09/20/2024
What we bury deep - In Earth to sleep - Wrap of Earth must be. What we love, abides above - all through eternity ~Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the great Rosicrucian Initiate, designed & built a modern Temple for the New Mysteries, which at first was lovingly referred to as ‘The Johannes Bau’, & has come to be known as ‘The Goetheanum’. This glorious Mystery Center, hand-carved by folk from every land, became a burnt offering to the gods on NYE 101 years ago. And now, standing in Michaelic strength on that same Dornach hill – site of an ancient Parzival Hermitage in Switzerland - we have the concrete version Steiner designed before he died.
The first Temple was brought into manifestation on the physical plane with a Ritual laying of the Foundation Stone - a copper double dodecahedron - on This Day - 111 years ago - 20 September 1913.
"Because Mercury was in Libra as the evening star."
on 20 September 1913 – this day was choosen for the laying of the Foundation Stone of the 1st Goetheanum. Since only 3 days advance notice could be given, only about 40 folks were present to brave the equinoctial storm that broke on them just as the ceremony was beginning, there in Dornach, at sunset on the Autumnal Equinox.
Torrents of rain fell, & a gale howled around them as Rudolf Steiner’s powerful voice sounded out above the blare of the elements. A few members took up some vine stakes that had been piled nearby & lit them, providing the only illumination for the Ritual.
Rudolf Steiner called upon the hierarchies to help & protect the undertaking. Then he spoke of the increasing power & malignity of “dark Ahriman clouding vision, who means to spread the darkness of chaos over fully awakened spiritual sight,” & how the human soul, symbolized in the Foundation Stone, must find the strength, in spite of the fear of the spirit induced in humankind by Ahriman, to undertake its spiritual task.
In the ceremony, Rudolf Steiner intoned, for the first time, the ancient prayer that had once echoed in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth when he witnessed the celebration of an ancient Mystery rite that had fallen into decadence. In that overwhelming moment the young man from Nazareth experienced the ‘Fall of Man’ & had to bear within himself all the sorrow that resulted for humanity. This ‘Macrocosmic Lord’s Prayer’ which Steiner later made public in his lectures on the ‘Fifth Gospel’, included as its essential element the recognition of the human being’s falling away from the Divine at the beginning of human evolution. The Lord’s Prayer, as given to humankind by the Christ, is the metamorphosis of this ancient prayer.
To emphasize the significance this macrocosmic Prayer had for Rudolf Steiner, a year later on 19 September 1914, in the Schreinerei, he says: “It was, my dear friends, one of the most sublime moments of my experience in the course of our Movement when for the first time I was allowed to utter the words of the Macrocosmic Lord’s Prayer.”
By linking the ‘Fifth Gospel’ with the laying of the Foundation Stone of the Goetheanum building, Rudolf Steiner accomplished a deed that stands like a Mystery in the history of our Movement.
Here is the full transcript of Rudolf Steiner’s words that faithful night 107 years ago today:
“Thrice the human soul rises up to the three secrets of existence: First they are symbols; then they are tokens when the soul reads the eternal world word; but the profoundest depths of the world secrets are vividly bound to the soul when this soul is able to create its own sheath out of the kingdom of the hierarchies — So be sheathed!
First symbol, then token, now sheathed so that you may become a firm Corner Stone of our striving, for our seeking inasmuch as we have seen it to be right in the evolution of humankind. Let us make of the Stone that is a token of our soul, one that is sheathed.”
To the copper stone was added the document that contained the solemn vow of humankind toward the spiritual world; which closed with the words: “Laid by the Johannes Building Association…on the twentieth day of September 1880, after the Mystery of Golgotha, that is, 1913 after the birth of Christ, when Mercury as evening star stood in Libra, the Balance.”
At this point Architect Schmid-Curtius & Engineer Englert (who later betrayed Steiner, but that’s another story) covered the Stone, on which Marie von Sivers has laid a bunch of roses — 12 red, & 1 white on the earth.
Then Rudolf Steiner & the others cross their arms & crosswise take each others hands round the Foundation Stone: Dr. Steiner, Dr. Peipers, Dr. Grosheintz, Marie von Sivers, Architect Schmid & Engineer Englert. Then all except Dr. Steiner depart from the pit. — which has nine steps.
“My dear Sisters & Brothers, Let us today, on this festival evening, understand one another truly. Let us understand that this deed really signifies for our souls a vow. Our endeavours have brought it about that here, at this place, whence we look far out in the four elemental directions of the compass rose, we are permitted to erect this emblem of spiritual life for the new age. Let us understand that on this day, feeling our souls united with that which we have laid symbolically into the earth, we faithfully dedicate ourselves to this spiritual stream in the evolution of humankind which we have recognized as serving the highest good.
