The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

the gospel of hellas
an equal basis in the preparation for the advent of the “Logos that was made
flesh.”
Alexandria best symbolized the mission of Alexander to bring to fruition
the gospel of Hellas. For it was Alexander who prepared the soil of past epochs
so that, in the midst of the upheaval which his wars caused, the germ of
Hellenism might be sown and cultivated until through the rise of Christianity
the Greek polis could flourish anew.
Alexander died at the age of thirty-three. Whatever the cause and
circumstances of so early a death may have been, the fact that it occurred at
this age is not without deep significance. Steiner’s historical psychology 73 has
shown that the relation between the maturity of consciousness and the growth
and vitality of the physical body differ in various epochs of culture. In previous
ages the soul could preserve a longer dependence on the growth of the body
than it can today. In other words, the human consciousness could learn from
the vitality of the body through innate instincts up to the highest age levels.
The council of the elders, the gerousia of the Spartans, which did not admit
men before the age of sixty, shows this fact in its constitutional and political
application. However, the more the individual consciousness arose with the
growth of the power of personal judgment and logical discrimination, the
shorter became the age limit through which the soul was able to learn from the
innate and instinctive forces of the growth of the body. The dependence of the
consciousness on the physical body grew less and less as the faculties of the soul
were emancipated from the inherited forces of the body.
In the later Hellenes it was approximately the age of thirty-three which
marked the boundary of such a dependence. The death of Christ at that age
signified the importance of this fact for all mankind. Alexander, with all his
grandeur and all his shortcomings, represented the symbol of the unfolding
of the individuality in the pre-Christian era. He was a pathfinder for an age
of mankind which was to come with the rise of the cosmopolitan world of
Christianity. It is under this aspect that we must view the fact that Alexander
asked the Hellenes to receive him among their deities.
Alexander died as a mortal. Yet his heritage bore the seed of immortality.
From Alexandria stemmed the new epoch which flourished in Aristarchus,