Michael. We are living toward the feast of Michael on the 29th of September. And I must say that before I got to know anthroposophy, I did not know this feast. I mainly got to know it at the Waldorf school, because the children went there. And of course also from the work of Rudolf Steiner. It might occur to you that Rudolf Steiner himself initiated this feast, but that is absolutely not the case. It is a very well-known feast, which is actually celebrated across a very large range of religions. Also really on the 29th of September.

It has above all the Catholic and Orthodox Christian background. But still also in the Protestant faith and in the Anglican church the feast is celebrated in certain cases. To me, it had never stood out. Of course, it is the case that, when you visit other countries, and also in your own country, that when you visit church buildings you often see images of Michael with the dragon, George with the dragon. So the principle, the symbolism – I should actually not say it like that – has been known. But the date, the 29th of September, was unknown to me. But that is now already many decades ago.

And when you then get to know the being of Michael – and you get to know that above all through the work of Rudolf Steiner in his books and lectures – when you get to know this being, then it becomes very clear that the image of the archangel who fights the dragon is an image that gives courage. It could also be frightening, but it is not. It is an image through which you get an impression that that which resists in the world can be fought and that it also can be overcome.

But what, then, is actually for us human beings in modern times the meaning of this being Michael? We come out of a time in which the summer warmth has been very strong – this year especially. And when you follow the weekly verses of Rudolf Steiner, then you have experienced that when you go along with that summer warmth – and you do that unconsciously in fact always, so also if you do not believe in those things, they nevertheless happen – when you go along with that summer warmth, then you actually go out of yourself. Then you are no longer so entirely anchored in yourself as you are in the winter. No, you really go with light and warmth out into the cosmos.

But then comes August, and that is the time in which also the meteor showers are. Those you could see as the sword of Michael. Then gradually comes the time that you feel: I am going back more to myself. But in fact you then go back to a house that has for a long time been more or less abandoned. And in that house, which therefore has not stood under your dominion for a time, all kinds of things may have happened. I had to think very strongly of Odysseus, who after a long absence returns home. The journey back is already difficult, but the arrival at home is truly a disillusionment. That is an image for what we experience every year when we return from the summer warmth and the light back into ourselves.

There a whole lot has happened where we were not present, in that sense. So even if you do not believe in these things, I say – and then of course you also do not have to believe it – that it is nevertheless so. This is not connected with belief. These are a kind of regularities of the yearly cycle. You therefore come back, and there in a certain nesting the dragon is found, who threatens us. And then you need a strength to bring yourself back again to yourself. And that is why the feast of Michael on the 29th of September is of course exactly the right time, for in this time of year we need his strength so badly.

It is courage that you need in order to confront yourself, not only with yourself but also with that whole earthly existence, with which we so often struggle, that you confront yourself with it again, but also unite with it in a certain sense. So not that you remain half outside, because you say: it is such a misery, I actually want nothing to do with it – but that you bring up the courage to face it all once more. I also always found it very pleasant when the school year, or later the academic year, began again; that you also got such a feeling: I am back, I must go to work again. It was beautiful, this summer, holiday and so, now we go to work again. And yes, you must apply a certain strength in order to do that again. That is the strength of Michael that we need.

But there is also still a Michael-strength not bound to the season, but bound to the course of time. We live since the last third of the nineteenth century in a Michael-age. Michael is the archangel who in our time is the leading spirit. And it has always been the case that an archangel also really appears as leading. He takes the leadership, and thereby in fact influences the course of events. But in our time simultaneously the period of freedom has begun, and that is in conflict with each other. One could not say that one is free when the ruling archangel influences you while you do not know it.

And Michael holds himself very strictly to that. But that means that he is not inspiringly active down into the physical everyday consciousness. He leaves us free, and that means that we must show our will, that we also really, with him, want to help shape this age, in which he is the leading archangel, in his sense. That you must, as it were, confirm with your will.

And Rudolf Steiner has made clear to us that in thinking – that is not the thought-life, that are not the associative thoughts, that are not the memory-thoughts, but that is the thinking with which you know, with which you understand, with which you practice science – that in that thinking deathliness has entered the most. That is an unpleasant happening; perhaps you also know it from your own life. When you look back, then you know that from your youth to adulthood gradually a transition occurs to a kind of distance that arises with respect to that which, for example in nature, is alive. A distance that you at first did not have, and that becomes ever clearer, strengthened even by all the abstract learning processes one has to go through.

