actual mystery wisdom is infinitely larger and greater than what all subsequent theology has been able to extract from the Gospels. In order to understand how small and insignificant compared to Gnosticism the concept of the Christ-entity that is common today is, let us delve into the concept of Christ in ancient Gnosticism. Place this image in front of your soul, and you will be stunned by the greatness of the mental image of this Christ-being entering a human body from the heights of the world, the distances of the world and the vastness of the world.
There was once a great, high concept of Christ among men. It has receded: For small in comparison are all the dogmatic statements that have come down to posterity as the Arian or Athanasian creeds - small in comparison to the Gnostic concept that combined wisdom about the composition of the world with a view to the Christ-entity. Only remnants remain of this great, Gnostic concept of Christ.
This is one aspect of the relationship between Christ and Jesus: that the Christ came into the world at a time when the wisdom that was able to understand him, that wanted to understand him, had already been wiped out. And those who said that the old Gnosis was an oriental fantasy that had to be eradicated for the salvation of Western man always believed themselves to be good Christians. In truth, it was only the impotence of the time that was unable to link earthly concepts with heavenly concepts. - You have to have a sense of the tragic if you want to understand the development of mankind.
How long did it take after the Mystery of Golgotha took place for the Temple of Jerusalem, the place of peace, to be destroyed? This city of Jerusalem enclosed the Temple of Solomon. What Gnosis was as wisdom, the Temple of Solomon was as symbolism. That which the Temple of Solomon enclosed as symbolism contained everything in the image that are world secrets. And it was meant that those who entered Solomon's Temple, in which the images were all around them and reflected in their souls, absorbed something into their souls through which they became human beings in the true sense. Solomon's Temple was intended to pour the sense of the world into the souls of those who were allowed to enter it. That which the Temple of Solomon contained - on earth it was not directly contained; for it contained all that which shone in upon the earth of world secrets from the vastness of the cosmos.
My dear friends, if you had asked one of the ancient initiates who knew about Solomon's Temple, the answer to the question: Why was Solomon's Temple built? - would have been something like this: So that there would be a sign here on earth to which those powers would look that guide the souls seeking their way into earthly bodies. - Let us grasp this correctly, my dear friends. Let us think that these ancient initiates of Solomon's Temple knew that when they guide people down into earthly bodies according to all the signs of the zodiac, then special souls must be guided to those bodies which are able to receive the great symbols of Solomon's Temple reflected within them.
Naturally, this was an occasion to fall into arrogance. If this was not received with humility, with Essene humility, it was an occasion to fall into Pharisaic wisdom! But this was already the case: the earthly eye looks up to heaven and sees stars. The spiritual eye of those who brought the souls from the far reaches of the world to earth looked down and saw Solomon's Temple with its symbols. It was a star through whose light they could guide the souls into bodies that would be able to absorb the meaning of Solomon's Temple. He was the central star of the earth, which shone particularly brightly in the spiritual heights.
When the Christ-Jesus had come to earth, when the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place ... then the great Mystery of Golgotha was to be able to take place in every single human soul: “My kingdom is not of this world!” Then the outer, physical Temple of Solomon first lost its significance and its fate was tragically fulfilled. And there was basically no one left who could have absorbed the full scope of the Christ entity by reflecting all the symbols of Solomon's temple at that time. But the Christ-entity itself had entered the earth evolution, was within it. And this fact - as has often been said in our circle - this fact is what matters. The Gnostics were the last stragglers of the bearers of that wisdom which was comprehensive and intense enough to understand something of the Christ out of the old atavistic earthly wisdom of humanity.
This is one side of the relationship between the Christ and Jesus. At that time, the essence of Christ could have been grasped through gnosis. This was not in the plan of the world - although in what existed as gnosis there was a full Christ-wisdom. And it can be said that the path that Christianity took through the countries of the South, through Greece, Italy, Spain and so on, was the path that led to an ever-increasing extinction of the insight into what the Christ actually was. The sinking Rome, the disintegrating Rome, was destined to extinguish the understanding of the Christ.
