Rudolf Steiner's Vision for the Future - Anthroposophical Society in ...

arrival. Iphigenia is laid on the altar, but just before the
priest lowers his knife, Artemis whisks her away in a cloud
and puts a doe in her place which is then sacrificed. Iphigenia
is magically taken to far-away Tauris (on the Crimea
peninsula in the Black Sea) where she becomes the priestess
in Artemis’ temple. Years later, her younger brother Orestes
comes to Tauris and brings her back to Greece where she
founds a new Artemis cult.
What does this strange story mean? The mission of the
Greek civilization was the development of the intellectual
soul, the soul force that enables human beings to think for
themselves through the organ of the brain. A new capacity
was to be developed consisting of the ability to think
logically one thought after another, thus creating a line of
reasoning that leads to intellectual understanding. This
kind of intellectuality is necessary for understanding
earthly matter; it does not lead to knowledge of the
spiritual world which can only be gained through direct
experience. And the more deeply humanity incarnates in
the body, the more deeply we will be interested in exploring
the world of bodies and matter, with the result that our
interest in and ability to communicate with the world of
spirit will decrease more and more.
In order to avert the danger that humanity would thus
completely lose its connection with divine wisdom by
focusing entirely on the physical world, a power of the soul
had to be isolated so it could
be consecrated and sacrificed
exclusively to the divine. This
soul power was represented by
the pure maiden Iphigenia,
‘untainted by the fall into the
intellect,’ who is ‘sacrificed’ to
become a priestess dedicated to
maintaining the human being’s
connection with the divine. The
myth is thus an image of a spiritual
and psychic process in all
human beings that was necessary
so that humanity would not ‘dry
up’ in the intellect and lose the
divine wisdom of the heart.
Now we can ask why the Greeks experienced this as
involving Artemis. And why did it happen to Agamemnon?
Artemis is one of the three manifestations of divine
wisdom, Sophia, which the Greeks recognized among their
gods and goddesses. First there is Demeter, the great
mother and progenitor of the plant world, the etheric
world that first arose on Old Sun. The second manifestation
of divine wisdom is Artemis, who lives in the astral
world of nature among the animals of the fields and forests;
the astral world arose on Old Moon. Finally, Athena
represents the divine wisdom of Earth where the ego
develops and emancipates itself from its surroundings and
from the divine. Artemis thus represents an aspect of the
divine world in the state of creation before humanity’s fall
into the intellect. The pure soul force of Iphigenia therefore
needed to connect with the purely divine.
As to Agamemnon, he was the most powerful king in
Greece. We have to take the word ‘king’ with a grain of
salt, because those kings reigned over territories often
consisting of little more than the size of a small city or
county; local chiefs or warlords might be more appropriate
terms for them. However, Agamemnon was the greatest
among them. Why? It would have to be because he had
developed his intellect to a greater extent than any other;
he was ahead of the others. The power of his cold,
calculating intellect is shown in the heinous lie with which
first issue 2011 • 61