Capesius: Inner Development, Healing, and Gentleness

David Andrew Schwartz

This report is based on my lecture given at the Mystery Drama Conference held at the Threefold Educational Center in Chestnut Ridge, New York. Lecturers were directed to present a karmic biography of one of the major characters in the plays that would spur questions of inner development from the conference participants and lead them to an alignment of soul with the struggles of the characters. I was asked to speak about Professor Capesius. Capesius’ story involves inner development and also is a healing journey. Something I learned from Capesius is that with him you need to be gentle.

Born in the mid-nineteenth century, Professor Capesius is about 60 at the beginning of the first play, The Portal of Initiation, when he joins the circle around the spiritual teacher, Benedictus. He is in his late 70s by end of the fourth drama, The Soul’s Awakening. He appears to be a confirmed bachelor living alone in his house in an urban setting. He is a professor of history: a scholar and teacher. As a thinker, he searches for a deeper meaning in history and seeks to awaken ideals in his students. He is solitary and lonely, but companionable in conversation, seemingly the bearer of the pain of inner conflict. In the course of the plays he enters a state of mental illness, perhaps a dementia-like state. He becomes a troubled older person, seemingly not-all-there by the end of the second drama, The Soul’s Probation, and into the third drama, The Guardian of the Threshold. His illness lasts for several years, from his late sixties to his mid-seventies. He eventually emerges from this illness. He becomes a conscious pupil of Benedictus and recognizes his connection to the karmic community of Benedictus’ pupils. His is a Grail story in the sense that he is able to realize his own connection to the saga of the renewal of the mysteries.

Rudolf Steiner speaks about Capesius on several occasions between 1911-1924. When he talks about Capesius it is not as a character in a play, but rather as a real person. For example, he recites experiences and conversations that Capesius has that are not in the plays. These lectures provide opportunities to observe Rudolf Steiner modeling his deeply loving, non-judgmental relation to Capesius.

The last time that Rudolf Steiner speaks about Capesius is in Karmic Relationships Volume IV, the last set of karma lectures. (1) In the final lecture of this series he speaks about Karl Julius Schroer and the relation of Capesius to this intimate friend and teacher of Rudolf Steiner.

Rudolf Steiner explains that the Spiritual Soul is the source of the intellect that articulates the materialistic, cold, hard, utilitarian principles that constitute our modern life of cognition. He reminds us that many of us experienced spirituality in our past lives but that these experiences cannot arise to consciousness in and integrate with our present life of intellect because of the materialistic and utilitarian nature of the intellect. At most an idealistic sense for beauty and truth may appear in a person with spirituality in their past life experience. He says that strength, perseverance, and enthusiasm are necessary to transform intellectualism so that the spiritual legacy of a past life can integrate with the intellect. As a matter of fact, he says that intellectualism is the greatest hindrance to the revelation of the spiritual content in the soul.

Rudolf Steiner goes on to say that the process to rise from intellectualism to spirituality was most difficult during the last third of the nineteenth century. As an example he offers Karl Julius Schroer, who bore within himself the spirit-soul of Plato, a being possessing treasures of spirituality. Schroer, who was steeped in the work of Goethe and introduced Rudolf Steiner to Goethe, recoils from materialistic intellectualism rather than going through the process of transforming it. Steiner explains that in Schroer the transformation of intellectualism into spirituality comes to a standstill before the threshold of this transformation. The question that Schroer asks is: How can I bring spirituality into the present so that my connection to my past lives can be maintained and the thread of my earthly lives shall not break?

Rudolf Steiner then says that the situation that prompts this question is shared by Capesius, who is a contemporary of Schroer, and he too asks the same question. It is a Parzival question, a leading question with healing power, a version of the question: Brother, what ails thee? Capesius is in dialogue with himself. He is the wounded Grail King, in need of healing; and Parzival, the future Grail King, who needs to become a healer.

Unlike Schroer, Capesius is able to open the door to his spirituality by joining the circle around Benedictus. At first he expresses doubt and skepticism. But eventually he connects to the circle around Benedictus, especially Felicia. Her stories help Capesius to reconnect to his spirituality from past lives.

Historian Capesius finds healing in the gentle company of storyteller Felicia and her nature-mystic husband Felix.

After three years, in Scene 8 of The Portal of Initiation, while looking at the painting Johannes has created of him revealing his true being, Capesius confesses to Johannes that his point of view has changed. He recognizes that to know his own being he will need to find his true being hidden within.

