AN APPROACH TO CONTEMPORARY QUESTIONS IN THE LIGHT OF ANTHROPOSOPHY The Golden Blade "I HE Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge Rudolf Steiner I h e F o u n d a t i o n S t o n e a n d 'World History' A. C Harwood Rudolf Steiner and the Dead ... Kalmia Biitleston TheDestinvoftheIdeaofDestiny Fnednch Hiebel Alchemilla and the Alchemists F. H. Julius Movement, Form and Feeling in P l a s t i c A r t E m i l y C r o c k a r i W e e k d a y s a n d W o r l d s A d a m B i i t l e s t o n The Essence and Meaning of ^ Number Bernard Nesjield-Cookson Some Turning-Points in Human History Sigismund von Gleich A Generation Ahead R. G. Seddon ^*JHis Forest Katharine Trevelyan Poems by Sylvia Eckersley and Joy Mansfield A. C. Harwood's Shakespeare's Prophetic Mind, reviewed by Kenneth Walsh; E. L. Grant Watson's The Mystery of Physical Life, reviewed by Olive Whicher. Edited by Arnold Freeman and Charles Waterman 1965 PUBLISHED ANNUALLY PRICE EIGHT AND SIX r The Golden Blade 1965 The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge Rudolf Steiner The Foundation Stone and •World History* A. C. Harwood Rudolf Steiner and the Dead ... Kalmia Biitleston The Destiny OF THE Idea OF Destiny Friedrich Hiebel Alchemblla and the Alchemists F. H. Julius Movement, Form and Peeling in P l a s t i c A r t E m i l y C r o c k a r t 5 4 W e e k d a y s a n d W o r l d s A d a m B i i t l e s t o n 6 0 The Essence and Meaning of N u m b e r ' Bernard Nesfield-Cookson 74 Some Turning-Points in Human History Sigismund von Gleich 89 A G e n e r a t i o n A h e a d R. G. Seddon 95 H i s F o r e s t Katharine Trevelyan 102 Poems by Sylvia Eckersley and Joy Mansfield A C Harwood's Shakespeare's Prophetic Mind, reviewed by Kenneth Walsh; E. L. Grant Watson's The Mystery of Physical Life, reviewed by OUve Whicher. Edited by Arnold Freeman and Charles Waterman Price 8/6 (9/5 post free) from the Rudolf Steiner Bookshop, 35, Park Road, London, N.WA. The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge Rudolf Steiner Two Lectures given at Dornach on July 24-25, 1915* I. A Dying Culture and the Christian Impulse AI/HEN ceople encounter the world-conception of Spiritu^ sciencS. their wish first of aU is to have quesuons answered, riddles solved. That is quite natural and understandable, oiie ran even say, justifiable. But something elw must be added if the spiritual-Uientific movement is really to become the hvmg ttang it must become, in accordance with the general evolution of earth and humanity. Above all, a certain feebng must added a cert^ perception that the more one strives to enter the spmtud wo^^^ Anthroposophy, a way of thought rather than a tte more the riddles increase. The^ riddles ai^ally become more body of dogma, springs from the work and teaching numerous for the human soul than they were before, and in a rar^ "of a Rudolf path of Steiner knowledge, (1861-1925). to gmde theHe spiritualspoke of in it the as respect also more sacred. When we enter into the spiritual-scientific view of the world, great Ufe-problems, the emstenra of wluch we human being to the spiritual in the universe hardly guessed before, first appear as the riddles they are. Now, one of the greatest riddles rannrated wife the evrf^^^ The aim of this Annual is to publish writings which of the earth and mankind is the Chnst-riddle, the nddle of Chnst- bring the outlook of Anthroposophy to bear on ques Jesus. And with regard to this, we ra^nly hope to advance slowly tions and activities relevant to the present time. towards its real depth and sanctity. That is to say, we can expect in our future incarnations gradually to peiwive more and more The title derives from a reference by Rudolf Steiner clearly in what a lofty sense, in what an extraordinary sense, this to an old Persian legend. ** Djemjdid was a king Christ-riddle is a riddle. We must not only hiye that much regaring who led his people from the north towards Iran, and this Christ-riddle will he clarified; we must hope also that much of who received from the God, whom he called Ahura what we have hitherto found full of riddles conraming the entry of Mazdao, a golden dagger, by means of which he was the Christ-Being into humanity's evolution will become still more to fulfil his mission on earth. ... It represents a difficult For much else wffl emerge, hnnging new riddles con