The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] This series of lectures will lead us into the higher realms of spiritual life; it will, so to speak, not only take us from our earthly home out into the physical worlds of space, but it will also lead us up into the spiritual worlds from which the physical world of space actually originated. But it is precisely such a lecture series that will show you that all knowledge and all wisdom ultimately aim to solve the great, the greatest of all mysteries: the mystery of humanity. For in order to make things understandable to human beings, they must be drawn from far, far away. Now, it is certainly necessary that those who wish to follow this course are already equipped with some basic concepts of spiritual science, but that is essentially the case for all of you, esteemed listeners. And so, in this cycle, we may perhaps allow our flight of the spirit to soar particularly high, even as we always strive to make these things—which must be drawn from so far afield—as understandable as possible.

[ 2 ] When we speak of what are called spiritual hierarchies, this means that our soul-eyes must rise up to those beings whose existence is above that of human beings here on our Earth. We can, so to speak, ascend for visible eyes only through beings that represent four levels of a hierarchy: the mineral world, the plant world, the animal world, and the human world. And above humanity begins a world of invisible beings, and it is given to humanity, through the knowledge of the supersensible—to the extent that it is possible for them—to ascend a certain distance to those powers and beings that, in the supersensible, in the invisible world, are the continuation of this fourfold sequence of stages found within the Earth. The knowledge and research that lead us into these realms are, as you all know, not something that has only recently entered human development in our time; there is what we might call a primordial wisdom. For what human beings can fathom, what they can know and recognize, the concepts and ideas they acquire, the imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions of clairvoyance they attain—all of this is, so to speak, merely relived by human beings; it has already been lived, known, and experienced by the beings standing above humanity. If we may use a trivial comparison, we could say: First the watchmaker has the idea, the thought of the watch, then he crafts the watch accordingly. The watch is formed according to the watchmaker’s thoughts that preceded it, and afterward someone can dissect the watch, analyze it, and study which of the watchmaker’s thoughts gave rise to this watch. Such a person then reflects on the watchmaker’s thoughts. Only in this way can human beings, at their present stage of development, relate to the primordial wisdom of the world—the spiritual beings that stand above them. They were the first to possess them: the imaginations, the inspirations, the intuitions, the ideas, and the thoughts according to which our world, as it lies before us, is formed. And human beings, in turn, find these thoughts and ideas in this world; and when they rise to clairvoyant vision, they also find the imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions through which they penetrate once more into the world of spiritual beings. Therefore, we can say: Before our world existed, there was the wisdom of which we are actually speaking. It is the plan of the world.

[ 3 ] So, if we are to remain within reality, how far back must we go if we wish to encounter this primordial wisdom? Must we go back to some historical period when this or that great teacher was active? Certainly, we can learn much by going back to this or that historical epoch and becoming disciples of the great teachers. But to encounter primordial wisdom in its true, highest form, we must go back to that time when there was still no outer, visible Earth, no world existing around us that could be perceived by the senses; for the world sprang forth from wisdom itself. But this wisdom, according to which the divine-spiritual beings formed our world, was also bestowed upon humanity afterward. Humanity was subsequently able to perceive in its thinking the thoughts, to grasp the thoughts according to which the gods formed the world. And after this primordial wisdom of the world, this wisdom of the world-creators, had undergone various forms, it came—in a manner familiar to many of you—after the great Atlantean epoch to the ancient holy Rishis of our first post-Atlantean culture, to the great teachers of India.

