8. The Myth of Heracles

GA 87/1901-12-28/p036 ·1901-12-28 · English High

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.

[Twelfth:] Before Heracles accomplishes the twelfth labor, he is initiated into the mysteries. That is what we are told. We don't need to interpret it. Before he does his twelfth labor, he is initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. And what does he accomplish here? He descends into the underworld, frees Theseus and achieves what is described by the words: he can bring Cerberus up from the underworld. The secret of the underworld becomes clear to him. Heracles acquires the Heraclitean wisdom of "overcoming life with death". He learns to understand Heraclitus' formula, in which he says: "The worship of Dionysus is at the same time the worship of Hades. In it, the highest deity of life flows together with the god of the underworld, Hades. The fruit is therefore the attainment of the underworld, something that we already encounter in Odysseus. It is the symbolic representation of the initiation process that we find in the Heracles legend. It only remains so incomprehensible that we don't really know what to do with it because it didn't really grow out of Greek philosophy, but out of mystery.

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Cite: GA 87/1901-12-28/p036 · edition English