Count and Countess von Brockdorff enabled Rudolf Steiner to link up with the theosophical movement. The book by Steiner, Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity holds a special place in the story of his remarkable and dedicated life. The book contains the substance of a series of lectures Rudolf Steiner gave in the winter of 1901–1902 in the “Theosophical Library” of Berlin at the invitation of the president, Count Brockdorff. This series had been preceded by another on the German mystics from Master Eckhardt to Jacob Boehme (published in the Centennial Edition of the Written Works of Rudolf Steiner under the title Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age) in which Steiner had ventured for the first time to present publicly some measure of his spiritual knowledge.
After these lectures on the mystics which was something of a prelude, Christianity as Mystical Fact now ushered in a new period in the understanding of the basic facts of Christianity as well as in Steiner's own life.
Compared with the free flow of spiritual teaching on Christianity offered by Steiner in his later works, the book may appear somewhat tentative and even reticent in its style. But it contains as in a nutshell all the essential new elements he was able to develop and unfold so masterfully in his later years.
Steiner considered the phrase “Mystical Fact” in the title to be very important. “I did not intend simply to describe the mystical content of Christianity,” he says in his autobiography. “I attempted to show that in the ancient mysteries cult-images were given of cosmic events, which occurred later on the field of actual history in the Mystery of Golgotha as a fact transplanted from the cosmos into the earth.”
A Biographical Sketch by Alfred Heidenreich (London, England -- August 1961)
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7/ Part 8 / Part 9
After these lectures on the mystics which was something of a prelude, Christianity as Mystical Fact now ushered in a new period in the understanding of the basic facts of Christianity as well as in Steiner's own life.
Compared with the free flow of spiritual teaching on Christianity offered by Steiner in his later works, the book may appear somewhat tentative and even reticent in its style. But it contains as in a nutshell all the essential new elements he was able to develop and unfold so masterfully in his later years.
Steiner considered the phrase “Mystical Fact” in the title to be very important. “I did not intend simply to describe the mystical content of Christianity,” he says in his autobiography. “I attempted to show that in the ancient mysteries cult-images were given of cosmic events, which occurred later on the field of actual history in the Mystery of Golgotha as a fact transplanted from the cosmos into the earth.”
A Biographical Sketch by Alfred Heidenreich (London, England -- August 1961)
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7/ Part 8 / Part 9
