A medieval frame-tale Steiner read in 1911 as the human ego, orphaned by the dying clairvoyant soul, rescued seven times by seven teachers.
The Legend of the Seven Wise Masters in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's reading of a medieval frame-tale, given in his Berlin lecture of 12 December 1911 (GA 252, The History of the Johannesbau and Goetheanum Associations). The story tells of Emperor Pontianus, his son Dyocletianus, and the stepmother empress who wants the boy hanged so her own line inherits. Taught for seven years by seven wise masters, and warned by a star to keep silence for seven days, the son is led seven times to the gallows and seven times reprieved, because on each road a master stops the procession and asks to tell a story first. Steiner takes the dead first wife as the old clairvoyant soul, the son as the human ego that outlives her, and the seven masters as the same sevenfold teaching that surfaces in the seven daughters of Jethro and in the seven liberal arts.
The Legend of the Seven Wise Masters is one of the great frame-tales of medieval Europe, circulating in dozens of versions and catalogued in English as the Seven Sages of Rome. Steiner picked up the Diederichs edition in 1911 and used it before an audience of builders to show something he cared about more than the plot: a living image can be explained correctly and ruined by the explaining.
In Steiner's Own Words
The Emperor had a wife; from her he has a son who is destined to be educated by seven wise masters, and who is aware that he comes from the time when humanity still had the clairvoyant soul. The clairvoyant soul has died, but the human ego still remains and can be taught by the “seven wise masters”, who appear to us in the most diverse forms. I myself once pointed out that we are essentially dealing with the same thing in the seven daughters of Jethro, the priest of Midian, whom Moses meets at his father-in-law's well, but also in the seven liberal arts in the Middle Ages.
What it Means Today
The closest modern companion to this legend is not a folklore study but an essay in criticism: Walter Benjamin's Der Erzähler (The Storyteller), published in the journal Orient und Occident in 1936. Benjamin's subject is the retreat of storytelling as a craft. His working distinction is between information, which is used up the moment it is understood, and the story, which is handed on without interpretation and keeps its germinating power for years.
Set that beside the legend. Each of the seven masters buys the son another day by declining to argue his innocence. Each simply tells a story, and the story does the work that argument could not do. Benjamin in 1936 and Steiner in Berlin in 1911 are describing one loss from two sides: Benjamin watches the storyteller's craft recede behind the newspaper, Steiner watches the fifth post-Atlantean intellect that cannot leave an image alone and reduces it to what he called a straw skeleton.
Thalira synthesis: the legend is not a coded lesson wrapped in a story, it is a demonstration that the story is the only container in which that lesson survives contact with a thinking mind, which is why the son must stay silent for seven days and let seven narrators speak in his stead. The practical instruction: tell it first, and explain only after the images have had their week.
Where to Read More
- The History of the Johannesbau and Goetheanum Associations, GA 252
- Find this volume at SteinerBooks
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