The Rudolf Steiner Archive

17. The Mind as a Gift from Lucifer and Its Future Transformation into a New Clairvoyance

[ 1 ] Today we want to talk about the functions attributed to certain spiritual beings called Luciferic. We will encounter strange connections they have with humanity. Let us start with the fact that the science of thinking, of reasoning, does not go back further than eight hundred to nine hundred years before Christ. Anyone who studies the history of philosophy knows that it begins with Thales, who lived around 600 BC and once predicted a solar eclipse based on scientific observations, which was still something extraordinary at that time. We have only had the philosophy of Western logic since Aristotle. Before that, there was no teaching about thinking, because thinking itself, the abstract mind, only dawned between 600 and 800 BC. The seeds for this were, of course, already present in the Atlantean race. We do, however, already have astronomy among the Chaldeans, the ancient Egyptians, and other Orientals, but this originated from the deeper faculties of clairvoyance.

[ 2 ] Half a millennium before Christ, the intellect emerged, and this fact is connected with the change in all forms of kinship and marriage. These were very different from today. Even among the wild peoples of America, science has established that the kinship of cousins is much more complicated than ours. The Iroquois, for example, call paternal cousins siblings, but not maternal cousins, because men of the same age in a family could have all women of the same age as wives, so that within a family one knew the mother of a child but not the father. The Iroquois still have these kinship relationships and designations today. Only occultism can provide the correct explanation for these circumstances. Between 800 and 900 BC, we have records of events that indicate that kinship marriages gave way to distant marriages. In earlier times, the head of the family was the father of the tribe. We still find these institutions among the Germanic peoples in much later times, while in Africa and the countries around the Mediterranean, distant marriage was already becoming the norm. In the Middle Ages, we find this transition to distant marriage glorified in German legends, for example in the Gudrunlied. Tacitus still speaks of the Germanic tribes with a common ancestor in his Germania. This custom was later broken, and in the Gudrunlied, the kings travel to distant lands to seek their wives. In the Siegfried saga, we have a description of how the new order rebels against marriage between blood relatives: Siegmund and Sieglinde, whose marriage is rejected by Frigga. Wotan is the founder of distant marriage. Long-distance marriage was introduced at different times among different peoples, but there is a peculiar connection between the transition to long-distance marriage and the development of the intellect. It is an occult principle that long-distance marriage has a killing effect on part of the etheric body: the forebrain is enlivened, while the old clairvoyance, which grows through blood kinship, is killed. The intellectual grasp of things awakens. Today, humanity is adapted to distant marriage, just as it was formerly adapted to kinship marriage. Today, kinship marriage has a detrimental effect on the mental activity of children, especially on the sense organ associated with intellectual development, the eye. That is why there are so many blind people in kinship marriages. Only through distant marriage is the brain improved. This physiological fact is closely related to the development of humanity. It was necessary to prepare for the emergence of Christianity. Could this have come about under other conditions? It brings about the love of soul to soul, the working of soul upon soul. The love of blood kinship had to be overcome first. Peoples will only become ready for Christianity when they have overcome kinship love. The ancient initiates of Egypt always came from the same family over many generations. The older wisdom was intuitive in nature, which becomes all the more apparent the further back one traces humanity. Intellectual superiority is connected with the foundation of Christianity.

[ 3 ] What was the relationship between the gods and humans? In the course of their development, humans will become gods, and the gods have undergone a kind of human development, different from ours, on other planets, but still somewhat similar. The higher beings develop on the basis of the lower ones: humans and animals live off plants, which in turn live off minerals. The gods could never exist if humans did not exist. The same relationship exists between them. What do the gods need from us? They feed on our love. The division of the sexes occurs. The real meaning of nectar and ambrosia, the food of the gods, is the love of man and woman. This is the expression of an occult fact.

