8. The Myth of Heracles
GA 87/1901-12-28/p037
·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.
When we understand the legend of Heracles, we understand the corresponding teachings of all peoples, of the Indians, Persians and Egyptians. The mysteries of Heracles have existed alongside the mysteries of others. They all represent to us the initiatory process, and the initiatory process is the same throughout the ancient world. I have cited the Mithras myth only to show how the Heracles myth lives throughout antiquity and how the Greek spiritual life in the Dionysus myth represents the higher development of the Heracles myth, representing the higher as opposed to the lower. [This is illustrated by the parallelism of the Dionysus process with that of the others. It is also shown in Angelus Silesius that the Initiate is not something indifferent in the world process, but something significant.
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