The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

0 the gospel of hellas
Thales experienced his phlegmatic temperament inwardly and at the same
time the secrets of the element of water, which he considered the origin of
creation. Anaximenes, in his sanguine temperament, saw everything originating
from the air. “As our soul, which is a breath within us, holds us together, so air
and breath embrace the universe.”
Anaximander’s first principle was the “unlimited” which was capable of
differentiation into all kinds of definite matter. He saw the origin of the world
in ether, in space. Anaximander’s ether is the “Zeus of Pherekydes” stripped of
his imaginations. “The Zeus of Pherekydes became for Anaximander a mere
idea of the unlimited, a most remarkable transition within the unfolding of
Hellas’ thinking!” 154 Anaximander’s thinking took its source from the element of
earth and his melancholic temperament; he drew the first map of geography in
collaboration with Hecataeus who wrote the first textbook on that subject. On
Anaximander’s map the Nile and the Danube appeared on the same meridian
and all features were symmetrically arranged (an interesting evidence of the
consciousness still on the boundary of pictures), while Hecataeus struggled
with the myths and found their stories “manifold and absurd.”
In all this striving and struggling was a rebellion against the past, a
revolution of the spirit which Ionia enkindled and brought to the entire world
of the West. Herein lay the spiritual background for the revolt of the Ionian
cities against the Persian government, and it was not by chance that Miletus
was the first of all cities to be completely destroyed by the Persians at the outset
of the Persian War, for her citizen, Thales, was the first philosopher.
But the focal point of all these movements—the silent mother brooding
over her child, Philosophia—was the mystery center of Ephesus, the only
outpost which was spared by the barbarians from Croesus and Darius to
Xerxes and Tissaphernes. Here could be found the core of the teaching of the
logos, the cosmic word through which occurred the ultimate transition from
the former picture-consciousness to that of the intellect.
Heraclitus of Ephesus, priest of the Artemis-temple, initiate and
philosopher, deposited his book of wisdom on the altar of the goddess when, in
old age, he retired to the forest and died. He said that his book would be dark
for the uninitiated but brighter than the sun for those who might be introduced