The Burning of the Ephesian Temple and the Goetheanum

This whole spiritual atmosphere has disappeared in the course of the later centuries. It is no longer present in our civilisation. An external, God-estranged civilisation has spread abroad over the countries that once upon a time saw such a civilisation as I have just described to you. We stand here to-day bearing within us the memory of many a scene like that I have described, although the memory can only be created in the Spirit in the astral light. And when we look back into the older times, that are so often pictured to us as times of darkness, and then turn our gaze upon our own times, a deep longing arises in our hearts. From out of the spiritual revelations that have been accessible to man since the last third of the nineteenth century, is born a longing to speak to men once more in a spiritual way. But to do so it is not enough to speak with abstract words; to speak spiritually demands the use of manifold signs and symbols; our speech has to be wide and comprehensive. Such a language, my dear friends, such a form of speech as needed to be found for the Spiritual Beings Who have to speak to modern humanity, was given to us in the forms of the Goetheanum that was destroyed by fire a year ago. In very truth, the forms were built and moulded to that end, that what was spoken from the platform in ideas should speak on further in them.