Die Begründung der Mysterien des Urheberrechts/en

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Foundation The Mystery of Copyright

Text of June 9, 2026

Edited on July 3, 2026

The Publisher: Tatiana Tsykra (tetyana.tsykra@gmail.com)

A pressing need has now arisen to publish on our website numerous texts that are the fruit of our many‑year joint spiritual work. Usually, when texts are published, the main question is the question of copyright. Yet for esoteric texts — both in ancient times and in the Rosicrucian tradition — it has always been clear that human beings, through their labor, can only assist spiritual content in becoming accessible to all humanity; but to claim authorship, to claim the role of creator of spiritual content, is complete absurdity. And nevertheless, since the mental habits of the Ahrimanic world regarding copyright have also taken root in the anthroposophical community, we consider it necessary to preface all our subsequent publications on this site with an introductory article in which the very question of copyright would be raised in the context of the New Mysteries.

In the cosmic rhythms of the yearly cycle we now find ourselves at a very important point — the point of the summer solstice. In the Ancient Mysteries of all times and peoples, it was one of the four most significant mystery festivals. Strictly speaking, in the earliest traditions it was in fact the most important festival of the year. In later mysteries, especially after the Mystery of Golgotha, the emphasis gradually shifted toward Christmas, but originally it was precisely the summer festival — the moment of the full predominance of light over darkness — that held the central place.

Right now we are experiencing this beautiful, sweetest season. We live at that point of the yearly circle when the Sun prevails over darkness, the day over the night. And this moment must not be missed, because if one does not gather solar forces now, later they will be vitally lacking, and it will be too late to store them. In nature this happens by itself: the Earth fills with the power of summer, and even when summer passes, its warmth lives secretly within it throughout the cold, dark part of the year — until the new spring. Otherwise the Earth would simply die every winter if it did not store this light and warmth. Not only all perennial plants, not only the entire world of insects, not only bears entering hibernation live through winter in summer’s warmth — this is how the Earth as a whole natural organism behaves.

People of antiquity, who had a deep and living connection with nature and, of course, with the mysteries, were fully immersed in these yearly rhythms. For them the year was not an abstraction that we today see on a calendar: “Aha, 2025 ended, 2026 began.” Whoever has a tear‑off calendar tears off the last page; others simply look at the numbers and note the change of year. But this is, in essence, pure Ahrimanic abstraction, devoid of a living experience of time.

For ancient consciousness, behind the concept of “year” originally stood a particular deity. In essence, behind the phenomenon of the year stands a high spiritual Being from the hierarchy of the Archai. Therefore it is no coincidence that in the lands where the future sixth cultural epoch is emerging — where abstractions will again be overcome — it is precisely in the Russian language that the word god (год) is literally identical to the word God (Бог). In English, God means “God,” and in sound it is close to the Russian god. In German, the word Gott is written almost the same as the English God, but pronounced [ɡɔt]. In the wisdom of the Russian language this is revealed, although few pay attention to it: God (Год) is God (Бог).

Now the time has come, and it very insistently demands that this God — the God of the year — be able to return to us. Humanity that does not return to the cosmic rhythms of the yearly cycle will not be able to enter the spiritual world correctly in order to build the culture of the New Mysteries. The yearly rhythm is a rhythm of exceptional importance.

Of course, other rhythms are also important — for example, the daily rhythm. But the daily rhythm is primarily significant for our everyday productive spiritual activity. If we violate daily rhythms, then in the end we completely exhaust ourselves and fall into the hands of opposing forces. However, if we speak globally — about the fact that human civilization, with the end of Kali Yuga, must return to the spiritual world — then the path lies precisely through returning to human beings such a God who is the Year.

If we turn to this God, he can give us an important hint. For he comes to us as the initiator of the New Mysteries, leading us toward a conscious return into the yearly cycle. And then the question arises: what relation does the yearly cycle have to the theme that concerns us now — the theme of copyright? We want to found the Mystery of Copyright. It would seem: “Elderberry in the garden, and an uncle in Kyiv” — what can the God of the year do for us here? He cannot not help! If we are building a mystery, then we must take into account that the essential mystery spirit, which in antiquity bore a natural character, now, after the Mystery of Golgotha, stands in direct connection with Christ Himself. A union of these Gods has taken place: Christ and the true Yearly Cycle. Of course, today there exist demonized pagan cults that also know something about the yearly cycle. But we are interested in the true, contemporary Yearly Cycle — in the spirit of the New Mysteries. And it is absolutely inseparable from the Being of Christ.

