Samothracian Mysteries

The Kabeirion on Samothrace.

The Samothracian mysteries were located on the mountainous and watery Greek island of Samothrace (Σαμοθράκη "Thracian Samos"), situated in the Thracian Sea of the northern Aegean. In these mysteries the Great Gods, the Kabiri (Greek: Κάβειροι "the Great", Latin: Cabiri), were worshipped. According to mythological tradition, they were chthonic gods of both sexes from Asia Minor and servants of the Great Mother, the Kabeiro, whom the Greeks identified with Rhea, the mother of the gods, but also with Demeter, Hecate and Aphrodite. They were actually the esoteric side of Ceres (the Kersa), Demeter, the world of becoming. Compared to the Great Mother, they appeared like dwarfs, yet they were called Megaloi Theoi, "Great Gods". Of the four traditional names of the gods known from mysteries of the Kabirs, probably from Thebes, Axierus, Axiokersa, Axiocersus and Kadmilus, it was claimed that they signified Persephone, Demeter, Hades and Hermes. The Greek prefix axios, which occurs in these names, means worthy. The name Kabiren is not of Greek origin, but derives from the mountain Kabeiros in the landscape of Berekyntia, which belonged to the Phrygian mother of the gods. Only later did they make Samothrace their sacred mystery island. At this time Orpheus was also their disciple. They were invoked as saving gods by sailors in distress.

The Kabiri are closely connected with the becoming of man. Goethe had already sensed this and therefore lets them appear in the second part of his Faust tragedy in the Classical Walpurgis Night where the Homunculus is to become a homo, a human being:

„In this way, however, Goethe shows that he had a deep and meaningful conception of the Kabiri of Samothrace, that he had a feeling for the fact that these Kabiri were revered in ancient times as the guardians of those forces which are connected with the becoming of man, with the genesis of man. So Goethe touches on the highest by calling up from the time of atavistic clairvoyance the images of those divine powers that are connected with the becoming of man.

The Greek view itself already referred to very old things when it spoke of the mysteries of Samothrace. And we may say that in contrast to all the various ideas of the gods and the connection between man and these gods that the Greeks had, the ideas about the deities of Samothrace and the Kabirian deities pervaded everything. And the ancient Greek was convinced that he had received a conception, an idea, of human immortality through that which had entered the Greek consciousness as a legacy of the Samothracian mysteries. The Greek thought that he owed the idea of human immortality, that is, of man's belonging to the spiritual-mental universe, to the influence of the Samothracian Kabiri mysteries.

Thus Goethe wants to say at the same time: Perhaps the abstract human idea of the Homunculus comes together with the real forces of human development when, in a bodiless state, the impulses are grasped which the Greek thought of as connected with his Kabiri of Samothrace.“ (Lit.:GA 273, p. 201f)

„Outwardly, they are again simple sea gods. Samothrace - as the Greeks knew - was surrounded by the most terrible, earthquake-like storms in relatively recent times. So the demons of nature had ruled here in such a monstrous way that it was still like a historical memory for the ancient Greeks. And in the forests, in the dense, then dense forests of Samothrace, was hidden the mystery of the Kabiri. Among the various names given to the Kabirs are those where one Kabir is called Axieros, the second Axiokersos and the third Axiokersa, Kadmilos the fourth. Then one had such a vague feeling that there was a fifth, sixth and seventh. But in essence, man's spiritual gaze was focused on the first three Kabiri. The old ideas of the Kabiri were really the mystery of the human becoming. And actually, he who has been initiated into the sacred mysteries of Samothrace should come to the view: What corresponds in the spiritual world, viewed spiritually, to that which happens here on earth when a human being comes into being for a soul that embodies itself on earth, when a human being becomes a human being in the succession of generations? - So to speak, the spiritual correlate of the human birth should be seen in the spiritual world. Through this vision Goethe believed he could make the homunculus into a homo in the idea. But the initiate of the Samothracian mysteries was also to be introduced to this vision.“ (Lit.:GA 273, p. 202f)

Rudolf Steiner pointed out that the total of seven Kabiri correspond to the seven members of the human being. The first three represent the bodily sheaths, which consist of the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. The fourth Kabir, Kadmilos, represents the human I. The other three "are to be inquired in Olympus" (Goethe) and refer to the higher spiritual members of being Manas, Buddhi and Atma - and "there lives also probably the eighth, of which no one thought yet!"