[ 4 ] Between gods and humans there are now beings who did not complete their development at the same time as the gods, who, so to speak, have remained in the school of evolution, but who are far ahead of humans. These are the Luciferic beings. They are the instigators of higher spiritual independence in human beings. They educated them to rebel against the gods; they developed that part of them that does not nourish the gods. In the Paradise story, Lucifer therefore appears as a serpent, and Jehovah's punishment is: “You shall bring forth children in pain.” The hosts of Lucifer continued to work on the education of the intellect. What they had not achieved, they made up for when remote marriage came into being. It is no longer unfree blood that brings about love, but rather it comes from outside through the harmony of souls. When we consider this, Jehovah's rule also becomes clear to us: he orders blood kinship through proper laws. The old law creates order among humans. Lucifer became free eight hundred to nine hundred years before Christ, and the inner power of the soul began to unfold. Christ is the representative of the new order. The outer law was given on Sinai, the inner law, grace, is given to those who are liberated through Christ. Such is the progress of humanity: the Luciferic principle had to develop more and more in human beings. Outer science should be liberated through theosophy: science deepened into wisdom. The name Lucifer indicates the principle of independence, which is why Madame Blavatsky named her first magazine thus, and why ours is named thus, in order to document this principle. More and more, the differences between people and nations will be smoothed out and the first sentence of the principles of the Theosophical Society will come into effect: to form the nucleus of a brotherhood of humanity. The love of blood kinship will be increasingly overcome, and people will seek more spiritual connections. Souls will come together from the greatest distances. The further development and transformation of the mind will bring us new clairvoyance in the future. Overcoming sexual love initially means loneliness. The chela must be uprooted—the great overcoming of all feelings of kinship is the function of the Luciferic principle.

Questions and answers

Questions not noted.

[ 5 ] The caste system of the Indians is based on knowledge of karma. The clairvoyant leaders of the Indians foresaw which caste karma had determined for each person, so that everyone was born into the caste corresponding to them. With the rise of the mind through remote viewing, people will attain conscious clairvoyance, and at the end of the sixth subrace they will organize themselves into moral castes. With the next subrace, all blood kinship love will disappear. The gods will thus lose their sustenance and withdraw more and more from humans to higher stages of development. Humans will be guided by their masters, who have served humanity from the bottom up, so to speak, but have consciously developed more quickly. These divine leaders do not need the love of humans for nourishment, which is why sexual love ceases.

[ 6 ] If the Luciferic principle had not come into force, the earth would have gradually become slag, dead and desolate, like the moon. This is not to be; human beings themselves will preserve and transform it. When humans first appeared, the Earth did not look as it does now. Lemuria had no dead, solidified metals and stones; everything flowed, metal rivers flowed through the mountains, which can still be clearly seen today. Miners, who come into such intimate contact with the Earth's interior, understand this and are therefore always the best spiritualists. Many plants were still animals at that time, and milk, which humans fed on, also flowed freely. As children, we unconsciously go through this stage again. But we should consciously return to this way of eating. This is also expressed in the sentence: Unless you become like little children. Milk and plant-based foods awaken occult healing powers, which is why a doctor of the future must nourish himself in this way, that is, with everything that strives toward the sun. Indian doctors make themselves immune to snake bites by allowing themselves to be bitten by snakes so that they can then heal these bites in others. Our food will be mineral. Physiological initiates already nourish themselves with minerals. There are different kinds of initiates: those who teach wisdom, and among others, those who work on improving the blood of humanity, physiological initiates. These do not need to be particularly clever in other areas, only their sense of physiology is highly developed. We should only eat those parts of plants and animals that do not contain their life force, i.e., not the roots, not the meat, but the fruits and the milk, the leaves. What grows above the ground, what the cow eats, that is proper food, what thrives in the sun. Of minerals, one should not eat what settles, i.e., no salt, only water. Physiological occultists watch over the transition of blood to the next race.

[ 7 ] In the last century since Frederick the Great, we have developed ten times faster than in the millennium from Charlemagne to Frederick the Great, and development will continue at a correspondingly faster pace. In Russia, the sixth sub-race is forming. Disbelief is a major obstacle to development.

[ 8 ] Mercury is the body of certain great beings, one of whom was incarnated in Gautama Buddha.

[ 9 ] In the course of development, humans will govern their bodies from the outside, carrying them with them like snails carry their houses, working on them and transforming them, as they already do unconsciously in their sleep.