Nevertheless, in order to found the New Mysteries, as we know, much occurs precisely as a resurrection of the Ancient Mysteries, and not merely as the emergence of something entirely new. Yes, both happen: something entirely new comes, but something else — something that withdrew into a deep pralaya — now returns as a fully Christianized resurrection of the Ancient Mysteries. And if we turn to this God of the year, who now addresses us, who comes in his principal ancient festival — the festival of the summer solstice, now called St. John’s Day — and ask him how we are to found our mystery, he will direct us to what took place in the Ancient Mysteries.

It turns out that in far‑distant primordial times the priests cultivated their mystery wisdom in a special way throughout the yearly cycle. We know well that at that time thinking in the modern sense of the word did not exist. But this by no means implies that wisdom did not exist.

Wisdom was not attained through refined logical human thinking; it was attained through entirely different paths — precisely in the cults of this Divine Being of the year. And this Divine Being of the rank of the Archai — a mighty Being commensurate with the Spirit of the epoch as a whole, yet bearing within itself the uniqueness of the given year — nevertheless bestowed inspirations or, more precisely, special capacities upon human beings. But of course not upon all human beings: primarily upon the initiates; through the initiates — upon their pupils; and through the pupils — ultimately upon all human beings who still preserved instinctive clairvoyance.

What did it bestow? It granted a special ability: to see cosmic script in all natural phenomena that unfolded cyclically throughout the year. The ancient human being literally read them. He observed the behavior of insects, the forms of leaves of trees and plants, the movements of animals, the changing appearance of the landscape: in winter — the snow cover; in spring — the melting of snow and the first buds; in summer — the greenery and the diversity of colors; in autumn — wilting, crimson and grayness, and again snow. All of this — down to the smallest details, down to the behavior of a single tiny bug or the appearance of a single flower — was experienced as letters of a cosmic alphabet. These letters formed words, the words formed sentences, and the sentences formed entire works of cosmic wisdom.

Thus the ancient human beings, long before the materialistic epoch, when the material phenomenon began to be taken as “face value,” as reality itself, clearly understood: all this is unreal. But at the same time it was not insignificant. On the contrary, it had the same significance as letters in a book.

When a person reads a captivating artistic work, he forgets that a book is before him. Let us recall ourselves in such moments: we do not read letter by letter or syllable by syllable, although letters form syllables, syllables form words, words form sentences, sentences form paragraphs, paragraphs form chapters. But we do not see any of this. Before the inner gaze unfold impressive images of the experienced plot, and we do not notice pages, lines, or letters. We see only what flashes up in the soul and seizes us as living content.

In a book the letters are the material, tangible elements; only they, as it were, “exist,” but they are precisely what is nonessential. What is essential is what is born in the soul as the images of the action of a powerful book. And although in the material world this does not exist, it nevertheless exists in the invisible world.

Where does it exist? Of course, in the spiritual world. These images cannot arise simply from letters — that would be absurd. It is impossible to imagine that such powerful images are born out of letters. All of them exist in the spiritual world, and the letters merely serve as conduits to them.

Through letters we enter those regions of the spiritual world where, in a certain sense, the artistic plots that seize our soul unfold in reality. In exactly the same way, through the images of nature the soul‑gaze of the pupil, initiated into cosmic wisdom, broke through and filled his inner world.

Therefore he valued nature and did not renounce it: without it he could not break through to cosmic wisdom. But at the same time he did not fall into illusion: at each moment of the year new fragments of this wisdom opened, and the soul lived in accordance with this rhythm.

Therefore it is no coincidence that the year began with spring. If we look attentively at the course of the year, we will notice: the month that in modern consciousness is firmly fixed as the last — December — was in fact the tenth month in Ancient Rome. The word dece means “ten.”

