The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] In our discussion of the beings we count to the realm of Christ or to the realm of Lucifer, we have so far given preference to how human beings, in the course of their development, approach these beings through their own souls, how they experience them. We have emphasized, for example, how the path of human beings to those cosmic beings, in whose midst Christ was in pre-Christian times, went outward from human beings in a cognitive manner, but how the path to Lucifer's realm went inward into the soul in order to penetrate the veil that shrouds the soul itself. And we have emphasized how this changed through the appearance of Christ on earth, so that the two realms have come to overlap and humanity is rushing toward a time when Christ will be to be sought within and Lucifer without. In order to harmonize some of what most of you have already heard about the Luciferic beings, we must now return briefly to the nature of the Luciferic principle. The things of the world are complicated, and everything can be viewed from many different perspectives. Because we have to look at things from one angle one time and from another angle another time, it sometimes seems that things are not entirely consistent. But they are consistent with each other. Just as someone who describes a leaf correctly by describing it once from the front and once from the back, and it is still the same leaf, so too does someone describe the Luciferic principle correctly who, as we have done in the past few hours, describes it by tracing the paths that the soul must take to this Luciferic principle. But one can, of course, also view the development of our Earth and of the world in general from a more extraterrestrial point of view, so to speak, and then characterize the position of the Luciferic beings in the progress of the world from a different point of view. Let us do this in a few words.

[ 2 ] If you remember that our Earth, together with the Sun and Moon, was once a single being, that the Sun separated itself from the Earth in order to become a dwelling place for higher beings who were then to work upon our Earth from outside, and that even higher beings remained united with the Earth after the separation of the Sun in order to bring forth the Moon, and if you remember that these beings who separated the moon were the same ones who, from within, now stimulated a new life, a soul life in human beings, and preserved them from mummification, then you will soon be able to find harmony between what you have heard here and there in the lectures and what you have heard in the past few hours. You will then say to yourselves: It is natural that human beings, in their further development, should first encounter those beings that separated themselves from the Earth with the Sun, by directing their gaze to where these beings went with the Sun. Human beings will therefore have had to seek the sun beings in their activity and in their realm with all their sub-beings on their way out into the world behind the carpet of the sensory world. But those beings who, in a certain sense, were still higher benefactors of humanity, who stimulated their inner soul life through the separation of the moon, they will have had to seek by first entering into his own inner being, by deepening himself into an underground region of the soul in order to find that which is hidden from the outer gaze, the underground gods, who are those who separated the moon from the earth and stimulated the soul life. Within the soul life, the paths had to be sought to those gods who were connected with this beneficial process of the separation of the moon. If we initially look only at these two realms, so to speak, the realms of the sun gods and moon gods, we have a difference that we can describe as: gods located outside in the heavens and gods located below the soul; and we describe the path out as the sun path and the path into the soul — initially just to have a name — as the Luciferic path. And Lucifer's beings are then those who did not participate in the separation of the sun from the earth at that time when the sun separated from the earth. And certain other beings, who are the highest benefactors of humanity but had to remain hidden at first and did not participate in this separation of the sun, did not really belong to either of these realms. These were the beings who had remained behind during the ancient lunar evolution and had not reached the stage they could have reached as spiritual beings, who at that time were much higher than the people on the moon. What did these beings fail to do at that time? They missed the opportunity to participate in the separation of the sun during the subsequent evolution of the earth. They would have been called upon, in a certain sense, to leave the Earth like the sun spirits and work down from the Sun. They missed this opportunity. What happened to these beings was that they made an attempt, in a certain sense, to separate themselves from the Earth with the Sun, but then they could not endure the conditions of the Sun's development and fell back to the Earth. These beings were therefore those who had not remained with the Earth from the beginning when the Sun separated, but who were then unable to keep up with the Sun's development and fell back; they remained connected to the Earth's development. What did these beings do next in the course of Earth's development? They, who were in a very special situation, now tried to continue their own development with the help of human development on Earth. They could not reach the human ego; they had not raised themselves to that level during the old Moon development. Those beings that had been drawn out of the earth with the sun could approach the human ego. And those beings that had separated the moon could also approach it from within. The beings that had fallen back from the sun were those who approached the human soul when it was not yet ripe to receive the revelation of those higher benefactors who had separated the moon. These beings approached the human soul too early. If, so to speak, human beings had waited completely for the beneficial effect of those spiritual beings that were working from the moon, that is, into the inner soul, then what happened earlier would have happened later. These moon gods would have slowly matured the human soul until a corresponding development of the I had become possible. But instead, the other beings approached humans and poured their effects into the human astral body from within, just as the moon gods do, so that these beings sought the same path through the inner soul on which the actual moon gods later also worked; that is, these beings joined the Luciferic realm. And it is they who are symbolized in the biblical record by the serpent. They are the beings who approached the human astral body too early and acted just like all other beings that work from within. And if we call the beings working from within Luciferic beings, we must also call these backward beings Luciferic beings. But they are the ones who approached human beings when they were still immature for such influences, those who became their seducers on the one hand, but who also gave them freedom, the opportunity to become independent in the astral body from those divine beings who would have taken their ego into their protection, which would have poured into him from the outset what can be poured into the ego from the divine spheres. But instead, these Luciferic beings approached the astral body of man, filled it with everything that can enthuse him for everything higher and more spiritual, thus influencing his soul and becoming, in a certain sense, the seducers of man as higher beings. And we must address this type of Luciferic entity as the seducer of man, and therefore say: That which approached man in the course of Earth's development and brought him, on the one hand, freedom and, on the other hand, the possibility of evil, came from within, came from Lucifer's realm. For these beings could not announce themselves from outside; they had to sneak into the inner soul; what can approach human beings from outside is what approaches their ego, not merely their astral body. So you see that in the vast realm of the light-bearers, the Luciferic beings, there are sub-species of which we can well understand that they could become the seducers of human beings. But we can also understand very well that it was precisely because of these beings that strict measures were taken where people could be introduced into the realms beyond the veil of the soul world; for those people who were led along this path into the inner soul encountered not only the good Luciferic beings who enlightened them from within, but they first encountered these Luciferic beings, who then acted as his seducers, inciting pride, ambition, and vanity in the soul.

