The History of the Esoteric School 1904–1914, Volume Two

GA 265

The Formula for the Vow (Oath)

(see p. 181)

An explanation of this from instruction lessons has not been handed down; however, Rudolf Steiner explained in his lecture Dornach, 26 November 1916, where this occult tradition comes from.

People today know very little about the past. Above all, people do not know why certain things have been handed down. At best, they still know that they have been handed down, but why they have been handed down is something that people today hardly know. For example, it is handed down - and this can be read today in all kinds of esoteric books, especially in Masonic books - that there were mysteries in ancient times, that the mysteries were, so to speak, a secret institution, and that in the mysteries, and this is already connected with the word, there were secrets that were really secrets in the external sense. That is to say, those who had found access to the mysteries were handed down certain things which they were obliged to communicate only to those who were with them in these mysteries. This rule is so pronounced that it is considered one of the gravest crimes if someone utters a mystery secret before an uninitiated ear; but it is equally one of the gravest crimes for an uninitiated person to listen to a mystery secret. And this view, which was practiced in the mysteries, was strictly adhered to when the mysteries were in their original sense. Why was that? Why did this happen?

I have emphasized it to you many times: Humanity has changed in the course of the evolution of the Earth, and an important turning point in this evolution was at the time when the Christ went through the Mystery of Golgotha through the Mystery of Golgotha. If one wants to cite one of the most essential features of this evolution, among others that we have already mentioned, then one must say: If we go back beyond the Greco-Latin period, especially if we go beyond the 4th century BC to the 5th, 6th, 7th centuries - we can even stay in the Greco-Latin period, but we would find even more if we went beyond that to the Egyptian-Chaldean or even the Persian period - we find everywhere that that what was spoken by man had a completely different meaning for other people than it had later, for example, as early as the 7th or 8th century after the Mystery of Golgotha. The word that one spoke to another had a completely different meaning in the time when the old atavistic properties of the soul were still present, which even led to atavistic clairvoyance, than it had later, when it was today. Then the word had, if I may say so, a kind of suggestive value through its own inner power, because there was much of inherited divine spiritual power in the word. When man spoke, so to speak, the angel from the higher hierarchies always spoke through his word.

From this you can form the mental image that the communications in those ancient times that took place through words were quite different from today. We have no way of speaking with words, even if we know all these secrets, as was spoken in ancient times, because we have to speak through what language has become of the words. We have conventional signs in words. Today we can no longer go to a person and, with the same power with which one could still speak in the 3rd, 4th, 5th century BC, with the words “Your angel loves you”, send a gentle shiver through the soul that had healing power. You can't do that anymore today, the words have lost their old suggestive value, their power. In ancient times, human community power flowed from soul to soul as people spoke to each other. Just as we breathe the same air when we are together in a room, so in ancient times a spiritual power of community lived in what people spoke to each other. This has been lost in the progressive evolution of humanity. The word has become increasingly de-divined. If you bear this in mind, in your mind's eye, then you will also be able to say that there could be very definite words and word combinations, word formulas, which had a greater effect than other words that are spoken in general. And such word formulas, which had an effect far beyond the ordinary, were handed down in the mysteries. Now you can understand that they could not be revealed, because the fact that a person knew these formulas gave him great power over other people, which must not be abused. It is an absolutely real truth that when the old Hebrew temple priest pronounced what in ordinary life was only called the “word” , but which had a certain sound composition, then, when he pronounced it in the right way - because in those ancient times it was the case that the power lay in that sound composition - it actually happened to the people to whom he spoke that another world was around them, spiritually, but this spirituality was real.

And so you can understand that it was not only criminal to speak the mystery formulas to the one to whom it was not allowed, since one thereby exercised an authority over him that was unauthorized, but that it was also frowned upon to listen, because one exposed oneself to the danger of placing oneself completely in the power of the other. Things are not as abstract as certain people today would have us believe. They are very real and very concrete. And times have changed, and we must listen to these changing times. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, words no longer have this meaning, for you realize that real freedom could not have arisen among men if words had retained this meaning; for men would always have been only the result, as it were, of language in relation to the soul. Words had to lose this inner power. But another power entered into the evolution of the earth, which, if it found the right relationship to humanity, could gradually replace in man what formerly came from the words. Ancient men learned to think from their words, and in ancient times there were no thoughts other than those that came from words. But the power of thought could only come from the words when the words were as I have described them. This power was no longer present in the period that followed. But then came the Being who, when thoughts unite with Him, could give them this power again, the Being who could say: “I am the Word” - and that is the Christ. Men must only find the way to make the Christ alive in their soul.