Su Kaspar Hauser - About Kaspar Hauser
Conosciuto anche come il Fanciullo d'Europa la sua storia ha affascinato artisti e
ricercatori…
Also
known as the Child of Europe its history
has fascinated artists and researchers...
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Dopo la foto - Below the photo
4 Video
4 Video
L’enfant sauvage (François
Truffaut)
Jeder
für sich und Gott gegen alle (Werner Herzog)
Kasper
Hauser - Child of Europe (Terry Boardman)
La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser (Davide Manuli)
Testi - Texts
1 - Nessi esoterici del testamento spirituale di Rudolf
Steiner (Italiano)
2 - On
the Esoteric Significance of Kaspar Hauser (English)
Kasper
Hauser - Child of Europe (Terry Boardman)
La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser (Davide Manuli)
Nessi esoterici
del testamento spirituale di Rudolf Steiner
Di Mario Iannarelli
da www.larchetipo.com
In relazione a Sciziano, volendo lumeggiare una nostra
personale ipotesi, spenderemo qualche parola
in piú. Prendiamo, sempre dalla conferenza del 31 agosto
1909 (O.O. N° 113), quanto Rudolf Steiner ci
dice su tale individualità, invero notevolmente
misteriosa per motivi che ora apprenderemo: «Gli uomini
che dall’antica Atlantide erano migrati verso l’Europa e
l’Asia avevano portato con sé immensi tesori di
sapienza. Sappiamo che nell’antica Atlantide la maggior
parte degli uomini era dotata di chiaroveggenza
istintiva, per cui poteva vedere le sfere spirituali.
Quella forma di chiaroveggenza non poté evolversi, ma
dovette limitarsi a singole personalità dell’Occidente. Quivi
essa fu diretta da un essere che dimorava nel piú profondo occultamento,
inaccessibile perfino a coloro che erano già discepoli di un grande Iniziato e
vivevano a loro volta ritirati dal mondo. Quell’essere era per cosí dire
rimasto indietro per custodire, per coltivare quanto era provenuto
dall’Atlantide, per custodire quei tesori di saggezza per i tempi futuri.
Possiamo designare col nome di Sciziano, usato nel primo Medio Evo, quel grande
Iniziato, custode dell’antichissima saggezza atlantica che penetrava persino
nei misteri del corpo fisico. Quando si cita il nome di Sciziano, chi conosce
la spiritualità coltivata occultamente in Europa, sa di trovarsi di fronte a
uno dei piú alti Iniziati della Terra». Prendiamo le caratteristiche salienti
di questo essere: vive, dopo la catastrofe atlantica, in Occidente, “nel piú
profondo occultamento, inaccessibile perfino” ai discepoli del Manu, che
ugualmente vivevano ritirati dal mondo, e che poi andranno verso Est, in Asia,
con la loro altissima guida. Nel Medio Evo è conosciuto con il nome di
Sciziano, cioè con il nome che lo lega al popolo degli Sciti. Diamo su questo
popolo poche notizie, ma atte al nostro scopo, prendendole da un dizionario
enciclopedico (Utet 1961): «Sulla cultura e i costumi degli Sciti, informazioni
sufficienti a darne un quadro generale ci sono fornite, oltre che da Erodoto e Ippocrate,
dalle tradizioni di un popolo del Caucaso, gli Ossi od Osseti, che gli studiosi
di civiltà indoeuropea collegano, attraverso gli Alani e i Rossolani, gli
Iagizi e i Sarmati, con gli Sciti. Una parte degli Ossi si chiama Iron, e
questo nome è una riprova dell’origine indoeuropea degli Sciti, poiché Iron
altro non è che l’equivalente di Iran e del sanscrito Arya. Dall’esame
di queste fonti, appare che gli Sciti pensavano la loro
struttura sociale secondo una formula di tripartizione, allo Antichi tumuli
sciti stesso modo che la pensavano appunto gli Arya, gli Iranici, i Celti e
anche i Protolatini. Secondo questo
pensiero, che è una concezione della società e del mondo, e quindi una cultura,
tre sono le funzioni che assicurano la sopravvivenza di una società: la prima,
magica e religiosa, spetta ai sacerdoti; la seconda, militare e giuridica,
spetta ai nobili; la terza, produttiva di beni di consumo, spetta agli
agricoltori e ai pastori. Senofonte dice anche che gli Sciti, sotto la spinta
delle vittorie dei Medi, furono respinti verso il Caucaso, dividendosi in due
gruppi: l’uno al Nord del Mar Nero, l’altro al Nord del Mar Caspio». Aggiungiamo
a quanto sopra una notizia data da Rudolf Steiner nella conferenza del 9
novembre 1914 (O.O. N° 158): «Sciziano in Epoca Postatlantica operava nella
zona settentrionale del Mar Nero». A tutto ciò, mettiamo in relazione quanto
rivelatoci da Steiner sugli impenetrabili Misteri occidentali di Ibernia (O.O.
N° 232-233), rimasti sempre molto occulti e di difficilissima percezione e
comprensione anche per gli Iniziati piú preparati e sviluppati, Misteri nei
quali si erano conservate, nella forma piú pura, le conoscenze spirituali e la
chiaroveggenza dell’Epoca Atlantica. Ciò permise agli Iniziati di questi
Misteri, per
mezzo di una pura connessione spirituale, la
sperimentazione del Mistero del Golgotha nello stesso momento in cui avveniva
in Palestina. Chi è, dunque, questo altissimo Iniziato, responsabile della
coltivazione e del progresso della chiaroveggenza in Europa, e cosí legato ai
destini di questa zona geografica? Se riandiamo a tutto quanto Steiner ci ha
riferito sulla personalità di Kaspar Hauser, sul “Bambino d’Europa” e sul suo sacrificio
salvifico per tutta l’umanità, forse potremo tessere certi nessi con
l’individualità di Sciziano. Raccogliamo altre affermazioni fatte da Steiner su
questo essere e riportate sul libro di Peter Tradowsky Kaspar Hauser (Ed.
L’Opera 1997):
· «Kaspar Hauser era un “Atlantide smarrito”».
· «Si trattava di un essere superiore che doveva compiere
sulla Terra una missione particolare. Non ne
ho potuto trovare né un’incarnazione precedente, né una
seguente».
· «Se Kaspar Hauser non fosse vissuto e non fosse morto
come fece, il contatto fra la Terra e il Mondo
spirituale sarebbe stato completamente interrotto”».
· «Kaspar Hauser è stato un Angelo».
· «L’individualità chiamata a celarsi sotto il velo di
Kaspar Hauser è un essere che ha esercitato una
azione ispiratrice sulle attività dei Rosacroce fin dal
loro inizio, e che poi si è incarnato il 29 settembre
1812. …Egli doveva compiere un’importante missione
nell’ambito del Cristianesimo esoterico».
Dopo aver riflettuto su queste dichiarazioni, non
possiamo certo affermare, con assoluta sicurezza, che sotto il “velo” di ç
Kaspar Hauser ci fosse un’incorporazione del Bodhisattva Sciziano. Nella
Scienza dello Spirito non si possono fare deduzioni che, anche se perfettamente
logiche, solo per questo possono ritenersi vere, esse potrebbero portare molto
lontano dalla realtà spirituale: questa segue il Logos e non la logica umana.