We also learn that Maria is going to be one of his important allies. At the end of Scene 3 of The Portal of Initiation Benedictus says to Maria: "Your course of life has fitted you as mediator for new healing forces. He tells her due to her inner development she has a gentle soul." This gentle soul will help Capesius to face his inner battles and persevere to victory.

By the end of The Portal of Initiation Capesius has acquired the mood of the threshold. He has started to listen to, notice, and observe others in the karmic circle of pupils around Benedictus. He awakens to the significance of situations involving these people.

When The Soul’s Probation begins, about seven years after the end of the events in The Portal of Initiation, now in his late sixties, Capesius has taken up the ideas of Benedictus. As a result, spirituality begins to awaken within him. But the changes to his inner life are not confortable for him. He experiences anxiety and begins to lose his grip on his earthly identity. The conversation in Scene 1 between Capesius and Benedictus is challenging. Benedictus remains nonjudgmental, compassionate, and loving. He stays with him and listens, exemplifying the role of the modern spiritual teacher. Capesius describes to Benedictus his battle to bring spirituality into his intellect, to preserve the thread of his earthly lives.

In Scene 5 of The Soul’s Probation Felicia tells Capesius the story of the rock spring miracle. This story is an imagination about the hindrance that modern intellectualism poses to the integration of spirituality gained from the past. The influence of this story is so stimulating that it awakens past life memories in Capesius. He experiences his life in a medieval period, around 1320-1330 c.e., after the burning of the Knights Templar in the spring of 1314, while the order is still in the process of dissolution. He experiences himself as a Temple Knight, the First Preceptor of his group of remnant knights. He meets all the people in the circle around Benedictus in their medieval lives with him and experiences his varied relations to them.

In Scene 10 of the same play, Capesius returns to his present life and reflects on his experience. The shock of knowing what he has done and the guilt that he feels amplifies his tendency towards solitude, allowing Lucifer, a promoter of isolation, to begin to gain control of his soul. Eventually, he withdraws from earthly life entirely, denying his existence as Capesius. His state of mental illness begins to set in at the moment Lucifer takes advantage of Capesius.

At the end of Scene 10 of The Soul’s Probation the Voice of Conscience speaks to Capesius and lays out his inner journey to a healing balance of soul, warning him about what Lucifer has done and admonishing him:

Be aware of what you’ve seen, be alive to what you have done. Renewed, you are a reborn being. Your life you have been dreaming. Rework it out of noble spirit light; perceive the tasks of life with sight-empowered soul. But if you fail in this,—to empty nothingness forever are you bound.

Capesius is offered wise insights in the domain of Lucifer by spiritual guide Benedictus and his mature student Maria.

But Capesius is not able at the moment to take up the guidance given by the Voice of Conscience. Through Lucifer’s influence the experience of his past life lames his healthy connection to his body. His clear thinking is hindered. Physical and mental instability set in. Nevertheless, as the Voice of Conscience indicates, Capesius begins to acquire the mood of knowledge. He starts to recognize and understand what he has perceived. In his case, he begins to know that reincarnation and karma are a reality.

In Scene 13 of The Soul’s Probation, the last scene of the play, Maria declares that she will help Capesius. She stands up to Lucifer and determines to find within herself the inner strength to overcome Lucifer for the sake of her karmic community. Benedictus expresses the necessity of keeping the circle of people together who are bound by karma. Lucifer wants to separate the people in the circle as he has done by isolating Capesius. In relation to Lucifer, Benedictus speaks to Maria concerning her healing power and says to her:

May in yourself this light now heal and turn into good those forces which once firmly bound your threads of life with all the others in a knot of destiny.

When the third play, The Guardian of the Threshold, opens, several years have elapsed since the events of The Soul’s Probation. In Scene 3 of The Guardian of the Threshold we experience that Capesius has not been mentally healthy for several years. He is minimally engaging in daily life, withdrawn, in state of self-denial, even suicidal. Capesius is in some ways a modern version of King Lear. Like Lear in the storm scenes with the Fool (e.g., King Lear, first speech, Act III Scene 4), Capesius speaks to Maria in Lucifer’s kingdom about himself in the third person:

"The man who here is speaking with you dreads those times that force him to put on a body, still alive, that keeps its earthly form although the spirit can no longer master it. At just such times this spirit feels the worlds he treasures are collapsing. It seems to him as if a narrow dungeon, bounded by nothingness, enclosed him cruelly. The memory of all that is pure life to him seems then extinguished for this spirit. And often, too, he senses human beings but cannot understand what they are saying. … He is in his body then, and he is not. He lives in it a life which he must fear when he beholds it from this region. And he is thirsting for the time to come when from the body he will be set free."

