The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] The insight into the development of such individualities, as we were able to follow yesterday through two incarnations, so to speak, allows us to glimpse something of the mysterious becoming and weaving of the world spirits during the evolution of humanity, during human history. For if we keep before our minds the images that yesterday were at least sketchily presented to our souls, the images of Julian the Apostate and of the next manifestation of this same individuality in the course of human evolution as Tycho Brahe, the great astronomer, then one thing strikes us in particular. Particularly in such personalities who mean something within history, we can observe that the peculiarity of their individuality carries over from one incarnation to another, but that in this pure process of reincarnation, what higher spiritual individualities of the upper hierarchies want to accomplish in history asserts itself in a modifying way, and for which they only use individual human beings as instruments. For we must say to ourselves: the individuality that appeared as Julian the Apostate had the task in the 4th century AD of giving, as it were, a final impetus to bring the spiritual treasures of wisdom from earlier epochs of human development to a final blaze and thus preserve them from the fate that they could easily have met if it had been left to the emerging Christianity to manage this treasure trove of wisdom. And on the other hand, we must tell ourselves that an individuality incarnated in a personality that had the good fortune to be initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries had, upon its reincarnation, the conditions to allow an infinite abundance of temporal forces and beings to work upon it, as was to happen in the 16th century. And we will indeed find completely understandable the greatness and power that yesterday appeared before our eyes in the personality of Tycho Brahe, which finds its explanation in the fact that a vast amount of macrocosmic knowledge could appear in connection with the microcosm in Tycho Brahe because he had been an initiate in a previous incarnation. Through such considerations of occult history, we become aware that it is indeed human beings who make history, but that ultimately history can only be understood if we find the connection between the individual personalities that appear and die in history and the individual threads that run through the entire development of humanity, so to speak, and reincarnate in the personalities. But we must always keep in mind that which flows in from other, superphysical worlds through the powers of other hierarchies if we want to understand humanity on the surface of the Earth in the course of history.

[ 2 ] Now, in our consideration, we have seen how, in all the cultural periods after the Atlantean catastrophe, certain higher powers from the higher hierarchies have worked through human beings. We have said that this is most evident in the ancient Indian soul, which is, so to speak, only a stage for the working of higher spiritual beings. This recedes somewhat in the soul of the ancient Persians. And then we have seen that in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the soul already had the task — and this is particularly evident when we consider the Babylonian soul — of bringing down the superpersonal into the personal, the spiritual onto the physical plane. Personality thus becomes increasingly important the closer we approach the Greek period, and in this period, we must say, we see the weaving of the I within the I, the complete expression of personality in the strong and powerful figures that confront us in the Greek period. In the Greeks and later in the Romans, what can initially only be given to individuality from higher worlds receded most; in contrast, what emerged was what human beings express as their true humanity in their personality.

[ 3 ] Now the question may arise, and the answer to this question will enable us to understand the whole occult course of history more deeply: What are these spirits that worked through the Indians, the ancient Persians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, and the Egyptians? To which hierarchies do they belong? From the research made possible by occult sources, we can say in a certain way which individualities of the higher hierarchies used each of these periods of human history as instruments to work through them. The beings we are accustomed to calling angels poured their powers into the ancient Indian soul, that is, into the soul that was, so to speak, the creator of culture immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe. So in a certain sense we are right when we say that when an ancient Indian spoke, when he expressed what moved his soul, it was not his own ego that spoke directly through his soul, but an angel, an angelos. Because the angel stands only one step above humanity, he is the being in the higher hierarchies most closely related to humans, and therefore he was able to express himself most fully in his own nature, so to speak. What is most foreign to humans comes to the fore in Indian expression because the angel is most closely related to humans and can therefore express himself most clearly as an angel.

[ 4 ] It was less possible for those beings of the higher hierarchies who expressed themselves through the ancient Persians to express themselves in their immediate nature. For these were beings of the next higher level, the archangels, who spoke through the soul of the ancient Persian people. And because they are two levels higher than humans, what they can express through human instruments is more foreign to their own nature than what the angels could express through the Indians. Thus, level by level, things become more and more human. Nevertheless, this flow down from the higher hierarchies is always present. The spirits of personality speak through the soul of the Babylonian, Chaldean, and Egyptian peoples. That is why personality comes out most strongly here, and what human beings are still able to give from what flows down is furthest from its origin and becomes most humanly personal. Thus, as we proceed to the Babylonian-Egyptian period, we have a continuous revelation of the angels, the archangels, and the spirits of personality.

