8. The Myth of Heracles
GA 87/1901-12-28/p012
·1901-12-28
·
English
HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Auch wenn die Mitschrift noch nicht die später übliche Genauigkeit aufweist» (Even though the transcript does not yet have the accuracy usual later). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 87), which calls the cycle the earliest of which a listener's transcript exists. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
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.
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