[ 3 ] Yes, we must make ourselves thoroughly aware that we should never attempt to encompass the worlds that lie beyond the sensory world and beyond the soul world with the concepts of the intellect prepared by our present-day culture.

[ 4 ] When we speak of Luciferic beings, we would have to know the entire scope of the realm of these beings, all their genera, species, and varieties. Then we would see that not everywhere where people speak of the danger of a certain kind of Luciferic being is there an awareness of the entire scope of the corresponding realm; that one can be right in speaking of certain kinds of the Luciferic realm in the way this or that document speaks; but that one must at the same time take into consideration that reality is wider, infinitely wider than human beings can ordinarily know. At a time when the outward and inward gaze were still very sharp for the members of a certain cultural epoch, human beings felt, when they turned outward, “That is you,” and when they turned inward, “I am the universe,” that the outward path and the inward path led to the same thing, to the unified I. In this first cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean period, however, people were able to think and feel very differently about what lay at the basis of the spiritual riches than they did later. It is therefore extremely difficult for the ordinary consciousness to put itself into that wonderful first post-Atlantean cultural epoch and identify with a soul that lived at that time.

[ 5 ] Yesterday we saw how feelings were of a completely different nature at that time, how people felt the soul of light streaming in from all sides as if through their skin, and how they were thus able to gather experience from their surroundings that is closed to people today. But there was something else connected with all this.

[ 6 ] It is known from my “Secret Science” that in the course of human development in the post-Atlantean period, the following epochs can be distinguished: the ancient Indian culture, the ancient Persian culture, the Chaldean-Egyptian culture, the Greek-Latin culture, into which the Christ event fell; then our culture. This will be followed by another, and then the last, and then the earth will again be struck by a transformation such as it was struck by at the time of the Atlantean catastrophe. So we have seven cultural epochs. Within these seven cultural epochs, we have a middle cultural epoch that stands on its own, the Greek-Latin epoch with the Christ event. The other cultural epochs, however, stand in a certain relationship to one another. The Chaldean-Egyptian cultural epoch repeats itself in certain manifestations of the fifth epoch, that is, in our own, so that in our time certain manifestations, certain facts, certain views must revive that were lived in the ancient Chaldean-Egyptian culture. Only they live again in a different form, namely in such a way that they are imbued with what has happened through the Christ impulse. We do not have a simple repetition of the Chaldean-Egyptian culture, but rather we have in our time a repetition of this cultural epoch in such a way that everything is immersed in what Christ brought to earth. This is a repetition, and yet it is not. Those people who have empathized more deeply with the course of human evolution and participated in it with their souls have always felt something like this. Even if they had not yet advanced to occult knowledge, something emerged in such people like a memory of ancient Egyptian experiences. What the Egyptian sages, in their wonderful knowledge of the workings of the heavens, penetrated in their own way in their Hermetic science, is living again in our fifth cultural epoch, in our own time, in a more material form. Those who were involved in it felt the revival of these phenomena particularly strongly. Let me give just one example.

[ 7 ] When the individuality that had once looked up to the stars in the secret places of Egypt and sought to fathom their secrets in the universe in the manner of that time under the rule of the Egyptian sages reappeared in the fifth period and became Kepler, what had been present in the Egyptian soul in another form reappeared in a new form in the great laws of Kepler, which today are such an important part of our astrophysics. So it came to pass that something arose in the soul of this individuality, which then pressed forth from it the words — you can read them in Kepler's writings: “I have gone and brought the sacred vessels from the holy places of Egypt and placed them here in the present, so that people may now understand something that can still have an effect in the distant future.” That is one example; we could cite many such examples that would make it clear to you how what was present in the Chaldean-Egyptian cultural epoch is reviving in a new form.

