The Mysteries of Christianity

Notes of thirty-one lectures and six question-and-answer sessions given and held in various locations from February 9, 1906, to March 17, 1907 (CW 97)

From esoteric studies on the Lord’s Prayer to insights into Rosicrucianism, the lectures in this volume, given to members of the Theosophical Society in 1906–1907, are inwardly illumined by the light of thinking and permeated by an intimate connection to the meaning of the Christ-mystery. Reading these lectures, one can become aware of the rebirth of the ancient mysteries in the light of a true future-bearing Christianity. As Marie Steiner later wrote: “[Rudolf Steiner] insisted on doing, within the Society, what he saw as his task: to allow the knowledge that illuminated the Christ-mystery and that, since the Christ-event, has become the esotericism of the West, to stream into the culture of Europe.”

These lectures form a foundation, a keynote, for the earnest development of anthroposophy in its early years. From the beginning, Rudolf Steiner described how this new approach to the spirit, which was only just beginning, would not remain the concern of a small group of theosophists. It was a path that had to lead to practical work in the world, as it indeed did through the development of the art of eurythmy, through biodynamic agriculture, through anthroposophic medicine, through Waldorf education, to name but a few fields in which this impulse has become active. These lectures contain seeds with endless potential for the future of humanity.