[ 5 ] We can trace precisely, especially among the Persians, how they were aware that the archangels were the principal spirits working in what we can call the human organism, the total organism. However, we must not take the average Persian as our example if we want to consider the influx of what flows down from the higher hierarchies. It also flowed into the average Persian, but only those who were the immediate disciples of the inspirer of the original Persian culture, Zarathustra himself, knew how this happened and understood the matter. And they did indeed know this, for you may remember from various descriptions of the teachings of Zarathustra that I myself have already given, or also from what has been handed down exoterically, that in the view of the ancient Persians, the divine, Zervan Akarana, reveals itself through the two opposing powers Ormuzd and Ahriman. Now the ancient Persians were clear that all such things that reveal themselves in human beings originate in the macrocosm, and that the phenomena of the macrocosm, namely the movements and positions of the stars, have a mysterious connection with what lies in the microcosm, in human beings. Therefore, the disciples of Zarathustra saw the outer expression, the image of Zervan Akarana, of that which weaves and lives eternally through all ages as the primordial being, in the zodiac, and the word “zodiac” still reminds us of the word Zervan Akarana. So they saw it in the zodiac, and from the twelve directions of the zodiac, the disciples of Zarathustra saw twelve powers coming, half of which were directed toward the light side of the zodiac, where the sun passes overhead during the day, and the other half were turned toward the dark side of the zodiac, toward Ahriman, as they called him. Thus, coming from the twelve sides of the universe and penetrating into the human organization, the Persians conceived of the macrocosmic forces; these flowed into the human organization, worked and labored within it, so that they are present in human beings. Therefore, what develops through the number twelve must also reveal itself microcosmically to human intelligence, that is, it must also express itself in the microcosm through the twelve Amshaspands (archangels), as a final manifestation, so to speak, of these twelve spiritual macrocosmic beings who had already been working earlier, who had prepared what only found its final expression during the Persian culture.

[ 6 ] Today's physiology could know where the twelve microcosmic counterparts of the twelve Amshaspands are. These are the twelve main nerves that spring from the head; they are nothing other than something that has arisen through the radiation of the twelve macrocosmic powers into human beings and has become materially condensed in human beings. The ancient Persians imagined that the twelve archangelic beings worked from the twelve sides of the zodiac, and in order to gradually bring forth what is now our intelligence, they worked in twelve rays into the human head. Of course, they did not work into human beings for the first time in the ancient Persian period, but finally in such a way that we have twelve cosmic rays, twelve archangel rays, which then condensed in the human head into the twelve main brain nerves, as if they had frozen there materially. And since in later times people naturally always know what they already knew in earlier times, the Persians could also know that spirits lower than the archangels had previously worked in Indian culture. The Persians called the next level below the Amshaspands, below the archangels, Izads, and they distinguished between twenty-eight and thirty-one of them. These are therefore what cause less elevated activity, what cause spiritual activity in humans. These are the ones who send in their rays and correspond to the twenty-eight or thirty-one spinal nerves of the human being. Thus, you have translated our modern physiology into the spiritual, into the macrocosmic, in the twelve Amshaspands of Zoroastrianism and in the twenty-eight to thirty-one Izads of the next lower hierarchy.

[ 7 ] In fact, it is true in the historical development of humanity that what originally appeared spiritually comes back to us through anatomical dissection, because things that were spiritually accessible to clairvoyant vision in earlier times appear materialistically in later ages. Indeed, here we see a wonderful bridge between Zarathustrianism in its spirituality and our modern physiology in its materialism. It will, however, be the fate of the greater part of humanity that such an idea of the connection between the Persian Amshaspands and Izads and our nerves will be regarded as madness, especially by those who study materialistic physiology today. But we have time, for the Persian period will not be completely repeated until the sixth, the period that follows ours. Only then will the basic condition be in place for such things to be understood by a large part of humanity. Therefore, we must content ourselves today with pointing to such things within the spiritual scientific worldview. But such indications must also be given today if we are to speak in the true sense of the word about a spiritual scientific worldview, and if we do not merely want to draw attention in a general, phraseological way to the fact that the human being is a microcosmic repetition of the macrocosm.