[ 8 ] We are in the fifth cultural period of the post-Atlantean era. It will be replaced by the sixth, which will be an important one. This sixth cultural period will be a repetition and at the same time an elevation of the original Persian Zarathustra culture. Zarathustra looked up at the sun in order to see behind the physical sunlight the Christ spirit, whom he called Ahura Mazdao, and to make people aware of him. This Christ has now descended to earth; this Christ must penetrate so deeply into the souls of those who are ready for him during the sixth cultural epoch that, through looking into their own souls, a number of people will be able to experience the powerful feelings that Zarathustra was able to arouse when he pointed to Ahura Mazdao. For in the sixth period, through looking into their own inner lives, through recognizing the wisdom of the sun, that which was revealed in the ancient Persian religion, something like a repetition will arise in a much higher, more internalized, more spiritualized form in a large number of people. I have already mentioned to you that when the Greeks spoke of Ahura Mazdao in their own way and in their own sense, they called him Apollo. In their mysteries, they revealed to people the deeper essence of this Apollo. Above all, they saw in Apollo the spirit that not only directed the physical forces of the sun, but also guided the spiritual forces of the sun and directed them to the earth. And when the teachers in the Apollonian mysteries wanted to tell their pupils about the spiritual and moral influences of Apollo, they spoke of Apollo filling the whole earth with sacred spherical music, that is, sending rays down from the spiritual world. And they saw in Apollo a being accompanied by the Muses, his helpers. There is a wonderfully profound wisdom in this Apollo, who is accompanied by the nine Muses. If you remember that human beings consist of different members of their being, of a physical body, an etheric body, a sentient body, a sentient soul, a mind soul, a consciousness soul, and so on, then you can say: Human beings are centered in the I, and around this center are united seven or nine members, which are the parts of their being. If we ascend from the human being to a divine being, then we must think of the I as this spiritual being, and what the members are for the divine being are what its helpers are: individual individualities. Just as the individual members of the human being, the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and so on, are grouped around his ego, so the Muses were grouped around Apollo. And what was said to the initiates of the Apollonian mystery circle in connection with such a thing is also of profound significance. They were entrusted with a secret, as it were, that the god who had spoken to Zarathustra in such a special way in the second epoch would speak to human beings again in a special way in the sixth epoch. This was explained by saying that in the sixth epoch Apollo's song would have reached its goal on earth. — In this sentence, which was common among the Apollonian mystery students, that in the sixth age Apollo's song would have reached its goal, the repetition of the second age of Earth's development in the sixth age on a higher level was expressed.

[ 9 ] The first age will reappear on a higher level in the seventh.

[ 10 ] The Christian understanding of the first post-Atlantean epoch stands before present-day human beings as a high ideal; to return to such a way of feeling, to such a way of looking at things as existed at a lower stage in the first post-Atlantean epoch. Again, at the end of our post-Atlantean era, when human beings go out into the outer sensory world and work what they have learned into their own soul life, they will recognize in a certain way that these two paths lead them to unity. That is why it is good to put ourselves a little into this ancient Indian way of feeling and thinking, which is quite foreign to our feelings today, since we are in the interim epoch. Even if one picks out only a few features, one notices something of the completely different way of feeling and thinking, of the completely different attitude toward wisdom and life that existed at that time in human beings who were not so awakened to ego-consciousness. What was then written down in the Vedas is the teaching of the first great teachers of ancient India, the holy Rishis. It must be pointed out here that the holy rishis received their inspiration from that high individuality which led the peoples of ancient Atlantis across what is now Europe into Asia. In a certain sense, the holy rishis were the disciples of this high individuality, the Manu. And what did the Manu impart to them? He taught them the way in which they had attained the first post-Atlantean wisdom and knowledge. To attain knowledge, as is the case today, by observing the outer nature, by sinking into the inner soul, as has only become possible today, would have made no sense at that time.

