WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Four Mystery Plays cover

Four Mystery Plays

Chapter 2: THE PORTAL OF INITIATION
By Rudolf Steiner
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

Plays/Films/DramasReligion/Spirituality

About This Book

A sequence of four linked stage mysteries depicts the soul’s progress through initiation by dramatizing meditative practices, inner trials, visionary encounters, and ritual councils that reveal moral debts and past-life ties, including a retrospective traced to ancient Egypt. Elemental beings and two antagonistic spiritual influences appear as catalysts that test free will and the balance between spiritual striving and materializing tendency. Scenes move between contemplative mountain meditations, subterranean and temple settings, and soul-world visions, while individual development culminates in an integrating finale that foregrounds self-knowledge, expanded perception of the beyond, and the unfolding significance of a renewed spiritual event.

THE PORTAL OF INITIATION

The general public has never been admitted to the performance of these plays. The English editor has, however, ventured to give some indication of the costumes and scenery, though this can only be sufficient to give a general idea. The following is a summary of the scenes:

A Prelude

Scene 1: A debating room. Theodora’s vision of the coming Christ.

Scene 2: Johannes’ meditation among the mountains: ‘Know thou thyself.’

Scene 3: Meditation chamber. Maria’s separation.

Scene 4: The Spirit of the Elements. The Soul-world.

Scene 5: The subterranean rock temple. The consultation of the hierophants.

Scene 6: Continuation of Scene 4. Felicia: her First Fable. Germanus.

Scene 7: The Spirit-world. Maria and her soul powers. Theodora’s vision of the past incarnation of Maria and Johannes. The scene ends with Benedictus’ great mystic utterance.

An Interlude

Scene 8: The portrait of Capesius by Johannes. Strader’s bewilderment.

Scene 9: Johannes’ second meditation among the mountains three years later than Scene 2. ‘Feel thou thyself.’

Scene 10: As in Scene 3. A trial for Johannes.

Scene 11: The Temple of the Sun. Destiny and debtors.