Like many events of significance, the Christmas Foundation Meeting was born out of tragedy and a sense of deep inadequacy. Before the First World War, Rudolf Steiner had begun to create a building that would be able to hold, amplify and radiate the new streams of light that were pouring into the world since the ending, in 1899, of the 5,000 years of darkness, known to occultists as Kali Yuga.
Kali Yuga had been spoken of for thousands of years, and for many centuries people had longed for it to end, that a new age of creativity and light could begin within this earth. The darkness of the old period had reached a kind of climax in the Western world during the Nineteenth Century — a deep point of materialism where the light of the spirit was almost completely shut out and people focused almost exclusively on physical reality. Steiner knew that he had a task to help humanity move into what was going to be a time of new opportunities but also new dangers. At the age of eighteen, in the year 1879, he had been shown how he must develop his awareness of the spiritual dimensions of what was happening on the earth and that his task would be to prepare human beings to take hold of entirely new inspirations of the spirit that were to become available then. Those who guided humanity's spiritual evolution knew that the 20th Century was to be a major turning-point, and Steiner's task was that this new influx of radiance from the spiritual world could be understood as well as felt, so that new creativity could begin to transform the world in ways that were never possible in earlier times.
As a visible sign of the fruitfulness of this new inflow of light, work began in 1913 on the building that Steiner had planned to be the focal point of his activities. Just 40 people were present on 20th September of that year in the Swiss village of Dornach, near Basel, when Steiner carried out a short order ceremony to mark the significance of the hour and laid a copper container, crafted into the shape of a twelve-sided dodecahedron, ino the pit that had been dug as part of the foundations of the building to come. During the ceremony, the elements responded with dramatically intense rain, wind, lightening and thunder as if the powers of darkness, determined to not have their 5,000-year reign disturbed, were enraged at this man's audacity and were signalling their intent to destroy everything that he was setting out to achieve.
Steiner had publicly taken hold of his mission in 1900, in his 40th year, when he began to speak openly of what his spiritual initiation and subsequent journeyman years had shown him. From that year onwards, he spoke of the new insights he perceived regarding Earth's connection to the cosmos and how spiritual beings were longing to assist human beings in all aspects of their lives. He gave personal lessons to individuals from many European countries who wished to become bearers fo the spiritual light that he served. However, the world as a whole resisted all attempts to change in any fundamental way, and the old tendencies of human egos contesting for power against other egos built up to a climax. The outer sign of this was the First World War.
While Steiner was staying in Berlin during the war, he was asked how Germany could respond to what seemed to be a hopeless situation. He replied by drafting a blueprint for how society could function, based on the sacred threefold organization of the human being. He and some colleagues did all they could to take these ideas out into the world, but once again he was thwarted by the sheer weight and inertia of what was living in the souls of the people of that time. When the war ended, Steiner knew that the Treaty of Versailles would doom humanity to a second great war and decades of conflict, for the real causes of the First World War were entirely unaddressed by the peace treaty that the politicians of the day had created. These politicians — so like those who hold forth in so many countries in our time — divided the nations up in the image of the old world whose destruction they had participated in, and Steiner saw the inevitable devastation that was ahead because of this.
Disappointed but in now way slowing down in his activities, Steiner continued to seek for ways to bring renewal and plant seeds that would bear harvest in future times. One of these seeds was the building that had been begun before the war broke out, for it encapsulated in solid materials the same sacred forms that he had tried unsuccessfully to bring in ideas as a blueprint of how society could function successfully without war with respect for the freedom and dignity of all human beings.
Work on this building, which Steiner called the Goetheanum after the great German writer, Goethe, continued throughout the war years and on into the Twenties. Then tragedy struck again. In what was probably and act of arson, carried out by those who did not want humanity to progress out of the darkness of old beliefs and superstitions, Steiner's building was burnt to the ground on New Year's Eve, 1922-23.
It has been reported that Steiner once said that he would live to be 100, but the destruction of this building had consequences for his physical health. As a part of this, he went through a kind of spiritual crisis during the year of 1923. For 22 years he had worked tirelessly in all parts of Europe, but he saw in the destruction of the Goetheanum a sign that the world was not ready for what he was bringing. He told colleagues that it was also a sign of the inabilities of those who worked with him to be able to make the vital consciousness shift that the times were demanding of them. He travelled a great deal in this key year of 1923, always carrying within him the dilemma of how he should proceed in these difficult circumstances. One solution was to withdraw and work with a small number of those who were ready for what he had to give. The way ahead was not clear to him, and he described later that it was as if he needed to take a leap of faith in making his next step.
