Ancient Mysteries and Christianity

GA 87 — 28 December 1901, Berlin

8. The Myth of Heracles

Highly Esteemed Attendees!

I have taken the liberty of describing the development of Greek spiritual life in the centuries before Plato - as a kind of preparation for Greek mysticism proper, that is, for the time in which the mystery system merged into what is usually called mysticism.

I note provisionally that Plato, who belongs to the fifth to fourth centuries before the birth of Christ, appears as a great confluence of all that Greek intellectual life had produced before Plato. He died at the age of eighty in 347 BC. Into this life was squeezed a continuous development that must appear particularly ascending [and] great to those who know how to read the Platonic writings correctly.

Plato's history of development in Greece took place at a time when life in Greece had taken on the strangest character. We must be clear about the fact that when Plato appeared, a kind of split also occurred, so that we only have to see the [one] branch of Platonic mysticism that developed after him and which can be called the "striving for truth". [The other branch, which has detached itself from the unified mystery being, has become art], above all in the form that confronts us in Greek tragedy, in the tragedy of Aeschylus and in the less important tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides.

Plato's [life] coincided with this period. Mystery became flattened into mere tragedy. Mystery united in undivided unity that which art and Greek mysticism had sought on separate paths. Such a division between truth and beauty, between mysticism and art, did not yet exist at the time of the ancient Greek Mysteries, and to a certain extent we will also see that a large part of the Mysteries took refuge in art. The most fleeting thing is the ideal.

We do not understand the concept of art at all if we do not understand it as something that has arisen as a distillation of the Greek Mysteries. But we can only understand this when we have penetrated the meaning of the ancient Greeks of the pre-Platonic period, who understood the really deep meaning of the word mystery. The Greek mystery being of pre-Platonic times united everything that can be expressed in inner aspirations. And what confronts us on the surface - including Heraclitus' philosophy - are only the diluted products of those who penetrated the depths of the mystery being, who threw them into the others because they could not penetrate, so that they could at least suspect, even if they could not see.

What the Greeks were looking for is something that Plato also gradually became aware of. It is that which presents itself to us in the writings that are usually referred to as the writings of the first eight years of Plato's writing career.

If you take these writings from the first period of Plato's writings, you will see that you are dealing with purely philosophical writings, ethical writings, moral writings. And that is the character of the so-called "Socratic philosophy". Socrates boasts that he was never initiated into the mysteries. After Socrates' death, an extremely important development begins for Plato, which then reaches its climax in Plato's most important work, the "Timaeus".

That which was present [in the heyday of spiritual life in Greece, before Christianity had a transforming effect on Greek spiritual life] and which Plato went through, this entire developmental process was called "initiation" in Greek spiritual life. It is what those who wanted to be initiated into the Mysteries strove for. For the Greeks, receiving initiation and becoming an initiate were one and the same thing.

And now, if I want to develop Platonic mysticism before you in the form in which it will appear to us as a process of continuous initiations, I must say something in advance. I must say in advance that what the Greeks had about the nature of initiation was expressed in a strange myth which cannot be understood if it is not regarded as a symbolic representation of initiation. It forms a parallel to the myth of Dionysus, a side piece to it; it is, however, quite different.

We know: Dionysus is the son of a mortal, Semele. Semele perished. She had asked Zeus to appear to her in his heavenly splendor and glory. When he granted her this, he had to appear like this and she was struck by his lightning bolt and burned to death. Dionysus had to be born a second time, [after Zeus had saved him by bringing the still immature child to maturity in his own thigh,] so that Dionysus, who was born as a man, was then burnt and then appeared as god-born.

This Dionysus myth presents us with the world process, the world's evolution, as the process of the incarnated god, as the process that the god goes through, that the one who has become god goes through. These myths were mysteries that related to the world process without taking into account the role that man plays within the world.

