Four Mystery Plays

Name: Four Mystery Plays
Author: Steiner, Rudolf

Steiner, Rudolf

Mysteries and miracle-plays

This soul hath not been able hitherto
    To recognize itself in spirit-light
    That through sense-revelation is outpoured,
    To show the meaning of all earthly growth.
    It saw God's spirit stripped of nature's guise,
    And Nature's self estranged from deity.
    And so through many lives it had to pass
    And stay a stranger to the sense of life;
    It could but find alone such carnal tenements
    To carry out its individual work
    As barred it from the cosmos and from man.
    Now in the temple it will earn the power
    To recognize strange Being as its own,
    And so be able to attain the force
    That leads out from the labyrinths of thought
    And points the way unto the springs of life.

BENEDICTUS:

    Another man strives to the temple's light;
    Though not at once will he approach its doors
    And seek for entrance to this hallowed spot.
    Throughout a life of studious research
    He planted germs of thought in his soul-depths.
    And so perforce the spirit-light went forth
    To ripen them outside our temple's doors.
    'Twas given him to know his present life
    To be the product of a former one
    Lived in a time that now hath long gone by.
    Now he can see the errors of that life
    And realize what their result will be,
    But lacketh power, those duties to fulfil,
    Which through self-knowledge he can recognize.

ROMANUS:

    Capesius shall, through the temple's power,
    Learn how a man must, in a single life,
    Take up a load of duties which demand
    For their entire accomplishment the space
    Of many lives of earthly pilgrimage.
    So casting fear aside he will admit
    That ancient errors with their consequence
    Pursue the soul e'en past the gate of death.
    Nor shall he then be vanquished in the fight
    By which the spirit-portals are flung wide
    If eye to eye, undaunted, he shall brave
    The Guardian of the Threshold of that realm.
    To him shall by that guardian be revealed
    That none may climb up to the heights of life
    Who fears to look on destiny's decrees.
    His insight will admit with courage then
    That of self-knowledge suffering is the fruit
    For which she knows no words of comforting.
    Will shall become his comrade on the way
    Which faceth boldly all that may befall,
    And, heartened by a draught from hope's clear spring,
    Endures the pain of widening consciousness.

BENEDICTUS:

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

Four Mystery PlaysSteiner, Rudolf

Religion

Four Mystery Plays

Steiner, Rudolf

Mysteries and miracle-plays

This soul hath not been able hitherto
    To recognize itself in spirit-light
    That through sense-revelation is outpoured,
    To show the meaning of all earthly growth.
    It saw God's spirit stripped of nature's guise,
    And Nature's self estranged from deity.
    And so through many lives it had to pass
    And stay a stranger to the sense of life;
    It could but find alone such carnal tenements
    To carry out its individual work
    As barred it from the cosmos and from man.
    Now in the temple it will earn the power
    To recognize strange Being as its own,
    And so be able to attain the force
    That leads out from the labyrinths of thought
    And points the way unto the springs of life.

BENEDICTUS:

    Another man strives to the temple's light;
    Though not at once will he approach its doors
    And seek for entrance to this hallowed spot.
    Throughout a life of studious research
    He planted germs of thought in his soul-depths.
    And so perforce the spirit-light went forth
    To ripen them outside our temple's doors.
    'Twas given him to know his present life
    To be the product of a former one
    Lived in a time that now hath long gone by.
    Now he can see the errors of that life
    And realize what their result will be,
    But lacketh power, those duties to fulfil,
    Which through self-knowledge he can recognize.

ROMANUS:

    Capesius shall, through the temple's power,
    Learn how a man must, in a single life,
    Take up a load of duties which demand
    For their entire accomplishment the space
    Of many lives of earthly pilgrimage.
    So casting fear aside he will admit
    That ancient errors with their consequence
    Pursue the soul e'en past the gate of death.
    Nor shall he then be vanquished in the fight
    By which the spirit-portals are flung wide
    If eye to eye, undaunted, he shall brave
    The Guardian of the Threshold of that realm.
    To him shall by that guardian be revealed
    That none may climb up to the heights of life
    Who fears to look on destiny's decrees.
    His insight will admit with courage then
    That of self-knowledge suffering is the fruit
    For which she knows no words of comforting.
    Will shall become his comrade on the way
    Which faceth boldly all that may befall,
    And, heartened by a draught from hope's clear spring,
    Endures the pain of widening consciousness.

BENEDICTUS:

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Four Mystery Plays

Four Mystery Plays

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