Why so? Because in those times, in the last reflections of the Ancient Mysteries still preserved in Rome, the New Year began approximately in March. And that cosmic wisdom which was bestowed upon the pupil at the moment of spring’s awakening of nature had a direct relation to the mysteries of his physical body. His consciousness was macrocosmic, and he knew perfectly well what his physical body truly was outside of illusion.

What happens when we exit illusion — through initiation, through death, and in fact every night through sleep? We do not possess developed consciousness, and therefore we do not consciously experience what happens to us in sleep. In sleep this occurs unconsciously, purely vitally; after death — already consciously, though not in the ordinary consciousness connected with the body, but in the mighty super‑consciousness bestowed by the Higher Hierarchies.

And then we experience something polar to earthly consciousness. In earthly consciousness we feel ourselves inside the physical body, in which the internal organs function: heart, liver, kidneys, stomach, bones, muscles, endocrine glands, and much more. Our body is constructed infinitely complexly and wisely — it is the most complex structure on Earth. No matter how scientific‑technical progress develops, even reaching Artificial Intelligence, it is still very far from the wisdom embedded in the physical body.

We experience that all this is our inner structure, which gives us consciousness: if it functions normally, then the head functions normally, and we feel healthy. And around us unfolds the outer world: first the natural world, then the cosmic world, which we understand as an illusion behind which stands the world of the Higher Hierarchies.

After death or in initiation we experience how everything changes places. What previously was the outer world — not the physical illusion, but the world of the Higher Hierarchies standing behind it — becomes our inner world. However unbelievable this may sound, however much the intellect may resist it, it is so: the boundless world of the Hierarchies unfolds within the human being.

Let us once more reflect on the true greatness of the human being: he is the vessel of all the Higher Hierarchies, up to the highest — the Seraphim. And Archangel Michael is our inner being. And if the human being is a macrocosmic entity containing within himself the First, Second, and Third Hierarchy, if all of this is his inner world, then is it fitting for him to suffer heavily, whatever may occur and whatever trials may befall him?

We can scarcely force into our consciousness the fact that we truly are macrocosmic human beings: being the sheath for the Higher Hierarchies, we are their vessel. But it is far more difficult to understand that we are not crowding somewhere in superspace, but on the contrary, are a single macrocosmic human being with a common inner world, while at the same time not losing our individuality.

Precisely for this reason it becomes evident how absurd the opposition of some human beings to others is. To fight one another, to compete where it is unnecessary (if it is merely unhealthy competition in the spiritual sphere), to envy, to be jealous, to be angry, to take offense — all this is devoid of any meaning. We are identical with one another, united in the One: we are the single macrocosmic sheath for all the Higher Hierarchies. At the summit of consciousness we are all united into one whole.

Rudolf Steiner speaks of this already in the Second Lesson of the First Class. But unfortunately, this has not become the living reality of the modern pupil of the Michael School. It has remained merely theoretical knowledge. In fact, it has not even become theoretical knowledge. Who remembers this? Hand on heart, who even keeps this constantly in memory?

If we nevertheless manage to place into our consciousness that we are the sheath for the Higher Hierarchies, that we are macrocosmic human beings, vessels of all the Gods, then the question arises: what, then, is our outer world?

Thus, our inner world is the Higher Hierarchies. And what, then, is the outer world? The outer world becomes what previously was the inner content of our physical body: its infinitely wise, divine structure. It is precisely this that spreads around us as the environment of the macrocosmic human being. It is something even greater than we ourselves, who bear the Universe within us.

It is precisely this that we work on together with the Higher Hierarchies dwelling within us during the life between death and new birth. It is what we create as the seed, as the grain of our future physical body, which then, having been infinitely diminished, enters the maternal organism and for a certain time exists more or less autonomously already on Earth. And at a certain week of pregnancy the embryo is united with our etheric body, astral body, and I.