„In the Samothracian mysteries, for example, they taught: There are four Kabiri; three of them always kill the fourth. - But actually they thought that man had a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an I. The physical body is first of all a physical corpse that falls prey to death. The etheric body dissolves in the cosmic, the astral body also dissolves in a certain way, as I have described in my "Theosophy". If the I does not save its self-consciousness by participating in the spiritual, then the three also kill the I and drag it down into mortality. In the Mysteries, people sought to save the immortality of the human being. It was not imagined that one could acquire immortality through prayers; it was not imagined that one could merely passively relate to immortality and the like, but it was imagined that those who were initiated, through the special transformation of their soul being, through their awakening, through the awakening of their I, got over the danger of not grasping themselves in the spirit and thus having to go the way of their mortal body.“ (Lit.:GA 205, p. 48f)

The Kabiri, designed as jugs according to Rudolf Steiner's sketch.

„It were those mysteries which, in the deepest sense, awakened in their listeners the consciousness that the whole world is a theogony, a becoming of gods, that one sees the world in a thoroughly illusory way if one believes that something else is becoming in the world than gods. Gods are the ones who represent the beings of the world, gods are the ones who have experiences in this world, gods are the ones who carry out deeds. And what one sees as clouds, what one hears as thunder, what one perceives as lightning, what one perceives on earth as river and mountain, what one perceives on earth in the mineral kingdoms, these are the revelations, the manifestations of the becoming of the destinies of the gods, which are concealed behind them. And also that which appears outwardly in the cloud, in thunder and lightning, in tree and forest, in river and mountain, is nothing else than that which reveals the existence of the gods, which is everywhere, in the same way as the skin of man reveals the inner soul of this man. And if gods are everywhere, then one must distinguish - as the students of the Mysteries in northern Greece were taught - between the small gods, who are in the individual natural beings and processes, and the great gods, who present themselves as the beingness of the Sun, Mars, Mercury, and a fourth, who cannot be made visible externally through an image or through a design. These were the great gods, the great planetary gods, those great planetary gods who were treated in such a way that man's gaze was directed upwards towards the world-space, that his eye, but also his whole heart, should behold that which lived in the Sun, Mars, Mercury, but which not only lives outside in this small circle in the world-space, but which lives everywhere in the world-space, which above all approaches man.

And after first, I would like to say, a majestic impulse had been awakened in the student of the northern Greek mysteries by directing his gaze upwards to the planetary circles themselves, this gaze was then humanly deepened in such a way that, as it were, the eye was seized by the heart in order to see spiritually. Then the disciple understood why three symbolically shaped jars had been placed before him on the altar.

We once used a replica of these jars here in a eurythmic Faust performance, and the way they looked then, these jars, is the way they looked in the Samothracian, in the northern Greek mysteries. But the essential thing was that with these jars, in their whole symbolic design, an act of consecration, an act of sacrifice took place. A kind of incense was put into these jars, it was lit, the smoke poured out, and three words, which we will speak about tomorrow, were spoken with mantric force by the celebrating father into the smoke that steamed up from these jars, and the figures of the three Kabirs appeared. They appeared because the human breath, the exhalation, was formed by the mantric word and communicated its form to the rising, vapourising substance that had been incorporated into the symbolic jars. And as the disciple thus learned to read his own breaths, as he learned to read what these breaths wrote into the smoke, he learned at the same time to read what the mysterious planets spoke to him from the vast universe. For now he knew: as one of the Kabiri was formed by the mantric word and its power, so in reality was Mercury; as the second Kabir was formed, so in reality was Mars; as the third Kabir was formed, so in reality was Apollo, the Sun.“ (Lit.:GA 232, p. 180f)

„Those were the times when man did not say in abstracto: In the primordial beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and a God was the Logos - those were the times when man could say something quite different, when man could say: In me the exhalation shapes itself, and in that the exhalation shapes itself in a regular way, it proves itself to be an after-image of cosmic creation, for it creates for me out of the sacrificial smoke formations which are for me the living writings which tell me what the planetary worlds want to tell me.

And when the disciple of the Kabiren Mysteries on Samothrace approached the gates of these initiatory places, then he had the feeling through his instruction: Yes, now I enter that which encloses for me the magical actions of the sacrificing Father. For "Father" was the name given to the initiators of these mysteries. And what revealed the magical power of these celebrating Fathers to the disciple? Through what the gods have placed in man, through the power of language, the priestly magician and sage wrote into the sacrificial smoke those writings which spoke out the secrets of the universe.“ (Lit.:GA 232, p. 182)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Menschenwerden, Weltenseele und Weltengeist – Erster Teil, GA 205 (1987), ISBN 3-7274-2050-2 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Mysteriengestaltungen, GA 232 (1998), ISBN 3-7274-2321-8 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Geisteswissenschaftliche Erläuterungen zu Goethes «Faust», Band II: Das Faust-Problem, GA 273 (1981), ISBN 3-7274-2730-2 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated. Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.