This Dionysus myth is accompanied by another myth, like a side piece. This is the myth of Heracles. It presents itself to us as a humanized Dionysus myth. Heracles was also the son of a mortal: He really is born of Alcmene. Now it turns out that this birth is delayed by Hera's jealousy, that he is born too late. Eurystheus was born beforehand, to whom he ceded the birthright. Because he was born second in line, Heracles had to perform his twelve well-known labors in the service of Eurystheus. So here we see the myth of Dionysus in a humanized form. So both were fire. Heracles then performs his human labors, and only after completing them is he transported to Olympus. Then he dissolves in fire.

So Heracles appears to us like the humanized Dionysus. He appears to us as one who has taken all suffering upon himself, in contrast to Dionysus, who has been spared this suffering. These twelve labors are nothing other than human trials that man has to pass in order to gradually ascend to the highest level he can reach. This whole myth can only be understood as a symbolic representation of the initiation process, and the twelve labors represent twelve successive states of the human soul. Through these, man gradually reaches an elevated consciousness, the entrance, the attainment of the actual divine consciousness.

The nature of these labors proves that the twelve labors of Heracles are nothing other than tests that man has to undergo in the course of the initiation process. It might seem to us that these labors have been juxtaposed by poetry as the overcoming of twelve monsters. 'But if you compare them, you will find that they are not tests of strength by a strong man, but meaningful symbolic things.

These are monsters, which were brought forth by the brother and sister Phorkis and Keto, from which the actual earthly things emerged. In connection with the Pontus, it is the deities who bring forth the liquid - standing between the fire and the earthly. Phorkis' and Ketos' descendants are the monsters that Heracles has to overcome. They must be overcome, these entities, they must be cast off. Let's take a look at these monsters against which Heracles fights:

[Firstly:] The 'Nemean Lion': He presents himself to us as a descendant of the sibling pair Phorkis - Keto. Citing the relationship would lead nowhere, but the genealogical structure is completely correct. The important thing is that the lion has an impenetrable hide. Heracles can only strangle him. He does so and brings him to his master. But his master is now afraid of him, so Heracles has to stay outside the city on his orders. The impenetrable force of nature is fully represented by the impenetrable fur. You cannot pierce the veil, you cannot pierce it with arrows; you can only leave it in place, you can only paralyze its mighty willpower. But you have to let it exist as an entity next to you. It cannot be killed completely.

We can only remain partial victors in this battle. We can only achieve the beginning, only a part. That is the important thing in this work. In the whole struggle, the forces of nature appear to us as voiceless powers whose voice we cannot recognize on the lower stages of development. Nature stands before us as a mute goddess. We must allow her to exist, we can only partially conquer her. This is symbolized for us in this first work.

[Secondly:] The second work that Heracles undertakes is the battle against the 'Lernaean serpent'. It has nine heads, of which the middle one is immortal. These have the property that they are always renewed when they are cut off. The battle is therefore a very difficult one. Heracles can only overcome this renewal by burning them with fire. This reveals something significant to us: he handles fire.

But we will see that this second work has a special meaning. It presents itself to us as a link between the temporal and the eternal. The middle, immortal head is nevertheless an obstacle to actual entry into the eternal. This can only be overcome through spirituality. But Heracles is not at the stage where he can accomplish this work. We must realize that it is like playing with fire by someone who does not know how to handle it properly. So this second work seems to be something that cannot really be of importance to Heracles. It is strange that the link between the temporal and the eternal should appear so early.

[Thirdly:] The third work is the conquest of the "Kerynite hind", which is sacred to Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt. In the reference to the virgin Artemis, to the arts of peace, we see that it is an ascending process. This hind [Heracles] caught alive. He was only allowed to catch her alive and bring her home alive. This was a work that he accomplishes in the purely earthly. He abandons the struggle for the immortal. He endeavors to stand firm and turn around.

[Fourthly:] Having gained strength in this way, he sets about another task, [namely capturing the "Erymanthian boar alive]. He brings it bound to Mycenae. This is warlike work. This tells us that, having overcome his warlike longing, he must descend again and can now go on to more meaningful work. We see that he now - as if by chance - accomplishes something else: he wounds the Centaur Chiron, who has to fulfill the important task of standing up for Prometheus. We see how the Prometheus legend is linked here with the Heracles legend. We see how the element of will is linked here with the actual course of Heracles' development. We see how Heracles creates and orders the being that is to deliver Prometheus from his torments. Thus we see how Heracles at this stage, after he has overcome himself and desisted from the struggle, after he has gone through the renewed conflict, is now called to do something for striving humanity. This is the meaning behind the connection between the Heracles myth and the Prometheus myth.