[ 11 ] In the first cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean period, among the ancient Indian people, the etheric body was still much further outside the physical body than it is today. The ancient Indian could still make use of this etheric body and the organs of this etheric body at that time when he did not become absorbed in the life of the physical body, but devoted himself to the etheric body, when he forgot, so to speak, that he was in the physical body. When they did this, they felt as if they had been lifted out of themselves, as if they had been lifted out of their sheaths, like a sword. As he felt this, he also experienced something that can be described as follows: one does not see through the eyes, one does not hear through the ears, one does not think through the physical apparatus of the intellect, one makes use of the organs of the etheric body. That is what he did. But then living wisdom appeared before him; not thoughts that human beings can think or have thought, but the thoughts according to which the gods outside have formed the world. What we today call thoughts, what we fabricate with the instrument of the brain as thoughts, was completely unknown to the Indian who truly lived in the spiritual life. He did not speculate, invent, or think things through intellectually, but rather stepped out of his physical body and looked into his etheric body. Surrounding him, like a momentary gift from the divine world, was the entire cosmic sum of God's thoughts, from which the world had sprung forth. How the gods had thought in the archetypes for all things stood before his etheric sense organ, and he saw it. He did not need to think logically. Why do we have to think logically? We have to do so because we must first find the truth through logical thinking, because we can err when we connect our thoughts. If we were organized in such a way that the right thought followed the right thought in immediate perception, then we would not need logic. The ancient Indian did not need logic; he saw the thoughts of the gods, and they were already correct in themselves. Thus he had woven around himself an etheric-cosmic web, woven from the thoughts of the gods. At the same time, they saw in this web of thoughts, which seemed to them like a soul light weaving through the world, the eternal wisdom. Thus, in this highest perfection, as I have just described to you, only the holy rishis were able to do this, and from this vision they were able to proclaim the great world beings. What sensation did they have then? They had the sensation that with this world-web of wisdom, in which everything was inscribed in living models, the whole was interwoven and permeated by the soul of light, the truth, the knowledge, flowed into them. Just as later humans have the feeling that something flows into them when they breathe in, so the ancient Indians had the feeling that the gods sent wisdom to them, and they breathed it in, just as the air we breathe is sent to us and we breathe it in. The ancient holy rishis absorbed this soul light, which was imbued with wisdom, and they were able to teach what they had absorbed to those who became their followers. In return, they could also say that everything they proclaimed was breathed out by Brahman himself. This is even the profound, literally correct expression: “It is breathed out by Brahman and inhaled by human beings.” This was the position of the holy Rishis toward the wisdom of the world, toward what they proclaimed, which was then written down in the various parts of the Vedas, one might say, only in weak images. For what the holy Rishis taught is written down in the Vedas only in weak images. And when the Vedas are read today, people should be aware that these are faint images of the original sacred wisdom of the rishis. Nevertheless, we must see something else in the Vedas than what we usually find in written works. We can find the most diverse written works in the world, we can stand on this or that point of view, we can say: An inner, spiritual, Christ-filled life confronts us, for example, in the Gospel of John; but if we take the expression given to us there, the outer expression of the Gospel of John, it is further removed from its content than what is written in the Vedas is from its content. There is a more intimate connection between the expression and the content of the Vedas, because what has been breathed in has been directly infused into the words of the Vedas and reproduced there, whereas the writer of the Gospel of John wrote down the profound truths in such a way that he received them and then wrote them down, and the expression is further removed from what the content is.

[ 12 ] These things must be clear to us if we really want to understand the development of the worlds. Therefore, we must feel that it is a natural feeling when a Christian says, “I value the Gospel of John above all else,” but when the Christian also feels the need not to stop at the words of this Gospel, but to penetrate, as spiritual knowledge does, to the spiritual content of the Gospel of John, when he says “It only becomes what it is supposed to be for me when I penetrate to what is given in the outer expression.” But anyone who wants to approach the Vedas in the right way must do so as the ancient Indians did, that is, they must say: “What is written in the Vedas themselves was not merely copied down by someone later as an expression of divine wisdom, but is directly a reproduction of what is inhaled wisdom.” That is why the words of the Vedas, why the parts of the Vedas, especially the Rig Veda, are not merely documents about sacred things, but are themselves sacred to those who understood the connection. And that is why the Vedas themselves were worshipped as divine beings in ancient times. We just have to understand that. And we have to understand it from the soul of the ancient Indian. And we have to learn many things, because we are moving toward an ideal, the ideal of rediscovering the first cultural epoch in an elevated form, that is, of reestablishing it. We must learn something from what is said, for example, in relation to the Vedic word that Baravadja studied the Veda for three centuries. Today's human being will believe that if he studied the Veda for three centuries, he would know an enormous amount; he will believe that he knows a great deal even if he has studied it for a much shorter time. Then, we are told, one day the god Indra came to Baravadscha and said to him: “You have now studied the Vedas for three centuries; look, there are three high mountains, mighty high mountains! One represents the first part of the Vedas, the Rig Veda, the second mountain represents the second part of the Vedas, the Sama Veda, and the third mountain represents the third part of the Vedas, the Yagur Veda. You have studied these three parts of the Vedas for three centuries.” Then Indra took three small lumps of earth, just as much as one can hold in one hand, from these mountains and said: “Look at these lumps! You now know as much about the Vedas as these lumps are to the great, mighty mountains.” Transform what has been said into a feeling, and then it means: approach the highest wisdom, be it in this or that form, even in the form in which it confronts us today, where we are called upon not to seek wisdom from books, but from what is in the world, through the message of the Rosicrucians, and apply this to what is given to us as spiritual knowledge, and feel this way and take the right attitude toward it, then you will hardly be able to say of yourselves that you have heard as much about spiritual knowledge as Baravadscha heard about the Vedas at that time; but everyone should take this parable of Baravadscha to heart, then they will intuitively put themselves in the right relationship to the comprehensive wisdom of the world. And this feeling will be such that we will sense an infinity of which we can only ever have a small lump. This will also give us the right longing to proceed in the right way and to be patient until another small lump accumulates. This inkling is one of the most beneficial feelings of the human soul. Much can be learned from the ancient wisdom of the East; among the most valuable things that can be learned from this light are those things that relate to our feelings and our perceptions; and this is something of what the god Indra gave to Baravadscha as a kind of instruction on how to relate to the Vedas in the right way. We must regain such feelings of holy awe and reverence if we want to move toward a time when we will be allowed to look into what is the proclamation of the newer mysteries, when we will once again look into that tapestry of wisdom woven from divine thoughts and not from human thoughts. That is also the very best thing we can learn in terms of feelings. But we must not believe that we already have these feelings in our ordinary consciousness; we must be clear that the path to the highest feelings leads through knowledge. And if one wants to avoid thinking, if one is too comfortable to seek feelings through the etheric heights of thought, then one will remain with ordinary, trivial feelings and confuse them with what is actually the soul's inner immersion in the divine. Such feelings, as they were found in ancient India, belonged as a fundamental feature of all wisdom in the first post-Atlantean epoch, in order to relate to the world in the right way at that time and to feel a unity in the spiritual worlds that one finds when seeking the path outward or inward. In all subsequent cultures, something different must emerge.

