Lessons for the Participants of Cognitive-Cultic Work 1906–1924

GA 265a

About an Mystica Aeternis Assembly in the Winter of 1921

Letter dated February 20, 1952

from Ingeborg Möller Lindholm (Follebü)

to Edwin Froböse (Dornach)

Dear Friend! Thank you very much for your kind letter of February 12! It is always nice to feel the spiritual bond that connects us across land and sea, through time and space. We have the most important thing – the eternal – in common!

The questions you ask me are difficult to answer, especially in a letter. In 1923, Dr. Steiner held an esoteric session, but not an M.D. (formerly FM.). However, he did so in 1921, when he came back to Norway after seven years (the First World War and the first post-war years had separated him from us). At that time, he gathered all the former members of M.D., but without ritual and without clothing. At that hour he formally dissolved the old M.D. It would no longer have been possible (for many reasons) to continue working according to the previous guidelines. The changed times demanded something different. But the old would not be dead - it would rise again in a metamorphosed form, also here with us, he said.

He probably meant the second and third classes of the School of Spiritual Science, which, however, never appeared on earth because he was taken away by death before they were finished.

As far as I remember, the Temple Legend was not told in 1921. That only happened during the “introductions” to the first degree - not later.

All the M.D. material was burned here in Norway at the outbreak of the war for fear of the Gestapo. I don't know of anyone here who now has the Temple Legend. However, my old friend in Stockholm, the class leader for Sweden, Ms. Anna Wager Gunnarsson, has the entire Temple Legend – given to her in detail by Dr. Steiner himself, along with many other M.D. materials. But we are never allowed to send them by post. She promised me that I could copy the legend if I ever came to Stockholm, which is impossible for the time being.

I have no notes from the esoteric lesson (called E.S. and not to be confused with M.D.) in Oslo in 1923 - we were not allowed to write.

I exchanged letters with Dr. Steiner when I translated the small volume From the Esoteric School (Vol. 1) into Norwegian a few years ago. However, she never said anything about the breathing exercises – neither orally nor in writing. They are described in detail in the relevant small volume! I have never learned anything more than what is there.

You will surely be [disappointed], dear friend, that I have so little to share – but that's just the way it is.

However, I am enclosing two mantrams that you may know, but which I have not found anywhere else.

My family and I are doing well for the time being – my son Dan is working hard at the Steiner School in Oslo and also with lectures and so on, like all younger anthroposophists.

In June I will move to Lillehammer, where I have finally been able to get a small apartment. There everything will be more comfortable and, above all, I have my dear group there. At 73 years of age, the bus trips from here are becoming too exhausting.

Warm greetings to you and your wife from your old friend

Ingeborg Möller Lindholm