Tuttavia, bisognerà ammettere che
nessuna delle affermazioni di Steiner esaminate entra in contraddizione con la nostra
tesi. La poniamo all’attenzione di coloro che amano la conoscenza antroposofica e condividono con noi l’ideale
di divenire, pur se al piú basso dei livelli, “ricercatori dello Spirito”. Come
ulteriore considerazione, desideriamo rilevare il nesso tra Sciziano (con le
sue conoscenze
profondissime del corpo umano, e quindi del Fantoma) e le
qualità uniche del corpo fisico di Kaspar Hauser, specie il suo rapporto con il
pane. Anche qui non possiamo dilungarci troppo su questi argomenti, perciò
prendiamo poche parole di Tradowsky che, comunque, ci appaiono
particolarmente illuminanti (op.cit.): «…Una luce chiarificatrice cade
…soprattutto sul fatto singolare e perciò continuamente messo in dubbio, che
durante la sua prigionia [di Kaspar Hauser], fosse stato letteralmente nutrito
di pane e acqua soltanto. …Si può a buon diritto affermare che, secondo la rappresentazione
che ci si fa comunemente della nutrizione umana, si tratta di un fatto
incredibile. Si sa tuttavia che Kaspar Hauser non desiderava mangiare che del
pane …L’enigma della sua alimentazione può essere risolto quando si pensi che
egli era collegato ad una corrente di vita superiore tale, che un apporto minimo
di sostanza terrestre bastava a mantenere la vitalità dell’organismo. Si può
dire anche che in lui si sia attuata la preghiera recitata a tavola: “Il pane
non nutre; ciò che in lui nutre è il Verbo eterno di Dio, è la Vita e lo
Spirito” (Angelo Silesio: Il viandante cherubico − libro 1, N° 193). Il pane
che lo nutriva può essere percepito immaginativamente come il corpo del
Cristo». E poco prima ancora: «…Chi prende sul serio l’indicazione di Rudolf
Steiner secondo cui, dopo Cristiano Rosacroce, nessun essere umano ha provato come
Kaspar Hauser quelle che furono le sofferenze del Cristo, costui sentirà che
quest’entità, che manifestamente appartiene alla cerchia piú vicina al Cristo,
abbia creato sulla Terra il corpo di resurrezione. Egli ha avuto parte, fra i
primi, e per la salvezza dell’umanità, agli effetti delle azioni del Cristo». Come
ultimo argomento, che adduciamo a sostegno della nostra ipotesi su
Sciziano-Kaspar Hauser, è che, come ispiratore del popolo degli Sciti, ne aveva
organizzato la società secondo un principio di tripartizione; questa, per
motivi di ordine storico-evolutivo, non poteva essere uguale a quella
presentataci da Rudolf Steiner, ma era pur sempre ispirata dal Mondo
spirituale. L’elemento interessante è che Kaspar Hauser sembra aver avuto per
suo vero compito terreno − nascendo il giorno della festa di Michele del 1812 come
figlio del granduca Karl del Baden e di sua moglie Stéphanie de Beauharnais −
quello di instaurare fra i suoi sudditi una società in forma triarticolata.
Tale società avrebbe dovuto rappresentare, michelianamente, un centro di
irradiazione e di esempio per tutta l’Europa. Ciò non fu consentito dalle forze
avverse all’evoluzione dell’umanità, e le conseguenze per la civiltà di questa
cruciale area geografica (e quindi per l’Europa) furono immense. In un
colloquio con il conte Polzer-Hoditz avvenuto nel novembre del 1916, Steiner
disse (Conte Polzer-Hoditz – note del novembre 1916): «La Germania del Sud
sarebbe dovuta diventare il nuovo castello del Graal dei nuovi combattenti
dello Spirito e la culla di avvenimenti futuri. Lo spazio spirituale era stato
ben preparato dalle personalità che conosciamo sotto il nome di Goethe,
Schiller, Holderlin, Herder eccetera. Kaspar Hauser doveva riunire intorno a sé
tutto ciò che viveva in questo spazio spirituale cosí ben preparato. Ma questo
è quanto quelle cerchie non volevano. Non potevano accettare l’esistenza di un
“centro” che si destava, dal momento che essi non volevano rinunciare al loro
potere e agli sforzi per mantenerlo. Il cammino spirituale di Goethe li
spaventa».
Concludiamo queste brevissime note su Buddha,
Zarathustra, Sciziano e la loro azione nell’ambito della
Rosacroce, ponendo in collegamento la potenza particolare
dei loro corpi, rispettivamente astrale, eterico
e fisico, con quanto dovrà avvenire in futuro in
relazione al Cristo. Dice Steiner (conferenza del 21 settembre 1911, O.O. N°
130): «L’individualità del Cristo …riapparirà solo nel Quinto Periodo di
Civiltà in un corpo eterico, nel Sesto Periodo in un corpo astrale, e sempre ascendendo,
nel Settimo Periodo come un possente Io cosmico, simile ad un’immensa anima
collettiva dell’umanità». Nella conferenza del 4 novembre 1911 dello stesso
ciclo, Rudolf Steiner preciserà che queste tre riapparizioni del Cristo
avverranno cosí: la prima sul piano astrale; la seconda nel Devachan inferiore;
la terza nel Devachan superiore. Appare chiaro che queste apparizioni sono da
collegarsi con una preparazione, seppur parziale, delle parti superiori degli
esseri umani (sé spirituale, spirito vitale e uomo Spirito), come effetto della
spiritualizzazione dei tre corpi inferiori (astrale, eterico, fisico). Ciò
dovrà avvenire per un numero sempre piú grande di uomini, e in questo si dovrà
riconoscere l’azione di Buddha, Zarathustra e Sciziano quali elevatissimi
Maestri coadiutori di Christian Rosenkreutz che, a sua volta, è superiormente
indirizzato dall’individualità di Manes. Ma tutto ciò è
già iniziato e in corso di attuazione, e come nel
Quinto Periodo Atlantico un piccolo stuolo di uomini
iniziò a prepararsi per divenire il nucleo fondatore
della Quinta Epoca Postatlantica, cosí già oggi un nuovo
nucleo di esseri umani, incompresi ed emarginati
come lo furono quelli atlantici, si prepara a divenire,
sotto la guida ancora occulta del futuro Manu, il
germe cristico per la Sesta Epoca. Con ciò ci avviamo a
rispondere alle due domande già formulate e che
qui riassumiamo. Chi è Manes, da porre al di sopra di
Buddha, Zarathustra e Sciziano, e anche di Christian
Rosenkreutz, giacché ne è il Maestro, avendolo iniziato
nel 1459 Cavaliere della Pietra Aurea?
Leggiamo ora le seguenti note di Steiner (Introduzione di
Gabriele Burrini a I Manichei, O.O. N° 93):
14 aprile 216 d.C.: Manes nasce a Seleucia-Ctesifonte; 9
aprile 243 (o 22 marzo 242): per mediazione di
Peror, fratello del sovrano, Manes si reca a Gondishapur,
la capitale Sasanide dell’Iran e riceve dal re
Shapur I (242-273) il permesso di predicare la sua
dottrina nell’impero. È questa la data di nascita del
Manicheismo; 26 febbraio 277: è la data di morte di
Manes. Viene sottoposto al martirio per ordine del re
Bahram I (274-277), che era il secondo successore di
Shapur, sempre a Gondishapur». E seguitiamo dalla
conferenza di Rudolf Steiner dell’11 novembre 1904
(op.cit.): «È ben poco quanto di Mani ci dice la storia.