[ 13 ] While in ancient India there is a union of the two paths, the subsequent periods, the ancient Persian period, the Chaldean-Egyptian period, and the Greek-Latin period, follow paths that we can describe as a fork in the road with regard to the two revelations from within and without. On the one hand, we have the revelation from without, and on the other, the revelation from within. This is already the case in the second period of post-Atlantean cultures. Here we have not only the path of the people, but also the path of the mysteries, both outward into the realm of Ahura Mazdao and inward. What was still vividly visible in the ancient Indian way of thinking, the unified reality behind the two spiritual worlds, was something for the second post-Atlantean period which had already disappeared from view, so to speak, which was already in an impenetrable underground of existence, of which one still had an inkling, but which could no longer live in the soul. The ancient Indian felt: “I go out there, on the other side I go in and come to unity.” The Persian went the way outward and said, when he followed the teachings of Zarathustra: “I am coming to Ormuzd!” and when he went the way inward: “I am coming to the essence of Mithras!” But these two paths no longer converged. He only sensed that they must come together somewhere. Therefore, he spoke of the being as the unknown in the darkness, which one can only sense, the unknown primordial god. This was only a primordial spirit being, which one knew must exist, but which one could no longer find. Zaruana akarana was the name given to this Persian god who existed in darkness but could no longer be reached by either path. What could be reached was what lay behind the veil of the outer sensory world. There was first of all that which Zarathustra pointed to. That is, something that was already a descendant of Zaruana akarana. It was the god Ahura Mazdao, the ruler of the realm of the sun spirits, the realm from which the beneficial effects descended, which, in contrast to the physical effects of the sun, can be described as spiritual, the spirit from which, for example, the ancient Persians derived what existed in terms of moral rules and laws, which the initiate — who was the one who, through initiation, elevated himself to the moral rules and laws — brought down as moral laws, as laws of human action, of human activities, and so on. That, then, was one way; and one saw, as it were, this spirit, which is the spirit of the sun, reigning in the highest region; there one saw his servants, the Amshaspands, those who stood around his throne, as it were, who were his messengers. While he ruled the entire empire, they governed the individual parts. Lower beings, who in turn are subordinate to the Amshaspands, are those commonly called the Izets or Izarats. So that the ancient Persians looked out into the empire beyond the carpet of the sensory world and saw a supreme spiritual being: Ahura Mazdao and beneath him a corps of Amshaspands; then again subordinate beings, the Izets or Izarats; and there were still other beings whom we can say are in the spiritual world what the thoughts of human beings are in the soul. These thoughts in the human soul are only shadow images of their realities; out there in the spiritual world, certain spiritual beings correspond to our thoughts. In the ancient Persian view, these beings, called Fravashis, were those who stood, so to speak, directly above human beings. Thus, within the Persian development, the realm behind the veil of the sensory world was conceived as a series of stages of spiritual beings up to Ormuzd. But at the moment when one does not see complete harmony between the spiritual realm that one finds on the path outward and the spiritual realm that one finds on the path inward, it depends to a high degree on the individual how he sees the inner realm. Now, however, the whole of nature had become different for the Persian people than it had been for the ancient Indians. The ancient Persians no longer had this peculiarity of having the etheric body so far outside themselves; the etheric body had already slipped much further into the physical body. Therefore, the members of the ancient Persian people could no longer use the organs of the etheric body as the members of the ancient Indian people could. The organs used by the members of the ancient Persian people were those organs that were originally incorporated into what we now call the sentient body. You know that in the complete human being we have to distinguish between the physical body, the etheric body, the sentient body, the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, the consciousness soul, then what is called the spirit self, then the life spirit, and finally the actual spirit human being.

