The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

the twilight of the gods
other daughters, Aphrodite, Artemis and Hestia; three Moirae, three Horae
and three Charitae; three Erinyes, Megara, Alecto and Tisiphone; and, finally,
nine (thrice three) muses around Apollo on Mount Parnassus.
The number three dominated the whole Hellenic life as far as it was
still connected with the impulses of the Olympians. The government of the
world was divided among the three sons of Kronus: Zeus ruled in the air and
enlightened the soul-consciousness of man; Poseidon ruled over the waters
and worked within the life-forces of the human body; Hades was king of the
world of matter and the netherworld and was experienced as the hardening
and imprisoning forces in the physical body of man. 48
Yet the gods could not give to man the most precious of all gifts, the ego.
The gods, who with their picture-consciousness were the Atlanteans, had
gradually to resign from the leadership of mankind in order that man might
unfold the consciousness of sense-perception and logical reason. The gods had
to “die within the soul of man.” The soul cut herself off from the imagination
of the divine; she stood alone. Her experience now was the twilight of the
gods, the first result of sunken Atlantis and the beginning of the age of Iron,
of Darkness.
Man was left solitary and would have been completely lost in the wilderness
of the Dark Age had he not had leaders who could act as mediators and
pioneers of the dawn of self-consciousness. These mediators were the Heroes,
the “sons of gods” and of mortal women. They lived as the initiators of man’s
self-consciousness in the early age of post-Atlantis. It was their task to teach
man how to win freedom, how to become an individual.
The bringer of individuality, preceding all the other demigods and heroes,
was Prometheus. Who was Prometheus? It is significant that since he was
born the son of Gaia and therefore as a member of the first generation of the
gods, he was created at the very outset of the development of the earth. Yet
he himself, a Titan, rebelled against his brother Kronus and cast him down,
thus helping Zeus to his domination. Prometheus was always a revolutionist.
His aim was to further the development of consciousness. He never wanted
to remain at the existing stage of evolution. Therefore, while he at first helped
Zeus to overthrow Kronus, he later turned against Zeus in order to acquire the