[ 4 ] This primordial wisdom existed among the great, exalted Rishis of that time in a form that today’s humanity can scarcely imagine. For human powers of thought and human powers of feeling have changed greatly since India’s great teachers first instructed post-Atlantean humanity; and if much of what once sounded from the mouths of the holy Rishis were to be spoken today, most souls throughout the world would hear little more than words and yet more words. It requires sensibilities other than those humanity possesses today to truly understand what first came to post-Atlantean humanity as wisdom. For all that has been recorded of this wisdom, all that has been recorded in the most beautiful and finest books of this primordial wisdom, is after all only a faint echo of the primordial wisdom itself. In many respects, this is clouded, obscured wisdom. And no matter how beautiful, no matter how sublime the Vedas may be, no matter how beautifully the songs of Zarathustra may sound, no matter how magnificently the ancient wisdom of Egypt speaks to us—all of this, we certainly cannot admire it enough, but what has been written down only reflects in a clouded light the great wisdom of Hermes, the great wisdom of Zarathustra, or even the sublime insights proclaimed by the ancient Rishis. Yet this sublime wisdom has been preserved for humanity; it has always existed within certain, albeit narrow, circles that guarded the sacred mysteries, as these insights are called. In the mysteries of India, Persia, Egypt, Chaldea, in the Christian mysteries, and so on right up to our own time, all that constitutes the primordial wisdom of humanity has been preserved. Until very recently, it was actually only possible within these innermost circles to receive not bookish wisdom, but living wisdom. For reasons that can become clear precisely in this lecture series, our time marks the epoch in which what has been preserved as a living reality within small circles is to emerge on a larger scale to reach broader masses of humanity. For it has never dried up, the primordial wisdom of the holy Rishis, for example. It has flowed through time—the time we recognize as the beginning of our era—as if through a fountain of youth. This ancient, sacred wisdom, which flowed to humanity back then, was continued by Zarathustra and his disciples, by the Chaldean and Egyptian teachers; but it also flowed into the proclamation of Moses, and it emerged anew, as it were, from a fountain of youth with a completely new impulse through the appearance of Christ on earth. But with that, it also became so profound, so inner, that it can in turn flow into humanity only gradually. And so we see that since the times of the Christian proclamation, the primordial wisdom has been flowing into humanity in the world, slowly and gradually, in its most elementary beginnings.

[ 5 ] The messages have always been there; they are found in the Gospels and in the other Christian writings, which contained the wisdom of the holy Rishis in a renewed form, as if reborn from the fountain of youth. But how could these messages be understood from the very beginning, especially in the age for whose purification Christianity was created? The very, very least was understood from the proclamation through the Gospels, and little by little these Gospels are only now working their way toward a broader understanding—in many respects toward further obscurity. And today, the Gospels are, in essence, the very books that remain, so to speak, the most sealed off for humanity even in its broadest circles; they will only be understood again by a future that can refresh itself with the wisdom of the primordial world. But the treasures lying in the depths of Christian revelation—which are none other than the treasures of Eastern wisdom as well, but reborn through new forces— they were preserved in turn within more restricted circles, those very circles that found their continuation in various mystery societies, such as the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail and, ultimately, the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. There these treasures of truth were preserved, made accessible only to those who had prepared themselves for living wisdom through rigorous trials. And so, through centuries and centuries of development from the beginning of our era, the treasures of wisdom from the East and West remained largely inaccessible to the great masses of people out in the world. Only a few scattered fragments trickled into the wider world here and there; the majority remained a secret of the newer mysteries.

[ 6 ] Then came the time when it became possible, so to speak, to speak of the content of the primordial wisdom in a language that the general public could understand. It was during the last third of the 19th century, more or less, that it became possible to speak of the primordial wisdom in a more or less unveiled form. It is only because certain events took place in the spiritual worlds that the guardians of the mysteries, so to speak, were given the opportunity to allow some of the primordial wisdom to be revealed. You are all familiar, of course, with the course of theosophical development; you know that, so to speak, the ice of theosophical development was first broken by those wisdoms that were revealed in a manner I need not describe today, in the so-called Dzyan stanzas. These Dzyan stanzas of the “Esoteric Doctrine” indeed contain the deepest, most significant wisdom; they contain much of what, stemming from the teachings of the holy Rishis, has flowed down through the wisdom traditions of the Orient. They also contain much of what subsequently flowed into the European West following the Christian renewal. For the Dzyan Stanzas contain not only wisdom that might otherwise have been preserved solely in the East, but also much that, so to speak, shines in a bright light through the centuries of our era, through the Middle Ages, in the secret schools of the West. And much of what is written in the Dzyan Stanzas will only gradually be understood in its depth. For here it may well be said: The Dzyan Stanzas contain such wisdom that even today it cannot be understood in the broadest theosophical circles; indeed, such wisdom that even today exoteric faculties do not provide the means to fathom its depths; that there is no hope for any exoteric faculties to reveal the underlying foundations of this significant world.