He made his decision concerning what he would do some time in the final months of 1923. He would not withdraw from the world but would create within it a new organization whose form would work out ever more strongly into the world. He imagined a society of human beings of all races and creeds, brought together in reverence for the new wisdom that since the end of Kali Yuga had streamed into the earth and reflecting in its structure the new understanding of what works between human beings who remember their spiritual origins and are capable of being representatives of a transforming humanity. The society's primary task would be to act as a conduit for the inspirations to come from the spiritual world and to encourage and enable people everywhere to be able to be able to achieve this for themselves. Steiner made an appeal to those around him to accompany him with all the forces of their souls. For a time, it seemed that this was successful. The Christmas Foundation Meeting took place over the course of nine days between 24th December 1923 and 1st January, 1924.
We can ask today if Steiner was naive to hope that human beings would be able to transcend the limitations imposed on them through being, as Nietzsche had put it, "human-all-too-human". The law I spoke of in the second paragraph of this article — that institutions have an inbuilt tendency to ossify and turn against heir own creators — has played itself out for centuries in many different situations. It was most visible when Jesus of Nazareth stood before the Temple in Jerusalem, built to house the prophesied Messiah, only to be rejected and put to death by the authorities of the time. Steiner had appealed for a certain kind of selflessness, and his inner power and charisma rallied people at first, so that he was able to speak of his leap of faith as having been the right decision. But the Christmas mood could not be sustained — human beings in the 1920's were simply too weak to bear what was being asked of them.
Steiner appealed a number of times for those around him to dedicate themselves anew to what had been founded, but it became clear that this was not possible, and Steiner's own death was a sign that something on the earth had failed. The power of his inspiration would continue working spiritually — over that, the powers of darkness had no control — but it could no longer be carried by him physically. After an extraordinary period of super-human creativity, when Steiner planted many more seeds in many different areas, giving sometimes five lectures a day in all kinds of professional fields, his physical strength gave out. On Michaelmas Eve, September 28th, 1924, Steiner took to his sickbed where he died six months later on 30th March, 1925.
For an initiate, death has not the same significance as it has for others. While his alive, the initiate has been able to enter into the spiritual worlds in a way that others will be granted only after death. It is possible to imagine that, after his death, very little changed for Steiner other than the loss of his instrument of his earthly body and that his work for the good of the world continued with the same intensity as he had shown in those nine intensely creative months between the Christmas Foundation Meeting and the beginning of his sickness. What changed was the ability for his work to be received on the earth. Steiner had predicted that if the creative impulse of the Christmas Foundation Meeting was not able to be held with sufficient strength on the earth, it would move from there to a realm beyond physical existence. Some deny admitting the possibility of such a thing, but it seems obvious to others, through considering the subsequent course of the 20th Century, that this is indeed what may have happened. A seed has been planted here of great significance, but it has remained a seed, unable, through the remainder of the 20th Century, to develop sufficiently further in the ways that its founder had imagined. Through the rest of the century, those who had been inspirited by Steiner's work were able to achieve many things that proved to be of great benefit for earthly life, bu the essence of what Steiner had hoped would come out of the Christmas Foundation Meeting was absent.
The key question now to those who recognize the significance fo that moment in 1923-24 is whether we can reconnect with what was planted into the earth in that time and bring it anew into physical reality. This is a very great question that weighs heavily on all who have some awareness fo the spiritual evolution of the world.
It is now 100 years since the difficult transition year of 1923. For most of that year, it was not at all clear to Steiner what he should do, and he was living, with great intensity, a quest to find the answer to his dilemma. Certainty came to him some time before the end of the year. After this year of 2023 we approach not just the centenary of the Christmas Foundation Meeting itself but also that of the incredible year 1924 that followed it when he was able to give to much that was of deep significance to humanity, guidance in all areas of practical life as well as the first part of a new path of schooling in inner development that he intended to become the growing-tip of contemporary spirituality. He also brought profound insights into the meaning and reality of reincarnation and karma. From those early beginnings in the Twenties of the last century — from seeds planted ata at time of great personal grief but with incredible spiritual strength — the new light has gone out to all parts of the world.
