The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy
GA 54
XVII. Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods
22 March 1905, Berlin
It was something of a surprise when, in the 18th century, German scholars rediscovered the ancient saga of the Nibelungs. In fact, this saga, to which we owe the thoughts of European peoples about their origin, was forgotten for centuries. The Germans' ancient tales of the dawn of their existence were hardly known, hardly known at all, from the 12th to the 18th century. And spirits such as Goethe, who were able to recognize the full significance of such a discovery for the spiritual life of the German people, attributed the greatest importance to the Nibelung saga in particular. Then people realized that what had been extracted from manuscripts of the 12th and 13th centuries were only later versions of an even much older folk tale. In the Eddalieder, these older figures of German legend from prehistoric times were found, which, as it were, fled northward, but then made their way back again – first through scholarship – and in the second half of the 19th century, provided the basis for the truly great renewal of art through the poet and musician Richard Wagner. Richard Wagner sought to bring about the renewal of art by not taking the figures he had express the deepest foundations of human destiny, or who could gain our interest through a special destiny that reaches beyond the everyday, from everyday life, but instead he took the figures of prehistoric times, idealized into the superhuman. He knew full well that the secrets harbored by the human heart and soul cannot be explained by figures or events of everyday life; he knew that myth and legend are precisely the reflection of what takes place in the depths of the human soul. Everyday life already shows us how every person is actually a mystery and contains infinitely more than we can perceive with our ordinary senses and minds. We know that we have an obligation – if we recognize such an ideal obligation – to look at people as such a mystery, never to conclude with our judgment of them. When we allow a person to resonate within us, then their figure indeed grows into the superhuman. We can only depict it by enlarging the features, and enlarging them in the right way, by emphasizing the characteristic without distorting it into caricature. That is the true art of inner human characterization.
Just as Wagner was clear that humanity may one day — though not yet, admittedly — be capable of expressing the very highest through ordinary language, and that one must resort to the elevated element of expression, to music, in order to bring forth the deepest of the soul, so he was also clear that he must rise above everyday life to the mythical. The power, inner feeling and reality that lives in this myth is revealed to us in a surprising way by this renewal of art. It is precisely through Wagner's art that much has been done to deepen this world of legends. Today, too, we will try to penetrate the reality of this seemingly unreal world from the point of view of spiritual science, and you will see that theosophy or spiritual science will have much to say about the deeper core of these legends. For from Nietzsche to the other Wagner interpreters, many have got stuck in the symbolic interpretation of the legend. This is due to the fact that in our time of materialistic thinking it is actually something quite great to recognize in the myth allegorical references to great inner human truths. It is of course impossible for me to cover the whole question of the Siegfried myth with you today; I will only be able to give a few points of view to show how, from the point of view of a deeper spiritual knowledge, this myth gains life and reality.
The figure of Siegfried is known to us primarily from the German version of the Song of the Nibelungs. You know that Siegfried was able to make himself invisible. He was in possession of the Nibelung hoard, the gold that is associated with many things: earthly fortune, but at the same time a curse, a fate. You also know that he became engaged to Brunhilda. This is a trait that is not present in Germanic mythology, but without which Germanic mythology can hardly be understood. They know that by entering into his marriage bond with Kriemhilde, he then acquires Brunhilda for Gunther by means of a deception, namely by appearing in the guise of another, which then becomes his undoing and leads to his death. They know that Siegfried is avenged by his wife at the court of the Huns, at Etzel or Attila.
These are the main features of the Siegfried figure. The traits in the German saga are substantially deepened in the Nordic saga, which tells us something quite different. In the German saga, we find Siegfried in possession of the magic hood that allowed him to make himself invisible. In the Nordic saga, we are introduced to the world of the gods through the figure of Siegfried or Sigurd. This myth of the gods is full of mysteries and secrets. We learn — and I can only hint at the very outermost outlines here — that the gods themselves were forced to give the gold they acquired from the Nibelungs to the giants as payment for a debt they had incurred. A giant in the form of a Lindworm now guards this treasure. It is a significant trait that Siegfried, the offspring of the old gods and, so to speak, related to Wotan himself, is destined in his youth to overcome the Lindworm, the guardian of the gold. This gives him the power by which he attains his might. By bringing a few drops of the blood of the Lindworm to his lips, he is able to understand the language of birds; he is thus able to take a deep look into nature and absorb hidden wisdom. Through this perfection he is able to approach the Valkyrie Brunhilda, who is surrounded by fire and flames, and to become engaged to her, he who has conquered the Nibelungen treasure himself in the fight against the Lindworm.