[ 14 ] Spiritual human being

[ 15 ] Life spirit

[ 16 ] Spirit self

[ 17 ] Conscious soul

[ 18 ] Intellectual soul

[ 19 ] Sentimental soul

[ 20 ] Sentimental body

[ 21 ] Etheric body

[ 22 ] Physical body

[ 23 ] The ancient Indian human being used his etheric body in the manner described above when he wanted to rise to the highest levels of knowledge. The Persians could no longer do this, but they could make use of the sentient body. They therefore rose to their highest knowledge through the sentient body. Because they could no longer see with the etheric body, the highest unity was veiled from them. With the sentient body, they could still look out and see in a certain astral way. This was still the case with many members of the Persian people: they could see Ahura Mazdao and his servants astral because they could still use their sentient body. Now you know from the description in my “Theosophy” that the sentient body is bound to the sentient soul. So at the moment when a member of the ancient Persian people made use of the sentient body, the sentient soul was, so to speak, present; but he had not yet reached the point of being able to make use of it, for it was not yet developed; it first had to be developed. Therefore, the member of the ancient Persian people was in a very special situation. He made use of his sentient body. The sentient soul always plays a role here. But he had to accept it as it was at that time. Therefore, he had to feel that when the sentient body, which is now already developed, rises up to Ahura Mazdao, the sentient soul is present. But it is in a certain danger, and when it reveals its feelings, it will send them straight into the sentient body; it will not express what is there from old Luciferic temptations as such, for it does not yet have the ability to do so, but it will send its effects into the sentient body. — Thus, in ancient Persia, the effects of the sentient soul on the sentient body were perceived as a kind of mirror image shining in from the outside world, reflecting what had been working in the sentient soul since ancient times. Seen from within, this is what we call the effects of Ahriman, the effects of Mephistopheles. That is why people felt they were facing two powers. If we look at what human beings can attain when they turn their gaze outward, we see the mysteries of Ahura Mazdao; if we turn our gaze inward, then with the help of the sentient body, through what Lucifer had wrought, we stand before the adversary of Ahura Mazdao, before Ahriman. There was only one thing that protected against the attacks of the Ahrimanic figure, and that became apparent: if one advanced through the initiation of humanity, if one developed the sentient soul. If one developed and purified this and thus advanced ahead of humanity, then one walked the path inward, a path that led to something other than Ahura Mazda; then one walked the path to the light-filled realms of Lucifer. And that which permeated the human soul on the path inward was later called the god Mithras. Hence, the Persian mysteries, which cultivated the inner life, are the mysteries of Mithras. So, on the one hand, we have the god Mithras when man went the path inward; and what he encountered on the path outward were the realms of Ahura Mazda.

[ 24 ] And now we step into the next post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the Chaldean-Egyptian period. There we encounter a remarkable phenomenon in this Chaldean-Egyptian period. It is not without reason that we give it two names. For on the one hand, during this cultural epoch, we have members of the northern stream of peoples in Asia, which is the Chaldean element; and on the other hand, we have the Egyptian element, which belongs to the stream of peoples that traveled along the southern path. So we have an epoch in which two streams of peoples collide. And if you remember that the northern stream developed a tendency to look outward, to search for those beings that stood behind the curtain of the sensory world, and that the Egyptian people sought those spirits that are found on the path inward, you will understand how two streams interacted here. So the outward path of the Chaldeans and the inward path of the Egyptians collided. The Greeks also perceived this in a very correct way when they compared the Chaldean gods with their Apollonian realm. They sought what belonged to them from the Chaldeans in their Apollonian mysteries in their own way. But when they spoke of Osiris and what belonged to him, they sought it in a corresponding way in their Dionysian mysteries. At that time, people had a vague awareness of how spiritual connections really are.