[Fifth:] The cleansing work of the stable of Augeas. Those who sought admission to the Mysteries had to undergo a kind of purification, a baptism. This fifth work can be accomplished by those who have completed the first. It is not an actual work, it comes to man of its own accord. It is not an actual work of Heracles. The second and fifth labors cannot really be considered Heracles labors. The second leads too early to the eternal, and the fifth is something that comes to him of its own accord. They are therefore a kind of intermediate stages.

[Sixthly:] A special work of Heracles is that which he accomplishes with the "Stymphalian birds". These are birds with which he also has to do battle. Pallas-Athena comes to his aid in this work. We have already seen what she is. She has great significance in the Odysseus saga. She is the deity of wisdom, of heavenly wisdom. Now, after the purification, Pallas-Athena stands at his side. Pallas-Athena is - in contrast to knowledge - the right wisdom.

[Seventh:] Overcoming the birds was only one stage of development. But only with the help of Athena is he able to bring the "Cretan Bull alive to Mycenae.

The bull is a symbol in all mysteries that was widespread in the ancient world at that time, a symbol that passed from Persia through Asia Minor, Egypt and then spread from there through Greece. It is a symbol for the fruitful living nature. Therefore, in the Mysteries of Mithras, we see the bull paired with a strange symbol, a symbol of living nature. The tail of the bull runs out into a bunch of ears of wheat. This is definitely the symbolic representation of fertile and living nature. And the Mithras symbolism represents nothing other than this work of Heracles. This appears as a higher work of Heracles: the "Nemeijic lion is the lower, the bull the higher. The bull is the nature from which life sprouts, while the lion is the nature that is blind, dull.

This bull is sacred to Poseidon. We also know that this bull is depicted for those who were admitted to the battles of Mithras, as a bull on which a youth sits, thrusting his sword into the bull's side. A dog jumps in. Below is a snake, lengthwise. In front of and behind the bull are two attendants. The youth represents nothing other than the one on the path of initiation. On one side he has a companion with a raised torch, on the other side a companion with a lowered torch. This represents a process between life and death, which is the process of initiation. The upper part represents the passing sun god, the ascending and descending one. This rightly represents to us as spiritual what goes on below. This is the corresponding process in the realm of Dionysus, while the lower one is that in which Heracles finds himself. The image contains nothing other than the seventh work of Heracles. This is contained in all the representations of the Mysteries throughout the ancient world.

[Eighth:] Now Heracles can accomplish a very important work. He can overcome the world hostile to man at his highest level. The trials are renewed again and again, and that which is now to be overcome presents itself to us in the eighth work, the overcoming of the "fire-breathing horses of the son of Ares Diomedes. These "fire-breathing horses become immediately clear to us when we hear that they have to be fed with human flesh. The misanthropic violence on the higher level is that which can still impose a test on man, even if he has already achieved a high level of spiritual conquest. Here he overcomes by presenting the horses himself and then leading them to Olympus, where they are torn apart by wild animals. Now he is able to carry out the further trials. We see how what man can achieve on his path of development gradually forms into a well-rounded whole.

[Ninth:] He then conquered the "Belt of the Amazon Queen". This represents the empowerment of that which prevents us, as it were, from attaining the higher levels of consciousness as something with which we are connected. We are dealing here with a female element. It must take possession of the "belt of the Amazon Queen".

[Then comes the "killing of the three-headed Geryon and the leading away of his cattle" [which were guarded by the dog Orthos and the shepherd Eurytion]. This is on an even higher level the same as with the lion and the bull. It represents an overcoming of the spiritualized force of nature.

[Eleventh:] But it is significant for us because he erects the pillars of Heracles on one side of the world and on the other. The test course is now completed for him with the erection of the two border pillars.

