Four Modern Mystery Dramas E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 633

Beschreibung

The Doorway of Initiation – The Trial of the Soul – The Guardian of the Threshold – The Souls Awaken Rudolf Steiner's Four Modern Mystery Dramas are powerful portrayals of the complex laws of reincarnation and karma, transporting us to landscapes of soul and spirit where supra-sensory beings are visible, active and influential. Through perception of these hidden worlds, we are given tools to comprehend the background to the struggles we face in everyday life – both in human relationships and in our attempts to practise spiritual development. Written between the years 1910 and 1913, during periods of intense inner and outer work, the dramas are powerful testimonies to Steiner's artistic creativity. By manifesting soul and spirit forms on stage, they foreshadow a dramatic art of the future. Rudolf Steiner planned for all four mystery dramas to be performed in August 1923, but this was no longer possible because of the burning of the first Goetheanum on New Year's Eve, 1922. They were eventually performed together for the first time in 1930 and since then have been staged regularly, in many languages, throughout the world. This fresh rendering into English by Richard Ramsbotham also features an extensive introduction by him. >GA 14

Leseprobe

FOUR MODERN MYSTERY DRAMAS

THE DOORWAY OF INITIATION

THE TRIAL OF THE SOUL

THE GUARDIAN OF THE THRESHOLD

THE SOULS AWAKEN

TRANSLATED AND INTRODUCED BY RICHARD RAMSBOTHAM

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

CW 14

Rudolf Steiner Press

Hillside House, The Square

Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2023

Originally published in German under the title Vier Mysteriendramen (volume 14 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach.

Based on the fifth German edition 1998

The ‘seal’ drawings for the four plays were designed by Rudolf Steiner for the first edition 1910-1913

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1998

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 642 5

Cover by Morgan Creative

Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Vishakapatnam, India

Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Introduction by Richard Ramsbotham

THE DOORWAY OF INITIATION

A Rosicrucian Mystery through Rudolf Steiner

Characters

Prelude, Sophia’s room

Scene One: A rose-red room

Scene Two: Outdoor landscape

Scene Three: A meditation room

Scene Four: The soul world

Scene Five: An underground rock temple

Scene Six: The soul world

Scene Seven: The spirit realm

Interlude: Sophia’s room

Scene Eight: A rose-red room

Scene Nine: Outdoor landscape

Scene Ten: Meditation room

Scene Eleven: The Sun Temple

THE TRIAL OF THE SOUL

Life-Pictures in Dramatic Scenes, as a Sequel to The Doorway of Initiation through Rudolf Steiner

Characters, Figures and Events

Scene One: Capesius’s library and study

Scene Two: A meditation room

Scene Three: A rose-red room

Scene Four: Capesius’s study

Scene Five: Outdoor landscape

Scene Six: A forest meadow

Scene Seven: A room in the castle

Scene Eight: The same room

Scene Nine: A forest meadow

Scene Ten: Outdoor landscape

Scene Eleven: A meditation room

Scene Twelve: The same room

Scene Thirteen: The Sun Temple

THE GUARDIAN OF THE THRESHOLD

Soul Events in Dramatic Scenes by Rudolf Steiner

Characters, Figures and Events

Scene One: An indigo-blue room

Scene Two: The same room

Scene Three: In Lucifer’s realm

Scene Four: A rose-red room

Scene Five: A room in Felix Balde’s woodland cottage

Scene Six: A space not bound by artificial walls

Scene Seven: A landscape of fantastic forms

Scene Eight: The realm of Ahriman

Scene Nine: A friendly landscape in morning sunlight

Scene Ten: The Temple of the Mystic Brotherhood

THE SOULS AWAKEN

Spiritual and Soul Events in Dramatic Scenes by Rudolf Steiner

Characters, Figures and Events

Scene One: Hilary Gottgetreu’s accounting office

Scene Two: A mountain landscape

Scene Three: The same landscape

Scene Four: The same landscape

Scene Five: The spiritual world

Scene Six: The spiritual world

Scene Seven: A temple in an Egyptian style

Scene Eight: The same temple

Scene Nine: A room in Hilary’s house

Scene Ten: The same room

Scene Eleven: The same room

Scene Twelve: The Earth’s interior

Scene Thirteen: A larger reception room in Hilary’s house

Scene Fourteen: The same room

Scene Fifteen: The same room

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

RUDOLF Steiner wrote and staged his first Mystery Drama in 1910; the second drama followed in 1911, and the third and fourth in 1912 and 1913. The first performances of the dramas took place under the direction of Rudolf Steiner in Munich as private events, only accessible to members of the Theosophical Society—and from 1913 the Anthroposophical Society—as follows:

The Doorway of Initiation at the Schauspielhaus on 15 August 1910

The Trial of the Soul at the Gärtnerplatz-Theater on 17 August 1911

The Guardian of the Threshold at the Gärtnerplatz-Theater on 24 August 1912

The Souls Awaken at the Volkstheater on 22 August 1913

The performance of the fifth drama was planned for the summer of 1914. As in previous years, Rudolf Steiner intended to write it before the rehearsals began. Tragically, the First World War broke out in August. The festival events had to be cancelled and the fifth drama, fully conceived by Rudolf Steiner, was sadly never committed to paper.

The complete performance of the four existing dramas, planned for the summer of 1923 in the newly built Goetheanum in Dornach, and for which Rudolf Steiner had already begun preparations, did not take place due to the catastrophic fire that destroyed the building on New Year’s Eve 1922/23.

After Rudolf Steiner’s death in 1925, the first two Mystery Dramas were performed in 1928 under the direction of Marie Steiner-von Sivers at the opening of the second Goetheanum, with the third and fourth dramas following shortly after.

The Doorway of Initiation on 30 September 1928

The Trial of the Soul on 4 October 1928

The Guardian of the Threshold on 29 September 1929

The Souls Awaken on 10 June 1930

A complete performance of the four dramas took place for the first time at Christmas 1930 for members of the General Anthroposophical Society and for the public on 6, 8, 11 and 14 August 1934. Since then, the four Mystery Dramas have been performed regularly, as public events, at the Goetheanum. They have also been performed in translation in many countries around the world.