[ 25 ] Now, however, humanity is advancing in time; it is progressing further and further, forming new members. In the ancient Indian period, the etheric body and its organs were formed; in the ancient Persian period, the sentient body was used and formed, and in the Chaldean-Egyptian period, the sentient soul was formed, that is, a primarily inner member. While the sentient body is still directed outward, the sentient soul is already directed inward. Thus, we move even further away from what divine-spiritual worlds are than before. We live an inner life in the soul and must limit this life, in relation to what is not in the human being, to what the senses perceive. Thus, on the one hand, the realm of the sensory world has become more and more present, and on the other hand, the soul life has become more and more independent. The culture of the sentient soul is the culture of the third period. But what the sentient soul develops is no longer wisdom that is seen, that is read as if from a carpet of the environment. This is similar to what modern humans conceive, although because modern humans have already advanced to the level of the consciousness soul, it was much more vivid back then. The thoughts are, so to speak, more succulent; they are more vivid than today, thoughts that are as vivid as the sensation of “red” is for us today. Today, people no longer perceive their thoughts with the same intensity as they perceive a taste or a smell. Back then, when the sentient soul was primarily developed in Egyptian times, thoughts were so alive in the soul as the perception of the color red, a smell, or a taste is today. Today, thoughts have faded and become abstract. Back then, they were concrete. They were even more like thoughts that were seen, even if they were not thoughts that one saw stretched out in the physical world, but rather thoughts that one felt: they were not something that had been thought out, but rather thoughts that rose up in the soul like inspirations that flooded in and were there. People no longer said: one breathes in wisdom — but one is alive with thoughts, they sprout up in the soul, they are driven up into our soul from the spiritual world.

[ 26 ] Thus, everything changes over time. Therefore, the people of the Chaldean-Egyptian era no longer had the consciousness of the wisdom of the world as a spread-out world of light that they breathed in, but they had the consciousness that they had thoughts, but thoughts that arose as inspiration. And the content of such a science rising up within them is Chaldean astrotheology and Egyptian Hermetic wisdom. This is how they came into being. What lived in the stars and moved them, what pulsed in things, could no longer be read by man, but it announced itself within him as the ancient wisdom of the Chaldean-Egyptian period. With the Chaldeans, it was so that people were conscious of the following: What we know is not merely our inner being; it is a reflection of what is happening outside. The Egyptians were aware that what rises up is a reflection of the hidden gods, whom man encounters not between birth and death, but between death and a new birth. Thus the Egyptians and Chaldeans differed from each other in that in their wisdom, the former perceived what lies behind the world in which we live between birth and death, and the latter, the Egyptians, in their inspired wisdom, perceived what lives between death and a new birth. But necessarily, as you can see from the whole meaning of this development, these inner inspirations, these ascending masses of inspired thoughts, were far removed from the actual original being in its unity. One did not penetrate as far, so to speak, as one could still penetrate in the original Persian time while still in the sentient body. Everything had already faded away, there was no longer so much of the outer world within; it had already withdrawn more. So people had experienced a wisdom of the outer world within themselves, no longer the wisdom in the outer world itself. Nevertheless, those who came to know it with the right feelings had the greatest possible respect for the wisdom of the ancient Persian period. If one wants to express in a word the paradigmatic wisdom that the Chaldeans saw about the spiritual world underlying the physical world, one can say: these are the Chaldean proverbs; and the collection of Chaldean proverbs formed a highly esteemed treasure of wisdom in ancient times. These sayings contain infinitely important secrets of the world. They were valued as highly as the revelations experienced between death and rebirth; they were regarded as sources of Egyptian wisdom.

[ 27 ] But even darker and more shadowy had become that being which was still fully present in the ancient Indian cultural epoch and had now withdrawn from view in its deeper essence. Even more shadowy than Zaruana akarana is this highest unified being of Chaldean-Egyptian wisdom. The Chaldeans call it Anu, and it denotes something that is the unity of the two worlds, but which lies far, far above what can be recognized. And even in those regions where the Zarathustra man still looked up, the Chaldeans no longer dare to look up, but look up into those regions that are already very close to human thought. There, they say, everything can be found, for the highest is also found in the lowest, but there they find something which they describe as a being that is a shadow of the highest. They called this Apason. Then they saw something that appeared to them like a shadow of what we today would think of as standing substantially beneath the spiritual human being, what we would think of as formed from the life spirit. They called it something like that, so that we can reproduce their word when we speak Tauthe. Then they had a being whom they called Moymis. Moymis was approximately what spiritual knowledge today is accustomed to calling a world spirit, which is a being whose lowest member is the spirit itself. Thus they saw a trinity standing above them. But they were aware that this trinity only showed its true form to them in relation to their lowest members, that the higher members were shadows of the higher, which had withdrawn from them. And as a descendant of this being, which might be called Moymis, in the region of the I-ness or the fire being, Bel must then be regarded as the god who, as the creator of the world, was also the god of the people.

