 The Mission of the
Folk-Souls
in relation to Teutonic Mythology
Eleven lectures by Rudolf Steiner
The Mission of the
Folk-Souls is a series of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in
Christiana (Oslo), Sweden in 1910, in which he describes the spiritual
reality behind the concept of nation and race.
Conventional wisdom regards
races and peoples simply as groups of humanity who settled and
developed in geographically separate areas of the world, and
therein evolved group characteristics - physical and cultural
- which make them somewhat distinguishable from each other.
Geographical adaptation, mono-cultural breeding and
mono-cultural influence are all understood to play their part
in giving a geographical group of people an identifying
assemblage of characteristics. When formerly isolated groups
eventually moved beyond their historical boundaries and bred
and culturally exchanged with other cultures, such
characteristics eventually became mixed and therefore
moderated.
This view conveys a
Darwinian randomness and certainly does not suggest any
directing or organising influence apart from the physical
imperatives that drive a group of people to stay in their
homeland or to move beyond it - seeking more fertile land, for
example.
In The Mission of the
Folk-Souls, Steiner takes his starting point, not from
what can be assumed as plausible and likely from physical
perception alone, but from a developed perception of a
spiritual reality behind the physical apparency, and this
includes the seeming happenstance of cultural groupings. When
he describes such a 'spiritual reality' he is necessarily
talking about consciously active and creative spiritual beings
of greater or lesser magnitude and influence. In many of his
lectures he has described a vast hierarchy of spiritual beings
ranging from the more or less automatic beings which comprise
and animate what we experience as the natural world, to Beings
which in form and function are well beyond ordinary human
imagination. Such beings are not unknown to historical
humanity and names such as angels, archangels, elohim,
seraphim, etc. have been used in Western Esoteric Tradition,
while other names for the same beings have been applied in
Eastern cultures.
In ancient times the
experience of one's race and people (nation or tribe) was felt
much more tangibly than it is today by most westerners, whilst
the experience of one's individuality ("I"-hood) was much
dimmer and was felt to be within and subservient to one's
feeling of belonging to the tribe. The experience of
individuality only began to emerge and become active in the
later Greek and Roman times, and this became intensified to
the powerful inner independence we feel today from the
fifteenth century onward. The further back we view into
history and pre-history, the more is the individuality
submerged within tribal feeling. This tribal feeling was not
some imaginary or delusional state; it was the dim but
definite perceptual experience (feeling) of living within the
living aura of a Being who governed and directed the group.
This Being, regarded as the God of the people, is what, in the
ranks of the spiritual world, is called an Archangel. Such a
Being is what Steiner also calls the group-soul or folk-soul
of the people. All the mores, feelings, attitudes and even
language of the people arose in the consciousness of the
people through their immersion within aura of the group-soul,
and it is through this immersion of the personal aura within
the group-soul aura that each person felt their tribal
identity.
As we move forward in time,
the power of race-hood and national sentiment is expected to
lessen as a result of cultural mixing, and through power of
the Mystery of Golgotha, the individuality learns to develop
beyond personal interests and cultural identification to what
is universally human, and this felt as deeply as earlier
humanity felt their tribalism.
The Mission of the
Folk-Souls is a chronicling of the history of many
cultures, races and groups as expressions of the activities of
various group-souls, and also describes the evolutionary
changes of the group-souls themselves as a result of this
process.
This is one of those sets
of lectures that will require reading and re-reading to tease
apart the various paths of development described and to fathom
their interweaving complexity, but certainly well worth the
effort for those seeking to understand an anthroposophical
view of world and human evolution.
Rudolf Steiner Press
11 lectures, Christiana (Oslo), 7-17 June 1910, GA121
192pp; paperback
ISBN: 1-85584-146-0
To purchase this title,
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The Mission of the Folk-Souls - Rudolf Steiner
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