עברית When we celebrate the centenary of Rudolf Steiner’s death in Easter 2025, we must feel that the renewed foundation stone of the Michaelic movement that we laid in Christmas has become so strong in our hearts and limbs, that in the coming years and decades it will carry the bridge and temple of the earthly-human Sun, and expand throughout the whole century until its end.
From Christmas 2023 to Michaelmas 2024 and Easter 2025
Extracts from a Lecture in the Global School of Spiritual Science
February 10, 2024
The laying of the renewed foundation stone in Christmas 2023 is for me now something that has become an external event. I can observe it, I can recall it, I can become aware of it, I can see it as I see any external event. So it is really helpful to hear what all of you have said about it. I say to myself: ‘Oh, this seems familiar to me. I might have been there also in this time!’ And this is a cause of great joy and gratitude. It stands there before me, it is like a picture, and the more I hear from others their responses to what they experienced, the more this picture becomes alive and real and I can also recall what happened. This may sound peculiar, but it is a fact. When you live with a spiritual impulse for a long time, say, some 30 years, and then bring it down to earth in such a cultic event and formative spiritual process, it goes through a huge metamorphosis. And you also go through it. And it takes time to digest and assimilate what happened to the spiritual impulse in this process. It truly ‘came home to me’ only when I returned to Israel and looked back from Israel to Germany. I stood there, contemplating the whole process of preparing it in the last year, years and decades, and in looking from East to West, from Israel to Germany, it dawned on me: Es ist Vollbracht! Remarkably, it was really experienced like this: What was fired spiritually in the East and conceived in the spirit, in the middle of the earth, received its earthly formation in the West, middle Europe, and now it appears as complete imagination, consolidated in time and space. This is the wonder and mystery of the incarnation of a spiritual being. But on the other hand, precisely because this earthly formation was so successful, a new challenge arises, because it has also taken a solid conceptual form. Now I feel that I must liberate and return it to its fluid spiritual stream, make it available to creative future work.
This must take place through our community building work, in our meetings with each other, when we actualize the renewed foundation stone and make it the foundation stone of the Michaelic movement in the 21st century. Then this impulse will have taken a new formation, naturally, because after it went through physical incarnation, and its etheric body has been transformed, it will be resurrected in our shared spiritual work. In bringing it to thinking and speaking, concepts and words, it has gained etheric consistency that it didn’t have before, which must be made fluid again and integrated in the free flow of its spiritual stream. It has gone through physical embodiment, and now it wishes to open up to receive new etheric forces and continue to nourish the coming stages of our spiritual work. And this can only take place if the members of the global school will realize the renewed foundation stone in their human relationships.
What I want to say to begin with, is to express my gratitude to all of you that you made this event possible. Your loyalty, dedication and commitment, for so many years, brought it about. I cannot stop looking around in the virtual zoom space and I the 70 mortal faces gathered here. And I am totally amazed! Are you aware of the fact that you are mortal? Or you take it for granted and believe that you are initiates, accustomed to lay such foundation stones every day? But as I look around, I still see the most ordinary mortals and among them also myself. I look at myself and joyfully affirm: Oh my god, what a wretched, sinful, weak mortal I am! And yet, I always comfort myself, that after all Michael and the teachers of humanity decided to give anthroposophy to mortals like me, expecting them- and here the pickle comes up!- to do immortal things. This is an awfully challenging contradiction, this contrast, about which we spoke many times. It glares back at us squarely to our faces, and we must admit that in Christmas, those mortals have done something truly immortal, and the gods are dancing blissfully all around, singing, what resounded in the laying of the renewed foundation stone: Sterbliche Menschen haben es gehört! Mortals comprehend it! Mortals do it! Because the time has come! I hope we shall all experience this more and more and draw the required life forces for our coming activity from this source of infinite new life.
When we shall gather in Michaelmas 2024 to celebrate the centenary of the last address, we must be able to respond and speak out loud and clear, exactly hundred years after the moment in which Rudolf Steiner was forced to stop speaking. In Michaelmas 1924, shortest nine months after the Christmas foundation conference, Michael had to concede human defeat: Menschen haben es nicht gehört! Menschen haben es nicht aufgenommen! Menschen haben es nicht getan! Rudolf Steiner had no one to whom he could speak any more.
Why couldn’t he speak any more? Because after the Christmas foundation conference it was no longer Michael’s and his voice through which he had to speak, it was to be our voice, because the time arrived when mortals had to speak. People did not respond, remained dead silent- only the conflicts and animosities between them never stopped, as Rudolf Steiner said- so he was forced to stop talking, which means: Michael begun to pull back his school from the earth. Rudolf Steiner expected and waited that people would respond strongly, and courageously walk the new Michaelic talk. They didn’t do it. He was left alone. He gave his last address in Michaelmas as loving, all accepting, farewell, and had to see how his beloved Germany and humanity hurried into the abyss and the impending apocalyptic doom.