Viene raccontato che in Asia Minore viveva un
commerciante molto dotto di nome Sciziano, che aveva
scritto quattro opere: i Misteri, i Capitoli, il Vangelo
e il Tesoro. Viene inoltre raccontato che alla sua
morte il commerciante lasciò quegli scritti a sua moglie,
originaria della Persia. A sua volta essa li lasciò
a uno schiavo che aveva prima comprato e poi liberato.
Era appunto Mani, che ricavò la sua saggezza da
quegli scritti. Egli inoltre era stato iniziato ai
misteri di Mithra e diede vita al movimento del manicheismo.
Mani è anche chiamato il “figlio della vedova” e i suoi
seguaci i “figli della vedova”. Egli stesso si denominò
anche “Paraclito”, lo Spirito Santo promesso all’umanità
dal Cristo. La cosa va intesa nel senso che
egli si definiva una delle incarnazioni dello Spirito
Santo e non che si ritenesse lo Spirito Santo stesso.
Pensava cioè che lo Spirito Santo si presentasse in
diverse incarnazioni e che egli ne fosse appunto una.
…Per l’esoterismo e per la mistica l’anima viene
denominata “madre”, e “padre” chi guida. Padre e madre,
Osiride e Iside, sono le due potenze esistenti
nell’anima: la guida, quello che rappresenta l’elemento divino
direttamente fluente, è Osiride, è il padre; l’anima
stessa, Iside, è la madre che concepisce e riceve l’elemento divino spirituale.
Nel corso della Quinta Epoca il padre si ritira e l’anima rimane vedova, deve
essere vedova. L’umanità è lasciata a se stessa, deve cercare nella propria
anima la luce della verità per potersi guidare da sé. …Questo elemento
autoguidato che non ha piú davanti a sé il fecondatore divino, viene chiamato
da Mani la “vedova”. Di conseguenza Mani designa se stesso come il “figlio
della vedova”.
…Ho già spesso detto che il Manu che apparirà nella
successiva Epoca [la sesta], sarà allora un vero fratello
dell’uomo, mentre i Manu precedenti erano sovrumani, una
specie di esseri divini. Solo ora l’umanità va
maturando fino al punto da avere come proprio fratello il
Manu, che dalla metà dell’Epoca Lemurica ha
attraversato con noi tutti gli stadi. Che cosa avviene in
realtà nel corso dell’evoluzione della nostra Quinta
Epoca, la Postatlantica? Avviene che la rivelazione
dall’alto a poco a poco si ritira e lascia l’umanità alle
sue vie, affinché essa si guidi da sé. …Mani intende
creare una corrente spirituale che superi, che vada
oltre quella Rosicruciana. La corrente di Mani tende alla
Sesta Epoca, che viene preparata sin dalla fondazione del Cristianesimo». Proseguiamo
ancora con l’ultima conferenza, quella del 24 giugno 1908 (O.O. N° 104): «Mani,
l’alta individualità che continuamente s’incarna sulla Terra, è lo spirito
guida di coloro che vivono per la conversione del male. Quando si parla delle
grandi guide degli uomini, dobbiamo anche pensare a questa individualità che si
è posta tale compito». Fermiamoci un momento e consideriamo da vicino alcuni
elementi che possiamo desumere dalle parole di Steiner. Il primo,
interessantissimo, è quello che lega Mani (o Manes) a Gondishapur, la località,
vicinissima a Bagdad, dove iniziò la sua predicazione e dove morí in
sacrificio. Questo stesso luogo, pochi secoli dopo, fu la culla dove nacque e
crebbe, grazie ad Harun al Rashid e al suo ciambellano (forse di nome Jafar),
la piú alta fioritura della cultura araba. Sappiamo da Steiner (conferenza del
10 settembre 1924, O.O. N° 238) quanta fu l’importanza di questa corrente di
cultura per gli effetti che ebbe, e che ha tuttora, anche per il nostro mondo
occidentale, e quanto grande fu il contrasto tra l’averroismo, sviluppatosi nel
suo ambito, e la filosofia scolastica di Tommaso d’Aquino. Abbiamo voluto
accennare a questo nesso perché, come già detto, ci è sembrato molto
interessante da sviluppare; ma non proseguiremo oltre nell’esame dei suoi
possibili risvolti. Il secondo elemento, quello per cui Manes si nomina
“Paraclito”, che viene cosí particolarmente spiegato da Steiner, ci riconduce
ad una conoscenza già acquisita quando abbiamo letto che la sfera dei
Bodhisattva è l’espressione, attraverso numerose incorporazioni, del principio
spirituale che conosciamo come Spirito Santo. Connettendo ciò con la conoscenza
che Manes era Maestro dei tre Bodhisattva: Buddha, Zarathustra e Sciziano,
s’inizia a delineare la natura dell’individualità di Manes. Egli è un essere da
collocarsi ai vertici della Loggia dei dodici Bodhisattva e di Christian
Rosenkreutz. Vedremo piú avanti come tutto ciò si articoli. Il terzo elemento
si desume praticamente dalle affermazioni di Steiner: «La corrente di Mani
tende alla Sesta Epoca»; «Ho già spesso detto che il Manu che apparirà nella
successiva Epoca [la sesta] sarà allora un vero fratello dell’uomo»; «Solo ora
l’umanità va maturando fino al punto da avere come proprio fratello il Manu,
che dalla metà dell’Epoca Lemurica ha attraversato con noi tutti gli stadi». Se
a queste parole aggiungiamo le prossime, desunte dal secondo capitolo della
Cronaca dell’Akasha, dovrebbero rimanere pochi dubbi che il prossimo Manu umano
− questo “fratello” con il quale condivideremo l’essere “figli della vedova”,
se sapremo incamminarci sul sentiero dell’autodeterminazione e
dell’autocoscienza − possa essere Manes: «Gli Iniziati umani, i sacri Maestri,
diventarono, dunque, al principio della quinta razza radicale [si intende
l’inizio della Quinta Epoca, la Postatlantica], le guide di tutta l’umanità.
…Il Manu [divino] guidò da prima egli stesso il suo gruppo come si guidano i
bambini; poi a poco a poco la direzione passò agli Iniziati umani. …Soltanto
alla fine della quinta razza radicale [la fine della Quinta Epoca attuale],
allorché, attraverso alla sesta e alla settima sottorazza [i prossimi Sesto e
Settimo Periodo di Civiltà, successivi al Quinto attuale, all’interno della
Quinta Epoca], si sarà formato un numero sufficiente di uomini capaci di
ricevere la sapienza, soltanto allora potrà manifestarsi apertamente ad essi il
sommo Iniziato. E questo Iniziato potrà assumere poi la direzione principale
ulteriore come fece il Manu [divino] alla fine della quarta razza radicale [la
Quarta Epoca]. Cosí l’educazione della quinta razza radicale [la Quinta Epoca]
sta in ciò: che buona parte dell’umanità diventerà atta a seguire liberamente
un Manu umano, come la sottorazza [l’umanità che visse nel Quinto Periodo della
Quarta Epoca, l’Atlantica] da cui ebbe origine la quinta [l’attuale Epoca],
seguí il Manu divino».