Now it is strange that this relationship between the Christ and Jesus had the effect on the one hand that we see a high concept of Christ glowing in Gnosticism, that we see it fading away as Christianity passed through the Roman being, and that on the other hand, when Christianity met the peoples who came to meet it from the north, the concept of Jesus emerged. The concept of Christ has faded away in the South; the concept of Jesus emerges in a way that is not at all sublime, but in such a way that it captures people's minds, that something wonderful enters their souls at the thought of how the child is born in the night of consecration who receives the Christ. Just as the concept of Christ was inadequately understood in the South, Jesus was just as inadequately felt in the North. But this feeling was one that went deep into people's hearts. ... But it is not quite understandable in itself. For if one compares the greatness that the Christ-Jesus means for the development of mankind with all the sentimental lappings that are contained in many poems and songs about the “dear little Jesus”, with which hearts are habitually stirred by believing in their egoisms, They believe in their egoism that they are experiencing truly heaven-shattering feelings within themselves, then you immediately get an impression of how something wants to settle in, but cannot fully settle in, how something connects with another in such a way that the deeper meaning, the whole deeper significance, actually remains in people's subconscious.
What now remains in people's subconscious as the concept of Jesus, the feeling of Jesus, the experience of Jesus arises? Strange how that happened! The understanding of Christ moved into the subconscious and the understanding of Jesus glowed in the subconscious. In the subconscious of the people, not in the consciousness, which was impotent, the glowing Christ consciousness, which glowed for the consciousness, and the glowing Jesus consciousness, which emerged in the subconscious, were to come together and balance each other out. Why then did the peoples who came down from Scandinavia, from what is now northern Russia, why did they not accept Christianity with the idea of Christ, which initially remained completely alien to these people? Why did they accept Christianity with the idea of Jesus? Why is Christmas the one festival that above all spoke to the human heart, that awakened infinite feelings of holy bliss in the human heart? Why then? What was it in this Europe, which basically received a completely distorted Christianity from the South - what was it in this Europe that caused the idea to light up in the hearts that then experienced its deep, deep emotional content in the Christmas festival?
We were prepared - but to a certain extent we had forgotten what we were prepared for: we were prepared by the old Nordic mysteries. But one had forgotten the meaning of the old Nordic mysteries. And you have to go back a long way if you want to discover the deep secret of the penetration of the Jesus feeling into the European emotional life from the inner meaning of the Nordic mysteries.
There was something quite different underlying these Nordic mysteries than the mysteries of the Near East, than those of the South. These mysteries of the North were based on something that was more closely connected with the direct existence of the stars, with nature, with the growth of the earth than that which was presented in symbols in a temple setting. The Mystery Truths are not the gimmicks that certain mystical sects want to turn them into today; the Mystery Truths are great, powerful impulses within the evolution of humanity. Just as we cannot go back to Gnosis, to the ancient Gnostics, with today's anthroposophy, neither can humanity return to what, for example, the ancient Mysteries of the North once were for the evolution of humanity. And it would be a foolish misunderstanding to believe that such mystery truths are revealed because we somehow want to go back to what lived in them. For the sake of self-reflection, humanity today must know what lived in such mysteries. For that which in the Nordic Mysteries established the connection with the whole development of the world was connected with that which arose from the earth, just as the Gnostic knowledge inspired by the cosmos was connected with that which took place in the worlds far and wide. The mystery of man in his connection with all the mysteries of the cosmos, as it takes place when man enters into his physical existence here on the physical earth, lies at the heart of these ancient Nordic mysteries at a certain time in the earth's development more deeply than anywhere else.
