Iphigenia - The Sacrifice of a Soul Force to the Divine

by Philip Mees

The following article came to me through the translation I am currently making of the book Hellas by W.F.Veltman, a Dutch author and pioneer of Waldorf education. The book is like a great course on ancient Greek culture in all its manifestations. The thoughts reflected in this article are in part those of Veltman and the researchers he quotes, and in part they are my own.

When the ancient Greek civilization arose, the center of human culture was gradually shifting from Asia and Egypt to southern Europe. This movement reflected a change in human consciousness that accompanied the progressively deeper incarnation of human souls into earthly matter over time, and a concurrent loss of insight and contact with the spiritual world. It is symbolized in the story of the Trojan War in which Greek forces, after a ten-year drawn-out siege, finally captured the city of Troy (in the northwest corner of Turkey) and leveled it to the ground around the year 1200 BC. Although archeological excavations have shown that this event actually happened, Homer describes it in his Iliad in mythological terms. It has become the symbol representing the change of culture and consciousness that was developing at that time. While in Asia humanity felt itself very closely connected with the divine world and experienced the direct influences of the gods in human life, for the Greeks the gods became more distant. The Greeks developed a stronger human personality that, although still influenced by the gods, was more able to perform deeds out of the thinking and initiative of its own Ego-force.

The myth of Iphigenia gives us a picture of an aspect of this development. It relates that the Greeks had assembled their huge forces in a large fleet at Aulis and were ready to sail for Troy. The winds, however, were adverse and remained so for a long time. This could only mean that a god was thwarting their intentions. The oracle in Delphi was consulted and indicated that the goddess Artemis was angry with the commander in chief, Agamemnon, because he had killed a deer she was fond of. To appease her Agamemnon must sacrifice his 15-year old virgin daughter, Iphigenia, at her temple in Aulis.

Agamemnon sends a messenger to his wife, Clytemnestra, with the devious lie that Iphigenia is to be married to Achilles so that she will bring their daughter to the camp. They do not hear the truth until after their arrival. Iphigenia is laid on the altar, but just before the priest lowers his knife, Artemis whisks her away in a cloud and puts a doe in her place which is then sacrificed. Iphigenia is magically taken to far-away Tauris (on the Crimea peninsula in the Black Sea) where she becomes the priestess in Artemis’ temple. Years later, her younger brother Orestes comes to Tauris and brings her back to Greece where she founds a new Artemis cult.

What does this strange story mean? The mission of the Greek civilization was the development of the intellectual soul, the soul force that enables human beings to think for themselves through the organ of the brain. A new capacity was to be developed consisting of the ability to think logically one thought after another, thus creating a line of reasoning that leads to intellectual understanding. This kind of intellectuality is necessary for understanding earthly matter; it does not lead to knowledge of the spiritual world which can only be gained through direct experience. And the more deeply humanity incarnates in the body, the more deeply we will be interested in exploring the world of bodies and matter, with the result that our interest in and ability to communicate with the world of spirit will decrease more and more.

In order to avert the danger that humanity would thus completely lose its connection with divine wisdom by focusing entirely on the physical world, a power of the soul had to be isolated so it could be consecrated and sacrificed exclusively to the divine. This soul power was represented by the pure maiden Iphigenia, ‘untainted by the fall into the intellect,’ who is ‘sacrificed’ to become a priestess dedicated to maintaining the human being’s connection with the divine. The myth is thus an image of a spiritual and psychic process in all human beings that was necessary so that humanity would not ‘dry up’ in the intellect and lose the divine wisdom of the heart.

Now we can ask why the Greeks experienced this as involving Artemis. And why did it happen to Agamemnon? Artemis is one of the three manifestations of divine wisdom, Sophia, which the Greeks recognized among their gods and goddesses. First there is Demeter, the great mother and progenitor of the plant world, the etheric world that first arose on Old Sun. The second manifestation of divine wisdom is Artemis, who lives in the astral world of nature among the animals of the fields and forests; the astral world arose on Old Moon. Finally, Athena represents the divine wisdom of Earth where the ego develops and emancipates itself from its surroundings and from the divine. Artemis thus represents an aspect of the divine world in the state of creation before humanity’s fall into the intellect. The pure soul force of Iphigenia therefore needed to connect with the purely divine.

As to Agamemnon, he was the most powerful king in Greece. We have to take the word ‘king’ with a grain of salt, because those kings reigned over territories often consisting of little more than the size of a small city or county; local chiefs or warlords might be more appropriate terms for them. However, Agamemnon was the greatest among them. Why? It would have to be because he had developed his intellect to a greater extent than any other; he was ahead of the others. The power of his cold, calculating intellect is shown in the heinous lie with which

he successfully convinces his wife to bring him their daughter. This capacity would also explain why it was he who had to make the sacrifice. On the one hand, his more highly developed intellect raised him to a position above all others; on the other hand, it made him more susceptible to losing his connection with the divine. Perhaps he had killed the deer out of sport rather than because he needed it for food or clothing, thus causing Artemis’ anger.

Does the story have a lasting significance in our time? I believe it does. It seems to me that our practice of going to church on Sunday, for instance, is an example of the sacrifice of Iphigenia. We dedicate our soul to the divine when we could just as well have continued our work to make money. We make a sacrifice. Similarly, a daily practice of prayer or meditation also represents such a sacrifice. I also find it interesting to realize that the age-old commandment in the Catholic Church that everyone must attend mass every week stands on the deeply hidden foundation of spiritual truth that such a sacrifice is necessary for the health of the soul. Finally, last but not least, we also have priests; they dedicate their lives to maintaining the connection with the spiritual world as well as helping others do so.

Such is the significance of many of the Greek myths. They bring us images of the wrenching transition in human consciousness from the security of a close connection with the divine world to a separation from this world into the doubt and uncertainty of intellectual thinking. As I mentioned above, the great symbol of this evolution is the Trojan War. The memory of this war pervaded all of Greek culture; it was represented in all forms of art through the ages. Yet, never was it shown with the pride a victor might feel in vanquishing his enemy. One has the feeling that the memory of the Trojan War was carried by this culture as a burden, as something that had to happen but was in fact a tragedy. It is as if this people had an intuitive awareness of the immeasurable spiritual loss they had suffered through their victory, a loss they bore in the collective unconscious with grief and a sense of responsibility.

Anselm Feuerbach's Iphigenia (1862, detail).

Iphigenia in a 1st century A.D. wall painting.