Christianity of the Sixth Root Race

Manes will create an overlapping stream, a stream which goes further than the stream of the Rosicrucians. The stream of Manes goes over to the Sixth Root Race which has been in preparation since the founding of Christianity. Christianity will appear in its perfected form in the Sixth Root Race. 

Life as such overcomes every Form. It propagates itself through Christianity and lives in all forms and confessions. Whoever seeks the Christian Life will find it. It creates Forms and shatters Forms. But, in addition, a form for the Christian Life of the Sixth Root Race must be prepared. A number of human beings must be formed into an organization, a Form, in which the Christianity of the Sixth Root Race can find its place. This Form, this external Form of Society must spring from a handful of men whom Manes prepares. This is the community that Manes prepares. Therefore the first endeavor of Manicheanism is to shape external life in its pure form. That is why Manicheanism laid such great stress on purity. The Cathari were a sect which appeared like a meteor. They gave themselves this name, Cathari, because Cathari means ‘the Pure Ones.’ They were human beings who had to keep themselves pure in their mode of life and in their moral relationships. 

In Manicheanism, it was less a question of the cultivation of Life but rather of the cultivation of the external Form of Life for the Sixth Root Race. In this Sixth Root Race, Good and Evil will form a far greater contrast than they do today. What will appear in the Fifth Round for the whole of humanity, i.e., that the physiognomy will be a direct expression for that which karma has created in man, so, in the Sixth Root Race, Evil will appear, especially in the Spiritual. There will be men who are mighty in Love and Goodness. But Evil will also be there as a mood and a disposition (Gesinnung) without any covering, within a large number of human beings. They will extol Evil. Some inkling in regard to the Evil in the Sixth Root Race glimmers in many men of genius. (Nietzsche's Blond Beast is a portent of this Evil in the Sixth Root Race.)

The task of the Sixth Root Race is to draw Evil again into itself through gentleness (Milde). In those who are the followers of the Sons of the Widow there will live the inviolable principle that Evil must be overcome through gentleness. That is the task of the Manichean spiritual stream. It appears in forms which many can call to mind, and need not be mentioned. It must express itself in the forming of a community which has to spread above all things: Peace, Love, and Non-resistance to Evil. It must create a Form for the Life that is to come later. 


-Rudolf Steiner, Berlin - November 11, 1904 - S-0948 - GA 93


Translation of brief notes made by Fraulein Scholl. Several passages in the German are very obscure.

Wagner & Buddhism

There is an amalgamation of Buddhism and Christianity in "Parsifal". This, as we know, is also one of the hallmarks of Manichaeism.

Richard Wagner was very well read in Buddhism, and incorporated it in his operas:

The name "Tristan" means sorrow and sadness (the world of Samsara). It is the sadness of separation from God:

"It might also be argued that there are no specifically Buddhist ideas in Tristan.....The subject of his Tristan und Isolde is not salvation but the suffering caused by the desire for extinction.
"Whether that deliverance or extinction takes the form of absorption into Brahman or transition into Nirvana is unimportant, in the context of the drama. From a remark that Wagner made to Cosima many years later, that Kundry had undergone Isolde's transfiguration a thousand times, it would appear that he had reached the view that Isolde had not yet escaped from samsara, which in notes in the Brown Book he equated to the realm of day; in contrast, Nirvana was the realm of night. So there is sufficient evidence from which to conclude that, if not during the composition of Tristan und Isolde then at least in reflecting on it later, Wagner thought of Tristan yearning for Nirvana, the realm of night."

-Derrick Everett
In the Wagnerian Parsifal, he shoots a swan: 

"Off with you, be on your way!

Take some advice from Gurnemanz:

In future leave our swans in peace,

go seek -- you gander -- for geese!"

"Much later, in Parzival's wanderings, he comes across a goose that has been wounded by King Arthur's falcon. Three drops of blood fall on the snow; the red on white reminds Parzival of his distant wife, Condwiramurs. In contemplation of the blood on the snow, he falls into a trance."

The three drops of blood on the snow is also scene from the beginning of Snow White. The young Queen pricks her finger while sewing and three drops of blood fall onto the snow.

⇋⇋⇋⇋⇋

In the writings of Basil Valentinus the Swan represents the third level of initiation- Raven and Peacock being 1st and 2nd. In this level Inspiration as the Divine Word, the Harmony of the Spheres, sounds forth.

"In the third degree he meets death and must sing the Swan's song. He then dies to everything earthly."

-Notes from Walter Stein's The Ninth Century.

From Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia"-

It happened one vernal day that a wild swan was shot by an idle courtier as the flock flew near the palace, and the wounded bird fell into the hands of Siddârtha. As he soothed the frightened, fluttering bird with tender touch, and drew the arrow from its side, he pressed the barb into his own wrist to make trial of the pain: --

Then some one came who said, "My Prince hath shot
A swan, which fell among the roses here.
He bids me pray you send it. Will you send?
"Nay," quoth Siddârtha, "if the bird were dead
To send it to the slayer might be well,
But the swan lives; my cousin hath but killed
The god-like speed which throbbed in this white wing."

And Devadatta answered, "The wild thing,
Living or dead, is his who fetched it down;
'Twas no man's in the clouds, but fall'n't is mine,
Give me my prize, fair Cousin." Then our Lord
Laid the swan's neck beside his own smooth cheek
And gravely spake, "Say no! the bird is mine,
The first of myriad things which shall be mine
By right of mercy and love's lordliness.
For now I know, by what within me stirs,
That I shall teach compassion unto men
And be a speechless world's interpreter,
Abating this accursed flood of woe"
(end of quote)

"In Wieland Wagner's interpretation of Parsifal, the spiritual hero progressed from the realm of mother and matter, symbolised by the swan, to the realm of father and spirit, symbolised by the dove. In this interpretation the incident with the swan can be seen as the starting point of Parsifal's journey and the descending dove as the end of that journey. In Wieland's famous Bayreuth production (1951-1973), however, the dove was omitted. Perhaps because this symbol suggests a parallel between Parsifal and Christ, one that Richard Wagner repeatedly denied had been his intention."

Kundry is the Kundalini:

Then someone chances upon her in a cave, or in dense undergrowth, in a deathlike sleep, lifeless, numb, bloodless, with all limbs rigid.

-Wagner's Prose Draft of 1865

After Parsfal's destiny is played out another union takes place - that of Parsifal with his wife Kondawiramur. They meet where Parsifal once saw three drops of blood in the snow. It was on this spot that he fell into a state of continuing dream while overpowerd by desire for her. Now all this is overcome. His love is now free from egoism. It has become a healing love which, stripped of all egotistic desire, is a free and radiant blessing- like the light of the sun it streams over the world.

-T. Ravenscroft The Cup of Destiny