Temple
A temple (Greek: τέμενος témenos, Latin: templum "delimited, enclosed") was originally a delimited sacred area erected in sacred places such as hills or groves in which cultic acts were performed addressed to the deity or deities who had taken up residence there. Later, temple buildings were erected at these sites, ranging from simple mounds of earth to extensive temple districts. The common archetype of all temple forms is the body of man, which receives the descending spirit in its soul. A perfect example of temple construction was the Temple of Solomon.
„What, after all, is a temple of the Near East? Where in the world do we find an example of it?
The example that immediately throws light on what has happened here is given in the following: you think of a human being lying on the ground and raising himself up with his fore body and his face. And in the human being lying on the ground and raising himself up in order to let his body be caught by the higher spiritual forces flowing down, in order to get in touch with them, you have given that which can give the stimulating inspiration for a temple in the Near East. All the pillars, the capitals, all the strange figures of this temple are symbols of what one can feel when one stands face to face with such an erect human being, with all that is revealed in his hand movements, in his gestures and in his countenance. If one were to break through this countenance with the spiritual gaze, if one were to penetrate into the interior of the human being, into the microcosm, which is an imprint of the macrocosm, one would find - in so far as the human countenance is a full expression of what is in the interior of the human being, of the microcosm - the same relationship between the human countenance and the interior as between the façade of the temple of the Near East and what was in its interior. An erecting human being is a temple of the Near East; not copied, however, but considered as a motif with all that it stimulates in the soul. In so far as we are physical human beings and human corporeality can be portrayed spiritually through anthroposophy, the temple of the Near East is the expression of the human microcosm. Thus, from the comprehension of the human microcosm with the striving upwards, that part of the human art of building is opened up. This physical human being has his faithful spiritual imprint in those strange temples of which not much more than ruins have survived. In every detail, down to the winged wheel and the archetypes of these things, one would be able to prove that this is so. The times speak to us in loud tones: The temple is man!
And the Egyptian and Greek temples?
We can describe the human being not only from the anthroposophical but also from the psychosophical point of view, from the point of view of the soul. If we approach the human being, in so far as he confronts us on earth in the most essential way as a soul being, then what we observe in his eye, in his face, in his gesture, when we confront the human being, is truly at first a riddle. And how many a person is a great riddle in this respect! Truly, when we approach the human being in this respect, it is no different than when we approach the Egyptian temple, which presents us with the riddle. And when we enter its interior, we find there the holy of holies of the human soul. But we find it only accessible to those who can pass over the outer and enter the inner. A human soul is locked in the innermost cella, like the sanctuary of God, like the mystery secrets themselves in the Egyptian temple, in the Egyptian pyramid. But the soul is not so closed in the human being that it cannot express itself in the gesture, in all that can confront us in the human being. The body can, when the soul penetrates it in its peculiarity, become the outer expression of the soul. Then this human body appears to us as something artistically completed in itself to the highest degree, as something soaked through, as something infinite completed in itself. And look for something in the whole of visible creation that would represent in itself something as complete as the human body is, insofar as it is soaked through: you will find nothing within visible creation - not in relation to dynamism - except the Greek temple, him who so encloses the God in himself, but also serves him as a dwelling place for expression in an infinite that is complete in itself, like the human body of the human soul. And inasmuch as man as microcosm is soul in a body, the Egyptian, is the Greek temple - man.“ (Lit.:GA 286, p. 22f)
Literature
- Rudolf Steiner: Wege zu einem neuen Baustil, GA 286 (1982), ISBN 3-7274-2860-0 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
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