Mystics at the Dawn of the Modern Age

Written in 1901, based on lectures in 1900 at the Theosophical Library, Berlin (CW 7)

The mystics Steiner writes about in this book were early giants in the modern art of illumined self-knowledge. Their ways of seeing the world, God, and themselves foreshadowed all that we practice today in the best of meditation, both East and West. Here, you can read about their essential passion for unity, their practice of intensification of perception, and their ever-fresh insights into the process of knowing itself.

Rudolf Steiner immerses us in the evolving stream of these eleven mystics who appeared in central Europe from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries. They managed to resolve the conflict between inner perceptions and the new seeds of modern science, and human individuality. Based on the lives of those mystics and on his own spiritual insight, Steiner shows how their ideas can illuminate and preserve our true human nature today.

The Chadwick Library Edition is an endeavor to republish—mostly in new or thoroughly revised English translations—some of Rudolf Steiner, written works. The edition is named for the late horticulturist Alan Chadwick, whose life and work has served as inspiration to the small group from which the idea originated. Our extensive experience with special bindings led to the selection for this “trade edition” of 750 books, of a leather spine binding, cloth sides, and a light slipcase. For the hand-numbered edition (100 books), the binding is full leather with a hand-gilt top of the pages in a fine, stiff, cloth-covered slipcase. The leather is blue calfskin, and the title stamping on the spines is in genuine gold leaf. All of this will be carried out by hand at one of the finest binders, Ruggero Rigoldi.

This volume is a translation from German of Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens und ihr Verhältnis zur modernen Weltanschauung (GA 7), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, 1993. A different translation is titled Mystics after Modernism Discovering the Seeds of a New Science in the Renaissance (Anthroposophic Press, 2000)