by George Adams Kaufmann

                In a beautiful passage of his Outline of Occult Science, Rudolf Steiner sums up as follows the quintessence of the Rosicrucian teaching, the wisdom of the Holy Graal, which forms the content of this book:--

       “. . . The ’Cosmos of Wisdom’ evolves into a ’Cosmos of  Love.’  Out of all things that the ‘I’ of man can unfold within, Love shall become.  As the all-embracing ‘pattern of Love,’ the sublime Being of the Sun--the Being whom we were able to name in describing the Christ-evolution -- manifested Himself.  Into the inmost heart of man’s being the seed of love was thereby planted.  Thence it will flow into the whole of evolution.  Just as the Wisdom, formed before, is manifested in the forces of the outer, sense-perceptible world of the Earth--in the ‘forces of Nature’ that prevail today--so in the future Love itself will be revealed in all phenomena, as a new force of Nature.  It is the secret of all future evolution, that knowledge, and also all that man does out of true feeling for evolution, is the sowing of a seed which must ripen into Love.  So much as comes into being of the force of love, so much is done creatively towards the future. . . . The Wisdom, prepared through Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, works in the physical, in the etheric and in the astral body of man; in the ‘I’ it is made inward.  From Earth-evolution onward, the ‘Wisdom of the outer World’ becomes inner Wisdom in Man.  And when in man it is made inward, it becomes the seed of Love.  Wisdom is the necessary forerunner of Love; Love is the outcome of Wisdom re-born within the ‘I.’ ”#

               

In the first Mystery Play, described by Rudolf Steiner on the title page as A Rosucrucian Mystery, this theme of the growth of Love as Wisdom re-born in the I of man is developed, as it were, through countless golden threads.  The four Mystery Plays are so filled with wisdom that as their writer said the spiritual teaching he could give in countless lectures was contained in them, for those who would take pains to draw it forth.  We find it ever more as we read and ponder them again and again, and above all as we see them performed on the stage, as we are now privileged to do at the Goetheanum.  It can at best be one among the many golden threads which with all reverence we touch in the following remarks, concerning the theme of Wisdom and Love as it appears in the first play, The Portal of Initiation.*