With this intimate sharing with Maria describing his condition of soul, Capesius alerts the audience that his path of inner development is and will be a healing journey. He has lost his health and longs for it. His trust in life no longer streams through his body. He is calling out to his true being to bestow a strength upon his soul and also his heart so that he can regain his health and trust in life. But Lucifer has Capesius’s soul in his grip. Think of Lear carrying out Cordelia’s body at the end of Shakespeare’s play (King Lear, Act V, Scene 3). Capesius is carrying out his soul and placing it before Maria and the audience and calling for the Spirit of God to help him.

Maria is Capesius’s link to the healing forces of Christ. She gently stays with him. Her holy solemn vow that is made at end of Scene 3 overcomes Lucifer and rays out to Capesius and Johannes healing rays of light and warmth coming from the Christ, healing forces of the balance of soul. In Scene 3 Capesius begins his inner healing.

Scene 6 of the Guardian of the Threshold is a significant scene for Capesius in his process to regain his balance of soul and reconnect to the spirituality of his past lives. He starts to follow the guidance of the Voice of Conscience. In this scene Capesius begins to grasp the influence of Lucifer in his life. He starts to move towards being a conscious pupil of Benedictus.

In this scene Benedictus asks Capesius to begin to reunite with his earthly body and in so doing invites him into a conscious relation with him. Benedictus explains to Capesius what his occult situation has been. Benedictus also explains that he has a responsibility to Capesius as one of his pupils. Then Benedictus instructs Capesius to transform his thinking into a meditative activity so that his thoughts become beings in his soul, direct perceptions, that is thinking permeated by the forces of Christ, of the Word. At this moment the voices of the soul forces resound and Ahriman and Lucifer appear. Maria then helps Capesius experience Ahriman and Lucifer in their unvarnished reality. Capesius awakens from his luciferic dream. Like Jesus calling Lazarus to life, Benedictus calls him to awaken back again into his earthly life. Capesius awakens, saying to Benedictus: I may belong in future to myself again. Now I will seek myself, because I dare, beholding myself in cosmic thought, to live. Benedictus then asks Capesius to reconnect to the stream of his earthly incarnations: And bind what you have won to everything you formerly achieved, for world enrichment. Here the thread of Capesius’s life has been prevented from being broken by Lucifer. Then, at the conclusion of the scene, Felicia comes to Benedictus’s side and tells Capesius the fairy tale of the child of light in order to give him the additional strength to reunite with his earthly body and life.

Capesius has come so far that he is able to acknowledge his relation to Benedictus as a pupil and tells him that he will follow him.

Capesius’s turning away from Lucifer to Christ is a delicate process. Benedictus says to Capesius:

Yet love speaks often with a gentle voice and needs support within the depths of soul. It should unite with everything that will devote itself in noble threefoldness here at this place [the temple of the occult brotherhood] in harmony with cosmic law. Maria will unite her work with yours. The vow she took in Lucifer’s domain shall radiate for you its strength.

And Maria says to him:

…the human being has need of that one God Who…rays forth his highest power only when He Himself dwells in the inmost human being, and in his love, transforms death into life.

The Mystery Dramas were meant to be performed in the original Goetheanum building which burned to the ground on New Year’s Eve 1922. In October of 1923, after the fire, Rudolf Steiner gave a course in Dornach called The Four Seasons and the Archangels. The third lecture is on the Easter Imagination and the Archangel Raphael. (2) This imagination is all about the human being standing between the forces of Ahriman and Lucifer.

Capesius (foreground) ponders while his friend the scientist Strader experiences the isolation of his soul’s abyss.

Capesius reminds us that the Mystery Dramas are examples of the healing rituals that Rudolf Steiner speaks about in this lecture with regard to Raphael who bears the image of Christ as healer to mankind. At the end of the lecture Rudolf Steiner draws our attention to a particular image. He speaks about the original Goetheanum as a building that, while it does not exist on earth, can still be a present reality for us. He indicates that at the back of the stage is the sculpture of the representative of humanity, the Christ, standing dynamically between Ahriman and Lucifer, and then says:

"It belongs to the character of this architecture and this sculpture that a kind of mystery drama would to be enacted with the human being and Raphael as the chief characters—Raphael with the staff of Mercury and all that belongs to it … a mystery drama showing Raphael teaching human beings to see in what way the ahrimanic and luciferic forces make him ill, and how through the power of Raphael human beings can learn to … recognize the healing principle, the great all-pervading therapy which lives in the Christ principle. … that could be expressed in the words: ‘The presence of the World Healer is felt—the Savior who willed to lift the great evil from the world. His presence is felt. … a drama in the earthly realm [is enacted] … embracing things which must be cherished and preserved on earth—the health-giving healing forces, and the knowledge of the ahrimanic and luciferic forces which could destroy the human organism.’

