The Great Initiates
Édouard Schuré's Les Grands Initiés (1889), a sequence of mystery-portraits — Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus. Steiner translated this into German and worked closely with Schuré.
Source context· Western European stream · Anglo-German cultural age
- Stream
- Western European
- Cultural age
- Anglo-German (5th post-Atlantean cultural age)
- Composed
- c. 1889 CE
- Soul-faculty
- Intellectual Soul — the work addresses the rational mind still oriented toward historical and mythological authority, seeking to persuade the modern educated European of the reality of initiation through literary and biographical argument rather than direct meditative exercise.
What this work carries
Schuré's work surfaces the mystery-wisdom embedded in eight initiatory lineages — Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and Jesus — drawing on pre-Christian esoteric traditions as living spiritual facts rather than historical curiosities. The text transmits the initiatory understanding that great cultural impulses originate from individuals who have undergone genuine inner transformation. It carries forward the Rosicrucian and Theosophical synthesis of Eastern and Western mystery-streams into late-nineteenth-century European spiritual culture.
Language frame
Written in literary French and shaped by the Rose-Croix aesthetic milieu of fin-de-siècle Paris, the work employs a narrative-portrait form combining esotericism with biographical reconstruction. Steiner translated it into German, placing it directly within the Germanic spiritual-scientific stream and using it as a preparatory vehicle for anthroposophical audiences.
Steiner’s engagement
- GA 53, 1905-03-16Steiner affirms the core thesis structurally congruent with Schuré's book: all great religions and cultural impulses of antiquity were first experienced by great initiates in the soul realm, and these initiates then brought their vision to each people in a form suited to that people.
- GA 93a, 1905-10-05Steiner notes that the greatest impulses of world history cannot be read in the astral light because the acts of great initiates were passionless and therefore leave no astral trace — a distinction that provides a clue to the epistemological limits of any purely clairvoyant-historical account such as Schuré's.
- GA 92, 1905-03-28Steiner situates Wotan as a great initiate of the Atlantean period, extending the initiates-framework Schuré applies to named historical figures back into mythological pre-history.
- GA 240, 1924-01-28Steiner references his own book Christianity as Mystical Fact in connection with the great similarities found in the biographies of ancient initiates — a motif central to Schuré's portrait-method — while maintaining that the Mystery of Golgotha is radically different from the old mysteries.
Cross-tradition congruence
- Neoplatonic theurgy (Iamblichus, Proclus)The Neoplatonic doctrine that theurgic initiates act as living channels of divine intelligences into earthly history is structurally parallel to Schuré's thesis that world-historical founders are initiated vehicles of higher worlds.
- Hindu paramparā (lineage transmission)The Indian concept of a paramparā — an unbroken chain of initiatory transmission from teacher to disciple across epochs — offers cross-tradition congruence with Schuré's claim that a continuous thread of mystery-wisdom runs through Rama, Krishna, and the later Western figures.
- Kabbalistic concept of the Lamed-Vav TzadikimThe Kabbalistic notion of thirty-six hidden righteous ones whose hidden spiritual work sustains each generation exhibits structural congruence with Schuré's portrayal of great initiates as the hidden bearers of civilisational impulses.
- 1Rama: The Aryan Cycle — Rama — the Aryan cycle
Schuré opens The Great Initiates with Rama — the Aryan founder-figure who carries the white race from its lost Hyperborean homeland southward into India. Rama as the first of the great initiate-founders of religion; the cycle of the Aryan migration as the matrix of every subsequent religious revelation.
12,426 words - 2Krishna: India and Brahmanic Initiation — Krishna — India and Brahmanic initiation
The Krishna chapter. Krishna as the second great initiate after Rama, the consummator of Brahmanic initiation, the giver of the Bhagavad Gītā. Schuré reads Krishna as the bringer of the doctrine of the immortal soul and of the path of yoga to the Indian world.
17,034 words - 3Hermes: The Mysteries of Egypt — Hermes — the mysteries of Egypt
Hermes Trismegistus as the third initiate. The mysteries of Egypt, the temple-initiation at Memphis, the doctrine of the gods as cosmic principles. Hermes as the architect of the Egyptian theological synthesis that bridges Vedic and Greek revelation.
11,902 words - 4Moses: The Mission of Israel — Moses — the mission of Israel
Moses, fourth of the great initiates. Schuré's reading of Moses as initiate of the Egyptian mysteries who carries forward the cosmic monotheism into the closed national-religious vessel of Israel. The mission of Israel: to preserve and transmit the divine name.
17,765 words - 5Orpheus: The Mysteries of Dionysus — Orpheus — the mysteries of Dionysus
Orpheus as the fifth great initiate — the bringer of the Bacchic-Dionysian mysteries to Greece. The Orphic transformation of the wild Dionysian intoxication into a path of theological-initiatory discipline. The seed of the entire later Hellenic mystery-religious tradition.
13,042 words - 6Pythagoras: The Mysteries of Delphi — Pythagoras — the mysteries of Delphi
Pythagoras, sixth initiate — the philosopher-prophet of Delphi. Schuré's Pythagoras synthesises Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek wisdom into a school combining mathematical science, music theory, ethics, and esoteric doctrine of the soul's transmigration.
35,245 words - 7Plato: The Mysteries of Eleusis — Plato — the mysteries of Eleusis
Plato as the seventh of the eight great initiates. The Eleusinian mysteries as the matrix of Plato's philosophy; the Phaedo, Symposium, and Republic read as Eleusinian doctrine made philosophical. Plato as the consummator of the Greek mystery-tradition.
11,507 words - 8Jesus: The Mission of Christ — Jesus — the mission of Christ
The eighth and consummating initiate: Jesus of Nazareth, in whom all prior initiations culminate. Schuré's Christ as the divine Logos incarnate, completing the cycle of the seven previous initiates and bringing the path of love that the prior cycle could only approach.
29,227 words - 9Notes — Notes
Schuré's footnotes and supplementary notes for the eight chapters — references to his sources (chiefly Iamblichus, Plutarch, the Vedas in French translation, and the late nineteenth-century esoteric literature), and clarifications of theological-historical points raised in the main text.
8,870 words
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