The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Some of you, when reflecting on the observations made in recent days about the development of our Earth and, in a broader sense, of the solar system in relation to human beings, may have encountered a contradiction that seems strange to you, a contradiction with many cherished ideas about life. Some of you may have said to yourselves: Now we heard yesterday that the worst forces in evolution are bound to the moon, and that it was only at the moment when the moon separated from the earth that the worst forces left with it, and that it was only because of this that the earth was left in such a state that human beings could find their evolution. We have heard all this, but where is all the romance of the moon? All that poetry, which sprang from true feelings and referred to all the wonderful effects of the moon on human beings?

[ 2 ] This contradiction is only apparent, and it resolves itself when we do not look at the facts one-sidedly, but when we place the whole sum of the facts before our soul. If we were to examine the moon today in terms of its physical mass, we would find that it would appear unsuitable to support life as we now have it on Earth. At the same time, however, we must also say that everything that is connected with the moon and its physical substances as ether is, to a large extent, of such a nature that it appears very inferior, decadent, compared to what rests as ether in our own physicality. And if we were to clairvoyantly observe what we can certainly refer to as the astral element in the individual lunar beings, we would be convinced that, compared to the worst of the base emotions that exist on our Earth, there are countless worse and inferior things on the Moon. Thus, in relation to the astral, the etheric, and the physical aspects of the moon, we can speak of beings, of elements that had to be eliminated so that our earth could follow its path free from harmful influences.

[ 3 ] Now, however, we must become aware of another fact. We must not forget that we cannot dwell on the bad and evil. For everything that becomes low and evil in evolution is always subject to a significant fact. As long as it is possible, everything that has descended into lower spheres must be purified by other, more perfect beings, raised up and purified so that it can be reused in the economy of the universe. If we find a place in the universe where there are particularly low beings, we can be sure that these low beings are connected with other, higher beings who have such great power for good, beauty, and glory that they are able to guide even the lowest forces toward good. Therefore, it is true that all that is low is connected with the moon, but on the other hand, high, highest beings are connected with it. We already know that, for example, the high, very high spiritual being Yahweh dwells on the moon. Such a high being, with such power and glory, has under itself in its activity great, great multitudes of serving beings of a good nature. So we must imagine that the lowest elements of the earth did indeed leave the earth with the moon, but that at the same time those beings who are capable of transforming evil into good, ugly into beautiful, remained connected with the moon. They could not do this if they had left the ugly in the earthly body; they had to take it out. But why, then, must that which exists as ugly and evil come into being at all? It had to come into being because without the influence of the ugly and the evil, nothing else could have come into being: man could never have become a formed, closed being in himself. Let us recall the previous consideration. There we saw how the lower nature of man was rooted in water, how he protruded halfway into the dark watery earth. There were no bones, there was no fixed human form. There was a metamorphosing form, plant-like, flower-like, the form constantly changing. Human beings would have remained this way if the forces had not developed as they did under the influence of the moon. If the earth had remained exposed only to the sun, the mobility of human beings would have increased to the highest degree, the earth would have reached a speed impossible for human beings, and human beings in their present form could not have come into being. If, on the other hand, only the forces of the moon had been at work, human beings would have frozen immediately; their form would have solidified at the moment of birth, they would have become mummies and thus immortalized. Between these two extremes, human beings today are developing in the middle: between unlimited mobility and solidification in form. Because the formative forces are in the moon, the physical moon has also become slag. Only the high, strong beings connected with the moon can work into these forms. Thus, two forces act upon the earth: the forces of the sun and the forces of the moon, one driving, the other mummifying. Imagine that a giant being dragged the sun away—at that moment we would all freeze into mummies, so much so that we would never be able to lose this form again. But suppose a giant dragged the moon away—then all the beautiful, measured, rounded movements we have today would become fidgety. We would become completely mobile internally; we would see our hands lengthen to gigantic proportions and then shrink back again. The power of metamorphosis would increase to gigantic proportions. But now man is caught between these two forces.

[ 4 ] Now, however, in this cosmos, not only in the forms and substances, but also in the relationships between things, there are many things that are extraordinarily wisely arranged. And in order to reveal to ourselves today the infinite wisdom that lies in the cosmos, we will now consider a relationship that is connected to the figure of Osiris.