Thus we must imagine the preparation of the germ of our physical body: exactly as each plant grows a seed within itself, only in nature the seed is small and the plant is large; from the small seed grows the large plant. But in the spiritual world everything is the opposite. There exists an infinitely enormous seed, even greater than the macrocosmic human being himself, who contains within himself all the Higher Hierarchies. This infinitely great grain of our physical organism, although in the spiritual world there are no spatial characteristics, appears in the conceptual picture as something greater than we ourselves, as that which envelops us, and in relation to which we are the inner, and it — the outer.

At a certain moment, when this seed is ready for incarnation, it begins to contract and leaves us. At this moment of our life between death and new birth we release this seed from ourselves. It diminishes infinitely and becomes the embryo in the early stages of pregnancy, in the embryonic period. At this time we work on our etheric body. We weave it from the world ether — not from the earthly ether, but precisely from the cosmic ether. Then, gradually diminishing from cosmic dimensions to earthly ones, we unite with this physical embryo.

It is especially important now to rise to this level of consciousness so that we may once again regain a living connection with the God of the year and conduct a normal conversation with him.

Why is this so important? Because if we wish to embrace the God of the year in his yearly cycle, we must understand: in spring, whose culmination is reached at Easter time, when we learn to read the letters, words, sentences, and entire chapters of cosmic wisdom, we reveal the mysteries of the physical body in all their details.

When we learn the same, but now in the completely transformed images of summer, we comprehend the mysteries of the etheric body. It is precisely in this period that we weave it together with the Higher Hierarchies from the world ether — not the earthly, but the cosmic. This occurs after the infinitely great cosmic embryo has been compressed into the infinitely small earthly embryo and released to Earth. And the mysteries of this process are revealed in summer, reaching their peak at the point of the summer solstice.

Then the letters of the God of the year change again. The Sun begins to weaken, but precisely at this moment the fruits ripen. And the God of the year reveals to us in these cosmic scripts the mysteries of our astral body. At the end of September the God of the year leads us to his most important servant — Archangel Michael. He must lead us toward winter through the densifying forces of darkness and the forces of death. Therefore every autumn we must conquer the Dragon of darkness and death, which reigns in nature, in order to enter the sacred mysteries of winter. These mysteries reach their peak in the Mystery of Christmas, where the mysteries of the human I are revealed.

Thus the ancient priests, throughout the yearly cycle, cyclically experienced cosmic wisdom. But let us emphasize once more: for us it is especially important now to understand that they perceived it not through the power of modern thinking. It simply did not exist then. They did not produce wisdom through the labor of their own mind, but simply inhaled it — like a gift of the cosmos. And they clearly understood: cosmic wisdom is not the fruit of human labor; it is the gift of the Higher Gods. We already know — these are the very Upper and Lower Gods who play a key role in the yearly cycle through their cyclical interaction with the human being, to whom the Fourth Gate leads.

When the earthly being, at the moment of summer’s predominance of day over night, is maximally outstretched above the Earth, it performs the process of macrocosmic exhalation. This exhalation is the reflection of excarnation, and it is precisely in this way that we enter the bosom of the Upper Gods.

Conversely, when the Earth is bound by cold and has contracted to its utmost, we may say: a person in the cold does not open his coat wide, but on the contrary wraps himself tightly, becoming contracted, like a hedgehog. So too the Earth: it contracts entirely, does not extend outward, and lives by what it has accumulated within itself as summer in winter.

This is extremely important — the concept of “summer in winter” also appears in Rudolf Steiner’s Soulcalendar. Summer works intensely within the Earth, and it is precisely in winter that the sprouting of seeds and the growth of roots take place. Although it seems that the earth is frozen through and that everything in it has died, nothing stirs. But this is not so. On the surface of the earth death reigns, but beneath the surface, under the ground, winter‑summer manifests: seeds sprout, roots grow. Therefore farmers can store potatoes underground — they do not freeze, for they are warmed by this wondrous summer warmth.

And it is precisely at Christmas that the Lower Gods reign on Earth. Thus the Fourth Gate lives in its own cycle throughout the yearly round.

Such things are extremely important for our attunement, to return us to the Michael School — the very one from which, if we recall the famous words from the first paragraph of the First Lesson of the First Class, we have strayed so terribly. One may say that it is precisely the God of the year, leading us through the yearly cycle along the path of initiation and revealing the mysteries of the macrocosmic human being, who has given us such an attunement.

