World Mysteries and Theosophy

GA 54 — 22 March 1906, Berlin

Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods

It came as something of a surprise when, in the 18th century, educated Germans discovered the ancient legend of the Nibelungs. In fact, this legend, to which we owe the European peoples' ideas about their origins, had been forgotten for centuries. Little was known about what the Germans in ancient times told each other about the dawn of their existence, little was known about it from the 12th to the 18th century, and minds capable of recognizing the full significance of such a discovery for the spiritual life of the German people, such as Goethe, attributed particular importance to the Nibelungenlied. Then it became known that what had been extracted from manuscripts of the 12th and 13th centuries were only later creations of an even older folk poetry. In the Edda poems, these older figures of German legend from prehistoric times were found, who had fled northward, so to speak, but then made their way back—initially through scholarship—and now, in the second half of the 19th century, provided the basis for the truly great renewal of art by the poet-musician Richard Wagner. Richard Wagner sought to bring about the renewal of art by taking figures who expressed the deepest foundations of human destiny, or who could gain our interest through a special destiny that transcended the everyday, not from everyday life, but from the superhuman, idealized figures of ancient times. He knew well that the secrets hidden in the human heart and soul cannot be expressed through everyday characters or events; he knew that myths and legends in particular can reflect what goes on inside the human soul. Everyday life already shows us how every human being is actually a mystery and harbors infinitely more than we can perceive with our ordinary senses and intellect. We know that we have an obligation—if we recognize such an ideal obligation—to regard human beings as such a mystery, never to conclude our judgment of them. If we allow what a person has inspired in us to continue to have an effect on us, then their image will indeed grow into something superhuman. We can only portray this by enlarging their features, and enlarging them in the right way, by emphasizing their characteristic traits without distorting them into caricatures. This is the true art of inner human characterization.

Just as Wagner was aware that humanity may one day — though not yet today — be capable of expressing the highest ideals through ordinary language, just as he was aware that one must resort to the elevated element of expression, to music, in order to bring forth the deepest depths of the soul, so too was he aware that he must rise above everyday life to the mythical. The power, inner feeling, and reality that live in this myth confront us in a surprising way in this innovator of art. It is precisely through Wagner's art that much has been done to deepen this world of legends. Today, too, we will try to penetrate the reality of this seemingly unreal world from a spiritual scientific point of view, and you will see that theosophy or spiritual science has much to say about the deeper core of these legends. For, starting with Nietzsche and continuing with the other Wagner interpreters, many have remained stuck in the symbolic interpretation of the legend. This stems from the fact that in our age of materialistic thinking, it is actually quite a great thing to recognize symbolic references to great inner human truths in myths. It is of course impossible for me to unravel the whole question of the Siegfried myth before you today; I will only be able to indicate a few points of view to show how, from the standpoint of a deeper spiritual understanding, this myth gains life and reality.

The figure of Siegfried is known primarily from the German version of the Nibelungenlied. You know that Siegfried was able to make himself invisible. He was in possession of the Nibelung treasure, the gold to which much is attached: external earthly happiness, but at the same time also a certain curse, a doom. You also know that he became engaged to Brünhilde. This is a feature that is not found in German mythology, but without which German mythology is hardly comprehensible. You know that by entering into a marriage alliance with Kriemhilde, he acquires Brünhilde for Gunther through deception, namely by appearing in the guise of another, which then becomes his doom and leads to his death. You know that Siegfried is avenged by his wife at the court of the Huns under Etzel or Attila. Scholars have often seen in Siegfried the symbol of a sun hero, in the way that scholarship understands such symbols: the sun as the conqueror of clouds and so on. Two weeks ago, I already pointed out how little such external symbolism can correspond to the matter at hand, as Ludwig Laistner's research on the riddle of the Sphinx has made clear that the people do not symbolize in such a way. We can only understand the Germanic pantheon and the Siegfried saga if we assume that all these relationships express the experiences of the gods.