On the Esoteric Significance of Kaspar Hauser
From http://threeman.org/
This is
the third and final article in the series about Kaspar Hauser, the first of
which dealt with the struggle for the factual truth about this innocent but
complex figure, a struggle which is still going on today, as seen in the two
recent and contradictory DNA tests. The second article looked at Kaspar Hauser
in relation to the present and future cultural and political development
ofEurope. This final article will consider the esoteric significance of ‘the
Child of Europe’ but does not pretend to do more than indicate some of the
outlines of what is a very wide-ranging and profound subject.[1] To do this, it
will be necessary first to refer briefly to two esoteric concepts that in this
author’s view, help to illumine historical development. The first was touched
on briefly in the second article of this series; it is the concept of time
regencies. According to this, time like space is differentiated and laden with
various qualities; it is not, as was thought in the 17th century, a mere
continuum, essentially the same at all periods. In an individual life, the
experience of time of a 70 year old person is very different from the
experience of the 7 year old. Esoteric knowledge, including Anthroposophy,
works with the concept not only of the evolution of bodies but also of
consciousness throughout history; this means that the way we think about
ourselves and the world today is very different from how the Greeks or the
Egyptians did. Esotericism has always seen everything in the universe as being
governed by intelligence, or rather, the intelligences of a variety of
spiritual beings. Monotheism, by contrast, has lost sight of this
differentiated activity of the divine and regards it from afar, so to speak, as
a single unitarian phenomenon. The esoteric viewpoint is thus that we human
beings live our lives within the longer-lasting periods of historical activity
of particular spiritual beings, or Time Regents, and we are affected by them
just as we are by the weather, within which we also live and over which,
similarly, we normally have no conscious control. The activity of these beings
forms a considerable part of our ‘historical weather’. These Time Regents,
whose evolutionary consciousness is two stages higher than that of Man, and one
stage higher than that of the beings traditionally known as angels, are of the
rank of archangels. There are seven of them and their periods of activity
rotate in cycles of approximately 350-500 years. The first European esotericist
to describe them in detail wasAbbot Trithemius of Sponheim (1462-1516).[2] The
seven archangels are associated with the planetary spheres; their traditional
names are: Oriphi-el (Saturn), Ana-el (Venus), Zachari-el (Jupiter), Rapha-el
(Mercury), Sama-el (Mars) Gabri-el (Moon) and Micha-el (Sun). The three with
which we are most concerned in this article are Samael (1190-1510), Gabriel
(1510-1879) and Michael (1879-c.2300?)[3]
Each archangelic period has its own character and brings something
different to human development, as does each season of Nature: Samael periods
divide, differentiate, and individuate; Gabriel periods focus on the physical
world of Nature and the senses; Michael periods focus on the spiritualisation
of human thinking and on cosmopolitan impulses. These three impulses have been
present in the background of human history from the period c.1200 until the
present. Each impulse does not start and stop suddenly but rather fades in,
climaxes and fades out; the peak of an impulse is invariably just afterthe end
of a regency, thus the early 20th century saw the peak of the Gabriel impulses,
which included the urge to nationalism, and the fading in of the Michael
impulses, which were still weaker by comparison. The second esoteric concept we
need to keep in mind when considering the period which Napoleon (1769-1821) and
Kaspar Hauser (1812-1833) lived through is that
the esoteric name of the Earth is not Gaia but Mars-Mercury. This
relates to the eoteric fact – described
by the spiritual scientist Rudolf Steiner in his book Occult Science An Outline
– that in the process of the seven great periods of Earth evolution
known as Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan, the
period of the mineral Earth in which we now live has two phases: the period of
condensation, ‘inhalation’, or materialisation until the Crucifixion of Christ,
and the period of expansion, ‘exhalation’,
or spiritualisation since the Resurrection of Christ. These two phases
are known as the Mars phase and the Mercury phase respectively, hence the name
Mars-Mercury for the whole Earth development. The seven archangelic Time
Regencies go on rotating throughout these two phases, so it will be obvious
that also during the Mercury or spiritualisation phase, there will be regencies
of Gabriel e.g. 1510-1879. A certain clash of impulses or ‘musical dissonance’,
can thus be expected, as the Gabriel impulse has something more in common with
the condensing, hardening, incarnatory gesture of Mars than it does with
the more fluid, relational, expansive
gesture of Mercury. Napoleon was the Mars gesture incarnate allied to the
Gabrielic in the way he sought to base his worldly military empire on his own
family’s blood lines. Kaspar Hauser, whose teacher and carer Prof. Georg
Friedrich Daumer noted, related more to quicksilver than to any other metal,
will be seen to be the ultimate bearer of the Mercury impulse. The individuality that hides behind the Kaspar
Hauser veil is a being which worked inspiringly into the Rosicrucian connection
from the beginning, and then on 29th September 1812, incarnated as the son of
Grand Duke Karl of Baden and his wife Stephanie de Beauharnais. Kaspar Hauser
had an important mission of esoteric Christianity to fulfil….It is not a
question of who …Kaspar Hauser was, but of what was to have been achieved by
[him]. One should occupy oneself with the question as to what was to have been
brought about through [him], for by such a direction of investigation we shall
always gain the key to an understanding of many problems.”[4]
According
to these thoughts of Rudolf Steiner, cited by Peter Tradowsky, to concern oneself with Kaspar Hauser is to
concern oneself with the future. Steiner draws attention to when Kaspar
incarnated : Michaelmas in the year 1812; where : Baden in southern
Germany; and the importance of his
mission. To the above indications he added that Kaspar Hauser had been an
angelic being and that he had been unable to discover any previous incarnation
of Kaspar Hauser since Atlantis. 1812? So, what could all this have to do with the future? What could a
putative German princeling of the early 19th century have to do with global
warming or the development of Africa ? But then, one could also ask: what could
an apparently insignificant Jewish preacher in AD 33 or a poor French farmer’s
daughter called Joan in 1429 have to do with the futures of the Roman and
British Empires respectively?[5] It may seem surprising that Rudolf Steiner
said very little about Kaspar Hauser in public; most of what we know of any
comments he made about him comes from conversations with individuals, including
the above, quoted by Peter Tradowsky. But when we note the reference to the
Rosicrucian connection and become aware that it was held as an esoteric
principle that one should not speak openly about great individualities active
in the Rosicrucian movement for at least a century after their death, then we
may understand a possible reason for
Steiner ‘s reticence. It is, however, worth paying careful attention to what Steiner
said and did in and around Karlsruhe – where Kaspar was born as the Crown
Prince of Baden – and in and around Nuremberg , where Kaspar was first
imprisoned for 12 years and then released. We see for example that it was
Malsch, near Karlsruhe, on the night of
a full moon, 5th-6th April 1909, that Rudolf Steiner chose for the laying of
the foundation stone of the first ‘anthroposophical’ building, the ‘Rosicrucian
temple’. The Malsch building was known as ‘Francis of Assisi’, an individuality
whom Steiner later explained had been a pupil of the super-earthlyBuddha around
700 AD in the Black Sea region. That individuality later incarnated as Francis
of Assisi in the 13th century at the time of the original initiation of