Siegfried is a type of hero that appears in many of the great epics of the world. He is the slayer of a dragon, he is imbued with the dragon's blood and thereby attains special powers, he acquires the power to make himself invisible and to approach a female figure who can only be penetrated by fire and flames. In the individual phases of descent from the gods, very significant ancient beliefs are hidden, some of which even elude any public discussion because they lead into areas that belong to the very depths of occultism.
Scholarship has often seen in Siegfried the symbol of a solar hero, and in fact in the way that scholarship understands such symbols: the sun as conqueror of the clouds and so on. As I pointed out a fortnight ago, such external symbolism can hardly be appropriate, as has been made clear by Ludwig Laistner's research into the riddle of the Sphinx, which shows that the people do not symbolize in this way. We can only understand the Germanic world of gods and the Siegfried saga if we also assume here that experiences of the gods are expressed in all these relationships.
A fortnight ago we saw that there was something of an experience of higher spiritual and mental worlds in Germanic prehistory and how the development of man has consisted in man's development from the astral vision of prehistoric times, from looking into the spiritual world, to our ordinary everyday views, which look at things with the outer senses. For our Central European ancestors, the time when people could see into the spiritual world was but a distant memory. This world has now been plunged into darkness and gloom, since outer physical vision has become more and more refined in humanity. What still lives today as legend and myth is the remnant of such a higher spiritual perception. The gods are higher experiences, are real figures of the world into which man lives when he has attained higher senses. There is a straight line from the dream to the highest astral-spiritual experiences of the soul. To make this clear to us, let us take a look at the difference between the so-called night and day consciousness. The day consciousness of the normal human being, through which culture has been created, is acquired. It comes about through the soul perceiving the external world through the senses and processing it with the intellect and imagination. But when the soul frees itself from the body at night, the gates of the senses are closed, the soul is within itself, then it lives in a different spiritual environment, but it cannot perceive because it has no senses for it, just as a person who has lost eyes, ears, in fact all senses, could still live, but would perceive nothing of the environment. Once the soul had the ability to see into the world into which the human being descends when he surrenders to sleep. He saw into the spiritual world, and the images of the spiritual world lie in myth and are real experiences. That is why it seemed to people in Central Europe that they had once perceived a light that had now sunk into the darkness of night. There is a light that can illuminate the night, a light that makes it possible to see spiritual and soul entities, those things that are found in mythological legends. This sinking down of astral consciousness is beautifully and powerfully depicted in the figure of Baldur. It is only a fantasy of German scholarship to claim that Baldur is the sun. Baldur is the ancient astral light that looks into the spiritual and soul world, but which died out in the course of evolution when a race arose for whom the spiritual light was immersed in darkness. This race, of which the ancient Germans could truly have said: though the lights shine in the darkness, but the darkness knows not the lights —, is the race of the Nibelungs, the dwellers of Nifelheim. What is meant by this race, for whom the spiritual is dark and only the sensual is light? What has changed with them?