[ 8 ] In other regions, too, it was known that what is expressed in the human being flows in from outside. For example, in certain periods of Germanic mythology, there was talk of twelve streams flowing from Niflheim to Muspelheim. The twelve streams are not meant in a physical-material sense, but are what, when viewed clairvoyantly, flow in as a certain reflection of the macrocosm into the human microcosm, into the being that wanders around on earth and is to develop through macrocosmic forces. And it must be emphasized that these streams are basically to be seen today as astral streams, whereas in the Atlantean times immediately following Lemuria, and in Lemuria itself, they could be seen as etheric streams. Therefore, a planet related to the Earth that is only at an earlier stage of development must show something similar. And since we can often observe things from a distance that are hidden from our perception when they are close by because of their isolation, we might still be able to observe these twelve currents today on a planet similar to Earth, if it is far enough away and is going through such earlier stages of development as our Earth did. However, they will look somewhat different than they once did on Earth, but the distance is necessary, because if you stand within a swarm of mosquitoes, for example, the swarm does not appear to you with cloud-like shadows; you only perceive them when you see it from a distance. What I have just said is based on observations that speak of Martian canals. What is described as Martian canals is in fact based on what I have just indicated to you; we are dealing here with certain energy currents that correspond to an earlier state of the Earth and are described in ancient Germanic mythology as currents flowing from Niflheim to Muspelheim. This is, of course, a serious heresy for today's academic physiology and astronomy, but they will have to accept many corrections over the next few millennia.

[ 9 ] All this can point us to the abyss of profound wisdom into which we gaze when the simple sentence is uttered: The human microcosm is a kind of mirror image of the macrocosm. Such statements make us very aware that this phrase touches directly on the deepest mysteries; for the statement that man is a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm can really be a mere trivial phrase, but correctly understood it can represent the summary of millions and millions of individual concrete mysteries. And this should be emphasized in order to show you what the configuration was like in the souls of the ancient Persian culture. There was, especially among the leading personalities, a living sense of this connection between man and the macrocosm. After the beings we have described in turn as angels, archangels, and spirits of personality had worked until the Babylonian-Egyptian culture, there followed the remarkable Greek-Latin culture, which gave particular expression to the personality as such, to the weaving of the I within the I. Certain beings also revealed themselves at a higher level than the spirits of personality; the spirits of form revealed themselves. But the revelation of these spirits of form took place in a different way than that of the spirits of personality, the archangels, and angels. How do angels, archangels, and spirits of personality reveal themselves in our post-Atlantean time? They work within the human being: angels inspire Indians, archangels do something similar with the ancient Persians, but in such a way that the “human” comes to the fore a little more; the spirit of personality, however, stood behind the souls of the Egyptians, driving them to bring the spiritual to the physical plane. The spirits of form reveal themselves differently. They reveal themselves from below as much more powerful spirits who do not need to use human beings merely as tools; they reveal themselves in the realms of nature that surround us, in the configuration of the beings of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. And there, if human beings want to recognize the spirits of form in their manifestation, they must turn their eyes outward, observe nature, and fathom what the spirits of form have hidden in nature. Therefore, in the Greek period, when the spirits of form manifest themselves most prominently, human beings do not receive any direct influence that has an inspiring effect. The influence of the spirits of form takes place rather in such a way that human beings are stimulated by the external sensory world, that their senses turn with joy and delight to what is spread out around them, that they try to idealize and embellish what is spread out before them. Thus, the spirits of form stimulate from outside. And one of the principal spirits of form is the one who hides behind Yahweh or Jehovah. And although there are seven spirits of form, working in the various kingdoms of nature, the sensibility of present-day human beings is actually only available to the one spirit whom we call Yahweh. When we consider all this, it seems understandable that toward the fourth period, human beings will be more or less abandoned by these directing powers, by the angels, archangels, and spirits of personality, and that they will turn their gaze entirely toward the outer world, toward the physical horizon, where the spirits of form reveal themselves. Of course, they were already behind this physical world before that, but they did not reveal themselves to human perception. In the period immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, the spirits of form were at work; they worked in the natural kingdoms, in the laws of wind and weather, in the laws of plants, animals, and minerals. They had also been at work in even earlier times. But human beings did not direct their gaze to what confronted them externally, for they were inspired internally by the others. They were distracted from the external world. Where did this come from?

