Take In The Might Of The Michael Thought Thoughts On Aspects Of Rudolf Steiner’s Final Address

By Joseph Bailey

Michael Festivals in the proper mood will make for an instreaming of the Michael force into spiritual goings-on in human earth existence.

The last words Rudolf Steiner ever spoke to an audience are considered not a “lecture”, but rather an “address”. He had to keep it short because he lacked the strength for anything else. From his first sentence one can deduce that he had paused the two days prior but hadn’t been able to recover fully. Little did he or anyone else know that after the few words he delivered he would retire to his sickbed and not leave it again: The “Last Address” marks the beginning of what would be the last phase of Rudolf Steiner’s life on earth.

He does seem to have been aware, however, that he would not be able to deliver one of the full-length lectures of which he had given some six thousand in the course of the preceding two and a half decades. Short as it is, though, Steiner’s talk is rich and profound, surprising, in places even baffling in the matters it refers to. This article seeks to underscore and elucidate some of this richness and depth. It is safe to assume that most anthroposophists are familiar with the “Last Address”; nevertheless, a commentated paraphrase of its contents seems the best way to do so.

The speaker’s stated purpose in addressing the audience on this eve of Michaelmas 1924 is to invoke the proper mood, the “Michael consecration mood for today , [italics J. B.], so that in our hearts, in our souls it can emanate onto tomorrow”1, onto Michaelmas, September 29th. He doesn’t want the day to pass, he says, without having done so, even briefly. And so he has braced himself up one more time and stepped to the podium – with the devoted medical support of Ita Wegman, without whom it would not be possible to manage even the few words he hopes to speak.

Why is it so important for Rudolf Steiner to speak on the Michael-mood in spite of his exhaustion? The Michael- mood is crucial to a proper instreaming of the Michael force into human spiritual events on earth, and this instreaming will be possible once Michael festivals in the right mood are installed along with the other existing seasonal festivals. We may assume that taking in this might and creating the proper mood go hand in hand. And the proper festive mood would lack its foundation – the “human point of departure”, as Steiner calls it – “unless the might of the Michael idea passes over into a number of souls”. But as of 1924, people have no more than an inkling of this power or might that inheres in the Michael idea.

Steiner goes on: What can be done until then – that is, in the absence of such a human point of departure – to call forth the Michael-mood at the Michaelic time of year is to give oneself over to what he calls “thoughts that prepare us for a future [italics J. B.] Michael-mood that is festive on a humanity-wide scale.” The speaker then goes into what to do to make “preparatory thoughts” of this kind “especially active” (and he becomes somewhat enigmatic here): Turn one’s gaze to something one has witnessed happening over long periods of time, “partly on the earth, partly in supersensible worlds.” This, he says, is what will prepare what can be accomplished in the course of the 20th century by those souls who truly feel attracted to the Michael stream in the proper mood.

But what is it that has been active over long periods of time, both on earth and in supersensible worlds? And what is the thing that can be accomplished by the souls in question in the course of the 20th century?

The speaker even goes so far as to state that (as he had striven to show in the weeks leading up to this address) the very members in his audience are among those souls who actually will take part in what can be accomplished during the 20th century, “inasmuch as you have an honest inclination to the anthroposophical movement”, thus he introduces the topic of the karma of the Anthroposophical Society into these considerations as well.

Steiner then turns to what can be considered the second of three parts of the address. This second part deals with the series of incarnations beginning with the Old Testament prophet Elija and ending with the German Romantic poet Novalis (the pen name of Friedrich von Hardenberg, who lived from 1772 to 1801). Here Steiner refers – in a remarkable elocution, considering it is a matter of one and the same reincarnating entelechy – to “entities” who will be brought to mind. These entities, who are “intimately bound up with the Michael stream” and whose connection to it will continue to intensify, and who “in at least two consecutive incarnations make a big impression on a large part of humankind”, will nevertheless combine to form a union as the consecutive incarnation of a single entity.

He then touches on the first of the two pairs of consecutive incarnations: the Old Testament prophet Elija, whose entelechy, with its purposeful, trailblazing impulse not just for his own people, but for humankind at large, and who had a way of reappearing at the most crucial of junctures in the development of humanity, reincarnated at the right time to be initiated by Christ Jesus Himself, as the New Testament figure of Lazarus/John.