The ancient powers that glowed in space and lived in everything, the powers of love, from which everything emerged, were, as people remembered, the deeper source of life at that time when they could still see into the spiritual world and lived quite differently. In place of love, which ruled everything, elevated all intercourse between beings, led beings to beings and established all relationships between them, selfishness arose with the emergence of the external sense world. A generation that still had insight into the spiritual world now clung to purely external physical things, physical possessions, physical property: the desire to possess some piece of the sensory world. That is the “gold”, the external, physical possession. Even in small circumstances, there was always something reminiscent of it in the German people, of the time when the land still belonged to the whole village community. Those who lived on such property were naturally united; in those days blood still established kinship. Now a different time came. The common property, which at the same time produced a certain sense of community, a common love, was transformed into private property, into the urge and drive to possess. The ancient Germans also went through this development, which almost all peoples went through. Thus they felt the new conditions to be in contrast to the old ones, as if the external had taken the place of the internal, as if in the past one had followed the urge that lived within, love, and now one followed selfishness. Now, too, what brought people together had to be regulated by contracts and legal provisions, instead of by natural degrees of kinship as in the past. A new world order arose, with new gods, corresponding to the outer reality of the senses. Such were our gods of ancient times. But these gods also appeared again in a new form, as it were, as those who extracted the better part, the essence, from the old, like supersensible powers above sensual time.
People appeared to be entangled in sensuality. But he who wanted to be a leader, a guide for humanity, was also an initiate within Germanic prehistory, as he was everywhere else, one who saw deeper into the sources of existence and was able to penetrate to the divine, creative powers. Such an initiate must have overcome what connects man to the sensual, he must be able to attach all his thoughts and desires only to what lasts, to what is behind the sensual things. He must withdraw from the struggles of everyday life. Now every human being is involved in these struggles with desires and everyday ideas. He must overcome all this; otherwise a real, deeper insight into things is not possible. Because this is so little understood today, people cannot grasp what real and true wisdom is. Otherwise, they would also know that before one can ascend to this knowledge, one must first make oneself worthy of it, one must feel that what mind and reason can grasp, what we can think, that these are divine thoughts, according to which the world is built. What matters is not what the initiates know, but how they know it, and they become knowledgeable because they have overcome the lower nature in man. Through this knowledge, which is linked to the transformation of the whole soul, knowledge becomes wisdom.
The nations had different initiates according to their respective character. We understand this when we grasp the meaning of initiation. What exactly is the task of the initiate? Above all, it was the initiates who gave the nations the certainty of the immortality of the human soul. To rise to wisdom means to experience that the soul is reality. One really gets to know it when one looks into the world illuminated by the astral light. There the immortality of the soul proves to be an attribute of the soul. Because the initiate can enter these worlds, in which there is eternal life, already in this existence, he can give an account of the destiny of man before birth and after death. The task of the initiated at all times has been to clarify how the soul is distinguished from the perishable sensual existence. Wherever there is a belief based on deep knowledge and experience, something similar to what is being said again for the first time in modern times by the theosophical or spiritual scientific movement is said. The more man transforms his sensual existence by developing the most diverse virtues and abilities, the more he passes over into another existence, which is everlasting. The Greeks called the soul a bee that flies out, gathers honey and then returns to the hive. That is exactly what the soul does. It flies in the physical world, gathers experiences and brings them back to the spiritual world, where they become its permanent possession. Wherever mystical facts are at hand, the soul has been imagined as something feminine, for example, as the “eternal feminine” in Goethe, the soul that constantly absorbs from the environment and is fertilized by it. On the other hand, the cosmos is male when viewed in relation to the soul. For the soul, every event in its dealings with the external world is a form of fertilization. Therefore, to the person who can see it, the soul's upward striving toward immortality appears as a kind of union, for it connects with its higher nature, which, as it were, comes to meet it when it has worked its way up to this higher level. Thus in Germanic mythology, because bravery was the highest virtue for the Germanic people, the acquisition of immortality appeared, for the warrior falling on the battlefield, in the approach of the Valkyrie; the Valkyrie is nothing other than the immortal human soul. When the warrior has practiced the virtue that leads to immortality, he unites with the Valkyrie; those who did not fall on the battlefield died a death on the straw and had to go down into the realm of Hel, where the spiritual light did not shine.
