Reviving Esoteric Masonry: Forms and Inner Spiritual Life

GA 265 — 25 November 1905

To Marie von Sivers in Berlin
Saturday, November 25, 1905, from Nuremberg

My darling, I am sending you the matter of weekdays and evolution. It is sketchy, but it will help you to present the subject on Monday.¹ who, after the evolution of the sun and moon, is now² also quite well positioned. —

Now you saw for yourself yesterday³ how little is left of the former esoteric institutions, which were, after all, once a physiognomic imprint of higher worlds. In truth, the three symbolic degrees – apprentice, fellow, master – should express the three stages on which man finds himself in spirit, i.e. his self within the human type. And the high degrees should indicate the gradual elevation by which man becomes a farmer at the temple of humanity. And just as the human organism, i.e. the astral, etheric and physical organism, is a microcosm of the world of the past, so the temple to be erected by masonry in wisdom, beauty and strength is to be the macrocosmic image of an inner microcosmic soul-wisdom, soul-beauty and soul-strength.

In materialism, humanity has lost the living consciousness of all this and the outer form has often passed to people who have no access to the inner life.

It would now be the task to take the masonic life out of the externalized forms and give birth to it anew, whereby, of course, the reborn life would also have to produce new forms. This should be our ideal: to create forms as an expression of the inner life. For a time that cannot see forms and create them, must necessarily evaporate into a non-essential abstraction, and reality must confront this merely abstract spirit as a spiritless aggregation of matter. If people are truly capable of understanding forms, for example, the birth of the soul from the cloud-like ether of the Sistine Madonna, then there will soon be no more mindless matter for them. And because one can only show forms in a spiritualized way to larger masses of people through the medium of religion, work for the future must be to shape religious spirit into a sensually beautiful form. But for this, a deepening of content is first required. Theosophy must first bring this deepening. Until man senses that spirits live in fire, air, water and earth, he will not have art that expresses this wisdom in external form.

With warm greetings from Rudolf

Refers to the Berlin branch evening, which Marie v. Sivers led in the absence of Rudolf Steiner. ↩
See “From the Akasha Chronicle”, GA 11. ↩
Theodor Reuß (1855-1923), together with Dr. Franz Hartmann, was authorized by the Freemason John Yarker in 1902 to introduce the Memphis-Misraim Rite to Germany. According to new discoveries of letters, it was Franz Zavrel who suggested to Rudolf Steiner that a Memphis-Misraim lodge be established for theosophists. He arranged the contact to Reuß, when Rudolf Steiner decided in October 1905 to acquire the authorization of this order for the section of the Esoteric School that was to be founded and which was to be based on the cult of knowledge. At that time, Franz Zavrel from Prague lived in Berlin. He held the 95th degree and had resigned from the office of the General Secretary of this order in 1904, probably in Bohemia. He had become a member of the Berlin branch in February 1905. For more details, see chapter 36 of ‘My Life’ and ‘The History and Content of the Esoteric School's Knowledge Temple Department’, GA 265, as well as Hella Wiesberger, ‘Rudolf Steiner's Esoteric Teaching’, Dornach 1997. ↩