Handwritten announcement by Rudolf Steiner

INTRODUCTION

THE following four ‘modern Mystery Dramas’—as their author once named them on a flyer he wrote in English (see facsimile opposite) are the beginning of something quite new in the evolution of drama—and radically expand what it was previously possible to explore and present on stage.

It has been increasingly recognized that the earliest origins of drama lay in the distant past in the ancient Mysteries and their Mystery centres. These were seen as being of essential importance for the cultures of which they were a part, even though their teachings and rites were kept strictly secret. The claim to the very first drama has been made for a kind of play performed within Ancient Egyptian initiation rituals.* It is also known that some form of ‘ancient Mystery Drama’ formed part of the initiation rites neophytes underwent in the Mysteries of Eleusis in Ancient Greece.† The radical new step of drama being performed on an open stage, before a public audience, was taken by Aeschylus, the first of the great Greek tragedians. This step was not without its dangers. Aeschylus had been brought up in Eleusis and was accused of having betrayed the Mysteries in one of his plays,‡ a crime punishable by death. He was acquitted when it was proved he had never been initiated and that any similarity to happenings or teachings within the Mysteries was coincidental. Through Aeschylus, therefore, drama stepped out of its childhood home within the Mysteries and out into the public world. Aeschylus stumbled, as it were, out of the Mysteries, revealing them without intending to, as he (and the art of drama with him) stepped out into the open light of modern culture.

Over 2,000 years later, Rudolf Steiner, one could say, took the reverse path to Aeschylus. In no way abandoning, but rather developing further the great cultural gifts humanity had won for itself in the meantime, Steiner found the way once more into the realms formerly encountered in the Mysteries—and just as old forms of Mystery Drama existed in the old Mysteries, so he created new forms of Mystery Drama suited for the new possibilities of today. He (and the art of drama with him) stumbled, as it were, not back into the old Mysteries but freely, consciously and openly, forward into new ones.*

***

Steiner was not rejecting drama as it had developed until then, but rather taking it further, in accordance with what is demanded and possible today.

He once briefly outlined the evolution of drama from Ancient Greece to Shakespeare, to what he was now attempting:

The Ancient Greek actors wished to avoid presenting the individual human element. That is why they wore extensions to their legs and feet (called ‘cothurni’) and let their voices resound through a simple musical instrument. For they wished to raise the dramatic action above the individual and personal.

I am not speaking, however, against naturalism, which for a certain age was inevitable and right. For when Shakespeare created his dramatic characters in their supreme perfection, the stage had been reached of presenting human beings in all their humanness. A very different need and artistic feeling was present at that time.

But now the time has come when we must find our way back to the spiritual, also in poetic art; we must find the way again to presenting dramatic figures in which human beings, as spiritual beings as well as bodily ones, are able to move amidst the spiritual happenings of the world, which permeate everything.

I have made a first weak attempt at this in my Mystery Dramas. People do not converse there as they do in the market-place or the street, but as they do when higher spiritual impulses play between them, and their instincts, desires and passions are crossed by paths of destiny, of karma, as these develop over centuries and millennia in repeated earthly lives.

[…] We must not lose what we have gained by having for centuries now held up the imitation of nature as an artistic ideal. Those who deride materialism are bad artists as well as bad scientists. […] We must have the will really to grasp hold of and to penetrate, spiritually, the material world; […] We must—though not by developing dry symbolism or allegory—find our way back into the spiritual.*

Steiner described what he was doing as ‘spiritual realism’, for it presents spiritual realities on stage. Drama of this kind, he says—and it is our own experience working with the plays—can be deeply satisfying to people’s sense for reality, regardless of whether they view the world spiritually or materialistically. In the Mystery Dramas:

[…] a certain artistic element has been created in which everything is spiritually realistic. One who thinks realistically—a genuinely, artistic and sensitive realist—experiences a certain amount of suffering at unrealistic performances. Even what at a certain level can give great satisfaction can be at another level a source of pain. […] Materialistic and spiritual things don’t need to but can contradict each other. But there is no need for what is realistic and what is spiritual to contradict each other and what is spiritually realistic can be admired and found wonderful [bewundenswert] even by a materialistic person.†

***

The plays are a strongly grounded in the human dramatic element— with a wide range of characters going through human trials and challenges, in many different spheres of life. When this human element is gone beyond—when the dramas expand to become Mystery Dramas— spiritual beings and realms and experiences are directly and artistically presented. It is a misunderstanding to think that Steiner is describing, cognitively, spiritual realities, as he does in his lectures and books. The more we work with the Mystery Dramas, the more we discover that every scene, however complex, is artistically and dramatically conceived, in ways befitting the realities being presented.

Their artistic form creates many new practical theatrical demands and questions regarding how to perform and stage them. In terms of their content, however, and what they present, they also go far beyond the previous limits of drama.

We experience, for example, the different aspects of people’s souls— both harmonious and divisive—appearing on stage. Steiner’s first Mystery Drama appeared shortly before the lectures he gave on psychosophy*—or spiritual psychology—and it is surely no coincidence when we hear in the ‘Prelude’ to The Doorway of Initiation that Sophia’s husband is away at a psychology conference, where his new relationship to psychology is described as being unlikely to be understood—as unlikely, no doubt, as what is presented in these plays!

We see direct encounters of someone (Johannes) with their own double—or Doppelgänger. We see the appearance of beneficent spiritual beings on stage, such as the Guardian of the Threshold—and adversarial ones, such as Lucifer and Ahriman, experiencing how the latter two beings work and reveal (or do not reveal) themselves. We experience many forms of spiritual deceptions, trials and breakthroughs. We experience elemental nature beings (in the fourth play) and the presence of those who have died.

In the third play we also experience a character (Dr Strader) working on a new form of ‘etheric’ technology. Steiner made sketches for Strader’s ‘machines’, models of which were created and presented on stage.

There are also (in the second and fourth plays) extended scenes depicting the characters’ previous lives on earth and even (in the fourth play) scenes showing their experiences in the spiritual worlds between two lives. In the fourth play we also witness a neophyte’s initiation in Ancient Egypt, followed by scenes where the characters who have inwardly beheld this event must come to terms with its consequences for their present lives.