The fifth lecture of The Secrets of the Threshold, given at the time of the first performance of The Soul’s Awakening, (3) is devoted to a description of Capesius’s inner path of development. The lecture covers the same ground as Scene 6 of The Guardian of the Threshold, but entirely different conversations between Capesius and Benedictus are recited. Even a fairy tale that is not in any of the plays is offered by Felicia instead of the fairy tale of the child of light.

In the lecture Benedictus meets Capesius and starts to instruct him regarding meditation. Like Rudolf Steiner in the Easter Imagination, Benedictus offers an understanding of Ahriman and Lucifer by revealing their mystery as the secret of the number three. The number three carries the inner nature of polarity. Benedictus presents two polarities to Capesius.

The first polarity consists on one side of unexpressed human thought formed in solitude by an individual. The thoughts of the individual are permeated by the luciferic element which then strengthens the tendency to separate the self from the world and others. On the other hand writing expresses thought and makes thought permanent. The ahrimanic element permeates writing. The balance between the unexpressed thought formed in solitude and the thought expressed in writing is the spoken word. Through the spoken word community between individuals is formed and a balance of soul is established. The mission of the spoken word is to hold the middle for true knowledge expressed in thoughts.

The second polarity described by Benedictus suggests that the forming of concepts within oneself is luciferic. On the other hand listening, that is, taking in the world around one through the senses, is ahrimanic. Balance is achieved through meditation. Meditation is achieved when thinking’s concept-forming becomes perceiving and perceiving becomes cognition, that is thinking that is as alive in the soul as perception. The person who meditates lives with thoughts that have become so alive as to be perceptions within.

Capesius is taught that everywhere polar opposites are revealed and it is necessary for these opposites to balance each other. Capesius begins to understand Ahriman and Lucifer. Rudolf Steiner says:

He divined that he had penetrated to a law which exists on the physical plane as though covered with a veil, and that, possessing this knowledge, he had something wherewith he could cross the Threshold.

With the knowledge of the number three, Benedictus leads Capesius into the mood of meditation. His knowledge of Ahriman and Lucifer has become true for him as a direct experience. With this living knowledge, Capesius begins to be able to resist and transform Lucifer within himself.

Moreover, the step of becoming a meditant brings Capesius to the fourth stage in his spiritual development. As a former Templar knight, Capesius carries deeply in his true being the Christian mission to redeem Lucifer and preserve for mankind the spiritual legacy of the past in a way that can unite and integrate with the modern situation that requires spirituality to be purified of the luciferic element of the past. This purification is necessary to spiritualize intellectualism. The impulse to serve the redemption of Lucifer is part of Capesius’s true being. Now he must awaken to the other part of his being and also embrace the Christian task of spiritualizing intellectualism by bringing his spiritual life into his current earthly life in a transformative way for works of good on earth. The transformation of work is the task of his present life as Capesius and of the Fifth Post-Atlantean Cultural Epoch.

In speaking about the Templar impulse Rudolf Steiner says that the Templar Knights prepared for the Fifth Epoch. Their mission was the healing of the European Spirit (from luciferic influences mentioned earlier and from ahrimanic materialism). After their deaths the wisdom of the knights flowed into European life including into Goethe and his fairy tale, The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. Rudolf Steiner says that there is a deep connection between the Templars and events of later times. The ideals of the Templars live on in Capesius because he was a Templar. By purging Lucifer from his soul life and reuniting with his earthly life, Capesius can let his past spirituality flow into his present life in the sense that Rudolf Steiner describes the Templar impulse:

A longing for the full Christianizing cosmic wisdom and earthly evolution gradually broke through—a longing for the full Christianizing of earthly life so that suffering, pain and grief appear as the earth’s Cross, which then finds its comfort, its elevation, its salvation in the Rose symbol of the Cross. Repeatedly in people thus inspired, in whom lived on what was thought to have been destroyed with the burning of the Templars—in these inspired people lived ever and again the ideal that in place of what brings quarrel and discord something must appear that can bring good to earth, and this good may be pictured in the symbol of the Cross entwined by the roses.(4)

As a woman (the future Johannes) listens telepathically, Pharaoh (in future Capesius) allows an initiation to fail.