Christian Rosenkreutz. His own destiny at that time portrayed the change from
Mars to healing Mercury, as he was a warrior in his youth and transformed
himself into a gentle healer. That night of the 5th-6th April RudolfSteiner
spoke these words:
“We want
to sink the foundation stone of this temple into the womb of our Mother Earth,
beneath the rays of the Full Moon shining down upon us here, surrounded by the
greenness of nature enveloping the building. And just as the Moon reflects the
bright light of the Sun, so do we seek to mirror the light of the divine-
spiritual beings. Full of trust we turn towards our great Mother Earth, who
bears us and protects us so lovingly . . . In pain and suffering our Mother
Earth has become hardened. It is our mission to spiritualize her again, to
redeem her, in that through the power of our hands we reshape her to become a
spirit-filled work of art. May this stone be a first foundation stone for the
redemption and transformation of our Planet Earth, and may the power of this
stone multiply itself a thousandfold. When we were still resting in the bosom
of the Creator, surrounded by divine powers, the all-penetrating and
all-embracing Father Spirit wove within us. But we were still without
consciousness, not possessing independence. For that reason we descended into
matter in order to learn here to have self-consciousness. Then evil came. Then
came Death. But Christ was also active within matter and helped us to overcome
death, and as we now die in Christ , so do we live. We shall overcome death and
through our strong powers we shall deify and spiritualise matter. So shall the
power of the Healing Holy Spirit awaken within us“[6]
These
references to the Moon, the spiritual sphere of birth and death, to the Mother
and to Nature, to the innocent state of unself-consciousness, the growth of
consciousness through the encounter with matter, with evil, to the coming and
the overcoming of death, the spiritualisation of matter – is this not a
veritable picture of Kaspar Hauser’s life in public during those 5 years
1828-33, spoken here by Steiner in the place near where Kaspar was born? It was
in Karlsruhe on 25th January 1910 that Rudolf Steiner gave the first public lecture of which we have a record
about the Second Coming of Christ, which would take place, not in the physical
body but in the etheric world, the spiritual region where, according to Steiner
, angelic beings are most active between the Earth and the Moon. He said that
this would commence in the 1930s, citing especially the years 1933, 1935 and
1937, which was, incidentally, a century after the death and slandering of
Kaspar Hauser (1833-8). In that same lecture, as part of his exemplification of
how human consciousness was different in earlier epochs, Steiner specifically
refers to a child growing up alone on some desert island, unable to acquire the
faculties of thinking and speaking, and indicates “…that time when human beings
were in direct intercourse with divine spiritual beings…”; it was a time which
“engendered forces and impulses in the soul that were divine-spiritual in a
totally different sense from the forces of today….a will spoke out of this soul
that also derived from the divine spiritual world.” This is how more
sensitive people in Nuremberg, notably
Kaspar’s teacher Professor Daumer, (described by Steiner as “the last
Rosicrucian”), perceived Kaspar Hauser during the first six months after
Kaspar’s release as a totally unselfish
being from Paradise, from another world, gifted with remarkable extrasensory
abilities that contemporaries could not hope to acquire. It was also in
Karlsruhe the following year at Michaelmas[7], almost exactly 99 years after
Kaspar’s birth, that Steiner compared for the first time the methods of the
Rosicrucians with those of the Jesuits. The struggle between the Rosicrucians
and the Jesuits takes us back to the decades before the 30 Years’ war (1618-48)
when the Rosicrucian movement first emerged into the light of day, specifically
around the momentous year of 1603-1604 when the first version of the Chymical
Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz was
written. The Rosicrucian movement had hardly taken the stage in 1614-1618,
however, when it was overwhelmed in the chaos of the 30 Years’ War as the
Jesuit-influenced Habsburgs of Austria made war on Bohemia and the
Palatinate.[8] Outright opposition to Rudolf Steiner’s activities from Catholic
quarters is usually dated from those Karlsruhe lectures of 1911. In those same
lectures of 1911 given at Kaspar Hauser’s birthplace, Rudolf Steiner revealed
one of the most profound teachings of esoteric Christianity – that of the
nature of the human ‘Phantom’, or the Resurrection body. There is not space in
this article to enter into that here (the reader is referred to the lecture
cycle) but a few days earlier on the 27th September 1911[9], Rudolf Steiner
spoke about the original initiation of the founder of Rosicrucianism, Christian Rosenkreutz, in the
mid-13th century in such a way as to leave no doubt that this young man was
himself endowed with the Resurrection Body, and said that: We must look for the
starting point of a new culture in the middle of the 13th century. In his book
Kaspar Hauser – The Struggle for the
Spirit, Peter Tradowsky discusses in detail the close relationship between the
angelic being of the Kaspar Hauser individuality and Christian Rosenkreutz. It
is in this context that we can understand Steiner’s remarks that: he could find
no earlier incarnation for Kaspar Hauser (before 1812); that he was a ’stray Atlantean’; that he was a higher being who had a special
mission on the Earth, and that the individuality that is concealed behind the Kaspar Hauser veil is a being who
worked inspiringly into the Rosicrucian connection from the beginning.[10] In
Kaspar Hauser, we thus have to do not with an ordinary human individuality but
with a being of an angelic nature, whose lowest member is normally not the
physical body but the invisible etheric, or life body.[11] If this is taken seriously, then no questions
will arise as to how the child was able to survive his 12-year isolation on
only bread and water; no desperate assertions will be made, as have been by
those who think materialistically, for example, to the effect that he must have
been treated well in captivity and
hypnotised shortly before his release so that everything he did and said after his release
was under the influence of hypnosis. Kaspar was “…a being who worked
inspiringly into the Rosicrucian connection from the beginning…” It was no
accident therefore that in his teacher and carer Professor Daumer , he met the
man described by Rudolf Steiner as ‘the last Rosicrucian’ of the initial
Rosicrucian stream; it was the meeting of the ‘first’ and the ‘last’ Rosicrucians,
so to speak.
Mars and Mercury
Earlier
mention of the year 1604 and the Rosicrucian movement, of Baden and southern
Germany brings us to a second principal esoteric theme in that story:
humanity’s intended movement from the Mars impulse to the Mercury impulse in
the course of history. The Mars gesture, according to Steiner, is that of
contraction, condensation into solidity and incarnation on the physical
(mineral) plane, while the Mercury gesture is that of release into flowing and
relationship. A renewed mercurial impulse of Rosicrucian origin around 1800 was
frustrated by the turmoil of the French Revolution and the revolutionary and
napoleonic wars that followed it. The threefold ideals that appeared in the
French Revolution in 1789, liberty, equality, and fraternity, which were
originally not revolutionaries’ ideals
but Rosicrucian ones inspired by the Count St Germain (an incarnation of the
individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz), were distorted by the Revolution and
could not take proper root. Likewise, the impulse of Idealism that attempted to
break through in German culture around 1800 was frustrated by the Europe-wide
campaigns of the martial master Napoleon and the British-organised struggle
against him. The idealism of Goethe and
Schiller was unable to translate into effective social action. Schiller died 7
years before Kaspar’s birth, writing his
Demetrius, about a young man in Russia (1604-06) who, like Kaspar, died in
tragic circumstances.[12] On 24th Jan
1919 in Dornach, Switzerland, Steiner
indicated that the middle of the 19th century was a crucial turning point i.e.