But we may object, like impatient pupils: “All this is, of course, very interesting, but how can it help us?” Yet the God of the year does not fall into wrath at our impatience. For patience — and only patience — is always rewarded. If we do not lay the foundation of all mystery activity, we will not be able to found any mystery — least of all one as complex as the Mystery of Copyright. Therefore we gather patience and calmly proceed further. We do not tug at the God of the year with our impatience.

What does the God of the year tell next? We stopped at the point that this ancient wisdom was not produced by the thinking of the priests, but literally inhaled by them. This occurred in much the same way as we usually do not apply enormous conscious effort to make each breath. If the organism is healthy, if we are not ill with asthma or coronavirus, when breathing becomes impossible, we do not notice the great blessing: the ability to breathe calmly. This great gift becomes perceptible only when we lose it. Then the most severe torments arise: a person cannot breathe, even if he has simply dived too deeply underwater. But in ordinary life we do not notice this blissful, blessed gift — the ability to breathe.

Just as naturally in those primordial times occurred the inhalation of cosmic wisdom by the priests. This wisdom, the wisdom of the Higher Hierarchies, even today immeasurably surpasses all human wisdom. What the ancient sages produced, no philosopher, however intelligent, and no scientist, however brilliant, will ever be able to produce.

Here we approach the most important point — our central theme. These ancient sages understood perfectly that the wisdom they perceived was not the fruit of their own labor, but represented a blessed divine gift, a gift of the higher gods. And if a human being does not maintain a conscious attitude toward this gift and does not render it due reverence in his cultic practice, the question arises: what happens to any gift when it ceases to be honored? Such a gift is either taken away or gradually loses its purity and becomes contaminated.

In such a case the forces that have the most direct relation to this gift enter in — the forces of Lucifer. In a certain sense one could say that ancient wisdom represented a pre‑Christian, Luciferic path. However, this must be understood in the sense in which Lucifer acted as a rightful guide toward Christ. But if a human being stumbles, Lucifer begins to manifest in his unlawful, tempting aspect.

To put it very simply: if ancient wisdom was attained as naturally as inhalation, then just as naturally exhalation must follow inhalation, so that a new inhalation may come.

And now the Spirit of Time, or the God of the year, as if addresses the Michaelites today: you are called to the re‑creation of the New Mysteries. And precisely now you find yourselves in a similar situation. You have accumulated enormous storehouses of wisdom, so vast that the question inevitably arises: where to put it? You take an inhalation, then another inhalation, and another, but at a certain moment you find yourselves in a heavy, seemingly hopeless situation. You can no longer properly dispose of what you have perceived and accumulated. And of course the opposing forces immediately come — “opposing” only in quotation marks, for their appearance is entirely lawful: they come precisely to push you toward the New Mysteries.

And for this one must ask: what did the ancient priests in the Ancient Mysteries do when they performed this inhalation? In what manner did they perform the exhalation?

It is precisely here that the God of the year reveals one of his mysteries to us. It is difficult to believe, difficult even to imagine how such a thing could have been possible, and yet the ancient priests, having passed through the full cycle of the yearly round and gathered all the cosmic wisdom of all four seasons — or, from another point of view, the entire totality of cosmic mysteries of the physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I — approached the moment of the great yearly summer festival, the festival of the summer solstice.

In this period, following the natural cosmic rhythm, the Earth performs its exhalation and finds itself in the embrace of the Upper Gods — the very gods who throughout the entire year, from one summer festival to the next, are the true masters and the true source of cosmic wisdom.

And meeting them again, the ancient priests experienced a deep inner need, in a special ritual of the summer festival, to return, to sacrifice back all the cosmic wisdom gathered throughout the year to its primordial source.

And this was not merely a symbolic act, not merely words: “Thank you, great gods, for this meeting, for the wisdom you have bestowed; we symbolically return it back.” No. A true returning of wisdom took place through specific ritual‑symbolic actions. In the flame of the sacrificial fire, among the fragrances rising upward, special ritual speeches were spoken expressing this process, and sacred actions were performed in which the priests entered this sacred space, clothed in various images of cosmic wisdom.

