Lecture I

Thus we must look into the spiritual world if we would gain knowledge of what has come to pass in external history. Think of what I said some time ago, namely, that scansion, the development of the art of ancient recitative, of the hexameter, is based on the relation between the rhythms of breathing and blood-circulation in man. Remind yourselves of what I once said in a series of lectures about the development of the hexameter. The study that led to the creation of the hexameter was, for the Greek Initiates, full of concrete realities. As we breathe in, we receive the moving waves of cosmic life into ourselves, and adjust them to our inner being. As we breathe out we impart to the rhythm of the breath something of the vibration of the pulse in the circulating blood. Thus we can say: The external world pulsates into our inbreathing. In our out-breathing our own blood pulsates. And so a Greek Initiate who was schooled in these things was able to observe how in and around the human being, in his ether-body and astral body, cosmic rhythm and the rhythm of the blood were meeting and intermingling and how denizens of the air were moving and dancing in these rhythms.