That deathliness is something very unpleasant. But on the other side, precisely that is the element of freedom. For if the conscious thinking were not dead, if all kinds of living influence would show themselves in it, if you yourself were not the one who determines the course of the thoughts, then you could not be free.

So that deathliness is at the same time also the source of freedom. Thereby we can, with our understanding, with our faculty of knowing, comprehend that in our time it is necessary that you work yourself up again to the region in which Michael indeed can work inspiringly. So the freedom lies in working oneself up to a region of thinking in which those inspirations can be received, because with that working oneself up you show that you want to be in that region, and that you therefore want to cooperate with the spiritual world on the shaping of further human development.

That is for me a very important point in the awareness of what Michael actually means. That point is that he does not automatically intervene inspiringly, but that we must first work ourselves up to another, a spiritualized thinking, in which that can happen. And by that deed, that you work yourself up to that spiritualized thinking – by that deed you show that you are free and that you out of free will want to help shape together with him.

Last year a book appeared with the title Thus Michael Appears. That is from my hand, but it is a report of a seminar a number of years ago that we held in Switzerland. And in it I was of course able to put into words much more fully what we actually must imagine of the being of Michael and how we can shape together with him.

There are two quotations from the work of Rudolf Steiner that I would like to give here, because both show that it is courage that it is about. You also need courage in order to want to spiritualize that dead thinking. It really does not go by itself. And the strength you need for that, that is the strength of courage.

Rudolf Steiner has on many occasions spoken about the courage we must have or develop when we want to work together with Michael.

The first quotation is from 1923. It stands in the Gesamtausgabe 223 on pages 103 and 104. There Rudolf Steiner speaks about Michael and says:

“It was so that Michael always himself intervened in the human nature, so that the human being would not sink down too much. But in the last third of the nineteenth century it was so that the Michael-image in the human being became so strong, that it depended, as it were, only on the good will of the human being, that it depended on that, to feelingly consciously lift oneself up to the Michael-image, so that the dragon-image would form itself for him – but then in a non-enlightened feeling-experience – and that on the other side, in a spiritual view, and then still not in a necessarily clairvoyant consciousness, the light-figure of Michael could stand before the soul’s eye. Thus for the human being a content of soul can arise, and then you say to yourself: In me works that dragon-power that wants to pull me down. I cannot behold it, but I feel that power as that which wants to bring me down. But I behold in spirit the shining angel whose cosmic task it always has been to overcome the dragon. And then there comes, as it were, an exercise that you could do in this time: I concentrate my soul on this shining figure. I let its light shine into my soul. Then in this way the soul will become illuminated and warmed; then it will carry within itself the Michael-strength. And in a free decision the human being will be able, through his bond with Michael, to overcome the dragon-power in his sub-human.”

In these few sentences you can actually experience the whole principle of Michael, of his being.

And a year later Rudolf Steiner then speaks in similar words, GA 237, but yet again differently, and says:

“The seriousness of the times; the courage that is needed in order rightly to unite with spiritual currents, one can become aware of when one deepens oneself into the Michael-being. But when one then takes these things into oneself, while one says to oneself: You human soul, you can be called upon, when you understand, to cooperate in the safeguarding of the Michael-sovereignty – then can at the same time arise what one might call a devoted inner jubilation of the human soul, to be allowed to be so powerful.”

There is courage needed to be full of power. That seems strange; you would say it is pleasant to be full of power, that you need no courage for that. But when you go a little deeper into it, then it becomes clear: When you live in this time and you want to stand firm in what you experience as true, beautiful and good, then you need power, and that power equals courage.

That is Michael. That we as human beings cannot do alone. For that you need spiritual beings who stand behind you, whom you can trust, that they will not abandon you when it becomes difficult, that you can always draw the courage of Michael himself out of the bond with him.

That I wanted to say for the 29th of September, so that we, united with each other and united with Michael, may grasp the courage to also truly dare to be powerful.