[ 7 ] Once the ice had been broken, so to speak, the time also came when it became permissible to speak from the sources of Western occultism, which is, however, none other than Eastern occultism, as it has merely continued to develop continuously, taking into account all the processes of spiritual and physical life, where it is also possible to speak from the sources of living occultism, which has been faithfully preserved in the Rosicrucian mysteries. There is no Eastern wisdom that has not flowed into Western occultism, and in Rosicrucian teaching and research you will find absolutely everything that the great sages of the East have ever preserved. Nothing, nothing of what can be known from the wisdom of the East, is missing from the wisdom of the West. The difference, if one wishes to speak of such a difference, is only that the wisdom of the West must take up the entire Eastern teaching, the entire Eastern wisdom, the entire Eastern research, and, without letting anything of it be lost, must illuminate it with the light that has been kindled in humanity through the Christ impulse. So let no one say, when speaking of Western occultism—that which in a certain sense originates from the hidden Rishis of the West, whom the eyes cannot see—let no one say that even a single iota, a single stroke, is missing from Eastern occultism. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is missing. It merely has to bring forth all things anew from the fountain of youth of the Christ impulse. All the great wisdom that first resounded from the mouths of the holy Rishis to humanity—concerning the superhuman worlds, concerning the supersensible existence—must once again resound into what is to be said about the spiritual hierarchies and their reflection in the physical world. Just as the geometry of the ancient Euclid has not become anything other than what it was, even though it is taught and learned today with newer human faculties, so too has the wisdom of the holy Rishis not become anything other than what it was, simply because we teach and learn it with faculties kindled by the Christ impulse. Thus, we could readily call a large part of what we have to say about the spiritual worlds “Eastern wisdom.” For one must not misunderstand these things, and misunderstanding is so easy.

[ 8 ] Those who are unwilling to move beyond misunderstandings toward understanding can, for example, very easily misinterpret something that was said yesterday in the Easter lecture. There could be—and we must mention this for the sake of our mutual understanding—those who do not wish to advance toward full understanding, and they might say: Yesterday you spoke of the great so-called noble truths of the Buddha. You said that the Buddha taught and revealed the sacred truths of suffering in life: birth is suffering, illness is suffering, old age is suffering, death is suffering, being separated from what one loves is suffering, being united with what one does not love is suffering, not obtaining what one desires is suffering. And you, some might say, told us yesterday: Let us look to the post-Christian era at those who have truly understood the Christ impulse—there we should then realize that through the understanding and penetration of this Christ impulse, the ancient sacred truths of the Buddha regarding the suffering of life no longer hold their full validity, that, so to speak, with the Christ impulse something has been created like a remedy against the suffering of life. You said that someone teaching the Buddha might speak thus: Birth is suffering; but those who understand Christ reply: Through birth we enter into a life that we share with Christ, and through our participation in Christ, the suffering of life is eradicated; likewise, through the healing power of the Christ impulse, illness is eradicated, and illness is no longer suffering for the one who understands Christ, and death is no longer suffering for the one who understands Christ, and so on. But then someone might reply: Yes, but I will show you from the Gospel that the Gospels contain the same statements as the sacred writings of the Buddha; in the Gospel, too, we can demonstrate that it says: Life is suffering, illness is suffering, and so on. And so one might say superficially: Now we have these modern religious texts, yet we find their content already in Buddhism; there is therefore no progress in the religions, no development; all religions contain the same thing. But you have spoken of progress; you have portrayed how, so to speak, the ancient sacred truths of Buddhism are no longer to be true through Christianity. - Anyone who speaks this way, however, would merely be expressing the most cruel misunderstanding. For that was not said; everything, everything—except for the very last sentence—was said. And it is important to understand precisely in this subtle realm. The fanatic can never understand precisely; only the objective person can understand precisely.

