{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 191/1919-10-12/p010","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"If we go back to the ancient Egyptian, the ancient Chaldean civilisation,—well there, we have as ruling powers quite a different type from what became the ruling powers later on. People nowadays take little account of the great upheavals that have come about in the course of historic growth. The powers that were peculiarly the ruling ones in that early age—the age that ended about the middle of the 8th century before Christ—were the sort of people who, in the traditional language of Spiritual Science, one would call “Initiates.” The Egyptian Pharaohs were, down to a certain date, invariably persons who were initiated. They were initiated into the secrets of cosmology, and regarded what they had to do on earth in the light of this cosmology When one says a thing of this sort to the modern man, he finds a certain difficulty in understanding it, for the simple reason that the modern man, from his own special mode of consciousness, thinks to himself: “It is all very well, but, after all, those Pharaohs, and the Chaldean initiates, too,—or so-called initiates—did a great many things that were highly reprehensible.” Well, one might, of course, argue that modern rulers, who are not initiates, also do a great many things that are hardly in accordance with the highest moral standards,—but *that*, here, would be obviously away from the point. One must, however, point out that in the world that lies beyond the senses the gods are not all good ones, but that there are also gods whose action is in every way contrary to men's interests, as commonly understood. So, one is by no means entitled to believe that anyone who is a real initiate must necessarily act from virtuous motives. And in speaking, as I am doing now, of the Pharaohs as Initiates, all that it must be understood to mean is that they acted on impulses inspired from the spiritual world. That these impulse's might often be very bad ones will be contested by nobody who has become in our sense acquainted with all the many divine, spiritual powers that lie behind the world of sense,—powers of a supersensible nature. But the true initiate,—he who could receive into his will, not merely receive into his consciousness, but into his will, what divine spiritual powers bestowed upon him,—he was in truth the ruler, down to the middle of the 8th century before Christ. Then began the age when, if one actually divests it of all the various illusions that pervade popular history,—when one may say that the real ruler was the Priest. The temporal ruler,—even when he was a Charlemagne—was always more or less dependent on the priesthood. Priest-rule was, to a much greater extent than is commonly supposed, even in the middle-ages of European civilisation, the really determining element. It entered into everything, it made itself felt everywhere, and was for the social structure also the element which, above all others, was the determining one. And the people who possessed land and estates held them to a very large extent of the Priesthood. Such regular soldiers as there were in old days, before the middle of the 8th century B.C., were troops in the service of the Initiates. Such regular soldiers as there were in the 4th post-Atlantean age, in the Graeco-Latin age down to the middle of the 15th century, were, taken as a whole, mercenaries of the priest-lords. And all enterprises, too, such as the Crusades, were, as a whole essentially military expeditions undertaken, if I may so express it, on behalf of the ruling priesthood. In one way and another, everything that was done had some connection with the rule of the priesthood.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"III. Fundamental Impulses in History","site_heading":null,"date":"1919-10-12","location":null,"word_count":616,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/191/1919-10-12/p010","alignment_confidence":"medium","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"LA1963","book_title":"Cosmogony, Freedom, Altruism","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA191/English/LA1963/19191012p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/191/1919-10-12/p010"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/191/1919-10-12/p010","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1919-10-12","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 191/1919-10-12/p009","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/191/1919-10-12/p009"}],"bead_confidence":"medium","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":557,"en_words":616,"ratio":1.11,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 191/1919-10-12/p009","passage_number":9,"text":"Wenn wir zurückgehen in die altägyptische, altchaldäische Kultur, da haben wir als die eigentlich herrschenden Mächte etwas ganz anderes, als was später die herrschenden Mächte waren. Die Menschen geben sich heute nur sehr wenig