This is a chapter from The Middle Ages by Karl Heyer.

An extensive literature about Genghis Khan and his empire appeared during the 1930’s, as though out of a sense of inherent facts that had a bearing on the immediate present or near future. Although these books are all extremely informative and give thorough characterizations of the phenomenon, their full significance is only revealed when they are viewed in conjunction with what Rudolf Steiner discovered in his spiritual research and expressed in lectures given in 1916 [Inner Impulses of Human Evolution].

Here he spoke about the deeper impetus underlying the Mongolian invasions and how these had been connected with efforts to distract and divert human consciousness from the path of was meant to follow during the fifth post-Atlantean era that was then about to begin.

If the consciousness soul is to evolve in the proper way during the 2,160 years of the fifth post-Atlantean era, mankind will have to develop two specific faculties. One of these, in contrast to earlier times, is the capacity to look with clarity at the sense perceptible world, to set aside any visionary or fantastical elements when observing its realities: and the other, still to come in the future, is the ability freely to generate spiritual imaginations such as Goethe was beginning to develop, imaginations of the kind striven for in spiritual science.

It was this normal course of evolution that Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers were seeking to disrupt. One strong impetus of which they made use of to this end were the after effects of Atlantean times. It was an impetus that began before the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean era and which was intended to play havoc with its progress. It came over to Europe from Asia.

Essentially, descendants of the ancient Atlantean teachers were the ones who were working from a particular location in Asia. A priest was trained in a seership that allowed him a belated view of what the Atlanteans had earlier called “Great Spirit”. He was able to receive orders from the Great Spirit which he then passed on to an exceptionally strong, active and capable young man, Genghis Khan who, as a result of these orders, came to be known among his own people as the “great ruler of the earth”.

Through the priest came orders from the successor of the Great Spirit to Genghis Khan to seize all the power he could in Asia in order to spread through the world an influence that would lead the fifth post-Atlantean era back into a Luciferic form.

Extensive forces were concentrated to this end. Freely achieved spiritual imaginations were to be transformed into old visionary imaginations. Every effort was to me made to lull human souls into a dreamy awareness of those imaginations instead of a free experience of them enlightened by the intellect. The forces obtained from Atlantis were to be imposed on the West in a way that would make its culture of dreamy, visionary consciousness.

All the unease resulting from the Mongolian invasions and everything connected with it that persists even to this day in the fifth post-Atlantean era signifies the grand attempt emanating from the direction of Asia, to make the culture of Europe a “culture of visions”, thus separating it off from the direction human evolution ought to be following.

There also existed a kind of descendant or successor of the Great Spirit of Atlantis whose name still resounds in the Chinese Tao. This kind of descendent of the Great Spirit was concentrated over in the East where, in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth centuries, a certain Mystery cult evolved. Essential this Mystery cult was a form of renewal of the ancient Tao cult, not in the intellectualized form elaborated by the decadent Chinese but in its original form.

It renewed a form of Initiation that enabled the priests to see the world of elemental spirits that live and weave directly beneath our own sense perceptible world: the great, overall spirit became perceptible. Some priests in this revived Atlantean Mystery in Asia were initiated into the old Atlantean cult which, naturally enough, led to illusions, since it was out of place at that time.

One of these priests became so highly developed that He was able fully to comprehend the nature of the Atlantean impulse. He it was who conversed with the unlawful successor of the Great Spirit. Over there in Asia this priest passed the spiritual inspirations he had received from the Great Spirit to an external worldly power, that youth known to history as Genghis Khan. What the priest told Genghis Khan may be expressed in the following words:

“The time has come for the divine judgment to sweep across the face of the earth. You are the instrument through which this divine judgment is to come about; you must lead all the forces of Asia in fulfilling the divine judgment throughout the world.”

Similar aims had earlier provided the foundation for the campaigns of the Huns. Now the impetus given by this Asian priesthood inaugurated the Mongolian invasions which were intended to overlay European culture and make souls really believe in this divine judgment to such an extent that they would turn away from the earth and lose all inclination to return there. In this way all earthly culture was to be destroyed.

That was the inner significance of the Mongolian invasions which swept over from Asia and then came to naught in Europe through no external agency. That was the extraordinary thing, that at the Battle of Legnica (in 1241, after the death of Genghis Khan) the Mongolian hordes were not vanquished. They were the victors and yet for some unexplained reason they refrained from further incursions and returned to Asia. It is perfectly obvious that they had been met by a counterforce of a spiritual kind.

The external explanation given (a miracle in itself!) is that news reached the Mongolians in Europe informing them of Genghis Khan’s death in distant Mongolia. In accordance with Genghis Khan’s decree, such a circumstance meant that all members of his clan, wherever they might be, must return to a grand council to decide on a successor, and this was supposed to be the reason why their victorious progress in Europe was broken off abruptly.

There was a deeper reason for the ending of the Mongolian invasions after the Battle of Legnica in the 13th century. The spiritual work cultivated by the Scholastics and the mystics at that time led to the development of a strong spiritual force that spread out over the whole of Europe, acting like a spiritual barrier which broke the Mongolian onslaught of atavistic Orientalism. This is obviously a most important view which may also be seen as an urgent challenge in our own day.

Because the impulses brought by the Mongolians were unable to make any headway externally in Europe, they nevertheless remained in Europe in a kind of distillation during the post-Atlantean era. Therefore, the cultural impulses coming from the East clearly contain elements of what was to have been brought to Europe in the after echoes of the Mysteries of the Great Spirit.

A comparison may be drawn here with the spiritual advances made by Arabism in Europe in the Middle Ages after a similar retreat of the Arabs when they lost the battle against Charles Martel near Poitiers in 732. Mingled as it is with Luciferic and Ahrimanic impulses, the stream of Arabism is another cultural element that tends to work against what ought to be the normal progress of human evolution. However, this analogy is not intended to imply that Arabism might be compared with the terribly destructive nature of the Mongolian power.

The effect of the Mongolian impulse in the long term was intended to be a dimming of human consciousness, especially in the West. A wrong kind of visionary state was to have estranged human beings from the earth. The fact that this impulse was Luciferic was what primarily concerned Rudolf Steiner. He continued his descriptions by showing that in the larger context of world history as a whole a balance was created against this Luciferic deviation by the discovery of America which took place in the normal course of evolution and established a counterweight to the activities of Genghis Khan.

America had to be discovered so that human beings might come closer to the earth and be more and more filled with material substance so that their added weight would counteract the type of spiritualization striven for by the successors of the Great Spirit.

In contradistinction to those Atlantean forces of Asia, however, this set other forces in motion, also stemming from ancient Atlantis, which in America worked in the worst possible Ahrimanic form. These impulses originated in the Mysteries of Mexico and their successors, which covered a large part of the American continents. They were connected with the gold treasure later discovered in America which then seized hold of Catholic Spain.