And The Temple Becomes Man

GA 286 — 30 March 1914, Munich

Introduction to a Subsequent Lecture

My dear friends, allow me to say a few words in advance about something that some of our friends may wish to know.¹

In this building, we are dealing with something that we are bound to bring into the world through our karma. The way in which the world has judged this matter, even when the project to erect the building here in Munich was first conceived, shows us that we have really been placed in a position where we have no choice but to look at nothing other than what can follow from our spiritual scientific convictions. We must, of course, assume that all outsiders will misunderstand the undertaking. Because this undertaking, which is so foreign to the present way of thinking, brings our spiritual science before more souls in the outside world, it will also be affected by this, in that it will have to experience more hostility than it would otherwise have had to. It is already the case in the present that people become aware of something when they come face to face with it, and so more will be known about spiritual science in the world than we would like, through this symbol, which for some is large enough to make a judgment about the spiritual scientific worldview. Everyone can see for themselves what these judgments are like. But we must be clear that we are facing what could be called the real inner pulse of the times.

As the year 1000 approached in Western development, within the Christian calendar, the feeling spread far and wide among European souls that something significant must be happening in the course of the world order. And because this feeling took on increasingly materialistic forms, people thought of this significant event as the physical end of the world. This is only a materialistic interpretation of a universal law.

It is indeed the case that, with the end of a millennium, events take place that are significant for the whole of human life. We have already drawn attention to this by pointing to the approach of the perception of the etheric body of Christ, which will become increasingly apparent to human perception the closer we and those who follow us come to the year 2000.

Significant spiritual events always occur in the stream of human development when such a period approaches. The 20th century, at the beginning of which we now stand, really presents itself to the spiritual gaze in such a way that the more it enters the near future, the more Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces will envelop humanity. Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, which work against the Christ impulse in the world, also made themselves felt as misunderstandings, causing the souls approaching the year 1000 to speak of the end of the world.

If the same habits of thinking prevailed today, souls would again speak of the end of the world. At that time, as the end of the first Christian millennium approached, anti-Christian impulses made themselves felt – not so much in ideas that were outwardly perceptible, but in the depths of soul development – which brought forms of thinking into the world that were directly under Ahrimanic and Luciferic influence.

At that time, one instrument of this activity was the Mohammedan-Arabic spiritual life that penetrated from the Orient via Africa into southern Europe. We should think less of the dogmas of Islam, of the ideas that spread in Spain, and more of the impulses working in the depths of the soul. A form that confronts us here is deeply significant: the arch, which ends in a point at the top.

In this point lies the mark of Cain, of Ahriman. Such things are pushed into human development. When I inquired about the inspiring beings who granted us the grace to point out the forms we use in the Dornach building, it turned out that they were the same ones who fought against Ahriman and Lucifer at the end of the first millennium. When the Norman peoples migrated from north to south, they brought with them building forms that were executed in wood. And we, who want to establish a new architectural style, which will of course be imperfect here because we do not have the means for more, were now inspired with building forms that emphasize the round in both the large and the small details. The situation is such that what are the forms of our building and are filled with wood were left empty by the Normans, and conversely, what was filled at that time is free space, is empty, in our case.

We were, so to speak, compelled to follow the inspiring beings more closely than they were followed at the end of the first millennium, when these beings wanted to oppose Lucifer and Ahriman.

Much has changed since then; much has happened in the spiritual life of humanity. If one wants to summarize everything that one wants to incorporate into the forms of the building, one must be clear that much of what calls itself Christian and bears the name of Christ works in an anti-Christian sense, that it is the best trick of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers to bring anti-Christian impulses into the world under the name of Christ. We must become increasingly aware that everything, down to the individual forms, is made in the spirit of the progressive spiritual powers of humanity, even if imperfectly, because it is a beginning.

I did not want to praise our building with this, but only to say what must enter our consciousness and what I am saying with the intention that you all grow to love this building, that it becomes a matter close to your hearts, that you learn to think of it, so to speak, as a monument to what we do not want arbitrarily, but must want. The more we love this building, the more we will succeed in placing it in the world in the way that the progressive beings in the spirit of the Christ impulse want it to be in the present.

Take this building and everything connected with it into your hearts, and think that it is an important thing if we can open it at the end of the year. It is not our fault that the building is not being constructed here; it is our karma. It is our destiny that it should be built in a lonely place, but in a place which, according to its local situation, is nevertheless of some importance for the spiritual life of modern times.