force given to man whereby he can act upon and cerning the Mystery of Golgotha; or, if you prefer, new aspects of transform external nature ". this great riddle. There is no question here of ever claiming to do more than throw some light on this great riddle from one side or another. ♦ From a shorthand report, unrevised by the lecturer. Published in this newly-revised translation by permission of the Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwal- tung, Domach, Switzerland. And I beg you to be entirely clear that only single rays of light can Evangelists, out of a certain clairvoyance, give those records of ever be thrown from the resources of human contemplation upon the Mystery of Golgotha which we find in the Gospels; an attempt this greatest riddle of man's earthly existence, nor do these rays was also made to grasp the Mystery by means of the knowledge aUempt to exhaust the problem, but only to illumine it from various which men already possessed. We know that since the Mystery directions. And so to what has already been said we will add of Golgotha, not only have its tidings been given out, but there has something that may bring us nearer to one aspect of the Mvsterv also arisen a New Testament theology in its various branches. This of Golgotha. ' New Testament theology, as is only natural, has made use of already You remember the pronouncement of the Jahve-God, radiating existing ideas in asking itself: What has actually come about with from the far distance, which stands at the beginning of the Bible, the Mystery of Golgotha, what has been accomplished through it? after the Fall had come about. It was then declared that since men We have often considered how, in particular, Greek philosophy had eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they must —for instance, the Greek philosophy developed in the teachings be bamshed from their present abode, so that they might not eat of Plato and Aristotle—endeavoured to grasp what had taken place also of the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life was to be protected, as in the Mystery of Golgotha, just as these philosophers exerted It were, from being partaken of by men who had already tasted of themselves to understand Nature around them. And so we ^n say the Tree of Knowledge. that on the one hand the Mystery of Golgotha entered as objective Now behind this primordial duality of the eating of the Tree fact, and on the other hand, confronting it, are the dirfCTent world- of Knowledge of Good and Evil on the one hand, and the eating of conceptions which had been developed since antiqmty, which reach a the Tree of Life on the other, there lies concealed something which certain perfection at the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha cuts deep into life. Today we will turn our attention to one of the took place, and then go on evolving. many applications of this pronouncement. We will bring to mind Whence were these concepts derived? We know indwd that what we have long known; that the Mystery of Golgotha, in so far all these concepts, including those which ^ved in Greek philoso^y ^ It was accomplished within the evolution of earthly history and approached the Mystery of Golgotha from the earthly side feU in the fourth post-Atlantean or Graeco-Latin epoch. are derived from a primeval knowledge, from a knowledge which could not have been at man's disposal if an onginal revelation had clusionI Mystery of the first of third Golgotha of the Graeco-Latin lies nearepoch andthe that con- two- not taken place. For it is not only a materialistic idea, but an tlurds of this epoch follow, having as their task the first incorpora entirely nonsensical one, to suppose that the onginal form of the tion of the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha into human evolution attenuated philosophy which existed at the time of the Mystery of must ^anguish two things in regard to the Mystery Golgotha could have come from human beings alone. It sprang of Golgotha. The first is what took place as purely objecave fact* from a primeval revelation, given at a time when men still had the remains of ancient clairvoyance. It was ^ven for the most part m "rnri,''Ctastus, intothe the entrysphere of ofearthly the evolution. Cosmic It would heBeing hypo; an imaginative, pictorial form, and this had bwn attenuate into "'g'" say.