[ 28 ] Thus we see how what has developed in the whole national character is expressed in the names of the gods. When the members of this Chaldean world then set out on the path inward, they said that they were passing through the veil of soul life into a world of subhuman or subterranean gods. Adonis is a later name for those beings whom they found on the path inward. Only the initiated could follow this path, for it was fraught with great dangers for the uninitiated. But the initiate also experienced, when he followed this path, when he developed in such a way that he reached the world that lies beneath the veil of soul life, something that can be compared to the experiences of initiation today. For we are already approaching the peculiarities that are increasingly becoming the peculiarities of our time. Those who were initiated in ancient Chaldeanism underwent two experiences, and care was taken to ensure that these two experiences coincided as far as possible, so that they entered the path outward into the spiritual world and inward into the spiritual world, so that they at least gained a feeling of a communal weaving and life of the spiritual outside and inside. And then, on his way inward, he encountered that spiritual being whom the Chaldeans called Ishtar and whom they knew to belong to the benevolent moon deities. Ishtar stood there at the threshold that otherwise closes off to human beings what lies behind the soul life in the spiritual realm. And on the other side, where one finds the gate to the spiritual world through the carpet of the outer sense world, stood the other guardian: Merodach or Marduk. Merodach stood there with Ishtar. Merodach, whom we can compare to the guardian of the threshold, to Michael, Merodach and Ishtar were the ones who made the inner soul clairvoyant and led humans into the spiritual world on both sides. Through this encounter, humans experienced what we still symbolically feel today: The shining chalice is handed to man, that is, man learns the very first use of his lotus flowers, still groping. — Then he gradually moves on. So you see how necessary it is to cross a certain threshold in this epoch. In Egypt it is somewhat different, but similar.

[ 29 ] Thus humanity continued on its path of development into our time. But then the time approached that was to prepare for the descent of the cosmic Sun Spirit onto the Earth. The Spirit, which had previously been external, was now to enter into the human soul so that it could be found within, just as the Luciferic deities had previously been found, just as Osiris was to be found within. The two paths, which were clearly opposed in the Chaldeans and Egyptians, were to fertilize each other. This had to happen. How could this happen? It could happen by creating a connecting link. This connecting link originates in Ur in Chaldea, as the Bible correctly tells us about the Hebrew people. There it takes up those revelations that come from outside. Then it goes to Egypt, takes up what comes from within, and unites the two, so that for the first time in Yahweh a being appears, shining ahead of Christ, who unites the two paths. What former gods were is now revealed to human beings from two sides. Just as Christ is later illuminated from within, so at least from without is illuminated that which formerly appeared in darkness as certain gods. Thus we see that in Yahweh or Jehovah a deity appears which is found on the path inward, but which does not yet become visible through itself, which only becomes visible when illuminated from without. The rejected light of Christ is with Jehovah. Here we see clearly how these two directions, which have occupied us so much, stand side by side and fertilize each other. But with this something completely new begins in the course of human development. Now the outer and the inner begin to enrich each other; now begins that in which the inner becomes the outer, in which that which previously lived only inwardly in time pushes out into space in order to exist side by side. Search your soul life once. It is not spread out in space; it runs in time. The individual thoughts and feelings follow one another. What is outside is spread out in space, it is side by side. Therefore, what must now occur is what is called the flowing out into space, into side-by-side existence, of something that has hitherto lived only in time. What also happens is that something that has lived only in time now lives side by side in space. This brings about something important, and it expresses itself in a particularly profound way.

[ 30 ] Everything that used to be human spiritual development, which led out beyond the outer world of space, also led outward into time. Now, everything that is arranged in time is arranged according to the measure and nature of the number seven. We master the evolution of the worlds when we take the number seven as our basis, saying: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan, for example, in which we have seven periods of time. In everything that is subject to time, we find our bearings when we apply the number seven. Therefore, wherever we are led into time, we are led to the number seven. All the colleges and lodges that lead out of space into time, when they lead to the supermundane, are subject to the number seven. The sacred Rishis are subject to the number seven, and the other sacred teachers of the peoples, right down to the seven sages of Greece, are subject to the number seven. The basic number of space is twelve. And as time flows out into space, it becomes revelation through twelve. Therefore, twelve reigns where time flows out into space. We have twelve tribes in Israel, twelve apostles at the moment when Christ, who had previously revealed himself in time, flows out into space. What is in time is one after the other. Therefore, whatever leads from space into time toward the gods of the Luciferic realm leads into the number seven. If we want to characterize something in this realm according to its essence, we find this essence when we trace what we are investigating back to its fatherhood. We recognize what develops in time when we ascend from the later to the earlier, as from the child to the father. As we enter the world of time, which is ruled by the number seven, we speak of children and their origin, of the children of spiritual beings, of the children of Lucifer. When we lead time out into space, we speak of those beings that stand side by side, where standing side by side and thus also the flow of soul impulses from one to the other in space comes into consideration. Where the number seven is transformed into twelve as time flows out into space, the concept of the child ceases to have the same supersensible meaning; the concept of brotherhood arises; those who live side by side are brothers. Thus we ascend in human evolution by transforming the important concept of the sons of God into the concept of brothers who live side by side. Brothers and sisters live side by side. What descends from one another lives one after the other. Here we see, at an important moment, the transition from the sons or children of the Luciferic kingdom and its essence to the brothers of Christ, a transition we will discuss further tomorrow.