These are the main features of the Siegfried character. The features in the German legend are significantly deepened in the Norse legend, which tells us something quite different. In the German legend, we find Siegfried in possession of the magic helmet, which enabled him to make himself invisible. In the Norse legend, the figure of Siegfried or Sigurd leads us into the world of the gods. This myth of the gods is full of mysteries and secrets. We learn—and I can only hint at the very broad outlines—that the gods themselves were forced to hand over the gold they had acquired from the Nibelungs to the giants as payment for a debt they had incurred. A giant in the form of a Lindworm now guards this treasure. It is a significant feature that Siegfried, the offspring of the old gods and, so to speak, related to Wotan himself, is called upon in his youth to overcome the Lindworm, the guardian of the gold. This gives him the strength through which he gains his power. By bringing a few drops of the Lindworm's blood to his lips, he is able to understand the language of birds; he is thus able to gain a deep insight into nature and absorb hidden wisdom. Through this perfection, he is able to approach the Valkyrie Brünhilde, surrounded by fire and flames, and become engaged to her, he who has conquered the Nibelung treasure for himself in battle against the Lindworm.

This Siegfried is a legendary figure who appears frequently in the poetry of world literature. He is the conqueror of a dragon, who is bathed in the dragon's blood and thereby attains special perfection, who acquires the power to make himself invisible and to approach a female figure who can only be reached through fire and flames. The individual phases of descent from the gods conceal very significant ancient beliefs, some of which even elude public discussion because they lead into areas that belong to the deepest realms of the occult.

Two weeks ago, we saw that in Germanic prehistory there was something of an experience of higher spiritual and mental worlds, and how the development of human beings consisted precisely in the fact that human beings developed from the astral vision of prehistory, from looking into the spiritual world, to our ordinary everyday views, which observe things with the outer senses. It was like a memory for our ancestors in Central Europe that humans once looked into the spiritual world, but that this world is now shrouded in darkness and gloom, as external physical vision has become increasingly perfected in humanity. What still lives on today as legends and myths is the remnant of such a higher spiritual perception. The gods are higher experiences, real figures of the world into which human beings enter when they have attained higher senses. A straight line runs from dreams to the highest astral-spiritual experiences of the soul. To make this clearer, let us take a look at the difference between so-called night and day consciousness. The daytime consciousness of the normal human being, through which culture has been created, is acquired. It comes about because the soul perceives the outside world through the senses and processes it with the intellect and the imagination. But when the soul frees itself from the body at night, when the gates of the senses are closed and the soul is within itself, it lives in a different spiritual environment, but it cannot perceive anything because it has no senses for it, just as a person who has lost their eyes, ears, and all their senses could still live, but would not perceive anything of their surroundings. Once upon a time, the soul had the ability to look into the world into which man descends when he surrenders himself to sleep. He saw into the spiritual world, and the images of the spiritual world lie in myth, are real experiences. That is why it seemed to the people of Central Europe that they had once perceived a light that has now sunk into the darkness of the night. There is a light that can illuminate the night, a light that enables one to see spiritual and soul beings, those things that are recorded in mythological legends. This sinking of astral consciousness is beautifully and powerfully represented in the figure of Baldur. It is merely a fantasy of German scholarship to claim that Baldur is the sun. Baldur is the ancient astral light that looks into the spiritual and soul world, but which died out in the course of development when a race arose for whom the spiritual light was plunged into darkness. This race, of which the ancient Germans could truly have said: The lights shine in the darkness, but the darkness does not know the lights — is the race of the Nibelungs, the inhabitants of Nifelheim. What is meant by this race, for whom the spiritual is dark and only the sensual is light? What has changed with it?