In the fourth Mystery Drama, The Soul’s Awakening, Capesius experiences his past life in ancient Egypt. He learns that it was in his life in ancient Egypt that he embraced the tendency to solitude and that the seed for his vulnerability to Lucifer was sown in that life. Capesius is a hierophant in these scenes. Events are described that make the karmic bonds between Benedictus’ pupils clearer.

In Scene 13 of the last play, Capesius’s final scene in the plays, he experiences Strader spiritually. Strader is speaking to Capesius inwardly and directing him to a true Christ consciousness: a way of meditating (seeking the balance) in the way of the new mysteries whereby the earthly life is connected with the spiritual life. Capesius musters the courage to move in a new direction inwardly, taking Strader’s instruction and severing his last tie with Lucifer. It is a true Raphael moment in Capesius’s healing journey. He is in his late 70s. He must be thinking about preparing himself for the crossing of the threshold of death. The whole scene feels like such a preparation. Strader is about to die. There is a mood of something coming to an end and preparing for the future. Strader clarifies for Capesius the exact nature of the modern meditative practice:

Stray not from the true mystic’s solemn mood. … To strive for nothing … wait in peaceful stillness, one’s inmost being filled with expectation: that is the mystic mood—and of itself it wakes—unsought amid the stream of life and when the soul has strengthened itself rightly, in spirit search, imbued with powers of thought. This mood comes often in our quiet hours, in heat of action too, but then it wants the soul not to withdraw in thoughtlessness from gently viewing spirit happenings.

Engagement with life and work on earth is essential to the fulfillment of meditative practice, the transformation of the earth. Finally, responding to Philia’s words directing his spiritual activity into the future, Capesius says, as his last word, embracing Strader’s Manichean directive:

The admonition that Philia gives to me shall lead me on, so that in coming times may be revealed to me as well in spirit what I as earthly man already find in my life’s circle understandable.

Finally, a word that appears often throughout the four of the Mystery Dramas is: GENTLE. For example, in Scenes 5 and (6) of The Soul’s Awakening, which take place at the midnight hour between death and rebirth, we hear these words: Radiant grace and kindly gentleness holds sway. Maria says of this afterlife in the sun sphere: What flames awaken the word of love? Gently they glow; their gentleness enkindles a lofty earnestness. Capesius needs to be treated gently. Throughout the plays his friends are careful with him. He is met over and over again with gentleness, understanding, and tolerance. The gentleness living within his karmic circle is an important factor in his inner healing. Maria is the outstanding representative of this quality. And we learn over and over again from Benedictus that as a karmic community his pupils have a duty to take care of themselves. His pupils fulfill their inner development and find inner healing through their concern for the others. This caring requires gentleness.

In "Knowledge of Higher Worlds" Rudolf Steiner writes about the esoteric nature of gentleness:

Every word spoken without having been purged in thought is a stone throne in the way of esoteric training. … [The student] must listen to the speaker as carefully and attentively as they possible can and let their reply derive its form from what has been heard. … The importance lies not in the difference of opinion between the student and someone else, but in the other’s discovering through their own effort what is right if the student contributes something toward it. Thoughts of this and of a similar nature cause the character and the behavior of the student to be permeated with a quality of gentleness, which is one of the chief means used in all esoteric training. Harshness scares away the soulpictures that should open the eye of the soul; gentleness clears the obstacles away and unseals the inner organs. (5)

Gentleness is deeply connected to the ideal that flows in the karmic community of the Mystery Dramas that was quoted earlier as living in Capesius: … in place of what brings quarrel and discord something must appear that can bring the good to the earth, and this good may be pictured in the symbol of the Cross entwined by the roses. Gentleness is the essence of Capesius’s path to a healing balance of soul and is essential to the Mystery Dramas.

In the fourth play, a tableau from the spiritual region of the Sun in the life between death and rebirth.

1 Steiner, Rudolf, "Karmic Relationships Volume IV", Dornach, lecture 10, September 23, 1924; five days later Rudolf Steiner gave his last lecture on September 28, 1924.

2 Steiner, Rudolf, "The Four Seasons and the Archangels", lecture three, October 7, 1923.

3 Steiner, Rudolf, "Secrets of the Threshold", lecture five, August 28, 1913.

4 Steiner, Rudolf, "Inner Impulses of Evolution (The Mexican Mysteries and the Knights Templars)", Dornach, lecture VI, September 25, 1916.

5 Steiner, Rudolf, "Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment", translation by George Metaxa with revisions by Henry B. and Lisa D. Monges, Chapter IV, “Some Practical Aspects,” Anthroposophic Press.