8. The Myth of Heracles
GA 87/1901-12-28/p028
·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.
The bull is a symbol in all mysteries that was widespread in the ancient world at that time, a symbol that passed from Persia through Asia Minor, Egypt and then spread from there through Greece. It is a symbol for the fruitful living nature. Therefore, in the Mysteries of Mithras, we see the bull paired with a strange symbol, a symbol of living nature. The tail of the bull runs out into a bunch of ears of wheat. This is definitely the symbolic representation of fertile and living nature. And the Mithras symbolism represents nothing other than this work of Heracles. This appears as a higher work of Heracles: the "Nemeijic lion is the lower, the bull the higher. The bull is the nature from which life sprouts, while the lion is the nature that is blind, dull.
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