The ancient forces that glowed through space and lived in everything, the forces of love from which everything emerged, were — as people remembered — the deeper source of life at that time, when it was still possible to see into the spiritual world, when people lived in a completely different way. With the advent of the external sensory world, egoism took the place of love, which ruled everything, elevated all communication between beings, led beings to beings, and established all relationships between them. A generation that had still looked into the spiritual world now attached its meaning to purely external physical things, physical possessions, physical property: the desire to encompass some part of the sensory world. That is “gold,” external, physical possession. Even in small circumstances, there was always some memory of this among the German people, of that time when the land still belonged jointly to the entire village community. There were still those who sat on such property, naturally connected, as blood still established kinship at that time. Now a different time came. Common ownership, which at the same time created a certain sense of community and a shared love, gave way to private ownership, to the urge and drive to possess. This development, which almost all peoples went through, was also experienced by the ancient Germans. They perceived the new circumstances as a contrast to the old, as if the external had replaced the internal, as if they had previously followed the impulse that lived within them, love, in their actions, and now followed egoism. Now, what brought people together also had to be regulated by contracts and legal provisions, instead of by natural degrees of kinship as before. A new world order came with new gods appropriate to the external, sensual reality. These were our gods of ancient times. But these gods also reappeared in a new form, as it were, as those who had extracted the better part, the essence of the old, like supernatural powers above sensual time.

People appeared to be entangled in sensuality. But those who wanted to be leaders and guides for humanity, both in Germanic prehistory and elsewhere, were initiates who looked deeper into the sources of existence and were able to penetrate to the divine, creative forces. Such an initiate must have overcome what connects humans with sensuality; he must be able to attach his entire senses and aspirations only to what is lasting, to what lies behind sensual things. He must rise above the struggle of everyday life. Now, every human being is involved in this struggle of everyday life with desires and everyday ideas. He must overcome all of this; before that, a truly deeper insight into things is not possible. Because people today have so little understanding of this, they cannot comprehend what real and true wisdom is. Otherwise, they would also know that before one can ascend to knowledge, one must first make oneself worthy of knowledge, feel that what the mind and reason can grasp, what we can think, are God's thoughts, according to which the world is constructed. It is not what the initiates know that matters, but how they know it, and they become knowledgeable because they have overcome the lower aspects of the human being. Through this knowledge, which is linked to the transformation of the whole soul, knowledge becomes wisdom.

Different peoples had different initiates according to their respective characters. We understand this when we comprehend the meaning of initiation. What is the actual task of the initiate? Above all, it was the initiates who gave the peoples the certainty of the immortality of the human soul. To soar to wisdom means to experience that the soul is reality. One really gets to know it when one looks into the world illuminated by astral light. There, the immortality of the soul proves to be a characteristic of the soul. Because the initiate can already enter these worlds, in which there is eternal life, in this existence, he can therefore give news of the fate of human beings before birth and after death. It has always been the task of the initiated to clarify how the soul emerges from the transitory sensual existence. Wherever there is a belief based on deep knowledge and experience, people say something similar to what has been said again in recent times for the first time by the theosophical or spiritual science movement. The more human beings transform their sensual existence by developing a wide variety of virtues and abilities, the more they lead the way to another existence that is imperishable. The Greeks called the soul a bee that flies away, collects honey, and then returns to the hive. It is exactly the same with the soul. It flies in the physical world, collects experiences, and brings them back to the spiritual world, where they become its permanent possession. Wherever mystical facts underlie, the mental image of the soul has been formed as something feminine, for example, Goethe as the “eternal feminine,” the soul that constantly absorbs from its surroundings and is fertilized by them. The cosmos, on the other hand, is masculine when viewed in relation to the soul. In its interaction with the outside world, every event is a fertilization for the soul. Therefore, to the person who can see this, the soul's ascent to immortality appears like a union, for it connects with its higher nature, which, as it were, comes to meet it when it has worked its way up to this higher level. Thus, in Germanic mythology, because bravery was the highest virtue for the Germanic people, the acquisition of immortality for the warrior who fell on the battlefield appeared in the form of the Valkyrie coming to meet him; the Valkyrie is nothing other than the immortal human soul. If the warrior has practiced the virtue that leads to immortality, he unites with the Valkyrie; those who did not fall on the battlefield died a straw death and had to descend into the realm of Hel, where no spiritual light shone.