One may imagine that the priests, for example, wore a paper crown expressing certain attributes of cosmic wisdom. And when, in the course of the ritual, these signs were consigned to the fire of the sacrificial flame or otherwise removed from themselves, the priests ultimately found themselves completely deprived of these signs.

And one should not think that this was some kind of farce, for in the course of this they truly lost all accumulated wisdom and emerged from the ritual in a state of complete inner emptiness, as though having become absolute fools. Today this is difficult to understand; it may even evoke horror: how did they continue to live afterward?

This was precisely the essence of what occurred: for several months thereafter — at least until the festival of Michael, until the autumn season — they truly remained in an absolutely foolish state, a state of deep inner indeterminacy and unknowing, until a new cycle of wisdom‑perception began again.

During these months they were supported by the secondary priests, or servant‑priests, who did not participate directly in this ritual but only accompanied and ensured its performance, while preserving their own wisdom. Primarily these were those who, by the nature of their service, did not have the right to lose it, since their activity required continuity throughout the entire year.

Above all, this included the Asclepiads — the ancient servants of healing, who, of course, also belonged to mystery service. They could not interrupt the medical process even for several months, while the old wisdom had departed and the new had not yet begun to arrive.

And it must be said that although these were outstanding individuals, nevertheless they sacrificially remained in the position of servants of the high priests, who had to lose their wisdom completely. Otherwise — let us emphasize again — this wisdom would inevitably have been seized by Luciferic forces.

And we already sense that it is precisely here that the New Mysteries must be founded — the Mysteries of Copyright — if we fully understand the true meaning of what copyright actually is.

Of course, the New Mysteries are not a complete renewal of the Ancient Mysteries — this is not the point at all. Yet to understand the New Mysteries we must inevitably turn to the mysteries of antiquity and rely on their experience. If we do not understand what occurred in the Ancient Mysteries, we will be incapable of laying the foundations of the new ones.

Likewise, we will not be able to see that in reality this ancient mystery wisdom, despite everything, has in one way or another been preserved in the general spiritual culture of humanity.

For example, when we encounter such a phenomenon as fairground skomorokhs and jesters, it is important to understand that they were not merely wandering performers, beggars, or representatives of some lower and undeveloped social stratum whose sole occupation was to entertain the public at fairs for a pittance.

On the contrary, it was precisely in such a guise that wandering initiates often appeared — initiates who were required to appear to the world in such a form. Through various forms of performance — dramatic action, puppet theater, playing the lyre or other musical instruments accompanied by singing, or even through overt jesting — they fulfilled their special mission.

And the powerful, the rulers of the world, naturally sought gradually to eradicate such phenomena, because behind them stood real spiritual authority. And the absolute rule of the servants of Ahriman could be established only when such phenomena were destroyed.

As we may surmise, before us are residual phenomena of the Ancient Mysteries, when in such jesting, in the costume of the fool, we also encounter Parzival. Now we can see that this is not accidental: here too the heritage of the Ancient Mysteries is reflected. Parzival had to begin his great path toward the Grail Chalice precisely in the costume of the “fool.” All this is the last echo of ancient mystery traditions.

We remember well the image of the court jester. Many outstanding kings kept such people at their side — people possessing the consciousness of initiates and therefore capable of uttering the sharpest and most uncomfortable truths, for which any other courtier, even the highest‑ranking, would have been beheaded, whereas the jester could speak them with impunity.

This is why in card symbolism the Joker — the card capable of surpassing any king — is depicted as a jester. It is the highest card in the deck. The almighty Joker becomes the image of the priest, that ancient priest who was one of the most powerful people of his time, but who at the moment of the summer solstice was in a state of absolute foolishness and had to remain in it for several months until he began once again to gather the wisdom of the new cycle.

Thus before us unexpectedly open truly global perspectives — from the deepest antiquity and, perhaps, up to our own days.

And if we ask where today one may find the last manifestations of this peculiar “cosmic foolishness,” which simultaneously is the highest mystery quality, when people completely renounce not so much wisdom itself as the claim to copyright over it, then one of the brightest examples is, perhaps, Wikipedia.