the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, because, as he said, After the Europe-wide 1848
Revolutions, social questions were seen
predominantly in abstract terms. The middle class had until the 1870s (approx
33 years, 1845-78) to internalise and act out of the abstract social idealism
of the 1840s so that a healthy social order might begin to develop with the
beginning of the Age of Michael in 1879 ; remaining asleep, they failed to do
this. The consequence was that instead of leading the liberal ideals of the
1840s over to the emerging working class movement, the bourgeoisie recoiled in
selfishness and fear and clung on to the upper classes, perpetuating old social
forms from the Ages of Samael and Gabriel , and abandoning the new, third force
in society, the industrial proletariat. The social movement thus fell into the
hands of extremist revolutionaries, themselves mostly middle class
intellectuals and society rapidly became polarised: middle classes and
aristocracy against the working class. Rudolf Steiner put it like this:
“The
characteristic feature of the [modern] epoch is man’s isolation. That he is
inwardly isolated from his neighbour is
the consequence of individuality, of the development of personality. But this
separative tendency must have a reciprocal pole and this counterpole must
consist in the cultivation of an active concern of every man for his neighbor”[13]
This
personal isolation and separative tendency had developed increasingly since the
early 15th century, the high point of the Age of Samael. What was needed in the
19th century was not to look just to the individual and his separate
personality, as was the tendency in the West, especially in Britain, nor to
look only to the collective and to the demands of society as was the case in
the East and in Russia (the “objective scientific” socialism of the Marxists –
western abstract philosophy religiously taken up by East Europeans) but rather
to see Man in the world. This was the true task of Central Europe – the task of
the balancing Middle: to relate the individual to the whole. This ‘general
reformation’ of society that would harmonise religion, art and science had
been the aim of the public Rosicrucian
movement already in the early 17th century (1604-1613). Natural science and
spiritual science needed to be linked if European culture was not to break
asunder. These Rosicrucian hopes were associated with the attempted marriage
between the impulses of England and Germany, symbolised by the wedding of
Princess Elizabeth Stuart and Elector Frederick V of the Palatinate.[14] This
would-be mercurial marriage between England and Germany was dashed by the
martial madness of the 30 Years’ War (1618-48) – and Central Europepaid the price. Russia had
already been invaded from the west (
Poland ) and cast into seven years of chaos (1606-13). In the year of Kaspar
Hauser’s birth, Russia, where his aunt was the Czarina, was again invaded from
the west (France) by Napoleon, his mother’s adoptive father. Into this
situation Kaspar Hauser came like a youthful spiritual comet in 1812,[15] as
Joan of Arc had come in 1429 and Dmitri (as portrayed Schiller’s Demetrius) had
come in 1604. Schiller wrote of Joan of
Arc : “The world indeed loves to blacken all that is radiant and drag down into the dust all that is
sublime”. Rudolf Steiner spoke[16] of how the pure soul of Joan of Arc defeated
the self-seeking and vainglorious element in the culture of her time, both in
the English and the French elites, despite the fact that those elites, by sins
of commission and omission, succeeded in
killing Joan. He indicated that the danger in the modern
period comes more from the materialistic acquisitive element. It was this more “modern” element in the English power
elite, through the well-connected Lord Philip Henry Stanhope, Pitt ‘s nephew,
that contributed to the killing of the 21-year old Kaspar Hauser. The real
power of the aristocratic families that
dominated Britain in Stanhope’s time was no longer based on the vainglorious
claims of ‘blue blood’ but on commerce, trade, industry and purely legal
entitlement to land. The English will to power in 1429 and in 1828 (when Kaspar
was released from captivity) was ultimately defeated in both cases by an
innocent soul. Joan ‘s 3 years of activity (1429-31) began a process of English
development that led away from the conquest of France and ultimately out to the
conquest of the seas. Kaspar Hauser’s 5 years of activity were followed by a
process of British development and eventual Anglo-German antagonism that led
ultimately to the beginning of the end
of the British Empire in the bloodbath of the First World War. If Kaspar
had lived to become the spiritual if not the political leader of Germany, it is
highly unlikely that Germany would have opted to seek to copy Britain’s route
to world domination as she did under KaiserWilhelm II. But British manoeuvring
(Stanhope) had been involved in the removal of Kaspar, and in the event,
without the more enlightened leadership that a Prince Kaspar could have
provided, Germany chose to challenge Britain on its own terms; the result was
that not long after the dawn of the Age of Michael (1879) Germany industry and
commerce were beginning to outpace Britain’s, and by 1915, after a single year
of war, Britain could no longer go on
without US financial assistance; it was effectively the end of British
pre-eminence. Having completed the imperial
phase of their history that goes back to 1604, when James the First’s
peace treaty with Spain made possible Britain’s oceanic mercantile advances
– a phase that arguably began with Henry
VIII and his separation from Rome – the
people of Britain now need to develop a
greater degree of ethnic self-knowledge and a new understanding of their place
in the world. For they have been the world’s leading initiators into the
principles of separation, individuation, and personality – what Steiner called
‘the separative tendency’. Paradoxically, this has been effected by means of
the British Empire , which would at first appear to be an integrative, uniting
enterprise. In fact, it was largely created through motives of greed and
acquisitiveness (piracy – the original ‘privatisation’) and secured with the
application of the principle of divide et impera. It introduced communities and
individuals to the drastic and often harsh experience of an isolating
individuation.
These
qualites of Mars; compulsion to divide
and individuate, British ships (the
hearts of oak) carried around the world.[17] The tendency of the Mars epoch
(1190-1510), was an egocentric drive to assert a separate sense of self that
seeks to compete with others, is oriented to the physical mineral world and
strives against traditional, blood-based social bonds. England had fully
internalised this tendency by the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and the
nation proceeded in the Age of Gabriel (1510-1879) to carry this martial
impulse successfully into the realm of trade and commerce, which can be
described as the lower octave of the mercurial. One must be clear, however,
that without this me-centred and alienating development, not only would there
have been no natural science but also no emergence of a self-centred personality
of the lower ego which could be transformed into a higher, spiritual ego: the
age of natural science perforce had to precede that of spiritual science – the
age of Gabriel (Moon) had to follow that of Samael (Mars) and precede that of
Michael (Sun). Each phase lasting beyond
its time and pushed to the extreme, however, as has happened for the last
century – has the tendency to become
evil, and in Rudolf Steiner’s words, threatens “to flood the world with the
death of culture and the sickness of culture”.[18]
Britain
having done most to spread the impulse to materialism during the 18th century,
the 19th century needed an antidote – which was to be given by a Germany
intended to be the focus of a new healing Grail culture, and Kaspar Hauser would have been at the centre
of that new mercurial Grail culture that could develop fully after the
beginning of the Michael era in 1879. Near the end of his life, Steiner said
that:
“South
Germany should have become the new Grail Castle of the new Knights of the Grail
and the cradle of future events. This spiritual ground had been well-prepared
by all those personalities whom we know of as Goethe , Schiller , Hölderlin,
Herder and others. Kaspar Hauser was to have gathered around him, as it were,
all that existed in this spiritual ground thus prepared. But that was not
wanted by those circles (the western lodges and the Jesuits). They could not
tolerate a centre that was awakening to consciousness if they were not to
relinquish their power and designs for power. A spirit such as Goethe ‘s
frightened them.” [19]
Kaspar’s path in the 19th century, like Germany’s path
in the 17th and 20th centuries, was a painful one of sacrifice through terrible
darkness and misdeeds. In the last century, during the 12 years of 1933-45,
Germany experienced a most radical evil.