An initiate is one who already encounters the soul in life. Thus, Siegfried is the initiate of Germanic antiquity who overcomes the lower nature, the dragon, ascends, and earns the right, like every initiate, to see into the world that humans will enter when they pass through the gate of death. Such initiates were always invisible to the physical eye of human beings; they always wore a cloak of invisibility. It is obvious to everyone that if an initiate such as Christ Jesus were to appear in any modern city today, he would remain quite hidden as such. For even if he were not imprisoned, what can only be perceived with the spiritual eye would at least be considered something completely unheard of. This is true of all initiates, including Siegfried. Those who ascend to a higher knowledge of wisdom must not only overcome the dragon, but also pass through many dangers to reach a higher consciousness. The flames and fires surrounding the Valkyrie are very real. Before a person is able to see into the higher world, the higher nature is always mixed with the lower nature, keeping the lower nature in check and guarding against what wants to emerge from the lower, stormy passions. But when the higher nature emerges, the lower nature is left alone at first. Therefore, those who have not thoroughly strengthened their character beforehand, but who attain clairvoyant abilities and want to ascend into the spiritual world, are often exposed to a transformation for the worse. There, the fire of passions easily begins to burn. The higher consciousness gives rise to the formation of flames, and the initiate must first pass through these flames. Here you have the initiation ceremonies of Siegfried. Such initiates existed in those days; they were ancient priest-kings who combined bravery and wisdom, who were both kings and priests. That was the ideal of man that lived in the memory of the ancient Germans and stood before their souls at the time when this poem arose like a memory. That had now changed. Bravery is no longer subject to initiation, and wisdom is assigned to a secular class; instead of a warrior class that was at the same time a priestly knighthood, there is now a priesthood that knows nothing of initiation.

The attainment of this higher consciousness by the initiated priest-wise men is represented in the fact that Siegfried, who was already betrothed to the Valkyrie Brünhilde, drinks the potion of forgetfulness, that is, is himself placed in the world that no longer knows anything of the old times, and that he acquires Brünhilde for someone who is no longer a priest-sage, who has discarded one side, bravery, that is, that with which the higher soul is acquired. Brünhilde was to be acquired for someone who was no longer an old descendant of the gods, that is, an initiate.

Thus, the development of spiritual culture is wonderfully expressed in the Siegfried saga. The times are past when bravery and deepest wisdom were united in the initiated. Union with the Valkyrie is no longer bound to initiation; in a certain sense, it is those who have fallen away from the past who now attain immortality through bravery. Thus, the connection with the old world of the gods was lost; only the sensual life, bound to gold, remained. For such a time — as was clear to mystical thinking at that time — higher consciousness meant something dangerous. For the initiate who has defeated the dragon, there is the possibility of uniting with higher consciousness and allowing himself to be filled by it. The lower nature cannot mislead him, since he has cast it off. But for those who still have to go through this and have not overcome their lower nature, the same thing can become dangerous. This had to be made clear to the ancient Germans. For union with the Valkyrie has a destructive effect if it is not linked to inner dignity. It becomes a destructive power when it acts on its own. Thus, Brünhilde acts on her own by having to belong to the man who had not undergone the initiation, to whom she had been unlawfully assigned. Therefore, the higher consciousness must have a destructive effect. With this, we have also explained what ultimately brings about Brünhilde's downfall. Brünnhilde, the higher consciousness originating from the old gods, must drag the old gods themselves down to ruin with her. The offspring of the gods was her equal. In ancient times, it was right for Valkyries to descend upon the warriors because there were initiates among them who had earned the right to unite with Brünnhilde through a victorious life. This consciousness, the gift of the old gods, which they originally gave to the initiates, subsequently also came to those who were not initiates, where it could have a destructive, dissolving effect, and then necessarily had to drag down the old world of the gods itself: the twilight of the gods.

It is no coincidence, but rather a result of profound wisdom, that the new Christianity also appears in the German version of the Nibelungenlied, where the people descend to the court of King Etzel to meet their doom. Christianity seems to have entered the old world, which had been founded on love. People symbolically remembered an old love that had been replaced by statutes based on gold. The age of gold had led to Brünhilde's higher consciousness having a destructive effect. And the moment when the old gods sank down is cosmically represented by the time when astral vision gave way to physical vision, which thereby became a reflection of the cosmic process.