Increasingly as the plays go on, and particularly in the third and fourth Mystery Dramas, the focus turns to the healthy transformation of modern civilization, specifically, in the fourth play, in the form of a modern factory. But in order to bring this about there is nothing, seemingly, either on earth or in the spiritual worlds, that can remain unaddressed. The fourth Mystery Drama has no ‘happy ending’ and the whole project in the play may even be said to ‘fail’ outwardly. In view of today’s civilizational challenges and the threat of society plunging into some form of technocratic dystopia, to conclude with any kind of utopian solution would obviously be absurd.

Steiner’s Mystery Dramas, if taken seriously, offer us, both individually and socially, huge help towards avoiding such a plunge. They offer no illusory ending, but they do bring every character to where they should prove able to meet quite differently, courageously and consciously, whatever the future may bring and ask.

***

The first Mystery Drama, The Doorway of Initiation, lays the basis for modern Mystery Drama. Aside from the extraordinary path travelled by Johannes Thomasius and the other characters, the possibilities of drama are developed throughout the play, until modern Mystery Drama has been born.

The second Mystery Drama, The Trial of the Soul, sees a heightened unfolding of what was begun in the first play. In The Doorway of Initiation we watch the metamorphosis of fairy tale (specifically of Goethe’s fairy tale, The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily) into mature Mystery Drama, with human characters replacing the figures of Goethe’s tale and direct spiritual experiences and encounters replacing fairy tale scenes. The Trial of the Soul, as its title suggests and as the main characters each discover in the first five scenes, is far from being a fairy tale. (Although it contains in Scene 5 the most extensive of all Felicia Balde’s fairy tales within the Mystery Dramas.) The play’s central scenes (6, 7, 8, 9) then present an extensive portrayal of the characters’ previous lives in the Middle Ages, as experienced by three of the characters (Maria, Johannes and Capesius). In the following scenes these three characters come to terms (or are unable to) with the lives they have experienced—and the final scene (in the Sun Temple) picks up the threads of what remains unresolved and ends by looking ahead to all that may change this in future.

The third Mystery Drama, The Guardian of the Threshold, whose events happen thirteen years after those of the first play, begins with a previously ‘secret’ Mystery centre opening its doors to the public. This deed goes unexpectedly ‘wrong’, leading all the main characters into intense and interconnected crises. At the furthest point of these, they find themselves at the threshold of the spiritual world, where they face the trials through which they may not only resolve their individual crises, but also, eventually, play a part in healing the crisis in the Mystery school, transforming its way of working from one based on handed-down tradition to one suited to free and individual human beings now. This transformation then takes place in the final scene of the play. The immense journey of The Guardian of the Threshold leads, in the end, to the flowering of all that has been developing up till then within the Mystery Dramas.

In the fourth Mystery Drama, The Souls Awaken, what was achieved potentially at the end of the third play has now to become a reality within modern civilization, in the specific context of a factory. On the way towards this, alongside the engagement with the world of industry, the heights of the spiritual world (between death and a new birth), the depths of the characters’ past lives (in Ancient Egypt) and the spiritual complexities of the human soul are met with and experienced as nowhere else in the Mystery Dramas. In resolving what has been shown to them of their past lives in Egypt, the characters of Maria and Johannes at last reach through to what they have striven until then to achieve. The last five scenes of The Souls Awaken are then some of the shortest and most intense in all the plays. Despite the enormous new challenges the characters (and we) are faced with, what is won in these scenes has a seed-like character, capable of enduring the storms that may lie ahead and bringing about new life in future.

A fifth Mystery Drama was planned for the Summer 1914, but the outbreak of the First World War made this impossible and it was never written. Oskar Schmiedel, who performed in the original Mystery Dramas directed by Rudolf Steiner, recalls Steiner saying at that time that he ‘was planning on writing twelve Mystery Dramas’!*

***

To say more than this would be unwise. The Mystery Dramas speak for themselves better than anyone can, even Rudolf Steiner. When Steiner was once asked after a lecture to explain something about the characters in the Mystery Dramas, he replied: ‘I do not like at all to comment on or interpret these plays. I myself would be their worst possible interpreter [‘der allerschlechteste Interpret’], because I never had any concepts but rather the living figures themselves before my eyes.’†

He warned others against interpretation in no uncertain terms:

[…] an unfortunate thing may happen. If one tries, as I tried in my four Mystery Dramas, to present what cannot be expressed in ideas concerning the essential nature of the human being, there spring up sympathetic but not fully comprehending people who try to explain everything in ideas, who write commentaries. This—I repeat—is an appalling thing!‡;

When Steiner published the fourth Mystery Drama he must have been asked more than once to add some kind of introduction, to help people understand the play. He refused, saying:

In response to many questions I began yet again to try and add some explanatory remarks […] This time too, however, I have stopped myself making this attempt. It goes against the grain to add something like this to a portrayal which should speak for itself.*

***

The greatest obstacle to more people taking up these plays remains, of course, their difficulty, intensity and depth. There is no getting around this, as William Blake knew well: ‘The wisest of the ancients considered what is not too explicit as the finest for instruction because it rouses the faculties to act.’†

There are two obstacles, however, which may have hindered people unnecessarily from engaging with these plays as they might—and which can perhaps, at least partly, be removed.

Firstly, as even a brief glance at the plays will show, the speeches are very long. For a contemporary English-speaking audience this can seem not merely off-putting but almost an affront to our expectations of what is possible on stage and what is not. Without denying the challenge of this, it is good to know, perhaps, that in the great works of German-speaking theatre, such as the plays of Goethe and Schiller, the speeches are also far longer than those in English-speaking theatre. Knowing that the Mystery Dramas, to some extent at least, spring from the background of such theatre may help us to meet them on their own terms, rather than expecting them to be something they are not. It is also possible, when staging them, to make visible, through mime or tableaux, images and experiences that are being spoken of, which can sometimes be of great help to English-speaking or other present-day performers and audiences.

Secondly, the translations of the plays—so deeply valuable for those interested in them—have often been hard for people with no previous knowledge of Steiner’s work to connect to. In translating these plays it became clear to me that three levels of translation were necessary. The first was just to understand, in thought, what was being said. The second was to express this in English; not just to put the German sentences into English (which might still then sound German) but to re-cast them so that they sound English. Thirdly, it was necessary to put them into lines an actor could speak—and an audience could understand when hearing them.