But one must go far back, approximately to the third millennium, perhaps even further back, in order to understand what lived in the minds that later absorbed the Jesus-perception. There, roughly where the Jutland peninsula is with today's Denmark, was the center from which significant mystery impulses emanated in those ancient times. And these mystery impulses were connected with the fact that in the third millennium before our Christian era, certain tribes in the north only regarded those who were born in certain weeks of the winter season as truly worthy of the earth. This was because from that mysterious mystery site on the Jutland peninsula among the tribes then called the Ingaevones, or by the Romans, at least by Tacitus, the Ingaevones, the temple priest gave the impulse that only at a certain time - in the first quarter of the year - should the sexual union of men take place. Any sexual union of people outside the time decreed by this mystery site was frowned upon; and anyone who was not born in the time of the darkest nights, in the coldest time towards our New Year, was an inferior person within this tribe of the Ingävonen. For the impulse from that place of mystery came at the time when the first full moon was after the spring solstice. It was only at this time that a sexual union was allowed to take place among those people who were to believe themselves truly connected with the spiritual worlds, as was worthy of man. The fact that the forces that go into such a sexual union were saved for the development of human strength throughout the rest of the time developed that peculiar strength which - at least still in the echoes - Tacitus had to admire, who wrote a century after the Mystery of Golgotha took place.
So those who belonged to the tribe of the Ingaevones experienced the process of conception in a particularly intense way - the other Germanic tribes in a weaker way - in the first full moon after the spring solstice: not in waking consciousness, but in a kind of dream proclamation. However, they knew what this meant in the context of the mystery of man and the mysteries of heaven. A spiritual being appeared to the recipient and announced to her, as if in a vision, the human being who was to come to earth through her. There was no consciousness, but only a semi-consciousness in the sphere which the human souls experienced when the human being's entry into the physical-earthly world took place. Subconsciously they knew themselves to be governed by gods, who were then given the name of the Wanen, which is connected with “imagining”, with that which does not take place in outer full intellectual consciousness, but in knowing dream consciousness.
What was there at one time and what was appropriate for that time is often preserved in later times in outer symbols. And so the fact that in these ancient times the sacred mystery of the incarnation was shrouded in the subconscious and led to all births being crowded into a certain part of the winter season - so that it was regarded as sinful if a human being was born at another time - has been preserved, so to speak, in fragments that have passed into later consciousness as the so-called Herta or Erda or Nertus legend. Splinters whose meaning no scholarship has yet revealed; indeed, scholarship openly admits its impotence to reveal them, for basically everything that is known about the Nertus legend in external terms - with the exception of a few notes - is contained in Tacitus, who reports the following about the Nertus or Herta service:
The Reudignians, Aviones, Angles, Varines, Eudoses, Suardones, Nuithones - German peoples dwelling between rivers and forests
these are roughly the individual tribes that belong to the Ingaevones,
worship the Nertus in particular, that is: the Mother Earth, and believe that she mingles with human affairs and comes to the peoples.
In ancient times, from the religious service of the Wanen, every woman who was to give the earth an earthling knew in her dream consciousness that the goddess, who was later worshipped as Nertus, would appear to her. However, the deity was not actually imagined as female, but as male-female - Nertus only later became completely female through a corruption. Just as the archangel Gabriel approached Mary, so in ancient times Nertus approached on her chariot the one who was to give the earth an earthling. The women in question saw this in spirit. Later, when the mystery impulse of this kind had long since faded away, this event was celebrated in the aftermath, in the symbolum, and Tacitus still saw this and described it as follows:
On an island of the ocean is a sacred grove and in it stands her consecrated chariot covered with a carpet. Only the priest may approach it.
This priest was thought to be the “initiate” of the Herta mystery. He knows when the goddess will appear in the sacred chariot.
He knows when the goddess appears in the holy chariot. He senses the presence of the goddess in her sanctuary and accompanies her chariot pulled by cows in deep reverence. So there are happy days and festivals in all the places that the goddess honors with her visit and stay. There are happy days and weddings. No war is fought, no weapon taken up, no iron locked. Only peace and tranquillity are then known and desired until the goddess, tired of her dealings with mortals, is led back to her sanctuary by the same priest.
Such was indeed the vision.
There is a happy day and a wedding.
