9. Preface to Edouard Schuré's Drama “The Children of Lucifer”

Goethe spoke of art as a revelation of secret natural laws that would have to remain hidden forever without it. In this way he brings art close to knowledge. He makes it the interpreter of the secrets of the world. He has thus prophetically pointed to something that must be the ideal of those contemporary spirits who know how to interpret the signs of the times. The spirits envision an art that seeks to reconnect with the paths of the searching soul that lead to the sources of existence. They want to speak to the mind in need of beauty; but what they speak should at the same time be the expression of the highest truths and insights. Religion, mysticism, research and art should flow from a primal source. In this way, the human spirit today seeks to renew something that was present in the dawn of our cultures. The Egyptian pyramids and sphinxes are the great truths embodied in small stones, which the sages of the land of Nile had to proclaim. In the ancient poetry of the Indians we also have monumental documents of the wisdom of this people. And in the ancient Greek drama, the intuitive imagination senses a work of art that was also the expression of the religious truths of primeval times. The hero of this drama is God, who descends into matter, suffers and finds his redemption in the work of man. - If we look at the development of the world in this way, we can look back on a human culture in which religion, art and science still formed an undivided unity. The One Truth found its expression in forms that represented beauty, wisdom and religious exaltation at the same time. Only a later period found a special religious expression for the mind, an artistic one for the senses and a scientific one for reason. This is how it had to be, for only when man developed each of his faculties on separate paths to its highest flowering could perfection be achieved. For thousands of years, truth, beauty and divinity went their separate ways. The high works of art of the Greeks and of all subsequent ages were made possible by a striving for beauty that followed its own laws and gave only the imagination the role of master. The depths of the Christian religion stem from a deepening of the soul that eluded the forms of beautiful sensuality. And the achievements of our science have sprung from rational thought and strict experience, which granted no access to the imagination or the religious needs of the soul.

What has sprung from one source strives today to reunite. What did Richard Wagner want other than a work of art that also elevates the soul to the sources of the divine? And what did Goethe really want when he sought to lead the hero to redemption in the regions of the highest truth in the second part of his “Faust”? He says himself (on January 29, 1827 to Eckermann): “But still, everything (in Faust) is sensual and, thought of in the theater, will fall well into everyone's eyes. And that is all I wanted. If it is only so that the crowd of spectators enjoys the appearance; the initiated will at the same time not miss the higher meaning.” And this “higher meaning” is none other than that of human existence in general. And it is shown by religion, art and wisdom.

If art becomes aware of its connection with the truth, then it must draw its inspiration from the same source as religion and science.

Such awareness permeates the personality whose creation is hereby presented to the German public. Edouard Schuré, the intellectual and profound French writer, should have a significant impact on our contemporaries. For it was given to him to be a herald of truth as an artist and a revealer of the mystical paths of the soul as a researcher. With an intuitive spirit, he immersed himself in the mysteries of the human spirit. His “Great Initiates” (Les Grands Initiés) lead to those heights of human development on which Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Pythagoras, Orpheus, Plato and Jesus walked. The ways in which these leaders showed their peoples and times the goal of humanity, which they drew from the source of their divine insight, are described in brilliant colors. In his books on “Musical Drama” and “Richard Wagner”, Schuré had already shown the goal of our time, which lies in the unification of the truth-seeking spirit, the religiously striving soul and the beauty-seeking senses. In the “Sanctuaries of the Orient” (Sanctuaires d'Orient), he recreated the sacred drama of Eleusis with a brilliant sense, that primal drama which was both a work of art and a religious cult act. The later Greek drama applied the art form, which had previously been the shaper of divine world action, to the sphere of human action and experience.

This is how Edouard Schuré - to use Goethe's expression - moved from the search for truth to the artistic interpretation of truth. In the preface to his “Sanctuaries of the Orient” he said (1898) that he wanted to express “through the artistic word and in the translucent medium of poetry” what goes on in the deep shafts of the searching and striving human soul. He calls the “Children of Lucifer” and the associated drama “La Saur Gardienne” the “theater of the soul”.

Schuré's entire oeuvre shows how deeply imbued he is with the need to reunite contemporary culture with the intimate mystical experience of the soul. For him, the dramatic action is a symbol of the deeper processes within the human being. What the eye sees is an image of what the soul experiences when the forces that connect it with the eternal are at work within it. One would like to write the words of Goethe's Chorus mysticus about the drama “Children of Lucifer”: “Everything transient is only a parable - the inadequate, here it becomes an event - the indescribable, here it is done.” For what is taking place here in the context of the fourth century, when Hellenism and Christianity fought the great battle, is a parable for two eternal forces in the struggling soul. Man strives eternally from the depths to the heights; and eternally he must expect redemption from the heights. Freedom and grace are the poles that strive towards each other, longing and will strive to complement each other, these “two souls” wrestle in the human breast. And all external processes are the images of the wrestling souls. Creating and receiving are embodied in a thousand forms. And what takes place between man and man is an interaction between creating and receiving, or - to use Goethe's words again - between taking and giving. And it is always through the “miracle of love” that balance is achieved. This “riddle of the world” cannot be grasped with the intellect, it must be experienced with the deepest forces of the soul. Whoever loves creatively, the living power flows towards him and unites with his life in a creative union. In the loving devotion of one's own, the seed is planted which inserts the human being into the eternal weaving of the world. Just as the blood flows through the body, so these secrets of humanity flow through Schuré's drama.

The “Children of Lucifer” are “theater of the soul”, because behind the plot the eternal hieroglyphics of the struggling human spirit can be seen. They are inspired by what in mysticism is called the One Cause of humanity. Imagination and mystical sense have an equal share in this work of art. If the mystical sense does not lose itself in the darkness of feeling, but calls the clarity of seeing its own, and if the imagination does not abandon itself to the arbitrariness of subjective ideas, but follows the intuition of truth, then alone can such a work of art come into being.

If we could see works of art of this kind in the theater, they would be temples of truth; and beauty would not be a servant of the religious sense, but its child. And from such a deepening of art it could be hoped that it would also have an effect on its sisters: religion and wisdom. Reason, imagination and religious edification could once again come into harmony with one another.

In Schuré, this harmony lives as a goal. Because he is a mystic as an artist, and because he has the power to express mystical knowledge in the form of art, time should listen to him. In his work lives something of what the future must bring.

The last centuries have reshaped our lives with reason and the senses; but the “life of the soul” will be brought by those who once again imprint the great intuitions of the true and the divine on external life. It is in this spirit that this drama is to be presented to the German readership.

At the beginning of the new volume (June 1905) The new volume of “Lucifer-Gnosis” begins with No. 25. Something new will be added to the previous content in that each issue will contain articles on the relationship of Theosophy, occultism, mysticism and so on to the great questions of life in the present. The next issue will contain, for example: “What is the significance of Theosophy in the life of contemporary man and the present?” Furthermore, in response to many requests, information will be provided on the theosophical movement, on occultist endeavors and everything that belongs to it in contemporary spiritual life. The next issues will appear in the next few days. And care will be taken to ensure more punctual publication in future. The publishing house M. Altmann in Leipzig will take over the commission publishing from No. 25 onwards.