This last stage (and even occasionally the second stage) has, in my opinion, sometimes been omitted by translators. I make no claims to perfection and new and ‘better’ translations will, I am sure, be made in future, but I hope nevertheless that my attempt to include this third level may enable some people to encounter the plays who might otherwise not have done.*

***

The first and second Mystery Dramas are in free verse, almost entirely in an iambic rhythm.† The third Mystery Drama is in blank verse—that is, in unrhyming iambic pentameter.‡ (This is the line Rudolf Steiner used throughout most of the Mystery Dramas, as did Shakespeare in most of his work.) The fourth Mystery Drama is in free verse—with lines, that is, of irregular length and rhythm. Whenever Steiner does not write in iambic pentameter, for example in the speeches of the soul-forces or in some of the meditations and verses in the plays, I have tried as far as possible to keep the original rhythm.

I began translating these plays while directing a production of the second Mystery Drama. The group had already started work when I arrived and was using a rendering of the play into English in blank verse. I made a few changes to the text, where these seemed necessary, and needed to write these in the same rhythm. My first complete translation was of the third Mystery Drama, which I also wrote in blank verse.

When work began on the fourth Mystery Drama, I made a new translation into free verse, as this seemed fitting for this final Mystery Drama of Steiner’s, with its contemporary setting and relevance.* I then translated the first and second Mystery Dramas and also wrote them in free verse, but found it best to keep this almost entirely in an iambic rhythm. I thus translated the plays in the rather odd order of third/fourth/first/ second.

***

I am grateful to all those I have worked with on these plays over many years, with a special thank you to all those who have made these translations possible. They are offered in the hope that these extraordinary ‘new beginnings’ may inspire more and more people and may continue to bear fruit in future.

Richard RamsbothamMay, 2023

____________ 

*The Triumph of Horus: An Ancient Egyptian Sacred Drama —announced as ‘The Oldest Play in the World’. Translated by H. W. Fairman (University of California Press, 1974).

† Many writers have described this drama (concerning Demeter and Persephone) within the rites of Eleusis. See, for example, Karl Kerenyi’s Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter (Princeton University Press, 1991). Edouard Schuré wrote about this play in detail in The Great Initiates and The Genesis of Tragedy and the Sacred Drama of Eleusis (1936, republished by Kessinger Books). The latter contains Schuré’s full (and bold) recreation of this ‘Sacred Drama of Eleusis’.

‡ The play was Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound.

* In case the word ‘stumbles’ surprises anyone, I mean it in the positive sense of not creating something finished, but rather a new beginning. Steiner spoke very clearly about this: ‘We are not trying […] to represent things in the same manner as is done on the ordinary modern stage. Those who have some inkling of the transformative impulse our kind of spiritual knowledge should give to art will know that we are aiming at something quite different. They will also know that performances which will only be able to achieve a certain perfection in the future must make a beginning in all their imperfection in the present.’ They are: ‘the beginning of something which is to come, the beginning of something which will one day be regarded as artistic truth in the deepest and most spiritual sense of the words, however imperfect and rudimentary it may seem to you today.’ (Lecture by Rudolf Steiner on 18 August 1911, in Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit (GA 129).

* Lecture by Rudolf Steiner on 20 May 1923 in: The Arts and Their Mission, Lecture 8 (GA 276).

‡ Lecture by Rudolf Steiner on 17 September, 1910 in: Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas (Anthroposophic Press, 1983).

*The Doorway of Initiation was first performed in August 1910. At the beginning of November 1910 Steiner gave his four lectures on psychosophy. They are published in English in: A Psychology of Body, Soul and Spirit: Anthroposophy, Psychosophy, Pneumatosophy (GA 115), introduced by Robert Sardello.

*Erinnerungen an Rudolf Steiner by Oskar Schmiedel (Stuttgart 2001). Quoted in Die Uraufführung der Mysteriendramen von und durch Rudolf Steiner—München 1910-1913 by Wilfried Hammacher (Dornach 2010), in the section: ‘… Er plane, zwölf Mysterienspiele zu schreiben’, page 610.

† In answer to a question after a lecture in the Hague on 28 March 1913. In Fragebeantwortungen und Interviews by Rudolf Steiner, GA 244 (Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, 2022), page 485.

‡ Lecture by Rudolf Steiner on 18 May 1923 in: The Arts and Their Mission, Lecture 7 (GA 276).

* From Rudolf Steiner’s character notes at the beginning of The Souls Awaken.

† William Blake, letter to Revd. Dr Trusler, 3 August 1799.

* This is not at all to speak against any of the previous translations. Having translated these Mystery Dramas over several years, I have great appreciation for what each previous translator has accomplished. With every new translation something new has been achieved and they have been and are of immense value for many performers, audiences and readers. The translations into English of all four Mystery Dramas (that I am aware of) are by Harry Collison (1925—Anthroposophical Publishing Co.); Hans Pusch (1973—SteinerBooks); Adam Bittleston (1982—Rudolf Steiner Press); and J. C. McCullough (2002-2005—The Modern Spirit Press). Michael Burton and Adrian Locher translated the fourth Mystery Drama, The Soul’s Awakening, in 1994 (Temple Lodge Publishing) and Alexander Gifford has written lively versions of the first three Mystery Dramas in blank verse (working from Hans Pusch’s translation).

† An iambic ‘foot’ has two syllables in a short-long rhythm (di-dum).

‡ A line with 5 (or 5 ½) iambic feet.

* These translations of the third and fourth Mystery Dramas, with an introduction, were published by Wynstones Press in 2017.

THE DOORWAY OF INITIATION

A Rosicrucian Mysterythrough Rudolf Steiner

CHARACTERS

a) PRELUDE AND INTERLUDE:

Sophia

Estella

Two Children

b) THE MYSTERY:

Johannes Thomasius

Maria

Benedictus

Theodosius, whose archetype is revealed in the course of the play as the Spirit of Love

Romanus, whose archetype is revealed in the course of the play as the Spirit of Action

Retardus, only active as a Spirit

Germanus, whose archetype is revealed in the course of the play as the Spirit of the Earth-Brain

Helena, whose archetype is revealed in the course of the play as Lucifer

Philia

Astrid

Luna

friends of Maria, whose archetypes are revealed in the course of the play as the Spirits of Maria’s Soul-Forces

Professor Capesius

Doctor Strader

Felix Balde, who is revealed as the bearer of the Spirit of Nature Felicia Balde

The Other Maria, whose archetype is revealed in the course of the play as the Soul of Love

Theodora, a seeress

Ahriman, thought of as being active only as a Soul

The Spirit of the Elements, thought of as active only as a Spirit

A Child, whose archetype is revealed in the course of the play as a young Soul

PRELUDE

Sophia’s room—the main colour is yellow-red. Sophia with her two children, a boy and a girl. Then Estella.