The defeat of Liberalism on the Continent the 1848 Revolutions led to massive
German emigration overseas, mostly to North America . This is the nature of the
counterpole to the ‘separative tendency’
– “the cultivation of an active concern of every man for his neighbour”,
the antidote to isolation and the relation of the individual to the whole.
Whereas these German emigrants had to adapt to the lands and communities they
settled in, emigration from Britain, by contrast, led to the creation of new
countries which were dominated by majority English speakers that saw themselves
as part of the British Empire (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, S. Africa) and
which subscribed to white, Anglo-Saxon protestant values. This amounted to the
continuation of ‘the separative tendency’ and indeed, in the first decades of
the 20th century there was a powerful movement among the British imperial elite
(e.g. Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Milner and his Round Table acolytes) to federate
the white nations of the Empire to bind them ever more closely together so
that, in alliance with the USA, they could be in a better position to dominate
the globe.[20] Since arguably, it would appear that no culture has developed
‘the separative tendency’ as extremely as the Third Reich, it might seem
problematic, to say the least, to speak of a Germancounterpole to ‘the
separative tendency’. But in fact, so much of the Nazi movement was the exact
inversion, like a glove turned inside out, of the Grail culture that Steiner
said was supposed to have developed in Germany. This was so even down to Hitler
‘s great love for the music of Wagner and especially Parsifal. The Nazis’
concern for Volksgemeinschaft (folk community) andVolksgenossenschaft (folk
cameraderie) was a shadow image of ‘the cultivation of an active concern of
every man for his neighbour’. In the middle European culture of the I (Ich),
the Nazis sought to eradicate the I. In the culture in which, during the age of
Kaspar Hauser, the idealistic principles of
liberty, equality and fraternity actually meant something – at least in
philosophy and the arts – the Nazis
later preached the ancient doctrine of Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. The
true German soul element as it had developed
over many centuries was in effect imprisoned, no longer visible, and in
its place, the world perceived an evil incubus, alien in spirit to the proper
nature and developmental stage of humanity in the mid-20th century: Faust
possessed by Mephistopheles. According to Steiner, the whole period of the 15th
to the 36th centuries (2160 years) is concerned with the development of Man’s
individualism, independence, self-reliance and conscience against the
background of a growing materialism and
the encounter with the mineral plane of existence. As the nature of mineral
‘reality’ is itself intrinsically one of fragmentation and separation (i.e.
alienation from the cosmic whole), then a major task in this modern epoch is
the understanding of the question of evil, which is ‘the separative tendency’
taken to the extreme. We can thus begin to sense the dimensions of Kaspar Hauser’s mission.
Whereas the Age of Samael in particular and the Middle Ages in general were
overawed or overwhelmed, so to speak, by the image of the Cross and the
Crucifixion, the challenge in the present epoch will be to awaken to the meaning
of the Resurrection, symbolised by the roses in the Rose Cross imagery. This
will happen in the most difficult possible circumstances, as the events of the
20th century, for example, have already made clear, through its wars and
persecutions, the terrible destruction of innocence of Nature, of ethnic
minorities, and of childhood itself, for the descent into materialism will be
so strong, and human consciousness will become so soporific, that only the
encounter with radical evil will suffice to awaken our consciences to the Good.
In the midst of a terrible darkness and ignorance, we shall be challenged to
awaken to spiritual reality. In the
heart ofEurope, the angelic being who quickly became known as the Child of
Europe showed through his life and death what this means. This is the second
reason why Kaspar Hauser is no ‘mere historical’ phenomenon and why his life
and death will shine like a beacon throughout the modern era. It is thus clear
that Kaspar Hauser was and is a great companion of Christian Rosenkreutzand
Christ Himself. Kaspar Hauser did not
achieve much outwardly in terms of great or widely recognised historical deeds;
he became known through the evil that
was done to him and through the quality of his being in response to it.
The Second Coming
The
third and final aspect of the esoteric significance of Kaspar Hauser that will
be mentioned here[21] relates to what is known as the Etheric Reappearance of
Christ – what is traditionally called the Second Coming.[22] Rudolf Steiner
emphasised that this will not occur in the physical body but in the etheric
body of the Earth, the spiritual form of the Earth’s biosphere which is the
realm of the angels and which extends to the orbit of the Moon. It will be an
ongoing event that will last till the end of Earth evolution. From the 1930s onwards, a few people, and
then gradually more and more as the decades and centuries go by, would be able
to perceive the Etheric Christ in the form of a being of light. As previously
mentioned, the first recorded public
lecture by Steiner on this subject was in Kaspar’s birthplace of
Karlsruhe on 25th Jan 1910.[23] He later emphasised that before humanity would
be able to perceive the Christ in His etheric form (in which his vessel would
not be a human being, such as Jesus was, but rather, an angel) it would have to
encounter what he called the Beast from the abyss. This he dated precisely to
the year 1933.[24] As we now know, the Beast did indeed appear in the year 1933
when Adolf Hitler came to power, exactly 100 years after Kaspar’s murder.
Throughout the 1930s Hitler’s demonic voice thundered out over Europe from the
Nazi Party rallies held in the swastika-bedecked city of Nuremberg, the very
city where the Child of Europe had been proclaimed in 1828, and among the ruins
of which Nazi leaders were judged after the war. Steiner thus spoke of this
reappearance or second resurrection of Christ in 1910 in Kaspar’s birthplace,
but it was not until three years later that he described what had preceded this
resurrection. The date was 2nd May 1913 and the place was – London. Here in the capital city of the
world’s greatest power of the time, the capital city of the nation that in the
1830s and 40s was initiating the world into industrial society, and the city of
the Foreign Office that had given Lord
Stanhope his orders as a secret agent[25], Steiner described how in the 1840s a
second Crucifixion of Christ had occurred in the etheric realm, not of course
of His physical body, but of the consciousness of the angel that was ‘bearing’
Him. The human being Jesus of Nazareth bore the divine being of the Christ for
the three years from the Baptism in the Jordan until the Crucifixion, and
enabled the Christ to experience human existence on the physical plane. Since
his Ascension, the Christ has dwelt in the etheric realm of the angels, the
supersensible sphere nearest the Earth and He has been borne by an angel; His outer form is thus that of an
angel just as it was a human being between 30 and 33 AD. This etheric realm in
which the angels are active is also the realm in which human thinking has its
being.[26] For some three centuries, the etheric realm had been increasingly polluted by the materialism of
human souls as they passed into the
first supersensible (Moon) sphere after death. This materialism of thought
reached a kind of peak in the 1840s, and its smog-like pollution clouded the
consciousness of the Christ-bearing angel. “This onset of unconsciousness in
the spiritual worlds will lead to the resurrection of the Christ-consciousness
in the souls of human beings living on earth in the 20th century…the
consciousness lost by humanity will arise again for clairvoyant vision…This was
a renewal of the Mystery of Golgotha, in order to bring about an awakening of
the previously hidden Christ-consciousness within human souls on earth.” It is
in this context that we can try to make sense of Steiner ‘s most enigmatic
statement about Kaspar Hauser . The first Mystery of Golgotha 2000 years ago in
Palestine , then the land of the Jews, was made possible through the sacrifice
of an innocent young man – Jesus of Nazareth. Karl Heyer reports the
well-authenticated remark of Steiner ‘s that: “if Kaspar Hauser had not lived
and died as he did, the contact between the earth and the heavenly would have
been completely severed.”[27] What was it that created the bridge that linked
the second crucifixion and the second resurrection of Christ ? Steiner does not
spell it out, but well over 100 years have now passed since the death of Kaspar
Hauser, and so we can now at least put
the question: was it not the sacrificial life and death of the angelic being of
Kaspar Hauser there in the land of the Germans, the crossroads region of the
heart of Europe[28], that built a
spiritual bridge between heaven and earth at the time of Europe’s darkest
materialism of mind and secured for mankind in the 20th century and for
centuries afterwards the possibility of seeing the resurrected Etheric Christ?