It is a colossal labor that would be beyond the power of any single person, and probably even beyond any collective of the most outstanding scholars and professors. Such a work can be accomplished only by countless enthusiasts who lack even the thought of appropriating copyright over the knowledge they create.

And nevertheless it is precisely they who guard and sustain the vastest reserves of human wisdom. Of course, this is no longer cosmic wisdom, but earthly wisdom. Yet it is precisely here that one can see how a once‑great sacrificial deed, fully descended to Earth and adapted to the conditions of the modern epoch, made it possible — through an immense amount of labor — to create an outstanding, publicly accessible encyclopedia that has simultaneously become a great treasure of all humanity.

Naturally, in the physical or legal sense Wikipedia may belong to a particular organization or portal, may have a specific legal owner. However, without the immense sacrificial labor of countless people its existence would be impossible.

And one could ask: why did you spend so much time on this? No one will pay you for this work; no one may even say thank you, because before us stands a vast anonymity, a vast “no one.”

But these people work not even for gratitude; they work out of a movement of the soul, out of that inner enthusiasm from which all mystery activity begins.

And in this sense what occurs can quite rightly be called a mystery, for how else can one explain the fact that the labor of countless people not only does not fall into destructive contradiction with the labor of others — despite the inevitable presence of human weaknesses such as envy, rivalry, dislike, hatred — but actually forms a unified whole?

Naturally, in Wikipedia such conflicts arise from time to time, yet these are only local cases that do not disrupt the overall grand structure and do not lead it into chaos. On the contrary, everything turns out to be ordered in a wondrous way. No labor disappears without a trace or settles somewhere in inaccessible depths from which it would be difficult to retrieve it again. Everything created is almost immediately introduced into the common open circulation, becomes accessible to all, and turns into common property.

Thus collective authorship is accomplished, which already to some degree is — if not yet a contemporary mystery — then at least an approach to it, carried out with the assistance of the Great Architect.

But perhaps an equally admirable example is the creation of the Linux operating system. This too is the deed of an enormous number of people, yet here we are dealing not merely with specialists in various fields, but primarily with programmers. Perhaps for this reason the example is less known to the general public, but it is no less illustrative and no less astonishing.

A vast number of professionals, who could have used their knowledge exclusively for personal well‑being and profit, consciously and sacrificially united their efforts, standing against the monopoly of oligarchic structures striving to impose a kind of tribute upon the entire world. This is precisely how the situation appears when large corporations — like Microsoft in the case of the Windows operating system — seek to place all humanity in dependence on their technological solutions and extract constant benefit from this.

This conscious protest of programmers, who managed to unite for a common cause, also represents a true mystery, because such unity and such a scale of joint creativity are difficult to explain by ordinary human motives and interests alone.

Of course, this can be regarded as yet another gesture of goodwill from the Great Architect, who together with Archangel Vidar has already done infinitely much for the salvation of humanity in his benevolent aspect, although, naturally, the ominous aspect of Artificial Intelligence continues to hang over humanity like the sword of Damocles. And with each passing day the approach of — so to speak — 2033 becomes more distinct, when the scale of Artificial Intelligence will outweigh the scale of human intelligence, and humanity will be seized not by individual corporations, from whose dependence one can still somehow withdraw, but by a force from which deviation will no longer be possible.

Nevertheless, for us something else is important: it is precisely the Great Architect — and apparently only through him could this occur — who created the foundations for the Mystery of Copyright, or, more precisely, for the overcoming of Ahrimanic copyright.

However, this Mystery itself is a pre‑mystery. By itself it resolves nothing and is not capable of delaying the arrival of the critical moment, the year 2033. It only creates certain prototypes and models that must be reproduced in the true mysteries — human mysteries, not those accomplished solely with the assistance of the Great Architect. And these mysteries must, without doubt, become Mysteries of Christ.

And in order to take a step in this direction, the God of the year reveals further that gradually — namely by the beginning of the fourth cultural epoch, by the year 743 BC — these ancient capacities began to fade. Cosmic wisdom could be “inhaled” less and less, because the forces of thinking had to awaken and develop.