And yet, in that 100 years, the powers of darkness that wish to keep humanity ignorant and in slavery to old gods have been unrelentingly active. The remainder of the 20th Century — with its genocide and nuclear weapons, its rise of state power everywhere and its continuation of materialism and exploitation of the strong over the weak — was a reflection of what Steiner had predicted when the First World War ended with the lessons that should have come out of it unlearned: "This war has not really ended," he said at the time. "It goes on, and what we have now is not peace — it is merely a cessation of hostilities." That war, waged by the enemies of the new Christ Consciousness against humanity, has continued throughout the 20th Century and on into the 21st.
But human beings, in this time of destruction and darkness, have had opportunity to undergo some degree of transformation. Those who long for what is new and feel in their hearts the possibilities that are unfolding there, have been deeply tested through their sufferings. Could it be that now there is a critical mass that was not present 100 years ago? Could it be possible today that okd and dead ways of thinking that divide human beings from each other and from the cosmos that surrounds them can be overcome and that new social forms can arise through enlivened and more truthful thinking that is in touch with the nature of reality?
Despite the fact that the trend over the last 100 years in mainstream western culture has been overwhelmingly in the opposite direction and that we are dominated today as never before by abstract and dogmatic ideologies, completely disconnected from reality, this is no mere empty hope. It will always be but a small minority who will lead the world into new directions — what is important is how strongly this minority can take hold of their tasks and be able to ground new streams of inspiration from the spiritual world in ways that will make them available to all. Steiner once said that 48 (12 x 4) individuals would be sufficient for that purpose. Till now, even that seemingly modest goal has not been attained, but we are now sailing upon quite different seas than those that carried us in the 20th Century.
Spiritually, Steiner never left the field of his activity. He is present with many others who carry with him various aspects of the total struggle for a new age in the sphere that he called the "etheric" — that realm of life forces referred to in the Bible as being "in the clouds", into which Christ vanished physically at the event of His Ascension. The sphere of the etheric is the place from which life-forces arise, surrounding the earth and giving it at every moment the renewing energies and formative forces that it needs. I would say that today, in 2023, the etheric sphere is very close to us, and what goes on there affects us far more than we know. From it, help can come for all who are engaged in this continuing struggle against stagnation, destruction and darkness.
What Steiner engraved into the earth in one location of Europe 100 years ago has expanded greatly during the intervening years. It may seem to be but a drop in the ocean compared to the evil that has worked its way into all areas of the world, but its potential is vast, and it is accessible to all, whether or not they know anything of the individuality who once bore the name "Rudolf Steiner" but who is not now limited to the identity he carried while he was alive on Earth.
One way to connect with what Steiner planted in his time as a foreshadowing of what was to come, is to pay some attention to what actually happened in that Christmas Foundation Meeting. When a friend of his who had not been able to be present was told about it afterwards, his instinctive reaction was expressed in the words, "Humanity has been baptized again!"
With the Christmas Foundation Meeting, 110 years short of 2,000 years since the greatest spiritual and earthly event ever, new powers of healing and light were enabled to stream into the earth. The year 2033 is now very close. At that time it will be more clear whether humanity is able to live out of the new Christ Consciousness or must continue on old cyclical roads, fettered to the earth and repeating endlessly the errors of the past. We are being tested, and evil is active as never before, developing strategies that will make it impossible for us to have genuine spiritual contact.
The Christmas Foundation Meeting gives us something that we can support us in our 21st Century endeavour to become realigned with the place of our divine origin. Powers of darkness work as never before to deflect us from this path and drive us in quite different directions. Against them, the Christmas Foundation Meeting, if it can be resurrected anew in a sufficient number of hearts, can become a source of strength for the entire world.
The key to understanding this event lies in taking hold of the words of the meditation which Steiner built up over a seven-day period during the Foundation Meeting, laying into the hearts of the 800 individuals present. This meditation is known as the Foundation Stone Meditation and it stands today as a sign that the powers of darkness can be broken and that humanity can throw off old chains and step out into a new era of spiritual creativity and freedom. The Foundation Stone Meditation concludes with these disarmingly simple words:
At the turning point of time,
The Spirit Light of the World
entered the stream of earth-evolutionDarkness of night
had held its sway.
Day-radiant light
poured into the souls of human beings.Light that gives warmth
to simple shepherd's hearts.
Light that enlightens
the wise heads of kings.Light Divine!
Christ Sun!
Warm our hearts,
bring light into our heads,
that good may come
from what we, in our hearts, would found,
from what we, in our heads, would direct
with single purpose.