Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ...them as their the path through the inner soul life to its deepest foundations. And in very fact we find a region of post Atlantean civilisation where those two kinds of mysteries existed contemporaneously--a region where on the one side the so-called Apollonian culture and mysteries were developed, and on the other the culture and mysteries of Dionysos. Such a division is to be found in ancient Greece. There we have on the one hand the path which was shown to the people as well as to the Initiates, the path leading out into the spiritual world, to what is behind the senses, to the spiritual world behind the sun. So far as the Greek knew this world, he gave it the name of the realm of the Apollonian beings. Apollo, the Sun god, was the representative of the divine spiritual beings which, exist behind the tapestry of the sense world. But there was also a class of mysteries pointing the way through the soul life into its spiritual foundations, mysteries concerning which we already know that man may enter them only after careful preparation, and after having attained a certain degree of maturity. For this reason the second kind of mysteries was more carefully guarded against immaturity than were the Apollonian. The Apollonian gods were indicated to the masses of the people, whereas the spiritual beings to be found along the path through the inner nature were reserved for those who, through spiritual, intellectual and moral training deepening alone can give an answer to man's yearning. Thus in ancient Greece these two divine spiritual worlds are side by side. In ancient India they appeared as an unity, in a state of reciprocal permeation. Now let us turn again to evolution. We have already seen that only the most advanced group of the northern...