The Rudolf selection below is discussed between John Barnwell and Douglas Gabriel in the video entitled Skeletons in the School Basement at the 54:57 mark.

The New Isis Myth

Ancient Myths, their Meaning and Connection with Evolution, Rudolf Steiner, Lecture III, January 6, 1918, GA 180

            “A statue was intended to be the central point of the Building [First Goetheanum]. This statue presented a Group of beings: the Representative of Man, then – Luciferic and Ahrimanic figures. People looked at the statue and did not know in the age of scientific profundity in the land Philisterium that the Statue, in fact, was only the veil for an invisible statue. But the invisible statue was not noticed by people, for it was the new Isis, the Isis of a new age.

Some few persons of the land of scientific profundity had once heard of this remarkable connection between what was visible and what, as Isis-image, was concealed behind what was open and evident. And then in their profound allegorical-symbolical manner of speech they had put forward the assertion that this combination of the Representative of Man with Lucifer and Ahriman signified Isis. With this word ‘signified’, however, they not only ruined the artistic intention from which the whole thing was supposed to proceed – for an artistic creation does not merely signify something, but is something – but they completely misunderstood all that underlay it. For it was not in the least the point that the figures signified something, but that they already were what they appeared to be. And behind the figures was not an abstract new Isis, but an actual, real new Isis. The figures ‘signified’ nothing at all, but they were in fact, in themselves, that which they made themselves out to be. But they possessed the peculiarity that behind them there was the real being, the new Isis.

Some few who in special circumstances, in special moments, had nevertheless seen this new Isis, found that she is asleep. And so one can say: the real deeper-lying statue that conceals itself behind the external statue is the sleeping new Isis, a sleeping figure – visible – but seen by few. Many persons then turned in special moments to the inscription, which is plainly there at the spot where the statue stands in preparation, but which also has been read by few. And yet the inscription stands clearly there, just as clearly as the inscription once stood on the veiled form at Sais. In fact, the inscription stands there: ‘I am Man, I am the Past, the Present and the Future. Every mortal should lift my veil.’

Another figure, as a visitor, once approached the sleeping figure of the new Isis, and then again and again. And the sleeping Isis considered this visitor her special benefactor and loved him. And one day she believed in a particular illusion, just as the visitor believed one day in a particular illusion: the new Isis had an offspring – and she considered the visitor whom she looked on as her benefactor, to be the father. He regarded himself as the father, but he was not. The spirit-visitor, who was none other than the new Typhon, believed that he could acquire a special increase of his power in the world if he took possession of this new Isis. So, the new Isis had an offspring, but she did not know its nature, she knew nothing of the being of this new offspring. And she moved it about, she dragged it far off into other lands, because she believed that she must do so. She trailed the new offspring about, and since she had trailed and dragged it through various regions of the world it fell to pieces into fourteen parts through the very power of the world.

Thus, the new Isis had carried her offspring into the world and the world had dismembered it in fourteen pieces. When the spirit-visitor, the new Typhon, had come to know of this, he gathered together the fourteen pieces, and with all the knowledge of natural scientific profundity he again made a being, a single whole, out of the fourteen pieces. But in this being there were only mechanical laws, the law of the machine. Thus, a being had arisen with the appearance of life, but with the laws of the machine. And since this being had arisen out of fourteen pieces, it could reproduce itself again, fourteen-fold. And Typhon could give a reflection of his own being to each piece, so that each of the fourteen offspring of the new Isis had a countenance that resembled the new Typhon.

And Isis had to follow all this strange affair, half-divining it; half-divining she could see the whole miraculous change that had come to her offspring. She knew that she had herself dragged it about, that she had herself brought all this to pass. But there came a day when in its true, its genuine form she could accept it again from a group of spirits who were elemental spirits of nature, could receive it from nature elementals.

As she received her true offspring which only through an illusion had been stamped into the offspring of Typhon, there dawned upon her a remarkable clairvoyant vision: she suddenly noticed that she still had the cow-horns of ancient Egypt, in spite of having become a new Isis.

And lo and behold, when she had thus become clairvoyant, the power of her clairvoyance summoned – some say Typhon himself, some say, Mercury. And he was obliged through the power of the clairvoyance of the new Isis to set a crown on her head in the place where once the old Isis had had the crown which Horus had seized from her, that is to say, on the spot where she developed the cow-horns. But this crown was merely of paper – covered with all sorts of writings of a profoundly scientific nature – still it was of paper. And she now had two crowns on her head, the cow-horns and the paper crown embellished with all the wisdom of scientific profundity.

Through the strength of her clairvoyance there one day arose in her the deep meaning, as far as the age could reach, of that which is described in St. John’s Gospel as the Logos. There arose in her the Johannine significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. Through this strength the power of the cow-horns grasped the paper crown and changed it into an actual golden crown of genuine substance.”

America’s Wooden Doll of Anthroposophy

“It is very remarkable: In Europe, over here, what we call Anthroposophy can be developed. It must be developed out of the Spirit – that does not come at all out of racial characteristics. It must be developed out of the Spirit. And the men who are unwilling to approach the Spirit will plunge Europe into disaster. The Americans do not yet need it, especially those who travel over there. For they can still maintain themselves on racial characteristics. We in Europe develop Anthroposophy out of the Spirit. Over there they develop something that is a kind of wooden doll of Anthroposophy. Everything becomes materialistic.

But for one who is not a fanatic, there is something similar in American culture to what is anthroposophical science in Europe. Only, everything there is wooden, it is not yet alive. We can make it alive in Europe out of the Spirit: those over there take it out of instinct. The time will one day come when this American “wooden man” – which actually everyone is still – when he will begin to speak. Then he will have something to say very similar to European Anthroposophy. One can say that we in Europe develop Anthroposophy in a spiritual way; the American develops it in a natural way. Therefore, when I explain anthroposophical matters I can so often point out: Well, this is how it is Anthroposophically, and that is the American caricature of it.”                        

Rudolf Steiner, March 3, 1923, Dornach, GA 349