Naturally, this process unfolded extremely gradually. Yet one of the tasks of the epoch of the Intellectual Soul consisted precisely in the fact that the Primordial Mysteries approached their completion, and human thinking began to be born in its modern form.

And indeed, several centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, or the Nativity of Christ, human thinking had crystallized to such an extent that the great Aristotle was able for the first time to describe its laws and forms systematically. Thinking began to be recognized as the human being’s own activity, although it was still understood as connected with a broader spiritual order and the action of the gods, and not as an exclusively autonomous product of the human being.

And then — several centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha and for several centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, that is, precisely in that interval of time which has special significance for us — in a kind of delta‑neighborhood of the Mystery of Golgotha, extending 333 years before it and 333 years after it, the priests had already begun to produce wisdom through the forces of human thinking.

However, along with this a new danger arose.

It is not difficult to guess that if an improper attitude toward wisdom that is a gift of the gods led to that wisdom being seized by Lucifer, then an improper attitude toward wisdom that now becomes the fruit of human labor leads to a change in its quality.

If ancient wisdom had the character of a breathing process — it had to be inhaled and then exhaled — then wisdom attained through one’s own thinking already had the character not of breathing but of circulation.

But circulation also has its own process of metamorphosis, which is indirectly connected with breathing. Arterial blood gradually becomes venous and must undergo renewal in order to regain its original quality and become arterial again.

Therefore here too a similar mystery had to unfold, only now a mystery directed not toward protection from Lucifer but, as is not difficult to guess, toward protection from Ahriman. For now it was Ahriman who gained the possibility — if such a mystery were absent — to seize that cosmic wisdom which the priests attained through human thinking.

However, in order to deal with Ahriman, another force was required — not the force of the Upper Gods, but the force of Christ Himself, whom humanity awaited with intense longing.

Before the Mystery of Golgotha His presence was experienced with particular sharpness in that period of the year when the Earth was in a state of cosmic isolation, that is, in winter, at the time of the winter solstice. This is precisely why in this darkest and most death‑laden period the winter festival had to be celebrated — the festival of the coming to Earth of the Divine Being, the only One capable of overcoming Ahriman.

Thus the center of the mystery, its semantic and spiritual center of gravity, shifted from summer to winter. But this, of course, did not mean the disappearance of the summer festival. On the contrary, now it acquired a new quality, since the God of the year Himself had passed through his Christianization, and all ancient yearly festivals acquired an entirely new, deeper meaning.

This was the special significance of Christmas: the priests had to offer cosmic wisdom in sacrifice now to Christ, and thereby save it from the power of Ahriman.

Naturally, this occurred no longer in the same way as in the most ancient times, when the priests completely lost their wisdom and became absolute fools. But to a certain degree it still occurred: in a certain sense they became like children. And in essence, the image that Parzival later embodied was indeed an echo of precisely these mysteries.

Thus we approach the understanding that the processes occurring in the Ancient Mysteries continued to exist in a certain form even in the first centuries of Christianity, when on Earth, according to this view, true Christianity still remained — the Christianity that was later displaced by the orthodox forms of church tradition.

However, it was precisely here that the original course of development was disrupted. Orthodox Christianity incorporated elements of the Ancient Mysteries in a not entirely rightful manner, as a result of which the mystery process was in a certain sense thrown backward, into the past. And although the subject was still Christ, His significance became increasingly entangled with ever‑fading forms of ancient mystery heritage, introduced outside their original context.

On the other hand, the surviving remnants of the Ancient Mysteries, as we know, were subjected to persecution and destruction by these same orthodox structures. Therefore the existence of Christian mysteries of wisdom was limited to the third–fourth centuries after the Nativity of Christ, after which this tradition was largely interrupted. But it was precisely in these mysteries that the forms of relationship to wisdom were practiced which today could be called mysteries of intellectual property.

And now, when this entire process begins to become meaningful to us, the possibility arises to speak consciously about the formation of new Christian mysteries of intellectual property — an approach that would allow us to clearly and openly develop a justified attitude both toward intellectual property and toward the wisdom created by human labor.

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