Turning to the next pair of consecutive incarnations, which is the one Steiner is referring to as the consecutive incarnations of “a single entity”, he speaks first in broader terms of the cosmic/supersensible relationship between the Renaissance painter Raphael Urbino (1482 – 1520) and the poet Novalis (who was born nearly 300 years later). The initiate’s spiritual scientific research had yielded that Raphael “resurrected”, so to speak, in Novalis: “What was revealed from within Novalis in beautiful words had through Raphael been set before humankind in the loveliest of colors and forms.”

Having thus briefly described the connection between these two consecutive incarnations, Steiner goes on to deal more in depth with the entity’s passage through the planetary spheres after the death of Raphael and before the incarnation as Novalis. He describes how the departed soul of Raphael entered the planetary spheres “in order to return to an earth existence after he had worked out his karma with the beings of those spheres and with the human souls likewise in the life of the departed.” One sphere after another, starting with the Moon, then Mercury, followed by Venus, the Sun and, finally, Jupiter (the “Last Address” makes no mention of Raphael’s work after death in the spheres of Mars or Saturn): this passage through the spheres culminates in the Jupiter sphere, where – together with the beings and souls mentioned above – the Raphael soul had consummated a wisdom-filled resumé of all that is cosmic thinking and cosmic being into magic; he had summed them up, so to speak, in terms of magic, and he had done so – remarkably enough – together with none other than Goethe (in his later phase [!]), but also, possibly even more remarkable, with two occultists who were “more or less on the wrong path”: Eliphas Levi and Emmanuel Swedenborg. The result of this surprising collaboration in the supersensible is what later became Novalis’ “Magical Idealism” –which one might read as synonymous with the term “cosmic intelligence” – or at any rate as similar as a “precursor” to it can be.

After the account of the Raphael soul’s passage through the Jupiter sphere, Steiner reports on what a difficult time Hermann Grimm had had when he sought to pen a biography of Raphael. After making four different attempts at writing Raphael’s biography, all that Grimm had been able to manage was to talk, not about Raphael himself, but about the sequence of Raphael’s paintings, that is, about how each one of his paintings proceeds out of the previous one and progresses into the one that follows it. The reason Steiner gives for this inability on Grimm’s part is that “the earthly personality of Raphael was completely swept along by –and could only be at all present through – what LazarusJohn had given this soul, in order for it to be able to pour itself out for humankind into color and form.”

And the biography of Novalis, who died at age 28, is a kind of repetition of Raphael’s, who lived to the age of 38: The Raphael-entelechy:

absolved, as it were, its Raphael life once more, likewise with a mere 30-year life span, in Novalis. And so we see Raphael die young, Novalis die young, one entity, gone forth from Lazarus-John, sent down to people on earth, presenting itself to humanity in two different forms, and in this way preparing the Michael-mood in painting and in poetry. […] Everything that could be seen by human eyes through Raphael: human hearts could permeate themselves with it when it resurrected in Novalis.

And Steiner goes on to point out that the short lives the two men lived is not the only thing they had in common; he makes clear that, as had been the case with Raphael, Novalis had not had a strong connection with earthly life – as evidenced by his declaration that the sole purpose of his life was to “die after” his fiancée Sophie von Kühn, who had died at the age of 15. Here, skeptics may raise the objection that he went on to become a mining assessor (not as ‘Novalis’, but rather as Friedrich von Hardenberg), not to mention his second engagement not long before his death, with Julie Charpentier – hardly evidence of being ‘poorly incarnated’. To be sure. Nevertheless, for Hardenberg these episodes, too, are no more and no less than means to the end of “living out his Magical Idealism [nay: inspiring it] by not wanting to come into contact with earthly life.” That can account for the way in which “everything in Novalis’ poetry appears in a nearly heavenly poetic radiance”, and how he is able to make “the most trivial material things resurrect through his poetic-magical idealism.” Moreover, the very affliction that ended his life – tuberculosis, which consists in the dissolution of the physical body – is a purely physiological indication of how it became progressively impossible for him to incarnate.

But in what way does all this make Novalis “a shining harbinger of the Michael mood”?

Raphael and Novalis, says Steiner in the “Last Address”, are a single entity showing itself to humankind in two brief life spans, preparing the mood of Michael through painting, through poetry. Why would it be necessary to distribute the normal duration of a single lifetime over two separate incarnations lasting 28 and 38 years, respectively? And in what sense is this something that can prepare what needs to be accomplished? In what

way would this bear witness to the fact that they are “intimately bound up with the Michael stream”?