[ 9 ] No one who speaks from the source of Rosicrucian wisdom and research will ever say that anything in the writings of the Great Buddha should be opposed, or that anything in the writings of the Great Buddha is untrue. Everyone who speaks from the source of Rosicrucianism shares the conviction of the Buddha and of all Eastern wisdom; he negates none of it. He says: Indeed, what you, great Buddha, have seen within yourself through your enlightenment regarding the great truths of the suffering of life is completely true; it is true down to the last iota. — Nothing, absolutely nothing, is taken away from it. Everything remains as it is. And precisely because everything remains as it is, because it is true what Buddha said—that birth is suffering, sickness is suffering, old age is suffering, death is suffering, and so on—that is why the Christ impulse is that powerful and important remedy for us—because it is he who lifts this suffering, for it is indeed true that suffering exists unless a great impulse lifts the world beyond it. Why did Christ act? Because Buddha spoke the truth. Humanity had to be brought down from spiritual heights, where primordial wisdom had worked in its pure form; humanity had to be led to independence, down into physical existence, and with that, life became suffering and illness became suffering; but just as much, in the course of further development, the great remedy had to come against these irrefutable facts. Does the one who says, “Yes, it is true what is said about this reality,” yet at the same time claims that we are given the remedy to bring the facts expressed by these truths to a healthy development, deny any reality? —- Oh, in the heights of existence, where we must seek them out, the spheres of the spiritual hierarchies, there it is not a matter of Buddhism against Christianity, Christianity against Buddhism; there the Buddha extends his hand to Christ, and Christ to the Buddha. But every misunderstanding of human evolution, every misunderstanding of the ascent, is at the same time a misunderstanding of the most spiritual deed that has taken place in our earthly evolution, the Christ deed. And so there will be nothing that is in any way negated by the wisdom of the East, which over such long periods of time has brought down the wisdom of the holy Rishis and thus the primordial wisdom, but during these long, long periods, in which wisdom has always flowed into humanity, understanding of these teachings became difficult, so to speak, among the great masses of people who were unable to penetrate to the sources of the sacred mysteries. It was precisely this understanding that became difficult.

[ 10 ] Oh, in the pre-Atlantean times, in the times before the great catastrophe, when the great masses of people still possessed clairvoyance—an ancient, dim form of it—and gazed out into the heavens, looking up toward the spiritual hierarchies, they saw things differently than they would later in the post-Atlantean era, when the old clairvoyance had vanished for the great masses of people and only the physical eye could look out into the physical expanses of the heavens! Therefore, it would have made no sense, in the time before the Atlantean catastrophe, to speak of the celestial bodies that are scattered throughout space today. For the clairvoyant human eye looked out into the vastness of the heavens, and these were spiritual worlds. It would have been pointless in those times to speak of Mercury or Neptune or Saturn and so on, as our astronomy does; for just as our astronomy speaks of outer space and its contents, so it merely reflects what the physical eye sees when it looks up into the vastness of the heavens. That was not at all the case in Atlantean times among the ancient clairvoyant humanity; when one looked up, one did not see physically limited stars at all. What the physical eye sees today is, so to speak, merely an outer expression of the spiritual that was seen back then. When the physical eye looks up today—say, through a telescope—at the spot where Jupiter stands, it sees, so to speak, a physical globe surrounded by its moons. Such is the physical eye of today. What did it still mean for the people of the ancient Atlantean era when they raised their then still clairvoyant eye to the very same point where the human physical eye looks today? What the physical eye sees, the ancient Atlantean eye would have seen just as little as your physical eye today sees the single light when it looks into a dense autumn fog. It sees something like a misty aura around the light, and the light disappears into the colored rings surrounding it. Likewise, the eye of the Atlantean would not have seen the physical planet Jupiter, but it would have seen what is also connected to Jupiter today, though it is something humans cannot see: the aura of Jupiter, a sum of spiritual beings for whom the physical Jupiter is merely an expression. And so, before the Atlantean catastrophe, the spiritual eye of humanity roamed through the cosmos, seeing spiritual beings everywhere. One could speak only of this spiritual realm, for it would have been meaningless, back then, when the physical eye was not yet as open as it is today, to speak of physical stars. One looked out into the cosmos and saw spiritual beings, spiritual hierarchies. One saw beings.

[ 11 ] And as things developed further, we can compare it to the following: Imagine we step out into thick fog. We cannot see the individual lights. Everything is shrouded in this foggy aura. Then the fog clears, and the individual lights become physically visible. But the auras are invisible. — This is merely a physical process intended to serve as a comparison. With Jupiter, however, the ancient eye could see the aura. It saw the spiritual beings in the aura who, from a certain stage of development, belonged to Jupiter. Humanity then developed the ability to see physically. The aura remained. People could no longer see it, but the physical middle body became clearer and clearer; what belonged to it spiritually was lost, and what was physical about it became visible. And the knowledge of this spiritual realm around the stars, the knowledge of those beings that are around the stars, was preserved in the sacred mysteries. All the holy Rishis speak of this knowledge. In the times when people already saw only physically, the holy Rishis spoke of the spiritual atmospheres, of the spiritual inhabitants of these world spheres scattered throughout space.