We should use the nine months from Christmas to Michaelmas to develop our active response-ability and answer with such energy, out of the life stream of the renewed foundation stone that we laid in our etheric hearts in Christmas 2023, to speak up with all the forces of our souls, to reverse what happened hundred years ago. Rudolf Steiner stopped talking because mortals did not respond. We have to say the human word loud and clear. The human word must resound on earth so strongly that the spiritual worlds will find the lost word of Anthroposophia resounding resurrected from the grave of civilization, that the new Michaelic word will speak upward through human beings, that those mortals who filled their hearts with the new revelation of Christ and resurrected the human-being Anthroposophia, speak the new word of Michael, and as it is said in the renewed foundation stone: ‘Let all the spirit beings hear it’. Then Rudolf Steiner will be able say: ‘Hundred years ago I said my last words on earth, now this smallest group of mortals gathered in Germany actively and creatively respond; they speak the so long expected new human word, they speak it finally out.’ If humans shall truly speak, the gods will hear it. Hundred years ago the gods spoke, human beings remained silent, did not respond. This must be reversed now.
And then the gods will be able to say: ‘In Easter 2025, when we commemorate the centenary of Rudolf Steiner’s death on March 30, 1925, when he left the earth and took Anthroposophia with him, some mortals will have finally allowed Anthroposophia to live in their etheric hearts, linked together in true brotherhood, on the earth’! In Easter 1925 Michael’s impulse retreated and Anthroposophia left the earth. In Easter 2025 she must be able to come back. We must celebrate the opposite of what happened in Easter 1925. Therefore, the short time from Christmas 2023 through Michaelmas 2024 to Easter 2025 is an exceptionally important time, we must not fall asleep, but fire the enthusiastic awakening experienced in Christmas to such an extent that we will be eager to wake up more and more. The joy of awakening must outshine the pleasant indulgences of the never ending ominous sleep of humanity!
We have some 14 months until Easter 2025 to assimilate this impulse and individualize it. To speak it out so powerfully that the gods will be dancing around, I mean wildly dancing, they were certainly dancing at Christmas. But this was a dancing that was still, how should I put it, well, a hopeful dance. It was a dance that said: we are rejoicing in the event, the event is really happening, we are greatly relieved that this light is kindled again on earth in this very late hour, but our waiting is not totally over. We still must wait to see what those mortals are going to do with this new Michaelic impulse. Are they going to continue it or not? If they do, our dance will surge through the coming year and the angles will dance passionately in Michaelmas, and the centenary of the death of Rudolf Steiner’s death will become the greatest celebration that the spiritual world had seen since the Christmas foundation conference. And we shall experience this dance very vividly because the earth will be shaking, the elementals exult all over the place, the clouds will be rolling, lightnings will crisscross the sky and the stars will fall down.
I wanted to say this tonight, in the first talk after the laying of the renewed foundation stone at Christmas, to wake us all up to accomplish our goal in the coming year. This is our task, as preparers of the preparers, to build a strong, deep, and unshakable foundation stone for the Michaelic movement in this century.
The first quarter of the present century is coming soon to a close. When we celebrate the centenary of Rudolf Steiner’s death in Easter 2025, we must feel that the renewed foundation stone of the Michaelic movement that we laid in Christmas has become so strong in our hearts and limbs, that in the coming years and decades it will carry the bridge and temple of the earthly-human Sun, and expand throughout the whole century until its end. And in this case, my dear friends, what will happen at the end of this century? In 1914 Rudolf Steiner predicted what will happen. This is the only communication he gave about what is going to happen at the end of both the 20th and 21st centuries.
To close our meeting this evening, I would like to read to you his words:
Terrible times, however, are ahead of humanity in Europe. We know that when the first third of this century is over, Christ will be seen in his etheric form and that this will give a huge impulse in addition to all the decline inclinations of this century… Confusion and devastation will prevail as the year 2000 approaches. And then not one piece of wood will remain on the other in our Dornach building. Everything will be destroyed and devastated. We will look down on this from the spiritual world. But when the year 2086 comes, you will see buildings all over Europe that are dedicated to spiritual goals and the forms will be similar to our Dornach building with its two domes. This will be the golden age for such buildings, in which spiritual life will flourish.
In March 7, 1914, few months before the outbreak of the first world war, Rudolf Steiner gave this prediction about the end of the first two Michaelic centuries. He foresaw total devastation at the end of the 20th century and the rise of a golden Michaelic age at the end of the 21st century. The prediction about the devastation at the end of last century is already fulfilled. Now our task must be, my dear friends, to fulfil the prediction about the positive end of this century, and prepare the golden age when new spiritual life will flourish all over Europe and the rest of the world. By then we shall again support it from the etheric world above.
At the end of the 20th century, the first Michaelic century and plan went down in the flames of Ragnarök, the grave of civilization, the devastation of humanity and earth and the de-culmination of anthroposophy. At the end of the present century, the second plan of Michael, whose seed was planted at the end of last century, in the grave of civilization, must be fulfilled. The age of Michael must be realized at the end of the second century of his present rule, because to start from an absolute abyss at the beginning of the 3rd and last and century, will be infinitely difficult. Let us take this positive and creative, vision, this Michaelic prophecy, into our hearts, fire our Michaelic courage and enthusiasm, and continued peacefully and joyfully to do our work.