[ 5 ] In the figure of Osiris, the Egyptians saw the effect of the sun on our earth at a time when misty vapors still swirled around the earth and there was no air, and they saw that when human beings began to breathe air, the unified entity, Osiris-Set, separated at that moment. Set or Typhon causes the breath of air to enter us. Typhon, the breath of wind, separated itself from the light of the sun, and Osiris acts only as the light of the sun. But this is also the moment when birth and death entered into the essence of human beings. A great change had come into that which was forming and unfolding, which until then had been something like putting on and taking off a coat. If human beings had been able to feel at that time, when the effects emanating from the sun had not yet left the earth, the effects emanating from those high beings who later left with the sun, they would have looked up with gratitude to these sun beings. But as the sun separated more and more from the earth, as the vapor sphere—which at that time was the realm of man's higher nature—became more refined, man, who was less and less able to perceive the direct influence of the sun, became aware of the forces in his lower nature and came to grasp his ego there. When he immersed himself in his lower nature, he became conscious of himself for the first time.

[ 6 ] Why, then, was the being we know as Osiris darkened? The light ceased to work with the departure of the sun, but Yahweh remained on earth for the time being until the moon separated. Osiris was the spirit who contained the power of sunlight within himself in such a way that later, when the moon separated, he went with the moon and was given the task of directing the sunlight to the earth from the moon. So first we see the sun go out; Yahweh remains behind on Earth with his retinue, with Osiris. Man learns to breathe. At the same time, however, the moon comes out; Osiris goes out with the moon and is given the task of reflecting the sunlight from the moon onto the Earth. Osiris is placed in a coffin, that is, he withdraws with the moon. Previously, man had received the Osiris effect from the sun; now he felt that what had previously come to him from the sun was now flowing to him from the moon. When the moon shone down, man said to himself: Osiris, it is you who shines the light of the sun from the moon, which belongs to your being.

[ 7 ] But this light of the sun is reflected back every day in a different form. When the moon is a faint crescent in the sky, we have the first form; when it has grown on the second day, we have the second, and so on through fourteen days, we have fourteen forms until the full moon. Osiris turns toward the earth through fourteen days in the fourteen forms of the illuminated moon disc. It is of profound significance that these fourteen forms, fourteen phases of growth, are assumed by the moon, that is, by Osiris, in order to shine the light of the sun upon us. What the moon does is simultaneously linked in the cosmos with the fact that human beings learned to breathe. Only when this phenomenon was fully present in the sky could human beings breathe, and thus they were linked to the physical world, and the first seed of the I could arise in the human being.

[ 8 ] Later Egyptian knowledge perceived all that has been described here and recounted it as follows: Osiris used to rule the earth, but then Typhon, the wind, appeared. This is the time when the waters fall so far that air appears, enabling human beings to breathe air. The consciousness of Osiris defeated Typhon, who killed Osiris, placed him in a chest, and cast him into the sea. How could this cosmic event be expressed more meaningfully in images? First, the sun god Osiris reigns, then he is driven out into the moon. The moon is the box that is pushed out into the sea of the world space; now Osiris is in the world space. But we also remember that the legend says that when Osiris was found again, when he appeared in the world space, he appeared in fourteen forms. The legend tells us that Osiris was cut into fourteen pieces and buried in fourteen graves. Here we have a wonderful reference in this profound legend to the cosmic process. The fourteen forms of the moon, the phases of the moon, are the fourteen pieces of the dismembered Osiris. The whole Osiris is the whole moon disc.

[ 9 ] At first glance, this seems to be nothing more than a symbol. But we can already see that it had a real meaning. And now we come to something without which the mysteries of the cosmos would never become clear to us. If such a constellation of sun, moon, and earth had not occurred, if the moon had not appeared in fourteen forms, then something else would not have happened, for these fourteen figures had a very special effect. Each of them had a great, powerful influence on human beings in their development on earth. Now I must tell you something strange, but it is true. At that time, when all this had not yet happened, when Osiris had not yet gone forth, man in his light form did not even have the beginnings of something that is of the greatest importance today. We know that the spinal cord is very important. Nerves emanate from it. These were not even present in the form of beginnings at the time when the moon had not yet come forth. The fourteen phases of the moon, in the order in which they follow one another, caused fourteen nerve strands to attach themselves to the human spinal cord. The cosmic forces worked in such a way that these fourteen nerve strands correspond to the fourteen phases or forms of the moon. This is the result of the Osiris effect.

