The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

the rise of philosophy
to it by an initiate. 155 Heraclitus, with his choleric temperament, was dedicated
to the element of fire. Thence came his saying: Panta rhei, everything flows,
everything is in a state of eternal flux. His teaching was connected with the
mystery-traditions of reincarnation. It was ridiculous, in his opinion, to be afraid
of death, for during life we experience constant dying. “The death of fire is the
birth of air, the death of air is the birth of water, and so the youth dies into the
birth of the aged man as yesterday dies into today.” 156 His constant meditation
were the problems of life and death, those fundamental questions of the whole
Graeco-Roman period: “Life and death are both in our living and in our dying;
for after we are dead our souls come to life again.” “Immortals are mortal, and
mortals are immortal”; and another fragment said: “How can we say about daily
life that ‘We are,’ when from the standpoint of the eternal we know that ‘We
are and we are not.’ ” Therefore he came to the thought: “Hades and Dionysus
are one and the same.” This, however, was a mystery word, understandable only
to those who experienced the mystical transformation in which Persephone,
the soul whose husband was Hades, united herself with Dionysus. Only those
who experienced the forces of awakening and resurrection of the spirit within
the body could grasp the significance of Heraclitus’ words. His thinking was
still connected with the action of waxing and waning, of becoming and dying,
and thus he understood fire as the principle of the cosmos and the fire of the
blood as the foundation of our ego. Typically choleric, he said: “Strife is the
father of all things.”
Personality was for Heraclitus the divine daimon, the actor in destiny:
“Man’s daimon is his destiny.” The daimon does not live solely within a single
life of the personality. He has the power to animate it many successive times.
The great idea of reincarnation sprang spontaneously from the thoughts of
Heraclitus, and his doctrine of the flux was quoted again and again. It was
probably his pupil, Kratylus, who gave us the famous saying: “We do not dip
twice into the same wave; we are and we are not.” 157
One cannot fail to feel the great struggle which was constantly waged in
such minds as those of Heraclitus, Xenophanes and Empedocles. They were
the lonely pioneers who translated the old imaginations into the first words
of the new language of the intellect. Yet this intellect was still unable to grasp