[ 12 ] And now consider the situation that arose. In the centers of learning, people spoke of the spiritual beings surrounding the celestial spheres. Outside, where the physical eye was becoming sharper and sharper, people spoke more and more merely of dense physical matter. If the ancient holy Rishis had spoken the word “Mercury”—which they did not, of course, but let us use the word so that we may understand one another—did they then mean this physical world body? No, not even the ancient Greeks, when they spoke of Mercury, meant this physical body, but rather the totality of the spiritual beings of this body. It was of spiritual worlds and spiritual beings that one spoke when, in the places of knowledge, one uttered the word Mercury. It was those who were the disciples of the teachers in the places of knowledge who uttered the words: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn; and by uttering such words in the various languages, they designated a sequence of spiritual beings. Whoever utters the word in today’s manner and refers to a physical body is referring only to the coarsest aspect of what was originally understood by Moon, Mercury, Venus, and so on. The main thing is precisely what they do not refer to. Thus the ancient teacher of wisdom said “Moon,” and with this word he evoked the idea of a great spiritual world. And when he spoke the word “Moon” and pointed to the place in the sky where the Moon is, and had in his consciousness: “There is the lowest level of spiritual hierarchies”—then the one who, through humanity’s ever-increasing materialization, had strayed far from this spiritual view, looked up, but saw the physical Moon and called it “Moon” . One word for two things that certainly belonged together, but which evoked quite different ideas in people. And it was the same when the sages of the places of knowledge looked up at Mercury, the Sun, Mars, and so on. The spiritual current designated with its words something quite different from the other, the material current.

[ 13 ] Thus we see that these two currents have increasingly diverged within humanity. In the Mysteries, these terms—which later became the names of our outer celestial bodies—were always understood to refer to spiritual worlds, a sequence of spiritual realms. The outer world has always understood them to refer to the material realm, right up to our present-day mythology—I use the word deliberately—which is called modern astronomy; and since spiritual science has recognized the other mythologies in their full value, you will understand that modern mythology is also appreciated by spiritual science—up to that mythology called modern astronomy, which sees only space and physical celestial spheres within it. But this modern mythology is, for the discerning person, nothing other than a particular phase of all mythologies. A straight line runs from what the ancient European peoples said in their tales of gods, stars, and worlds, from what the Greeks and Romans presented in their mythologies, from what the Middle Ages offered in its more or less clouded mythologies, all the way up to that mythology which—fully appropriate and fully deserving of admiration—was created by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. A time will come when people will speak of this modern mythology in much the same way: There were once people who deemed it right to place a material sun at the center of an ellipse, to have planets circle around in ellipses, and to have them rotate in various ways; they arranged a world system for themselves just as earlier times had done. Today, so a future generation will naturally say, all of this is nothing more than legend and fairy tale. — Yes, that time will also come, even if modernity still so deeply despises the old mythologies and swears by its own, and even if it seems utterly impossible to it that one could speak of a Copernican mythology. But this will make it clear to us how, so to speak, ever different things have been imagined in connection with the words. Nevertheless, what constitutes primordial wisdom has been perpetuated and continued time and again. It is just that this primordial wisdom has been understood less and less in the exoteric sense, because it has been interpreted and explained in more material terms, because the spiritual aspect has been seen less and less. And so it came to pass that, in order not to let humanity lose, so to speak, its connection with the original, spiritual wisdom, during the rejuvenation of primordial wisdom at the beginning of our era, it had to be pointed out once again in sharp terms that where the human eye looks out and, as a physical eye, sees only the physical, there the spiritual fills space spiritually. And so, in the sharpest terms, the one who was the closest disciple of the Apostle Paul—Dionysius the Areopagite—pointed this out in Athens: There is not only the material out there in space; there is, when the human soul rises intuitively into the realms of world existence, a spiritual realm out there in the world that stands above humanity in the development of existence. —- And he now used words that, of course, had to sound different, for had he used the old words, no one would have seen in them anything other than the material. The Rishis spoke of the spiritual hierarchies, expressing in their words what Greek and Roman wisdom also expressed when it spoke of the world rising before it—the world of the Moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn. Dionysius, the disciple of the Apostle Paul, had exactly the same worlds in mind as the Rishis; only he strongly emphasized that one is dealing with the spiritual, and he chose words of which he was certain would be taken in a spiritual sense: He spoke of angels, archangels, primal forces, powers, authorities, dominions, thrones, cherubim, and seraphim. And now, once again, people have forgotten—truly forgotten—what humanity once knew. If one could have understood in context what Dionysius the Areopagite and what the ancient holy Rishis saw, one would have heard, so to speak, the moon named from one side, and from the other mysteries one would have heard the world of angels named, and one would have known: This is the same thing. One would have heard the word Mercury on one side and the word Archangel on the other, and known: This is the same thing. One would have heard the word Archai on one side and the word Venus on the other, and known: This is the same thing. One would have heard the word Sun on one side and Powers on the other, and known: The same worlds are designated by these words. If one had heard the word “Mars” on one side, one would have felt: Here one ascends to the Powers. If one had heard the word “Jupiter” on one side, it would have been the same as what was taught in the school of Dionysius when speaking of Dominions. The word “Saturn” corresponds here to the word “Thrones.”