THE CHILDREN, SINGING:

Sophia accompanies them on the piano.

The sunlight’s glory spreads

Through the world’s wide spaces,

The birdsong echoes in joy

Through the air’s heavenly fields,

The plants spring up and shine out grace

From the earth their mother,

And human souls arise

In their thankful hearts

Up to the spirits of the world.

SOPHIA:

Now, children—off to your room—and dwell on the words we’ve been singing.

Sophia leads the children out, Estella enters.

ESTELLA:

Hello, my dear Sophie. I hope I’m not disturbing you.

SOPHIA:

Not at all, my good Estella. I’m delighted to see you. (They greet one another and then:) Let’s sit over here.

ESTELLA:

Have you had good news from your husband?

SOPHIA:

Very good. He’s at a psychology conference. He says it’s interesting, although he finds the approach there to many huge and significant questions unappealing. But what fascinates him, as a psychologist, is how, through a particular spiritual short-sightedness, people make it impossible for themselves to gain a clear view of the mysteries they’re dealing with.

ESTELLA:

And he’s giving a talk himself, isn’t he, on an important theme?

SOPHIA:

Yes—on a theme both he and I find very important. He doesn’t hold out much hope, though, that what he brings will have any effect, given the scientific attitudes of the audience.

ESTELLA:

I’ve been led here by the wish, my dear Sophie, that you and I might spend the evening together. Tonight is the performance of the play Exiled and Uprooted, and you could give me no greater pleasure than by coming to see it with me.

SOPHIA:

It’s slipped your mind, dear Estella, that this evening our society has its own performance, which we’ve spent a long time preparing for.

ESTELLA:

Oh dear, yes, I’d forgotten. I’d so happily have spent this evening with my old friend. I’d been looking forward to sitting beside you and gazing into the depths that lurk beneath contemporary life. But your ideology—that I find so alienating—will soon destroy even what little remains of the beautiful bond that has joined our hearts since we shared that same little desk together at school.

SOPHIA:

You’ve often said that; yet you’ve always had to admit that our opinions need not be any hindrance to the affection that’s lived between us since the shared days of our youth.

ESTELLA:

It’s true—I have often said that. But it keeps on causing bitterness in me to see how with each year that passes you grow ever more estranged from all that I find valuable in life.

SOPHIA:

But that’s the very way we could be so much for one another—if we can each value and accept where our different perspectives have led us.

ESTELLA:

Aagh—I often let my reason tell me you are right. But something in me rebels against the way you look at life.

SOPHIA:

Then honestly admit to yourself that what you really ask of me is that I reject the inmost core of my being.

ESTELLA:

If not for one thing, I could have accepted it all. I can well imagine people with different ways of viewing the world resounding in complete sympathy with each other when they meet. But the direction of your ideas, in its whole nature, obliges you to assume a certain superiority. Other people are well able to stand side by side, and think of the other’s opinions as caused by different possible viewpoints, but nonetheless to be equally justified. But your view of the world declares itself to be deeper than all others. It sees these simply as outgrowths of lower stages of human evolution.

SOPHIA:

You could know, though, from all our conversations, that those who share my way of seeing things do not make knowledge or opinions the final measure of someone’s worth. And if we do indeed view our ideas as those that must be taken hold of, in a living way, if the rest of our life is not to lack all true foundation, we nonetheless try very hard not to set too high a value on someone because they have been able to become an instrument of what we see as the true goals of life.

ESTELLA:

That all seems finely said. But it doesn’t take away one nagging suspicion. For I’m not going to fool myself that a world-view, ascribing to itself illimitable depths, can only end up, through its pretences of profundity, at a certain superficiality. You are much too dear a friend for me to want to point the finger at those who share your way of thinking, who swear by your ideas and yet display the most grotesque spiritual arrogance, wholly unaware that the emptiness and banality of their souls shouts from everything they say and do. Nor do I wish to point out that many of those around you seem completely insensitive and even indifferent to the lives of others. The greatness of your own soul has, I know, never pulled you away from all that everyday life demands from those one must unhesitatingly call good. And yet, the very fact that you’re leaving me alone this evening, when real life is authentically and artistically to be seen on stage, shows me that the ideas you hold about life are creating even in you—forgive me for saying so—a certain superficiality.

SOPHIA:

What does it consist in, this superficiality?

ESTELLA:

As we’ve known each other for so long, it should be clear to you how I’ve fully freed myself from a way of life bound by convention and the banalities of popular opinion. I have sought to understand why so many people must undergo seemingly undeserved suffering. I have worked hard to get up close to both the depths and the heights of life. I have even explored the sciences, as far as they’re accessible to me, to glean all manner of explanations for things.

Well, to get to the point—the whole matter in front of us now— it has become quite clear to me what true art is. I understand, I believe, how it seizes hold of the wellsprings of life, and sets its true and higher reality before our souls. When I can open myself up to art like this, I feel I am sensing the beating, throbbing pulse of our times. And it’s appalling for me to think that you, my dear Sophie, should show so little interest in such art, brimming with the stuff of life, and should prefer instead something in a style I can only see as didactic, allegorical and hopelessly outmoded—which gazes on doll-like cyphers rather than living human beings and expresses its admiration for a series of symbolic happenings far removed from everything in daily life that arouses our compassion and our sense of being actively and sympathetically involved in it.