In such old documents, things are described quite accurately; people just don't understand them. There is a happy day and a wedding. There was no war fought, no weapon taken up, the iron locked. That is indeed how it was in the time that is now our Easter time, when people had to believe that the time of earthly fertility had come for themselves out of their inner soul life and those souls were conceived who were then born in the time that is now our Christmas time. Easter time was the time of conception. And because the whole thing was seen as a cosmic-sacred mystery, this was what later found its symbolism in the Nertus service. But the whole thing was shrouded in the subconscious and was not allowed to enter the conscious mind. This can be heard in Tacitus' description of that service:
Only peace and tranquillity is then known and desired until the goddess, fed up with her dealings with mortals, is led back to her sanctuary by the same priest. The chariot and carpet and the goddess herself are then washed in a hidden lake. The service is performed by slaves, who are immediately devoured by the lake as a pledge, so that everything that knows about these things sinks into the night of the subconscious. A secret horror and a holy darkness reign over a being that only victims of death are allowed to see.
A luciferic and ahrimanic counter-image is formed of everything that enters the world. That which, in the Ingaevonian sense, was what lay in the regulated evolution of mankind, related to the time of the first full moon after the spring solstice. But what had remained in ancient times as a dreamlike experience from ancient times due to the advancement of the equinox was increasingly shifted to a later time and had thus become ahrimanic. So if what was thought of in the real Herta service in ancient times was shifted to about four weeks later, it had become ahrimanic. This having become ahrimanic meant that the connection between the human woman and the spiritual world had been sought in an unlawful way - at an unlawful time. This was then recorded in the Walpurgis Night from April 30 to May 1! We can only see an ahrimanic time shift there. As you know, Luciferic time displacement goes backwards; the Ahrimanic appears in reverse, because it is connected with the advance of the equinox: The retarded appears later in this case. So that which was the ahrimanic, the mephistophelean flip side of the Herta service, the reversal into the diabolical, later became Walpurgis Night, which is connected with the most ancient mystery being, of which only the faint echo has survived.
Much of this mystery being lived on, if we understand the matter correctly, in the Scandinavian mysteries. There, instead of Nerta, there is a god Friggo, who, according to his symbolism - but you have to know it from spiritual science first - becomes a traitor to what was actually at the root of it.
And there was another thing that should be mentioned in relation to these mystery customs. As you can imagine, from the time of the spring full moon until the time of winter, when the human fruit had ripened, there was usually a human being who was the first to be born in the “holy night”. This human being, who was the first to be born in the “Holy Night” among the tribes of the Ingävonen - in the oldest times this was the case every third year - was chosen as leader when he had reached the age of thirty, and he was to remain leader for three years - only three years. What happened to him then - perhaps I can tell you later.
If you look very closely, not only is Frigg, Frei, Freiga a kind of secondary meaning for the Nertus, just like the Norse “Nört - but the name ”Ing itself, from which the Ingävonen call themselves, is also a secondary name for the Nertus. Those connected with this mystery called themselves: those who belonged to the god or goddess “Ing”: Ingävonen. In the outer world, only splinters remain of what actually lived there. One of the splinters are the words of Tacitus, which I have shared with you. Another splinter is the famous Anglo-Saxon runic song, which contains only a few lines. These famous lines, which every Germanic philologist knows today, but whose meaning no one understands, read something like this:
Ing was first seen among the men of the East Danes. Later he went to the East. Over the waves he strode, and the chariot rolled after him.
In this Anglo-Saxon runic song there is an echo of what had happened: what one had in the old mystery custom of the Easter conception with regard to the Christmas birth time. What happened there in the spiritual world was known above all on the Danish peninsula. That is why the runic song rightly says: “Ing was first seen among the men of the East Danes.” - Then came more and more the times when this ancient knowledge fell into corruption, when only echoes, symbolism were present, when generally within the development of mankind more that which came from the warm countries spread. And from the warm countries comes that which is not - as in the cold countries - connected with the fact that the season has an intimate relationship to what man experiences within himself. The scattering of the human fruit over the whole year, which was of course already present in these regions in the old atavistic clairvoyance, even if still permeated by the old principles, came when the Wanen gods ruled in the cold regions and in the southern regions the temple mysteries had long since taken the place of the nature mysteries. This came to the north, still mixed with the old ones, when the Wanen gods were replaced by the Asen gods. As the Wanen-gods are connected with “wishing”, so the Asen-gods are connected with being, that is, with being in the outer, the material world, which the outer mind wants to grasp. And when the Nordic people had entered an age in which the intellect of the individual began to assert itself, when the Aesir had taken the place of the Wanen, the Wanen, then the old mystery custom corrupted itself. It moved over into individual scattered mystery communities of the East. And only one more - the one in whom the whole meaning of the earth was to be renewed - only one in whom the Christ was to dwell, who was to unite in himself what was once the content of the Nordic mysteries.