[ 14 ] But in wider circles, people simply no longer knew this, or were no longer able to know it. So, on the one hand, there was a science of the material world that became more and more materialistic, retaining the old names—which once also signified spiritual things—for the material. And so, on the other hand, there was a spiritual life that spoke of spiritual things, of archangels, angels, and so on, and which had lost its connection with the physical expressions of these spiritual beings. And so we see how primordial wisdom penetrates the school that Paul had founded through Dionysius, and how it is simply a matter of imbuing the newly founded institution with the ancient spiritual spirit. But this is the task of modern spiritual science or anthroposophy: to re-establish the connection that should exist between the physical and the spiritual, between the world, the Earth, and the spiritual hierarchies. It is therefore incomprehensible to those who do not know where the concepts of the outer sensory world actually come from; it is incomprehensible for them to recognize the other side, the spiritual side of knowledge.

[ 15 ] This becomes particularly evident when we approach those writings that have emerged from the primordial wisdom and which, even if they contain only a faint echo of it, can truly be understood only in light of this primordial wisdom. Let us cite, precisely in regard to the difficulty of understanding those writings that have emerged from primordial wisdom, a passage as an example—a passage from the divine song, the Bhagavad Gita—a passage that illuminates human life in its connection with the hierarchies with profound significance. This passage from the Bhagavad Gita, found in Chapter 8, beginning with verse 23, reads: “I will explain to you, O seeker of truth”—so it is usually translated—“under what circumstances the god-abiding, when they leave the earth through the gate of death, go forth to be reborn or not. I will tell you: Behold fire, behold the day, behold the time of the waxing moon, behold the half-year when the sun is high. Those who die at the time when they die in fire, in the day, in the time of the waxing moon, when the sun is high, enter Brahma through the gate of death; but those who die there under the sign of smoke, at night, during the waning moon, in the half-year when the sun is low—when they depart from the world, they pass through the Gate of Death only into the light of the moon and return again to this world.”

[ 16 ] My dear friends, here is a passage from the Bhagavad Gita that tells you: The manner of a person’s progress and rebirth depends on whether they die under the sign of light—by day, during the waxing moon, in the half-year when the sun is high—or whether they die under the sign of smoke—at night, during the waning moon, or when the sun is low. This is what is said; this is the material meaning. And of those who pass through the gate of death under the sign of fire, by day, during the waxing moon, when the sun is high, it is said of them that they need not return. Of the others who die there under the sign of smoke, at night, during the waning moon, or in the half-year when the sun is low, it is said of them that they cannot ascend to the heights of Brahma, but only to the height of the moon and must return again. There is a passage in the Divine Song of the East that causes the greatest difficulties for all—almost all—who wish to explain it within the exoteric life. It can only be explained when it is illuminated by the light of spiritual knowledge, by the light from which it was essentially written, by the light that shines in the secret schools, that propagates itself, that has been rejuvenated through Christianity—when it is illuminated by the light that allows us to find the connection to the names: Moon—Angel, Mercury—Archangel, Venus—Archai, and so on. And we will find the key to such passages; let us take this one passage as an example when we place it in the light of ancient spiritual wisdom. Our contemplation this evening shall begin with the explanation of this passage in the Divine Song, with the explanation of this passage from the Bhagavad Gita, which is impossible in exoteric life; and then, having found the key, we shall ascend into the spiritual hierarchies.