And if Kaspar Hauser’s sacrificial life is so intimately related to this Second
Crucifixion and Second Resurrection of Christ (Second Coming), does this not
suggest that his spiritual significance is of a most profound and awesome
nature?
Notes
1. Readers are referred, for example, to Peter Tradowsky,
Kaspar Hauser – The Struggle for the Spirit (Temple Lodge, 1997), esp. ch. 5
2. The seven archangelic Time Regents have a
specific function within the community of archangels; needless to say, there
many more archangels than just seven. The other archangels have various other
functions, such as being the guides or bearers of human groups and communities.
Trithemius’ description of the archangelic regencies is included in his book A
Treatise on the Seven Secondary Causes i.e. Intelligences, or Spirits, who move
the Spheres according to God (written 1508, published 1515 and dedicated to the
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I). He was also the author of the great book of cryptography, the
Steganographia and the teacher of the esotericist and magus Heinrich Cornelius
Agrippa von Nettesheim . Trithemius saw the archangelic periods as being fixed
at 354 years and 4 months each – a periodicity related to astronomical
phenomena of the Moon and Saturn – whereas Rudolf Steiner saw these periods as
becoming less rigid after the Incarnation of Christ)
3. The dates given – except for 2300 – are those
by Steiner cf. Trithemius’ dates: Samael 1171-1525, Gabriel 1525-1879, Michael
1879-2233
4. 3.3.1925, Tradowsky, p.281
5. Steiner pointed out in a lecture of
18.10.1918 (From Symptom To Reality in Modern History, Rudolf Steiner Press,
1976) that it was Joan of Arc who played the key role in differentiatingEngland
from France . After France’s resurgence led by Joan, and England’s subsequent
defeats, England turned away from trying to build a continental empire and
looked outwards to the oceans.
6. Steiner lecture of 18.5.1907 Occult Seals and
Columns GA 284/285. GA refers to Steiner ‘s Collected Works in German.
7. 4-14 Oct. 1911 GA 131 The lecture cycle known
as From Jesus to Christ (Rudolf Steiner
Press, 2005)
8. The Palatinate (the word comes from the old
imperial title Count Palatine – palatial
count – and is related to paladin) is an important region straddling the Rhine
and including the cities ofHeidelberg and Mannheim . It also includes Sponheim,
where Trithemius was active, and stems originally from the 10th cent. County
Palatine of Lotharingia (Lorraine). Its ruler was made one of the seven
hereditary imperial Electors by Emperor Charles IV’s Golden Bull of 1356 so
that the region assumed a decisive importance in Germany. In the mid-16th
century it embraced Calvinist Protestantism and by 1613 its capital Heidelberg
was becoming a centre of Rosicrucian activity. In that year, the Elector
Frederick V married Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I of England & VI
of Scotland. This alliance of the two Protestant courts was seen as a great
opportunity for those warlike and hotheaded Protestants who were spoiling for
war with the Catholic Habsburgs of Austria in the tense ‘Cold War’ situation of
1610-1618. The young and impressionable Frederick allowed himself to be swayed
by his adviser Christian of Anhalt to accept the offer of the Crown of Bohemia;
this was unacceptable to the Habsburgs and sparked the catastrophic 30 Years’
War.
9. lecture of 27.9.1911 GA 130, in Esoteric
Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz (Rudolf Steiner Press,
1984)
10. See
Tradowsky, esp. ch. 5
11.
Whereas human beings have physical (mineral), etheric (life) and astral
(feeling) ‘bodies’ and are developing their own ego during Earth evolution,
angels have an etheric, astral body and ego and are completing the development
of the next highest member, the Spirit-Self, during this same period.
12. The
efforts of the young would-be Czar, Dmitri, to gain the throne were frustrated
by a combination of Jesuit intrigues and Russian Orthodox and aristocratic
conservatism. His overthrow was followed by 7 years of chaos in Russia that
ended with the establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613.
13.
Steiner, From Symptom to Reality in Modern History, lecture IV
14. cf.
Ferdinand and Miranda in Shakespeare ‘s The Tempest, which was performed for
the wedding of Frederick and Elizabeth on Valentine’s Day 14th February, 1613.
15. It
was a year of destiny for both Napoleon and Russia. The Great Flaugergues
Comet, which had appeared in 1811, was
still visible in the heavens during Kaspar’s mother’s pregnancy and last
observed on 17 Aug 1812; he was born on 29 Sept 1812.
16. 17th
and 19th January 1915, GA 157
17.
Interestingly, the oak tree has from time immemorial been associated with Mars.
18.
Lecture of 15.12.1919 GA 194, Ideas for a New Europe (Rudolf Steiner Press,
1994) p.49
19.
Tradowsky, p.278
20. See
P. Roberts, World War I and Anglo-American Relations: The Role of Philip Kerr
and The Round Table, in ‘The Round Table’, Vol. 95, No. 383, pp.113 – 139, Jan.
2006, and Inderjeet Parmar, Univ of Manchester at:
http://ire.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/16/1/53.pdf
21.
There are many other aspects of the esoteric character of the destiny of Kaspar
Hauser but they cannot all be included here. See further: Tradowsky, Kaspar
Hauser – The Struggle for the Spirit.
22. This
is a complex subject; readers are referred to The Reappearance of Christ in the
Etheric (Anthroposophic Press, 1983)
23.
Apparently, he first gave a public lecture on it in Stockholm on the 12th
January 1910 but no record of that lecture exists. See T.H. Meyer, The
Boddhisattva Question (Temple Lodge, 1993), p.136.
24. In
the lecture of 20.9.1924 (GA 346) in The Book of Revelation and the work of the
priest (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1998)
25.
Stanhope was active as an agent in Sicily and Dresden 1812-1816 and thereafter,
mainly in southern Germany 1817-1835.
See J.Mayer, Lord Stanhope, Der Gegenspieler Kaspar Hausers (Urachhaus, 1988);
untranslated.
26. For
Christ and His Reappearance in the etheric realm, see The Reappearance of
Christ in the Etheric, Anthroposophic Press, 1983) and Steiner ‘s lecture
of 2.5.1913 in The Archangel Michael –
His Mission and Ours (Anthroposophic Press, 1994). The cyberspace of the
Internet is a materialistic and deceptive ‘copy’ of this angelic realm of
thoughts. It is noteworthy that both the Internet and a concern with angels
emerged in the 1990s.
27.
Tradowsky, p.282 and ch. 5
28. Both Pilsach, where he was imprisoned for 12
years, and Ansbach, where he was killed, are within 25 miles of Nuremberg.