An initiate is one who has an encounter with the soul during his lifetime. Thus Siegfried is the initiate of Germanic prehistory, who overcomes the lower nature, the dragon, who ascends and acquires the right, like every initiate, to see into the world that people will enter when they pass through the gate of death. Such initiates were always invisible to the physical eye of men; they always had a cloak of invisibility on. It is obvious to everyone that if an initiate like, for example, the Christ Jesus were to appear in any modern city today, he would remain fairly hidden as such. For even if he were not imprisoned, what can only be perceived with the spiritual eye would at least be perceived as something quite outrageous. This is the case with all initiates, including Siegfried. Anyone who strives for a higher knowledge of wisdom must not only overcome the dragon, but also pass through many dangers to a higher consciousness. The flames and fires surrounding the Valkyrie are very real. Before man is able to see into the higher world, the higher nature is always mixed with the lower; it keeps the lower in check and guards what wants to emerge from the lower stormy passions. But when the higher nature stands out, the lower nature is initially left alone. Therefore, those who have not thoroughly strengthened their character beforehand, but who have attained clairvoyant ability and want to ascend into the spiritual world, are often subject to a transformation for the worse. The fire of the passions easily begins to burn. The higher consciousness causes the flames to form, and the initiate must first go through this flames. Here you have the initiation ceremonies of Siegfried. There were such initiates in those days; they were old priest-wise men who combined bravery and wisdom, being kings and priests at the same time. That was the ideal of man that lived in the memory of the ancient German and stood before his soul at the moment when this poem was created like a memory. That has now changed. Valor is no longer subject to initiation and wisdom is assigned to a secular estate; instead of a warrior-hood that was at the same time a priestly knighthood, there is now a priesthood that knows nothing of initiation.
The attainment of this higher consciousness of the initiated priest-wise is shown in the fact that Siegfried, who was already betrothed to the Valkyrie Brunhilda, drinks the potion of forgetfulness, that is, he is placed into the world that no longer knows anything of the old times, and that he acquires Brunhilda for one who is no longer a priest-sage, who has laid aside the one side, courage, that is, that with which the higher soul is acquired. Brunhilda was to be acquired for one who was no longer an ancient offspring of the gods, that is, an initiate.
Thus the evolution of spiritual culture is wonderfully expressed in the saga of Siegfried. The times are past when bravery and the deepest wisdom were combined in the initiates. Union with the Valkyrie is no longer tied to initiation; they are, in a sense, those who fell away from the ancient past and now achieve immortality through bravery. Thus the connection with the old world of the gods was lost; only the sensual life, bound to gold, remained. For such a time — at least this much was clear to mystical thinking in this period — higher consciousness is something dangerous. The initiate who has conquered the dragon has the possibility of uniting with the higher consciousness and allowing himself to be filled by it. The lower nature cannot tempt him, because he has laid it aside. But for him who still has to undergo this and has not overcome the lower nature, the same can be dangerous. This should be made clear to the old Germans. For the union with the Valkyrie has a destructive effect if it is not linked to inner worthiness. She becomes a corrupting power when she acts for herself. Thus Brunhilda acts for herself by having to belong to the man who had not gone through the initiation, to whom she was unlawfully assigned. Therefore, the higher consciousness must have a corrupting effect. This also explains what ultimately brings about Brunhilda's downfall. Brunhilda, the higher consciousness that came from the old gods, must drag the old gods themselves down with her into ruin. The god's offspring was her equal. In ancient times it was right that Valkyries descended upon the warriors because there were initiates among them who, through a victorious life, had earned the right to unite with Brunhilda. This consciousness, the gift of the old gods, which they originally gave to the initiated, had later also come to those who were not initiated, where it could have a destructive, dissolving effect, and then necessarily had to drag down the old world of the gods itself: the twilight of the gods.
It is no mere accident, but the outcome of profound wisdom, that in the German form of the Nibelungenlied, too, where the folk go down to King Etzel's court to meet their doom, the new Christianity also makes its appearance. Christianity shines into the old world, but the world started from love. Symbolically, an ancient love was remembered that had been replaced by the statutes founded in gold. The time of gold has brought it about that the higher consciousness of Brunhilda has had a destructive effect. And the point in time when the old gods sank down is cosmically represented with the time when astral vision gave way to physical vision, which thereby becomes a reflection of the cosmic process.