In the absence of the second part of what Rudolf Steiner began to say in the “Last Address”, 2 my speculation on the matter is this: If the “entity” had spent sixty-plus years in a single earth incarnation, it would necessarily have entered into old age, and would thus have had to incarnate more fully. So if, say, Raphael had lived into his 60s, it might actually have been possible for someone like Hermann Grimm to write a biography of him. To be sure. But it would also – so this author assumes – have given Ahriman more ready access to this incarnation together with the artistic works that arose out of it. And Steiner would not have been able to ascribe heavenly, lovely attributes to these works in the way he did.

In what sense, then, are Novalis and Raphael to be considered “Michaelic”, or as precursors of the Michael stream, of the anthroposophical movement?

In the way just described, they possess at least this one of the many traits Steiner ascribes to Michael (in contexts other than the “Last Address”):

The difficulties, nay the impossibilities for Michael to work into human souls have to do with the fact that he himself with his being does not in any way want to come into contact with the physical presence of earthly life. […] Any and all contact with what human beings must come into contact with in their present physical life on earth could only be seen by Michael as a defilement of his own being. (“Continuation of the Second Contemplation…”, GA 26 [1976], p. 146)

So we might say that Raphael and Novalis are precursors to the Michaelic Age inasmuch as there is no Ahrimanic element in the lives they live; none, that is, that could lend any inappropriate earthly heaviness to their artistic activity. What Steiner says about anthroposophy in the following remark would thus also apply – at all events to the extent that this was possible in their respective centuries – to Raphael and Novalis:

In the science of the spirit, another sphere is created in which there is no Ahrimanic element; and it is just by receiving this spirituality in the form of knowledge to which the Ahrimanic powers have no access [underline J. B.] that the human being has sufficient strength to confront Ahriman within the world. (Last paragraph of

“From Nature to Sub-Nature”, GA 26)

In its third part, the “Last Address” culminates in a grand entreaty for “the work” to vanquish the demonic, the dragon-like:

The “grand, mighty permeation with the Michael force, with the Michael will”, he calls a “work” that amounts to “what precedes the Christ will, the Christ force, in order to implant this Christ force into earthly life in the proper manner.” In order for this “work” really to overcome the demon-like, the dragon-like, all those listening must receive, must take in the Michael thought in the light of anthroposophical wisdom, with true hearts and in fervent love; moreover, they must “strive to take this year’s Michael mood of consecration as a point of departure not only to reveal this Michael thought in your souls with all your strength, but also to enliven it in your every deed .” Only in this way “will you become true servants of this Michael thought.” Only then “can you become noble helpers of what –through anthroposophy and in the spirit of Michael – is intended to assert itself in world development.”

The “Last Address” closes with the famous promise involving four times twelve founders/leaders of a humanity-wide Michael culture, followed by the mantra “Sprung from powers of the Sun”. Both the promise and the mantra are in themselves topics to which an entire article could be devoted.

Readers of this article who have also read the “Last

Address” will have noticed that the former does no more than mention what Steiner touches on as “the karma of the Anthroposophical Society.” I have chosen to leave this question out of the present considerations, and defer instead to the 2011 article by Stephen E. Usher, entitled Remarks On The Culmination at the End of the 20th Century , as a resource for answering the question on their own. In my estimation, not one word of what Steiner says outside of this question forfeits any of its currency, irrespective of whether the “four times twelve” individuals were ever found, or not. Taking in the Michael thought, creating the Michael consecration mood on a humanity-wide scale hand in hand with the installation of a culturally universal Michaelmas festival remains every bit as crucial to an instreaming of the Michael force into human events on earth if Steiner’s promise was fulfilled, and is all the more urgent if it was not.

1 Please note that all quotes in this article have been translated by the author from the original German.

2 In the „additional remarks“ to the original German version (p. 175), Marie Steiner is quoted as follows: He [i.e., Rudolf Steiner] did not get as far in the lecture as he had originally intended. He gave us the f irst part of the Mystery of Lazarus; At that time he not only told me, but later wrote on the envelope of the first transcription:”Do not pass this on until I have added the second part.” It was wrested from him anyway, like so many other things.– Now he will no longer give us this second part. [...] He ended with what had run like a red thread through his revelations of wisdom: the mystery of Novalis, Raphael, John.