Heracles could thus appear to us as a kind of initiate. However, the second and fifth works have something questionable about them. In the works of the "Cleansing of the Augean Stable and the 'Lernaean Serpent', however, it is expressed that he did not achieve his complete initiation. The two works were not accepted.

11 b: "He had to seize the apples of the Hesperidens. They were the bridal gift of Hera, [which Gaea had given to Hera at her marriage,] the symbol of knowledge itself. Heracles must first retrieve it from Hera's garden, [where they were guarded by four maidens, the Hesperides, and the dragon Ladon, a descendant of Phorkys and Keto]. 11 c: In this way he frees Prometheus and 11 d overcomes Antaios, the giant figure who is always sucking new power from the earth, who only needed to touch the earth to receive new power, natural power. Only after Heracles has passed these almost insurmountable tests of nature can he fetch the apples of the Hesperides. The [overcoming of] natural power is not yet something permanent. At this stage he must realize that this knowledge must be continually renewed. This test must always be carried out anew. The only thing that can be achieved is that the Antaios must always be fought anew. It will always gain new strength when it touches the earth. It is therefore an ongoing battle.

[Twelfth:] Before Heracles accomplishes the twelfth labor, he is initiated into the mysteries. That is what we are told. We don't need to interpret it. Before he does his twelfth labor, he is initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. And what does he accomplish here? He descends into the underworld, frees Theseus and achieves what is described by the words: he can bring Cerberus up from the underworld. The secret of the underworld becomes clear to him. Heracles acquires the Heraclitean wisdom of "overcoming life with death". He learns to understand Heraclitus' formula, in which he says: "The worship of Dionysus is at the same time the worship of Hades. In it, the highest deity of life flows together with the god of the underworld, Hades. The fruit is therefore the attainment of the underworld, something that we already encounter in Odysseus. It is the symbolic representation of the initiation process that we find in the Heracles legend. It only remains so incomprehensible that we don't really know what to do with it because it didn't really grow out of Greek philosophy, but out of mystery.

When we understand the legend of Heracles, we understand the corresponding teachings of all peoples, of the Indians, Persians and Egyptians. The mysteries of Heracles have existed alongside the mysteries of others. They all represent to us the initiatory process, and the initiatory process is the same throughout the ancient world. I have cited the Mithras myth only to show how the Heracles myth lives throughout antiquity and how the Greek spiritual life in the Dionysus myth represents the higher development of the Heracles myth, representing the higher as opposed to the lower. [This is illustrated by the parallelism of the Dionysus process with that of the others. It is also shown in Angelus Silesius that the Initiate is not something indifferent in the world process, but something significant.

The Greek spiritual world also created an equivalent for the "above" and "below". What went on in Dionysus was referred to as the "spiritual process", the "above"; what went on in man was referred to as the "below". For the purpose of mediating between the two, an image was created, the figure of Hermes, the messenger of the gods. He takes care of errands, love letters and so on, but also has a deep esoteric meaning. He presents himself as the mediator of the Dionysian and the Heraclean. He is the son of Zeus and a mortal, Zeus with a daughter of Atlas, Maya, who lives in the Arcadian caves. Through the mediation, the connection of Maja with Zeus, the mediation between the "upper" and "lower" arises. Hermes is the symbol for the actual human spiritual power, which represents the mediation between the "above" and the "below".

The whole myth of Hermes is proof that the human striving for knowledge is simultaneously a matter of earthly and spiritual nature. This dual striving for knowledge is expressed in Hermes. He is the "clever one, the 'cunning one'. Even as a child he raids Apollo's herd of cattle and drags away a number of cattle. His cunning as a child is already so great that the pursuer cannot even follow their trail. He leads them in such a way that the cattle go the other way. The pursuer is thus misled. Apollo [does] solve the mystery with the help of Zeus.

Hermes has succeeded in forming a lyre from a tortoise shell. Here you can see how the power of the spirit leads through man from the "lower" to the "upper". He gives this turtle-shell lyre to Apollo for the herd of cattle.