[ 10 ] How are we to understand that these other hierarchies, which we know to be lower than the spirits of form, were able to exert such a dominant influence over the already existing activity of the spirits of form? This is connected with a very specific periodic development of our entire Earth. These things are quite different for the clairvoyant gaze, which looks backward with the help of the Akashic Records, than they appear to be for speculations based on today's geological facts. If we go back beyond the activity of the spirits of personality in the Chaldean period, beyond that of the archangels in the Persian period and the angels in the ancient Indian period, we come to the period of our Earth when the Atlantean catastrophe raged most fiercely. We gradually enter the Atlantean catastrophe itself. This is the time to which the flood legends of various peoples refer, and indeed, things looked very different then than the geological hypotheses of the present day paint them. In the even earlier Atlantean period, things looked quite different again. Human beings were changeable beings. The entire face of the Earth before this catastrophe was different from what people now imagine. Now you can imagine that spiritual hierarchies had an even greater influence on the earth at that time.

[ 11 ] We have, as it were, a boundary between the old influences in the Atlantean era and those in the post-Atlantean era, a boundary filled by the Atlantean catastrophe, by those events that completely changed the face of our earth in terms of the distribution of water and land. Such times and their changes are connected with great processes in the constellation, position, and movement of the world bodies associated with the sun. And indeed, what takes place on Earth as such periods is directed here from the macrocosmic space. It would go too far today to explain how these successive periods are directed and divided by what is now called in astronomy the advance of the equinoxes. This is related to the position of the Earth's axis in relation to the axis of the ecliptic, which is related to major processes in the constellation of our neighboring celestial bodies, and there are indeed very specific times when, due to the peculiar position of the Earth in its axis in relation to the other bodies in its system, there is a completely different distribution of heat and cold on our Earth than usual. The climatic conditions change due to this position of the Earth's axis in relation to the neighboring stars. And indeed, over the course of a little more than 25,000 years, our Earth's axis describes a kind of cone or circular movement, so that our Earth experiences conditions that it experiences at a certain time in a different form after 25,000 to 26,000 years, only at a higher level. However, there are always smaller periods between these large periods. And the process does not continue continuously, but rather in such a way that certain years are turning points, deep incisions in which important things happen. And here we must point out in particular, because it is of essential importance for the entire historical development of our Earth humanity, that in the 7th millennium before Christ there was a particularly important astronomical moment — important because it was expressed by the constellation of the Earth's axis in relation to the neighboring stars in such a distribution of climatic conditions on Earth that the Atlantean catastrophe took effect at that time, six to seven to eight thousand years before our calendar — it did indeed have an effect over a long period of time. We can only emphasize here what is correct and not the fantastical time periods that are given, because it is much less far behind us than is usually believed. During this period, however, the macrocosmic conditions had such an effect on the physical world that the result was the tremendous physical revolutions of our Earth, which we know as the Atlantean catastrophe and which completely changed the face of the Earth. That was the strongest physical transformation, that was the strongest influence of the macrocosm on the Earth. At that time, however, the influence from this side on the spirit of human beings was at its lowest; therefore, during this period, the less powerful forces of the hierarchies were able to begin to exert a strong influence on human beings, which then gradually ebbed away again.

[ 12 ] So where the spirits of form had a powerful revolting effect on the physical, they did not have much time to also affect the spirit of human beings, so that the physical world, so to speak, disappeared from under their feet. On the other hand, however, human beings were most spiritually attuned during the Atlantean catastrophe and only gradually returned to the physical world in the post-Atlantean period. Now it will not be difficult for you to imagine — if you consider that the least influence was exerted on the human spirit during this period, that is, about six to seven to eight thousand years before our Christian era, and the greatest influence on the physical conditions of the earth — that there can be another time when the opposite is the case: where those who can know such things feel, in reverse, the least influence on the physical, but instead the greatest influence on the human spirit from the spirits of form. You can first construct hypothetically in your soul that there may be a point in history where the opposite of the great Atlantean catastrophe is the case. Of course, this will not be easy to notice, because people in our post-Atlantean time, who are very physically oriented, will be very aware of the Atlantean catastrophe in which parts of the earth were destroyed. They will be less aware of the fact that the spirits of form have a strong influence on the human personality and only a slight influence on what happens externally. The point in time when this occurred, which is naturally less noticeable to people, is the year 1250 of the Christian era. And this year 1250 is indeed an extraordinary and historically important year. It fell into a period that can be characterized as follows: The spirits felt compelled, so to speak, to express in the most precise way possible how one looks up to the higher divine beings standing above the other hierarchies, how one seeks to gain a relationship with these beings, which one initially perceives as a unity, first through Yahweh, then through Christ, and how one applies all human knowledge to reveal the mysteries of Christ Jesus. This was a particularly suitable time to convey to humanity the mysteries that are directly related to the spiritual and the workings of nature. We therefore see that this year is the starting point for a great and precise elaboration of what was previously only believed or intuited: the starting point of scholasticism, which is far too little appreciated today. But it was also the starting point for the revelation that found expression in spirits such as Agrippa von Netiesheim, and which found its deepest expression in the entire Rosicrucian movement. This indicates to us that if we want to seek the deeper forces of historical development, we must look beyond the outwardly visible circumstances. Yes, behind what I have just said lie, for example, those forces that are at work in the existing and ebbing Crusades. The whole of European history, especially what is happening between the Orient and the Occident, is only possible because of the forces behind it, as I have just described them.