Love instead of statutes is to rise again as a new element. Even this is symbolically hinted at in the myth, and it emerges even more intimately in this fact: when Siegfried was to be betrayed, his wife marked the spot where he could be wounded with a cross. Every initiate is spiritually invulnerable to earthly sensuality, even if his body is torn to pieces. The soul has grown into the higher life. But there is one thing the initiate has not yet been able to achieve. Siegfried has remained vulnerable in the place where moral law, purified into the divine, should flare up in love. This flaring up of deifying morality in love is the essence of Christianity. That was not yet part of Siegfried's initiation. After the twilight of the gods is over, another hero enters among the old combatants, one who stands higher than Siegfried, who is invulnerable in the place where Siegfried was still vulnerable. The cross that Kriemhilde can only sketch has been carried on the back of the Great One. — You see what a deep foundation, what a spiritual picture of life is present in this saga of ancient times. The mystery of humanity resounds everywhere in it.

You all know that Richard Wagner was not satisfied with the figure of Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied, but that he drew on Norse mythology, even if he changed some of the individual motifs and personalities. He depicts Siegfried as the soul that has passed through initiation by slaying the Lindworm, as a being who understands the language of birds, who therefore sees and hears not only through the gates of the sensory world. And in Götterdämmerung, he allows us to see the connection symbolized in Brünhilde as the old world of the gods, which descends into the depths, from which Christian love then rises, replacing the old world of the gods.

I do not wish to claim that Richard Wagner had these thoughts in an abstract way; but that need not be the case with an artist. People speak so lightly of the artist's “unconscious” creation. That is not a good word. If man thinks in abstract concepts, in shadowy mental images, the artist works in form. It is more a higher form of impertinence on the part of scholarly vanity and intellect to describe this life and weaving in the imagination and in creation as “unconscious.” There is something else underlying this. What is art with its creative design, with its letting in the light of a higher world? It is deeply significant that it is precisely through the renewal of myth that a renewal of art has also been brought about. If for the ordinary person myth is only a symbol, for the initiate it is spiritual reality, the expression of the experience of a higher spiritual world. It is such a full consciousness that ordinary bright daytime consciousness cannot grasp it. A shadowy reflection of this has remained in myth, and we have something similar when we form a mental image of an initiate introducing his disciples to the ancient mysteries, be they Greek, Persian, Egyptian, or those told to us by German prehistory. Here we have the initiate who has the power to open the eyes of his disciples to this higher world. There they look into this spiritual world; scenes of a higher experience unfold before them, not between humans, but between gods. A later time captured the form of these scenes as if in a shadow image, namely in art. Art is like a dream or a shadow image, a memory of earlier clairvoyance and a prophecy of later clairvoyance for all of humanity.

It was a great epoch when the last echoes of that ancient time were brought back to life in German mythology by Richard Wagner, in order to rediscover the connection between art and vision. Thus, the works of Richard Wagner's art have a prophetic significance. They are a great, eminent educational tool of the modern age; through the sound of music and the superhuman events unfolding before their eyes, they will help people renew the myth and awaken the powers of the soul. And the theosophical or spiritual-science worldview, which works toward that future of humanity, may regard this art, reborn from the myth, as a true sister. In this way, it is possible, in a certain sense, to gain a deeper understanding of Richard Wagner's art from Spiritual Science. The vitality of spiritual insight, which Spiritual Science strives for, must take the place of the mere abstract scholarship that has taken hold of the old legends and myths. Myth is a representation of profound truths, of lofty spiritual experiences, and by awakening the consciousness of these spiritual experiences, spiritual research, which is a different kind of research from the ordinary kind, will also make the depths of myth understandable again. Then the legends of the dawn of humanity will be able to come alive again in their essential core. People have expressed truth in many different forms. But only those who have a sense for the core and the living source of truth understand the form of truth. Seeking the core of this truth is the task of the spiritual-scientific worldview, and through this attitude, which constitutes the essence of the spiritual-scientific field, the best of humanity's past spiritual treasures will be able to come to the surface of today's educational life.