Rechenschaft über die großen Umwälzungen, die im Laufe des geschichtlichen Werdens sich zugetragen haben. Die eigentlich herrschenden Mächte dieser alten Zeit, die ungefähr in der Mitte des 8. vorchristlichen Jahrhunderts geendet hat, das waren Menschen, die man, im alten Stil der Geisteswissenschaft gesprochen, Initiierte, Eingeweihte nennen konnte. Die ägyptischen Pharaonen waren ja bis zu einem gewissen Zeitpunkte durchaus initiierte Menschen. Sie waren eingeweiht in die Geheimnisse der Kosmologie und betrachteten dasjenige, was sie auf Erden zu tun hatten, im Sinne der Kosmologie. Für den heutigen Menschen ergeben sich, wenn man so etwas ausspricht, schon gewisse Schwierigkeiten des Verständnisses, aus dem einfachen Grunde, weil der heutige Mensch aus seinem Bewußtsein heraus sich sagt: Ja, aber die Pharaonen und schließlich auch die chaldäischen sogenannten Eingeweihten haben doch manches getan, was höchst anfechtbar ist! - Nun könnte man ja allerdings einwenden, daß auch moderne, uneingeweihte Herrscher manches tun, was nicht gerade den höchsten moralischen Begriffen entsprechend ist, aber das wäre natürlich hier nur ein ungeeigneter Einwand. Man muß aber darauf hinweisen, daß es jenseits der sinnlichen Welt durchaus nicht bloß gute Götter gibt, sondern daß es auch Götter gibt, welche den Interessen der Menschen, wie man sie so gewöhnlich ansieht, durchaus zuwider handeln. So daß man durchaus nicht glauben darf, daß derjenige, der ein wirklicher Eingeweihter ist, nur aus guten Motiven heraus zu handeln braucht. Wenn man in dem Sinne, wie ich es jetzt tue, darüber spricht, daß die Pharaonen Eingeweihte sind, so muß man sich eben nur klar sein darüber, daß sie aus geistig-spirituellen Impulsen heraus handelten. In ihrem Willen lebten geistig-spirituelle Impulse. Daß das manchmal recht schlechte sein konnten, das wird derjenige nicht bestreiten, der in unserem Sinne kennengelernt hat dasjenige, was da alles an göttlich-geistigen Mächten, Mächten übersinnlicher Natur hinter der sinnlichen Welt lag. Aber der eigentliche Eingeweihte, der in seinen Willen, nicht bloß in sein Bewußtsein, aufnehmen konnte dasjenige, was göttlich-geistige Mächte gaben, der war der eigentlich Herrschende bis in die Mitte des 8. vorchristlichen Jahrhunderts. Dann begann die Zeit, von der man sagen kann, wenn man sie entkleidet all der verschiedenen Illusionen, die unsere landläufige Geschichte durchtränken, daß der eigentlich Herrschende der Priester war. Die weltlichen Herrscher waren mehr oder weniger, selbst wenn sie Karl der Große waren, abhängig von der Priesterschaft. Viel mehr als man glaubt, war auch noch im Mittelalter der europäischen Zivilisation die Priesterherrschaft das eigentlich Maßgebende. Sie steckte überall drinnen, sie machte sich in allem geltend, und sie war vor allen Dingen dasjenige Element, das auch maßgebend war für die soziale Struktur. Und die Menschen, die Grund und Boden besaßen, hatten sie eigentlich in hohem Maße überantwortet erhalten von der Priesterschaft. Was Soldatentum in alten Zeiten vor der Mitte des 8. vorchristlichen Jahrhunderts war, war Soldatentum im Dienste der Eingeweihten. Was Soldatentum wurde in dem 4. nachatlantischen Zeitraum, in dem griechisch-lateinischen Zeitraum, von der Mitte des 8. vorchristlichen bis in die Mitte des 15. nachchristlichen Jahrhunderts, das war Söldner der Priesterherrschaft. Und im Grunde genommen waren auch solche Unternehmungen wie die Kreuzzüge im wesentlichen militärische Unternehmungen im Auftrage, wenn ich so sprechen darf, der Priesterherrschaft. In irgendeiner Weise hing das, was getan wurde, mit der Priesterherrschaft zusammen.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":557,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/191/1919-10-12/p009"}],"english":["GA 191/1919-10-12/p010"],"method":"length","confidence":"medium","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":557,"en_words":616,"ratio":1.11,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.17,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":8353,"original_word_count":7159,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"LA1963","book_title":"Cosmogony, Freedom, Altruism","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA191/English/LA1963/19191012p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing.","warning":"No translator is recorded for this edition. An unattributed translation cannot be weighed as a witness: you cannot tell which hand made the choices in it. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"entity_parity":{"status":"discrepancy","checked_against":["GA 191/1919-10-12/p009"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":["Christ"],"bead_confidence":"medium","bead_length_ratio":1.11,"likely_cause":"unresolved","note":"NAME MISMATCH between this English passage and its German counterpart. A name the German carries is absent here (or a name appears here that the German does not carry). 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