Love instead of statutes should arise as a new element. Even this is indicated allegorically by myth, and in this fact it emerges even more intimately: when Siegfried was to be betrayed, his wife marked the spot where he could be wounded with a cross. Every initiate is spiritually invulnerable to the earthly sensual, even if his body is torn to pieces. The soul has been living into the higher life. But there is one thing the initiate has not yet been able to achieve. Siegfried remained vulnerable at the point where moral lawfulness, refined into the divine, is to flare up in love. This flaming up of moralizing in love, becoming divine, is the essence of Christianity. This did not yet belong to the initiation of Siegfried. After the twilight of the gods is over, another hero enters among the old fighters, who stands higher than Siegfried, who is invulnerable where Siegfried was still vulnerable. The cross that Kriemhilde can only sketch, the great one has carried on his back. You see what a deep substratum, what a spiritual picture of life is contained in this saga of prehistoric times. The riddle of humanity resounds around us.
You all know that Richard Wagner was not satisfied with the Siegfried figure of the Song of the Nibelungs, but that he went back to the Nordic saga, even though he changed the individual motifs and personalities somewhat. He presents Siegfried as the soul that has passed through initiation through the killing of the Lindworm, as a being that understands the language of birds, that thus sees and hears not only through the gates of the sense world. And in Götterdämmerung, he allows us to see the connection that is symbolized in Brunhilda as the ancient world of the gods, which plunges down into the depths, and from which Christian love then rises, which has taken the place of the ancient world of the gods.
I do not wish to claim that Richard Wagner had these thoughts in an abstract way; but that need not be the case with an artist. One speaks so glibly of the artist's “unconscious” work. That is not a good word. While man thinks in abstract terms, in shadowy images, the artist works in forms. It is a kind of high-flown impudence of the vanity of learning and intellect to call this life and activity in the imagination and in forming “unconscious”. There is something else at the bottom of it. What is art with its creative forming, with its letting in of a higher world? It is deeply significant that it is just through the renewal of myth that a renewal of art has been brought about. If myth is only a symbol for the ordinary person, for the initiate it is spiritual reality, the expression of the experience of a higher spiritual world. It is such a full consciousness that the ordinary bright day consciousness is unable to grasp it. A shadowy reflection of this has remained in myth, and we have something similar when we imagine how an initiate introduced his students to the ancient mysteries, be they Greek, Persian, Egyptian, or those of which a German prehistory tells us. There we have the initiate who has the power to open the eyes of his disciples to this higher world. They gaze into this spiritual world; scenes of a higher experience play out before them, not between people, but between gods. A later time has captured the form of this play of scenes as in a shadow play, and in art. Art is like a dream or like a shadow play as a memory of an earlier clairvoyance and a prophecy for a later clairvoyance of all humanity.
It was a great epoch when the last echoes of those ancient times in German myth were brought out again by Richard Wagner, in order to find the union between art and vision again. Thus the products of Richard Wagner's art have a prophetic significance. They are an eminent and great means of education for our time. They will renew the myth for man through the sound of the music and the superhuman that unfolds before his eyes, and help to awaken the powers of the soul. And the theosophical or spiritual-scientific world view, which is working towards that future of humanity, may regard this art, reborn out of the myth, as a true sister. Thus it is possible, in a way, to gain a further deepening of Richard Wagner's art from spiritual science. The living quality of spiritual penetration, which spiritual science strives for, will have to take the place of the mere abstract scholarship that has taken hold of the old legends and myths. Myth is a portrayal of profound truths, of lofty spiritual experiences, and by awakening consciousness of these spiritual experiences, spiritual research, which is a different kind of research from ordinary research, will also make it possible to understand myth in its depths again. Then the legends of the dawn of humanity will be able to come to life again in their essential core. Men have expressed the truth in the most diverse forms. But only he understands the form of the truth who has a sense for the core and the living source of the truth. To seek the core of this truth is the task of the spiritual-scientific world view, and through this attitude, which constitutes the essential in the spiritual-scientific field, the best of the past spiritual treasures of mankind will be able to come to the surface of today's cultural life.