There we see how a separation occurs: on the one hand, we have the actual pursuit of knowledge. - Music and the arts have passed to the other messenger of the gods; Apollo is also a messenger of the gods. Hermes and Apollo are two messengers of the gods. In Hermes we have the sense of truth and in Apollo the sense of beauty. Here again we have the gift of imagination as a connection between the lower and the higher. Thus Hermes and Apollo appear to us as mediators of the lower and the higher. They are the two forces that connect the Dionysian with the Heraclean. They present to us separately that which was present to us as a unified process on the original level.

This is how the later mystery teachings developed. These are the later myths that could only arise from those that contained truth, beauty and goodness in an undivided form. When the festivals that were celebrated in the mystery temples contained everything as if in one trunk, "Hermes and "Apollo" could not exist. But when the artistic striving arose, as in the tragedies of Aeschylus, and the striving for truth in Socrates and Plato, these two branches of the original trunk appeared. On the one hand, we have the pursuit of knowledge, which originated with Socrates and Plato, and on the other, art, which strangely enough has never - not even to this day - been connected with the pursuit of truth in the consciousness of the majority of humanity.

It was only at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the realization dawned that these two tribes belong together, that neither of them can exist without the other and that real deepening is only possible when these two tribes reunite. For a large part of human consciousness, this unification cannot be described as achievable. But where we have encountered something significant in this respect, it can be found in Goethe. How deeply Goethe looked into these things can be seen from the content of the following words: "I have the suspicion that the Greeks proceed according to the eternal laws according to which nature itself has proceeded."

There dawned upon [him] a ray of that [primal ray] from which Greek spiritual life developed. And the result was many a thing that has come to us as a shining point.

Answer to the question:

[ Question:] What is the relationship between the emergence of Plato's mystical philosophy on the one hand and the emergence of tragedy on the other?

[ Answer:] The origin of tragedy has been sought in the origin of tragedy in Greek life. In Wagner's camp, it is clear that in late Greek times there was still an idea of what the mere shadow of the mysteries, tragedy, was all about. We can see this from Aristotle's description of tragedy and epic. What he writes about it has been incredibly misunderstood. A myriad of books have been written with conjectures about what he might have meant by "purification through fear and pity". Through catharsis we are purified from fear and pity. One cannot know what catharsis represents if one does not consider it on the basis of the wisdom of the Mysteries, the Mystery Being. The passions were calmed by soothing music. Only then did the players appear. This is the first stage of the initiation process. Tragedy presents this process to us exoterically. It is the shadowed great catharsis within the Greek mysteries. If one reads Aristotle's poetry, the "Poetics", with this presupposition, then one can also understand what Aristotle was able to say. Without this background, it is completely worthless.

In this way, you really understand that art has grown out of immense depths. It is not something eternal; it presents itself as something temporal alongside the pursuit of truth. Art presents itself to us as something against which the convincing power of truth has dwindled in human consciousness. Therefore, it is not even felt that art basically also wants to strive for truth. This awareness has been lost. It has been deprived of the core of truth.

The other tree appears to us in Platonic philosophy, in Philonic philosophy as a new striving for truth. In Platonic philosophy we have before us a striving to advance towards knowledge by the one-sided path of striving for truth. It is quite natural that Plato arrived at the doctrine of ideas: For Plato, the world process was, on the one hand, emergence from chaos, and on the other, emergence from ideas. The world process consists of the continuous interpenetration of the spiritual with the material, of ideas with chaos.

The demiurgos, the world soul, arises as the first product. It is the first matter into which the breath of the spirit has penetrated. Plato depicts this in the form of a cross. And connected with this form is the entire world of ideas of the Logoi, as the Platonic world of ideas must be called. Thus it presents itself as the pursuit of pure truth and then again in the "Timaeus" as truth itself. This truth is presented to us under the new image, under the new symbol "of the Logos stretched on the world cross. We have the Logos in connection with the world cross.

You will now see that it was already in the original Platonic mystic that in the form in which Christianity later developed - after it had passed through a Greek spiritual consciousness - [...] it had to deepen from mere myth to true mysticism. After all, the Logos crucified on the world cross is found in Greek.