[ 13 ] We can therefore say that there are two points in time, one of which can be described as a great upheaval on the outer physical plane, the other as the transition point of everything that had to rumble in the mysteries. But we must hold fast to the fact that, in fact, other laws exist for all such things, which thwart the main laws. And so we understand that the starting point for great revelations falls into this time, that this time is so well suited for the appearance of a person who, like Julian the Apostate, was once inspired in the Eleusinian mysteries. He then allowed what emerged there as the revelations of the spirits of form to work on his soul. But it is always about four hundred years in which the first onslaught of any powerful influence takes effect; then a ebb begins, then the streams begin to separate, so to speak. Therefore, what was seen at that time as something spiritual behind the phenomena of nature had such an effect that people forgot the spiritual and retained only the phenomena of nature. That is modernity. And Tycho Brahe is at the same time one of the last to still grasp the spiritual behind what is external natural science. And it is precisely because Tycho Brahe mastered external astronomy to such a high degree that he discovered thousands of stars and other things, while at the same time carrying the spiritual workings of the great powers in his soul in such a way that he astonished the whole of Europe when he boldly and brazenly predicted the death of Sultan Suleiman. We see that from the spiritual knowledge of nature that began in 1250 and that we encounter outwardly in such minds as Agrippa von Nettesheim, there gradually emerges what later becomes merely the external working of nature, while the inner, the spiritual, remains in that mysterious stream known to us as Rosicrucianism. The two streams then flow apart.

[ 14 ] Yes, it is remarkable how this separation can even be seen within personalities. Quite early on in our German movement, I drew attention to how something that continues here as a spiritual movement, still connected with a certain knowledge of nature, appears in a 15th-century personality, and how the spiritual is then discarded and lives on in a purely external form. We can trace this in a single individual: in Nicholas of Cusa. If we just read him—one can do more than just read him—even through reading it becomes clear how deeply connected his spiritual vision was with his external knowledge of nature, especially where this is clothed in mathematical forms. And because he understood how difficult this is to achieve in a time that is moving more and more toward external scholarship, he called his work, out of a sense of world-historical modesty, “learned ignorance,” “docta ignorantia.” Of course, he did not mean to imply that he was a particularly stupid fellow, but rather that what he had to say was above what would now develop as mere external scholarship. If we want to use a term that has become popular today, we can say that this “learned ignorance” is a kind of super-erudition. Then, as you know, he was reborn, and in this case very soon, as Nicolaus Copernicus. The same essence that was in Nicolaus Cusanus continued to work in Nicolaus Copernicus. But it shows how, precisely in those times, the organization of humanity had advanced so much toward the physical that the whole depth of Nicholas of Cusa could only work in Copernicus in such a way that the external physical world system came into being. What lived in Cusa was, as it were, filtered, the spiritual was discarded and transformed into external knowledge. Here we see clearly how powerful an impulse was to have an effect in such a short time, originating in 1250, when it reached its midpoint. And what poured into our earth at that point continued to have an effect in its own way. It continued to work in these two currents, one of which is materialistic and will become even more materialistic, the other of which strives for the spiritual and manifested itself particularly in what we know as the Rosicrucian revelation, which flowed most intensely from this starting point, even though it had already been prepared beforehand.