Let us try, my dear Sisters and Brothers, to make this vow in our souls: that in this moment we will look away from all the minutiae of life, from all that binds us — must of necessity bind us – as human beings to the daily round. Let us try in this moment to awaken in ourselves the thought of all that links the human soul with the striving of the Turning Point of Time. Let us try to think for a moment that, as we do what we have vowed to do this evening, we must bear within us the consciousness of looking into far, far cycles of time, in order to become aware of how the mission, of which this Building is to be the emblem, will take its place in the great mission of humankind upon our planet earth. Not in pride and vainglory – in humility, devotion and readiness for sacrifice, let — us try to lift our souls to the great plans, the great purposes of the human beings’ activity on earth.
Let us try to put ourselves into the position in which we really ought to be, and must be, if we understand this moment aright. Let us try to think how there once entered into our earth-evolution the great announcement, the great communication, the primeval, eternal Gospel of Divine-Spiritual Life, how it passed over the earth at a time when the divine spirits themselves were still the great teachers of humankind. Let us try, my dear Sisters and Brothers, to transfer ourselves back into those sacred ages of earth existence, of which a last yearning, a very last memory still dawns on us, when, maybe in ancient Greece, with the last echoes of the mystery-wisdom, and simultaneously with the first tones of philosophy, we listen to their great Plato telling of the eternal forms and the eternal substance of the world. And let us try to grasp what since those times has spread over our earth evolution as luciferic and ahrimanic influences.
Let us try to make clear to ourselves how the connection with the Divine Cosmic existence, with the willing, with the feeling, and with the Divine-Spiritual Wisdom, has faded from the human soul. Let us try in this moment to feel deep, deep in our own souls what in the countries of the East, the North, the West, the South, those human souls whom we acknowledge as the noblest, are feeling today, though they get no further than, let us say, a vague, inadequate longing and hoping for the spirit. Look around you, my dear Sisters and Brothers, and see how this undefined longing, this vague hoping for the spirit prevails throughout humankind today. Feel, and harken, here by the Foundation Stone of our emblem, how in the vague yearning and hoping of humankind for the spirit, there is audible cry for the answer, for that answer which can be given where Spiritual Science can be present, with its Gospel of the Knowledge of the Spirit.
Try to engrave into your souls the greatness of the moment through which we are passing this evening. If we can hear the longing call of humankind for the spirit, and resolve to erect the true Building from out of which the tidings of the spirit shall ever more and more be proclaimed – if we feel this in the life of this our world, then we understand one another truly this evening. Then we know – not in pride and nowise overvaluing our own efforts, but in humility, in devotion and readiness for sacrifice – that in our indefatigable endeavours we must be the continuers of that spiritual work which has been extinguished in the West, in the course of advancing human evolution. Inevitably, through the adverse influence of the ahrimanic forces, that evolution ended by bringing humankind to the point where we stand today, the point where souls could only wither and waste away, should that cry of longing for the spirit go unheard.
My dear Sisters and Brothers, let us feel this anxiety! It must be so if – aglow with the fire of love – we are to fight on, in that great spiritual conflict it was granted us to inherit, in that great spiritual conflict which was when they repelled the Ahrimanic onslaught of the Moors. (Steiner is referring to the fact that the Dorncah hill was the location of the decisive 1499 Battle of Dornach, which ended the Swabian War and effectively ensured the independence of the Old Swiss Confederacy from the Holy Roman Empire.)
Led by karma, we stand at this moment at a place through which important streams of spiritual life have flowed; (a referrence to the Parzival Hermitage) let us feel within ourselves this evening the full gravity of the situation.
Humankind in days gone by had reached the culminating point in its striving for personality. When in the fullness of this earthly personality, the ancient heritage, received from the divine leaders of the very beginning of earth-evolution, had exhausted itself, then in the East the Cosmic Word appeared: In the Beginning was the Word, And the Word was with God, And a God was the Word. And the Word was made manifest to the souls of men and spoke to the souls of men: Fill earth-evolution with the purpose and meaning of the earth! Now the Word Itself has passed over into the earth aura, has been received into the spiritual aura of the earth. Fourfold has been the proclamation of the Cosmic Word through the centuries numbering now well-nigh two thousand years. Thus has the light of cosmic worlds shone into earth-evolution. Deeper and ever deeper Ahriman sank, and had perforce to sink.