SOPHIA:

My dear Estella, you simply don’t wish to understand that life is only to be found in its richest abundance there where you see merely dry, spun out thoughts. And that there might be people for whom what you see as ‘reality brimming with life’ is hopelessly insufficient if not viewed in connection with the source from which it actually springs. Maybe my words sound harsh. But our friendship demands complete honesty between us. Like so many others, you know the spirit only as the bearer of knowledge; you’re only aware of the spirit in the form of thoughts. You want nothing to do with the living, creative spirit that fashions human beings with elemental power, the way that embryonic forces fashion the creatures of nature. In art, for example, what you and many others see as naïve, natural and original for me does away with the Spirit. Whereas our way of looking at the world unites fully free conscious activity with the naïve powers at work in the world. We raise the naïve and natural to consciousness, without robbing it of the fresh and abundant fountain-springs of its life. You believe that one’s thoughts about the human character have no part in it— that this must somehow be formed by itself. You don’t wish to see how thought wholly submerges itself in the creative spirit of the world, touches the living wellsprings of existence, and re-emerges as the creative seed-kernel itself. It’s absurd to think that the forces in the seed teach the plant to grow—they show themselves to be a living reality within it—and just as little do our ideas teach: life-giving, they pour into us, setting our lives aflame. I thank the ideas now available to me for everything that gives my life meaning. I thank them not only for the heart-filled courage but also for the understanding and the strength through which I hope to make of my children individuals who are not just conventionally able to perform some useful function in outer life, but who bear an inner peace and contentment within themselves. Well, my dear Estella—I won’t go into everything—I don’t want to say too much.

ESTELLA:

No…

SOPHIA:

But I’d like to say one more thing. I’m convinced that the dreams you share with so many can only come true if people are able to link what they call ‘reality’ and ‘life’ with the deeper experiences you have so often called fantasies and illusions. It might seem strange to you—but I experience much of what you see as genuine art merely as an unproductive criticism of life. For one will never satisfy any hunger, or dry any tears, or uncover any of the sources of corruption and depravity, if one merely puts on stage the outer manifestations of hunger, grief or corruption. The way these are normally shown is unspeakably far removed from the true depths of life and the complex and profound interrelationships between different beings.

ESTELLA:

When you speak like this—it’s not that I don’t understand you— you simply show me quite clearly you’d rather wallow in fantasies than face the realities of life. Our paths now really are separating. This evening I must do without my friend.

She gets up.

I have to leave you now; we’ll remain, though, I think, old good friends.

SOPHIA:

We really must do—yes.

During the last words Sophia leads her friend to the door.Curtain.

SCENE ONE

A room which is rose-red in tone. On the right (seen from the audience) is the door to a lecture-hall; the characters gradually emerge from this hall and each lingers for a while in this room. During this time they speak out some of what has been stirred up in them by a lecture they have heard in the hall. Maria and Johannes appear first, then others join them. The lecture finished a little while ago and the speeches that follow are continuations of conversations that already began in the lecture hall.*

MARIA:

O my friend

We’re so close

It’s terrible to have to witness

Your soul and spirit

Withering in this way.

It makes me see as well

That all that’s grown so beautifully between us,

These last ten years,

Uniting us,

Has borne no fruit.

Even this momentous talk

Where so much has been brought to us

That shines the brightest light

Into the dark, unconscious places of the soul,

Even this,

Has brought you only shadows.

The shocks and deep wounds you felt

After so many of our speaker’s words

I experienced as if it was happening to me.

Your eyes,

When I saw them,

Used to shine back

Their pure joy

At all the things and beings around.

What the sunlight and the air,

Gracing the forms of nature

And unveiling the mysteries of the world,

Paint in swift moments that pass,

Your soul would seize hold of

In images of peculiar beauty.

Your hand, as yet unskilled,

Could not embody

In strong and radiant colours

The living dance your soul beheld.

But in our hearts

We beautifully believed

That with your soul

Immersed, as it was, so joyfully

And so inwardly

In all the happenings of the world

The future would surely bring

The hand’s artistic mastery as well.

What the power of spirit-knowledge

So wondrously reveals

About the wellsprings of existence—

All this would pour

With infinite joy of soul

Into people’s hearts

Through your art—

This was what we thought.

Future blessing and healing

Mirrored in forms of most radiant beauty—

As the fruit of your work—

This was how I pictured

Your soul’s true striving.

But now it seems

The flame of strength within you

Has been extinguished,

Your infectious joy in creativity

Seems dead—

Your arm—which a few years ago

Guided your brush

With young, fresh power

Seems almost paralysed.

JOHANNES:

It’s true.

Alas, that’s how it is.

All the fire I used to burn with has gone.

That’s how it feels.

My eye just blankly gazes

On all the splendour and beauty

The sunlight gives to the world.

My heart feels almost nothing

When the sky, in all its ever-changing moods,

Turns and plays around me.

My hand is in no way stirred

To compel into ever-living forms of art

What elemental powers,

From deep grounds of existence,

Momentarily conjure up before our senses.

I’ve lost the very urge to create,

Which before welled up in me so joyfully.

A numbness is spreading over my whole being.

MARIA:

It’s the deepest sorrow to me

That this has been brought about in you by

All that I experience as the highest—

As the stream of holiness that runs through our lives.

My friend, within that ever-changing game

That people call existence,

An eternal, spiritual life is hidden.

And every soul interweaves within this life.

I experience myself in the midst of spirit-powers

Whose effects reach down as if into ocean-depths,

And I see people’s lives

Like the ruffled waves on the water’s surface.

I feel one with the whole purpose of life

That’s striven for so restlessly,

And which to me seems only

The revelation of our own true being.

I saw how this would often unite itself

With the core of someone’s soul,

Raising them to the very highest

For which the heart can yearn.

But the way it lives in me

Reveals it as an evil fruit,

Whenever my being touches

The beings of others.

This destiny of mine also shows itself

In everything I wished to give you,

Who lovingly drew near to me.

With me at your side

You courageously wanted to tread the paths

That should have led to an ennobling of your creative work.

And what has happened?

What constantly revealed itself to me, in its true being,

As the highest, most pristine life,

All this—was death for your spirit.

JOHANNES:

Exactly so.

What lifts your soul

Into light-filled spirit-heights,

Plunges me,

If I experience it together with you,

Into dark nether-realms of death.

When, in the early dawn of our friendship,

You guided me to that wellspring of revelation

That is able to illuminate those darknesses

The human soul enters every night unconsciously;

Through which our erring selves stray

When death seems to make a mockery

Of life’s true purpose;

And when you helped me recognize the truth

Of our repeated lives on earth,—

Then it was possible to think

That I would develop

Into one who indeed lives in the spirit.