Therefore, when we encounter the story of the appearance of the archangel Gabriel to Mary in the Gospel of Luke, we must seek its origin in the true visions that appeared in what was once reflected in the Nertus symbol of the ancient Nertus Mysteries. This was carried over to the East. Spiritual science reveals it to us today, and it alone gives meaning to the Anglo-Saxon runic song. For Nertus and Ing are the same. And it is said of Ing:
Ing was first seen among the men of the East Danes, later he went to the East. Over the waves he strode, and the chariot rolled after him.
Of course, over the waves of the clouds, just as Nerta walked over the waves of the clouds. What had been general in the regions of the colder zone became singular, became a singular thing. It appeared as something singular, as something unique, and confronts us again in the description of the Gospel of Luke.
But what is once there and has settled in, has anchored itself in the mind's perception, then remains in the mind, sits in the soul. And when people in the north received the news of Christianity from the old Roman south, they received something that was connected with an old mystery tradition that was no longer fully conscious but lived in the subconscious and was therefore only felt. This is why the feeling for Jesus could develop particularly strongly there. What lived in the old Nertus mystery had already been drawn down into the subconscious; but it was present in the subconscious, was felt and sensed.
When in ancient times the families came together in the far north, when the earth was still covered by forests in which the aurochs and the wretched beast still lived, when they gathered in their snow-covered huts by burning lights around the newborn child and spoke of the new light that was brought to them with this new life, which heaven had announced to them in the early spring, this was the old Christmas. Those to whom the news of Christianity would one day come were told: One had been born in a particularly holy hour who was destined for greatness. This was the one who was the first to be born after the twelfth hour on the night designated as holy. They no longer possessed the old knowledge about this, but the old feeling still stirred when the news came that such a one had been born in distant Asia, in which the Christ lived, who had come down to earth from the starry world.
It is up to the present to understand such things more and more and thereby really grasp the meaning of the development of humanity on earth. For great and tremendous things are contained in the holy scriptures, not those trivialities that are so often spoken of in religious proclamations today, but those marrow-twitching, heart-soaking, sacred truths that run through all human development. This vibrates in that which is contained in the Gospels. And as spiritual science reveals the deep backgrounds on which that which lives in the Gospels rests, these Gospels will one day become dear and valuable to humanity. And mankind will one day know why the Gospel of Luke tells us:
At that time it came to pass, that the emperor Augustus gave commandment that public records should be made in all those countries, at the time that Cyrenius was governor of Syria. Everyone went to his place to be recorded. Joseph also, from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, went to Judea, to the town of Da vid, Bethlehem, because he was from the town and family of David, to be registered with Mary his wife, who was with child. It came to pass that she gave birth while they were there. She gave birth to the firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the inn.
For him, as the firstborn among those who are to be found in the soul, that ancient holy mystery power had traveled from the Danish peninsula to the distant East.
In that region there were shepherds in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night. Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to them, a divine radiance of light enveloped them, and they were greatly afraid.
So also Nerta, who traveled through the realms for the old Wanen consciousness - that is, for the subconscious in atavistic clairvoyance - announced the arrival of humans on earth.
The angel said to them: 'Fear not! For behold, I proclaim to you great joy, which shall be to all the people, for today in the city of David the Savior is born, who is Christ the Lord. And by this you will know him: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. Then suddenly there was a company of heavenly powers with the angels, praising God and saying:
And they spoke now what the Nerta priest had spoken to the conceiving woman in the old Norse mystery service:
The revelation of the divine happens from the heights in the time when there is peace among men who are of one good will.