Let us feel ourselves surrounded by the souls of men in whom the cry of yearning for the spirit resounds. But let us feel, my dear Sisters and Brothers, how these human souls all round us might be left crying out in vain, since Ahriman, dark Ahriman, is spreading chaos over all spiritual knowledge of the worlds of the higher hierarchies for which they strive. Feel that in our time the possibility has indeed arisen of adding to the spirit-word, four times proclaimed, that other proclamation which I can now present, but in a symbol only. From the East it came – the light and the Word of the proclamation.
From out of the east it passed over to the West, four times proclaimed in the four Gospels; awaiting the advent from the West of the mirror that will add knowledge to what is still only proclamation in the four times uttered Cosmic Word.
It pierces deeply into our hearts and souls when we listen to that Sermon on the Mount, which was uttered in the hour when the time for the ripening of human personality was fulfilled, when the ancient light of the spirit had vanished and the new spirit-light appeared. The new spirit-light has appeared! But after it appeared, it travelled through the centuries of human evolution from East to West, waiting for understanding of the words which once in the Sermon on the Mount had sounded their way into human hearts. Deep-toned ringing out of the depths of our cosmic evolution, that immemorial, undying Prayer, uttered as proclamation of the Cosmic Word when the Mystery of Golgotha was enacted. Deep-toned rang out the undying Prayer which from the innermost core of the human heart was to make known to the microcosm, in depths of soul, the secret of existence. That secret was to be heard in the Lord’s Prayer, as we know it, and as it reverberated from East towards West. Yet it waited patiently, this cosmic word which sank then into the microcosm – waited in order that one day it might resound in harmony with the ‘Fifth Gospel’; for the souls of men had to mature before they could understand that which as the most ancient of all, because it is the Macrocosmic Gospel, is now to reverberate from the West like an echo to the Gospel of the East.
If we bring understanding to this present moment, then understanding will also dawn in us that to the Four Gospels a Fifth Gospel can be added. So, on this present evening, may there ring forth in addition to the secrets of the Microcosm, the words which express the secrets of the Macrocosm. As a first revelation of the Fifth Gospel there shall even now sound forth the macrocosmic counter-image of the microcosmic Prayer that was once proclaimed from East to West. So let sound forth towards it as a sign of understanding the macrocosmic World-Prayer of the Fifth primeval Gospel which is connected with the Moon and Jupiter, even as the four Gospels are connected with the earth:
AUM, Amen! The Evils hold sway, Witness of Egoity becoming free, Selfhood-Guilt through others incurred, Experienced in the Daily Bread, Wherein the Will of the Heavens does not rule. In that Man severed himself from Your Kingdom, And forgot Your Names, Ye Fathers in the Heavens.
The ‘Our Father’ had been given to humankind as Prayer. There now resounds in answer to the microcosmic Paternoster, which was proclaimed from the East to the West, the primeval macrocosmic Prayer. So does it echoing sound, when, rightly understood by human souls, the Prayer rings out into cosmic spaces and is given back with the words imprinted from out of the macrocosm.
Let us take it with us, the macrocosmic Lord’s Prayer, feeling that with it we begin to acquire understanding, or the Gospel of Knowledge: the ‘Fifth Gospel’.
From this grave moment let us take home earnestly and worthily in our souls: our Will.
Let us take home the certainty that all wisdom for which the human soul is seeking – if the seeking be true – is a reflex of Cosmic Wisdom; and that it makes fruitful from out of the love that is sovereign in the evolution of humankind all of human love that is rooted in the soul’s own selfless love.
Throughout all earthly ages, and into all human souls, there works, out of strong human will, that has filled itself with the meaning of existence and the meaning of the earth, a further strengthening – a strengthening through the cosmic power for which the human being craves today, casting uncertain glances towards a spirit for which they hope – but which they refuse to know, because Ahriman has buried an unconscious fear in the human soul, wherever the spirit is spoken of today. Let us feel this, my Sisters and Brothers, at this moment. Feel this, and you will be able to arm yourselves for your spiritual task and as revealers of the spirit-light, will prove yourselves strong in thought, even in the hour when dark Ahriman’s clouding wisdom, means to spread the darkness of chaos over fully-awakened spiritual sight.
My Sisters and Brothers, fill your souls with the longing for real knowledge of the spirit, for true human love, for strength of will. And try to quicken in yourselves that spirit which has trust in the utterance of the Cosmic Word as it echoes to us out of cosmic distances and out of the wide expanse of space, sounding into our souls. This is what one who has grasped the meaning of existence must truly feel in this evening hour: Human souls have reached the limit of their striving. Feel in humility, not in pride, in devotion and willingness for sacrifice, not in arrogant presumption, what is to come of the emblem for which we have laid the Foundation Stone today.