And I felt certain

That the artist’s seeing eye

And true confidence in all I undertook artistically

Would only flower in me

Through the exalted strength of your inner fire.

And so I let that fire work on me—

And what happened? It robbed my soul of

The regular interweaving of its forces;

It squeezed out of my heart

Quite ruthlessly

All my faith in the world.

And now it’s gone so far

That I’m no longer clear

Whether to believe or to call into question

The whole revelation from the spirit-worlds.

Moreover, I’ve even lost the strength to love

What speaks in you of the beauty of the spirit.

MARIA:

For years I’ve had to recognize

That the way I live the spirit-self

Turns into its opposite,

When it comes into contact with other people’s ways of living it.

I’ve had to see as well

The bounteous blessings spirit-power brings

When it reaches people’s souls on other paths.

Philia, Astrid and Luna enter.

It’s communicated in words,

Yet the words change into this spirit-power

And lead a person’s way of thinking

Up into the heights of the world.

There, in place of the dull sense that had lived there,

It creates a joyful sunlit mood;

It can transform the superficial dancing of the mind

Into seriousness and depth of feeling;

It gives one a sure ground and bearing in life.

And I—I am taken up completely

By this spirit-power,

And have to see

That it brings pain and devastation

When it streams from my heart into the hearts of others.

PHILIA:

It was as if a whole chorus

Professor Capesius and Doctor Strader enter.

Of attitudes and opinions

Was sounding together just now

In the circle that brought us together.

Amidst many harmonies

There were also several stark dissonances.

MARIA:

When many people’s words

Present themselves like this before one’s soul

It’s as if, between them all, mysteriously,

The whole human archetype was standing;

It shows its different parts in many different souls,

As in the rainbow the one light

Reveals itself in many different colours.

CAPESIUS:

Thus I’ve striven earnestly for years

To find my way into the changing character of different times in history,

Always trying to get inside

What lived in the minds of human beings

Who taught about the true grounds of existence,

And tried to align all their activities

With the highest goals of life.

I believed I’d brought to new life within myself

The lofty power of thinking,

And through it had shed light

On many a riddle of destiny.

I was of the opinion

I could feel within myself

The strong and firm support

Of all my judgements

When new experiences

Pressed in on me with further questions.

But everything I’ve heard here, in amazement,

Both on other occasions and again just now,

About the kind of thinking cultivated here,

Shakes this firm support in me.

And when I think of the colossal power

Of the effects of this thinking in life,

Then my whole ground

Starts to shift beneath me.

I’ve spent so many days

Trying to express

What I had fathomed of the mysteries of the past

In words that would strike

The deepest chords in people’s hearts.

And I was happy

When I could bring true warmth and enthusiasm

To even the tiniest corner of the souls

Of my crowds of listeners.

And I seemed to have achieved a lot.

I certainly can’t complain of lack of success.

Yet all my work of that kind

Could only lead me to acknowledge

The opinion that people of action so love to stress:

That in real life

Thoughts are no more than pale shadows.

They can enrich the true creative powers within us,

But never actively shape these.

I’ve long resigned myself to simply say:

Where only pale thoughts reign

Life loses its lustre,

And all that life involves.

The innate talents of those gifted by nature—

And the power of destiny itself—

These show themselves in life as far stronger

Than the most mature words,

However profound and eloquent.

The vast and heavy mountain of tradition

And the nightmarish clouds of prejudice

Always crush the power of even the best words.

But what is happening here

Gives people like myself much to think about.

Such an effect would seem easy to explain

Were it a matter of the fanatical spirit of some sect

Flooding over people

And merely deceiving them.

But nothing like this is to be seen here.

The soul is spoken to through reason alone.

And yet: through words, real powers of life are created,

And they speak to the innermost core of the heart.

And this strange something,

That to those, like me, who travel older paths,

Appears to be merely pale thought,

Even takes hold of the realm of the will.

It’s quite impossible for me to deny its effect;

It’s just that I cannot give myself over to it.

This all speaks to me in such a peculiar way:

As if it wasn’t a question of my rejecting what is experienced here;

It almost seems

As if this something

Were unable to bear within itself

The kind of person I am.

STRADER:

I couldn’t agree more

With these last words of yours;

And I’d go even further and rigorously stress

That all the effects on the soul

That ideas give rise to in people

Can in no way determine

The value of those ideas as knowledge.

Nothing but the verdict of genuine science

Can decide

Whether truth or error

Is at work in our thinking.

And no one could seriously deny

That what is presented here, with feigned clarity,

Wishing to offer solutions to life’s greatest mysteries,

Can in no way meet

The scientific demands of that verdict.

Though it speaks delightfully to the mind,

In fact it merely seduces the believing heart;

It claims to open doors to realms

Before which strict and conscientious research

Stands humbly at a loss.

And it would be right for those

Genuinely devoted to this research

To acknowledge

That no one can know

Where the wellsprings of our thinking flow from

And where the foundations of existence lie.

Such an admission may well prove very hard

To souls who long to fathom

All that lies beyond the bounds of knowledge—

Yet for the soul of the thinker

Every single glance one takes,

Either outwards into the world or inwards into oneself,

Harshly brings one up against the boundaries of knowledge.

If we turn away from reason

And from direct experience

We slip into the void.

And anyone can see

How little what’s taken here as a new revelation

Is seriously prepared to submit itself

To our mode of thinking.

It’s hardly very difficult to show

How it completely lacks

What gives support and ground

To all our thinking

And lends a sense of certainty.

These new revelations may well warm people’s hearts;

To the thinker they’re merely wild effusive dreams.

PHILIA:

This is the way that knowledge

Gained objectively, by reasoning,

Will always speak.

But the soul that can believe in itself

Needs something more.

It will always listen to words

Speaking to it of the spirit.

What it had already dimly intimated

It seeks to understand.

To say that things cannot be known

Might well seduce the thinker;

But not the human heart.

STRADER:

I can certainly feel

The validity of your objection.

It applies to those who merely speculate,

Who simply spin out threads of thought,

And ask endlessly what conclusions should be drawn

From their own pre-formed opinions.

But it doesn’t apply to me.

I did not dedicate myself to thought

For any outer reasons.