[ 10 ] Now there is something else that corresponds to the development of the moon. These fourteen phases are only half of the moon's appearances. The moon has fourteen phases from new moon to full moon and fourteen phases from full moon to new moon. During the fourteen days leading up to the new moon, there is no Osiris effect. The moon is illuminated by the sun in such a way that it gradually turns its unilluminated surface toward the earth as a new moon. These fourteen phases from full moon to new moon also have their effect, and this effect is achieved for the Egyptian consciousness through Isis. These fourteen phases are governed by Isis. Through the Isis effect, fourteen other nerve strands extend from the spinal cord. This makes a total of twenty-eight nerve strands corresponding to the different phases of the moon. Here we see the origin of very specific parts of the human organism arising from cosmic events. Some will now say: But that's not all the nerve strands, there are only twenty-eight. — There would only be twenty-eight if the lunar year coincided with the solar year. But the solar year is longer, and the difference between the solar year and the lunar year has caused the extra nerve strands. Thus, the Isis and Osiris influences have been incorporated into the human organism from the moon. But there is something else connected with this.

[ 11 ] Until the moment when the moon began to exert its influence from outside, there was no dual sexuality. Until then, there was only one human being who was, so to speak, both male and female. This separation only occurred through the alternating effects of Isis and Osiris from the moon, and depending on whether the Osiris nerves or the Isis nerves exert a particular effect on the organism, the human being becomes male or female. An organism in which the Isis effect predominates becomes male, a body in which the Osiris effect predominates becomes female. Of course, both forces, Isis and Osiris, are at work in every man and every woman, but in such a way that in men the etheric body is female and in women the etheric body is male. Here we have something of the wonderful connection between the individual being and the positions in the cosmos.

[ 12 ] We have now discovered that influences on human beings occur not only through forces, but also through the constellations of the world bodies. Under the influence of these twenty-eight nerve strands emanating from the spinal cord, everything belonging to the male and female organisms was formed. Now we will mention something else that will shed light on the cosmos and its connections with human development. These forces shape the human form, but humans do not harden within them; a balance is created between the effects of the sun and the moon. In the following, we must not think that we are dealing with mere symbolism; we are dealing with real facts.

[ 13 ] What is the original Osiris, the unbroken Osiris? What is the divided Osiris? What was previously a unity in the human being is now divided into the twenty-eight nerves. We have seen how it lies divided within us. Without this, the human form could never have come into being. But what was formed initially under the influence of the sun and moon? First, through the interaction of all the nerve strands, not only did the external male and female arise, but also something arose within the human being through the influence of the male and female principles. The inner Isis effect arose, and this inner Isis effect is the lung. The lung is the regulator of the influences of Typhon or Set. And what Osiris does for us is to stimulate the female effect in a male way, so that the lungs become productive through breathing. The male and female principles are regulated by the effects of the sun and moon: in every female there is a male — the larynx; in every male there is a female — the lungs.

[ 14 ] Isis and Osiris work inwardly in every human being in relation to their higher nature. Thus, every human being is dual in gender, for every human being has lungs and a larynx. Every human being, whether female or male, has the same number of nerves. And now, after Isis and Osiris have thus torn themselves away from the lower nature, they have given birth to their son, the creator of future human beings on earth. Both brought forth Horus. Isis and Osiris begot the child, guarded and nurtured by Isis: the human heart, guarded and nurtured by the lungs of the mother Isis. Here we have something in the Egyptian conception that shows us that in these ancient mystery schools, what had become the higher nature of man was regarded as male-female: what the Indians recognized as Brahma. The Indian student was shown in the primordial human being what would later appear as that higher form. Horus, the child, was shown to him, and he was told: all this came into being through the primal sound, through the Vach, the primal sound that differentiates itself into many sounds. And what the Indian student experienced has been preserved for us in a remarkable saying in the Rigveda. There is a passage that says: And there come upon man the seven from below, the eight from above, the nine from behind, the ten from the depths of the rock vault, and the ten from within, while the mother cares for the child to be nursed. — This is a remarkable passage. Let us imagine this Isis, whom I described as the lungs, this Osiris, whom I described as the respiratory system, and let us think about all this: how the voice works within, differentiating itself as throat sounds, lung sounds, how it differentiates itself into letters. These letters come from different sides: seven come from below, from the throat, and so on. The peculiar workings of everything connected with our respiratory system are laid down in this. Where the sound differentiates and structures itself, there is the higher mother who nurtures and cares for the child — the mother: the lungs; the child: the human heart, formed under all influences, from which the impulses come to animate the voice.

[ 15 ] Thus, the mysterious workings and weavings within the cosmos were revealed to the initiate, and thus they built themselves up over time. And we will see how the other members of the human being have built themselves into this fabric. Thus, in this Egyptian secret teaching, we also have a chapter on occult anatomy as it was practiced in an Egyptian secret school, insofar as one knew about cosmic forces, cosmic beings, and their connection with the physical body of the human being.