Feel this portent of the knowledge which should come to us because it is given to us to know: In our time, the veil enshrouding the spiritual beings in the expanses of space must be pierced through, as the spiritual beings come to speak to us of the meaning of existence. Everywhere, everywhere in the surrounding world the human soul must needs receive the meaning of existence. Hear how, in whatever cultural centres there is talk of. or knowledge of the spirit, of religion, of science, of art - the energies of souls are growing more and more barren. Feel how you must learn to quicken these souls, these energies, out of Imaginations, Inspirations, Intuitions of the spirit. Feel what those will find who hears aright the ring of creative spirituality. Those who in addition to the old Lord’s Prayer, learn to understand the meaning of the Prayer from the ‘Fifth Gospel’, they will recognize the root of that meaning out of the Turning Point of our Time.
If we learn to understand the meaning of these words, we shall seek to receive into ourselves the seeds that must blossom now, if earth evolution is not to wither, if it is still to bear fruit and thrive, so that through human will, the earth can reach the goal set her from the very beginning.
Feel, then, this evening, that the Knowledge and the meaning of the new Wisdom, of the new Love, and of the great new Strength, must come alive in the souls of men. The souls who will be working amid the blossoming and the fruits of future ages of earth-evolution, will have to understand that which we today mean to implant in our souls for the first time: the macrocosmic voice of the ageless, eternal Prayer, sounding towards us.
AUM, Amen! The Evils hold sway, Witness of Egoity becoming free, Selfhood-Guilt through others incurred, Experienced in the Daily Bread, Wherein the Will of the Heavens does not rule, In that Man severed himself from Your Kingdom, Ye Fathers in the Heavens.
Thus we will go our separate ways – taking with us in our souls the consciousness of the meaning of the earnestness and the dignity of the solemn act we have performed. The consciousness which remains of this evening shall kindle in us the striving for knowledge of a new revelation given to humankind, for which the human soul thirsts, from which it will drink. But only then when, without fear, it wins faith and confidence in what the Science of the Spirit can make known, the Science that is to unite once more those three that, for a time, perforce took their several roads through the evolution of mankind: Religion, Art and Science.
Let us take this with us, my Sisters and Brothers, as a memory of this hour, that we have celebrated together, and as something we would wish never to forget.”
With a final invocation of the hierarchies, which included this time the elementals, that were loudly calling to be heard in the storm, the Foundation Stone-the copper (sacred to Venus) double dodecahedron, “symbol in its twofold twelvefoldness of the striving human soul, was sunk as microcosm into the macrocosm” let down “into the condensed kingdom of the elements.”
The Foundation Stone was covered over & cemented in.
Before that, Rudolf Steiner invoked the planet Mercury, healer & messenger of the gods. Remember, it was the Autumnal Equinox, & as you can read in Henrick’s astro chart above, there were many other configurations, so - why was Mercury in particular invoked?
Perhaps because, as Spiritual Science tells us, during the ‘Old Moon’ phase of Earth evolution the seed was planted into the human astral body for the eventual blossoming of our higher Ego - our individualized “I”.
But, also on ‘Old Moon’ we have the counterimage of the luciferic effect that would steal that possibility away. And so, I see Rudolf Steiner invoking Mercury at the laying of the Foundation Stone, as a kind of antidote to this peril, a way of laying into the foundation our highest potential to fully manifest our “I” forces.
Ten years later, after the Burning of the 1st Goetheanum; at the Christmas Foundation meeting of 1923/24, Dr. Steiner presented a ‘Spiritual Foundation Stone of the human being,’ – the ‘Dodecahedron of Love’ as he called it, to the members of the newly-formed General Anthroposophical Society, called to initiate a new phase in the open revelation of the Mysteries, which MA is exemplifying.
The Foundation Stone Meditation is a mantric revelation in which sound, form & rhythm integrate with the esoteric meaning found in its 5 layers, an evocative multiplicity, to awaken the Human Soul.
The Foundation Stone that was laid into the earth on this day 111 years ago; is still there under the second Goetheanum. May it also live within our hearts striving to unveil the truths which will set us free.
~hag
Resources: “Rudolf Steiner: Herald of a New Epoch” by Stewart Easton, “The Christmas Foundation; Beginning of a new Cosmic Age” by Rudolf Grosse