I grew up, in childhood,

Among a circle of pious, religious people,

And saw ceremonies

Which took my senses away

Through images of those heavenly kingdoms

They know so well how to paint,

So consolingly, for the naïve.

I experienced the utmost bliss

In my boyish soul,

When I could soar up

And indulge myself

In the highest spiritual worlds;

And to pray was a need of my heart.

I was then educated in a monastery

Where all my teachers were monks;

Myself to become a monk

Was my inner longing

And my parents’ ardent wish.

I was already preparing for my ordination

When a completely chance event

Made me leave the monastery.

But I must be very grateful to this circumstance;

As my soul had long been robbed of its inner peace

When this event saved it.

I had come to know so many things

That have no place in a monk’s world.

In writings forbidden to me

I encountered the knowledge of nature.

Thus I learned to know the latest research;

And only with difficulty did I find my way with it.

I sought on so many different paths.

I certainly have not cleverly spun out

What has shown itself to me as truth.

In fierce inner struggles

I tore from my mind and spirit

All that had brought me peace and happiness as a child.

I can understand the heart

That yearns for the heights.

But because I recognized

All I had been taught of the spirit

To be a dream,

I then had to find the solid certain ground

That only research and science can give.

LUNA:

Everyone may understand in their own way

The meaning and the purpose of life.

I am certainly quite unable

To test, against the science of today,

The spirit-teachings I receive here.

I clearly feel, though, in my heart,

That my soul would perish without them,

Just as my limbs would without blood.

You use no few words, dear doctor,

In your struggle against us.

And what you’ve just told us

Of your own life-struggles

Lends weight to your words

Even for those people

Who are not capable of following what you say.

Yet I always have to ask myself

Theodora enters.

Why it is

That honest common sense

Finds words from the spirit

To be self-evident,

Which it always grasps

With real warmth of interest;

While if it seeks for soul-nourishment

From words such as you’ve just spoken

Only coldness floods over it.

THEODORA:

For myself,

Although I must feel happy and at home

Among this circle,

All that I’ve heard spoken here

Still seems strange to me.

CAPESIUS:

Strange? In what way?

THEODORA:

I don’t like speaking of it myself.

Will you describe it, Maria?

Theodora leaves briefly.

MARIA:

Our friend has often recounted

The extraordinary way her life has developed.

One day she felt herself as if transformed.

And she met with no understanding anywhere.

Everywhere she went, the way she was

Only caused consternation in people and rejection

Until she arrived in our circle.

Not that we ourselves can understand

What she never shares with anyone;

But through the whole way we think

We gain deep interest

Even in what is unusual,

And let the true value be seen

In all human experience.

There was a moment

When our friend felt everything belonging to her own life

Disappear.

Her whole past was as though blotted out for her.

And again and again

Since this moment of change

She has experienced this soul-mood anew.

It only ever lasts a short time.

During the rest of her life

She is just like other people.

But when she falls into that state

She loses almost completely

The gift of memory.

The power of her eyes is also taken from her,

She feels, then, what is around her,

But cannot see it.

While this is happening

Her eyes shine

With a rare, unearthly light.

And in return,

Images appear to her,

Which at first were dream-like,

But which now are so clear

That they can only be understood

As prophecies of what will take place in future.

We have witnessed this many times.

CAPESIUS:

That’s exactly what I like so little

About this circle;

That superstition mingles

With logic and reason.

Everywhere that people have strayed down these paths

This is always what happened.

MARIA:

If you can say this

You clearly don’t yet understand

Our stance towards these things.

STRADER:

As for me,

I openly confess,

I’d far rather hear of revelations like this

Than these dubious spirit-teachings.

For even if I have no solution

To the riddle of such dreams,

I still look upon them as facts.

There’s no chance, I suppose,

That we could witness

This strange frame of mind?

MARIA:

Perhaps. Here she is again.

It almost felt to me

As if this extraordinary state

Was wanting to reveal itself right now.

THEODORA:

I am impelled to speak:

An image stands before my spirit

In a glory of radiant light,

And from it words sound out to me;

I feel myself in future times

And can see people

Who are not yet living.

They too behold the image,

They too can hear the words,

Which sound out thus:

‘You lived your lives in faith

You found your comfort in hope,

Now find your comfort in seeing,

Be quickened to new life through me.

I lived in souls

Who sought me in themselves

Through the words of my messengers

And through their powers of devotion.

You saw the light that shines through the senses’ world

And could only believe in the creative worlds of the spirit

But now there has been won for you

A drop of the noble gift of spirit-vision.

Feel it now within your soul.’

- - - - - - - - - -

A human being emerges

From that glory of light

And speaks to me:

‘You are to make known

To all who are willing to hear you

That you have beheld

What people will experience in future.

Christ once lived upon . . . the earth,

And the consequence of this life

Is that, in soul-form, . . . he accompanies human beings,

As they evolve through time.

He has united Himself with the earth’s spiritual nature.

Human beings were not yet able to see Him,

As he appears in such a form of existence,

Because they lacked the spirit-eyes

Which only later would be theirs.

But the future is now near

When the people of the earth

Will be endowed with the new spirit-sight.

What people saw with their senses

During Christ’s life on earth

They soon will behold with their souls

When the time has been fulfilled.’

She leaves.

MARIA:

This is the first time

She has spoken out like this

In front of so many people;

On other occasions

When she has been impelled to speak

Only two or three have been present.

CAPESIUS:

It seems extraordinary, though,

That she felt driven to this revelation

As if to order and upon request.

MARIA:

It might appear like that.

But we know how she is.

If at this very moment

She wanted her inner voice

To sound into your souls,

There was no other reason

Than that the true source of this voice

Wanted to address you all.

CAPESIUS:

I’ve heard

That the man seen as the soul of this circle

Has also often described

The future gift

She spoke of, as if in a dream.

Isn’t it possible that the content of her pronouncement

Comes from him,

And that only the form it took is her own?

MARIA:

If that was the case

We would see no significance in it.

But the facts have been closely examined.

Before she joined our circle

Our friend was completely unaware

Of what our teacher had been saying.

And nor had a single one of us

Ever heard of her.

CAPESIUS:

Then we are faced

With one of those situations

Which so often abuse the laws of nature

And which have to be regarded as pathological.

Sound and healthy thinking alone

And the wakeful use of one’s senses