As Tacitus tells us:
There is glad day and wedding, no war is fought, no weapon taken, the iron locked.
This is precisely the great thing to which man must rise: to look into the course of human development. For even the Mystery of Golgotha, through which the whole development of the earth has received its deeper meaning, becomes fully understandable when it is shown how it stands within the whole development of mankind. Once materialism has disappeared and man will know not only in abstracto but in concreto how he is of divine origin, then there will again be an understanding of the sacred mystery truths of antiquity; then the interim period will be over in which the Christ lives on earth but can only be understood to a small extent by the awakened consciousness. For the understanding of Christ of Gnosis burned up; the understanding of Jesus developed only unconsciously in connection with the old Nertus ministry. In the future, however, humanity will have to bring the two unconscious currents to consciousness and unite them. Then an understanding of Christ will be able to take hold more and more on earth, which will be the connection between the knowledge of the Mysteries and a renewed great Gnosis.
Whoever takes the anthroposophical worldview and the movement connected with it seriously will not see child's play in what it has to say to humanity, but shattering, serious, great truths. And we must allow ourselves to be shaken in our souls, because the great things should shake us.
The earth is not only a great living being, it is a sublime spiritual being. And just as the greatest human genius could not stand where it stands in later life if it had not developed in the appropriate way through childhood and youth, so the Mystery of Golgotha could not have taken place; the divine could not have united with the earth's development if divinity had not descended to earth in a different, but also divine way at the beginning of the earthly days. The revelation of the divine from the heights in the old Nertus ministry was different from what could be understood later; but it was there.
This ancient wisdom does indeed contain an atavistic knowledge, but an infinitely higher one than that which today so brutally deceives humanity as a materialistic worldview.
Christianity is a fact, not a theory; the theory must follow, it is important for the human consciousness that is to emerge in the further course of earthly evolution; but Christianity as such, the Mystery of Golgotha, exists as a fact, and it was precisely in the subconscious currents that Christianity first entered. This was still possible in the Near East at the time when Christ united with the earth.
Shepherds, people similar to those among whom the Nertus ministry lived, are also described in the Gospel of Luke. I can only give you a sketch of all this. If we could talk about it at length, what I have to say to you today would turn out to be deeply founded. Because man descended from spiritual heights ... that is why the revelation of the divine took place from the heavenly heights ... This had to be said to those who knew from ancient wisdom that man's destiny was connected with that which lives in the stars from the heavens. But that which is to live on earth through the entry of the Christ into an earthly human being will have to be understood little by little. The message is twofold, in two parts: “Revelation of the divine from the heights” - “Peace in the souls of the earth who are of good will”. Without this second part, Christmas, the feast of the birth of Christ, has no meaning!
And not only was the Christ born for mankind; mankind also crucified the Christ! This too is based on necessity; but that does not make it any less true that people crucified the Christ! And it can be known that the crucifixion that took place on the wooden cross at Golgotha was not the only crucifixion. A time must come when the second part of the Christmas saying can be understood: “Peace to men on earth who are of good will.” For even the negative can be felt and sensed: People are far from understanding the Christ and the Christmas mystery in the right sense.
It must cut us to the heart that we ourselves live in a time when people's longing for peace is being shouted at! It is almost untrue to celebrate Christmas in these days when people's longing for peace is being shouted at! Let us hope today, when the worst is not yet upon us, that souls can turn back and that Christian feelings and the will for peace will take the place of the longing for peace. Otherwise, perhaps it will not be those who are striving in Europe today, but those who will one day avenge the longing for peace from Asia, who will have to proclaim Christianity and the Mystery of Golgotha to mankind on the ruins of European spiritual life! And it will then remain indelible: At Christmas in the 1916th year after the proclamation that there may be peace on earth among the souls of men who are of good will -, in the 1916th year after the proclamation of Christmas, mankind could once come to roar the longing for peace!
May it not be so! May the good spirits working in the Christmas impulses protect the unfortunate European human race from this!