[ 15 ] So you see that we have, so to speak, a period of six to seven to eight millennia in which the development of the Earth is going through an important cycle in relation to the historical facts in which human development is woven. Such cycles are in turn intersected by others, for the most diverse periodic forces are at work on the development of our Earth. Only when we analyze the forces, when we get to know the individual forces and see how they interact, so to speak, can we gradually understand how things happen on Earth. It is through all these forces and laws that humanity is actually advanced and human progress is brought about. You know that another current has placed an important turning point in our century, which is hinted at in the Rosicrucian mystery: the return to the etheric world and the revelation of Christ within the etheric world. But that belongs to another current. I am now speaking more of forces that work into the broad basis of historical events.

[ 16 ] But if we want to understand historical events completely, we must also take into account that such turning points in development are always connected with certain positions of the stars, and that in 1250 our Earth's axis was also in a certain position, so that the so-called minor axis of the ecliptic was in a very special position in relation to the Earth's axis. If we take into account that what happens on Earth is caused by large celestial conditions, then we can already see from the external climatic conditions that there is further specialization and differentiation within the Earth. Isn't it true that because forces from the cosmos are at work in a certain way, the Earth's belt is such that we have the hot zone, then the temperate zone, then the cold zone? This can be taken as an example of how what is brought about by the Sun and other conditions through spiritual activity manifests itself on the physical plane. But now differentiation takes place within the earth itself; the climate is different when you have to deal with depths or heights in the hot zone; it can still be very cold at high altitudes. Therefore, the climatic conditions are distributed quite differently at the same degrees when we look at things in Africa or America. But there is also something in spiritual development that can be compared to this kind of differentiation, so that in periods when a very specific character prevails over large parts of the Earth due to the constellation of the stars, modifications occur in the spirits and souls of human beings, and special conditions arise. This is particularly important because it must indeed happen sometimes that provision is made for the distant future.

[ 17 ] Just imagine that the wise world government—this is only a comparative expression, of course—had to decide thousands of years ago: There is a group of souls that I must prepare so that they can fulfill this or that task in their next incarnation. Connections must be created so that perhaps a small group of people who have just experienced something very specific, who are incarnated together in a small spot on earth, can go through something that seems insignificant at that moment. But when we consider how such people, who are crowded together in a small space, are scattered in their next incarnation and how precisely what they have received in that confined space later has an effect on the whole of humanity, then the matter takes on a different perspective. And so we can understand that in times when the overall character of humanity is a very specific one, something occurs in isolated parts of culture that stands out strikingly, that differs completely from this overall character. You see, I would like to mention something like this to you because it is quite relevant to our time.

[ 18 ] Oberlin lived in Steinthal near Strasbourg. The profound German psychologist and researcher Schubert always pointed to this Oberlin. Oberlin was a peculiar personality, and he had a peculiar effect on people's souls. He was a clairvoyant personality—I can only hint at this—and, after losing his wife at a relatively early age, he was truly able to live with her individuality as one lives with a living person. And now he noted down day after day what happened up there, where his wife lived, and he also laid it out on a map of the heavens and showed it to the people around him, so that in fact there was a whole community that participated in the life that Oberlin led with his deceased wife. It is a strange, out-of-place thing that something like this was included at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. But if you consider what I have said, you will see the meaning of such a thing. And things like this, as they were revealed to Oberlin, are among the most significant things that have come out in this field in recent times. I would like to draw your attention to a very beautiful work of cultural history that deals with these circumstances surrounding Oberlin, the novel by Fritz Lienhard. You will find it extremely stimulating reading, not only in relation to the person of this pastor, but also to the cultural circumstances of that time. From such things, which are easily underestimated and regarded as coincidental, we can see how such an event fits into our development, how it can have an effect in the overall context of human evolution. For people who are brought together in this way, who gather around a personality who acts as their leader, such people are destined to take on certain tasks in later incarnations.

[ 19 ] So you see — and this is what I wanted to bring before your soul today — how, so to speak, the greatest, the macrocosmic influence from distant worlds into human souls is connected with what can happen in the smallest space. These things become particularly interesting, however, when one connects them with another law, with such great junctures of development as 1250 was. At that time, the strongest influence was exerted on the human soul — and this is less noticeable than the rumblings of continents. During the Atlantean catastrophe, the spirits of form had the least effect on human souls; therefore, the younger hierarchies, so to speak, dominated the field at that time. And this is how the activities of the various classes of hierarchical beings are distributed. It is now important for us to recognize that these cyclical movements are in turn governed by certain laws of ascent and decline. I have already hinted at this when I said that there was an upsurge in 1250, followed by a decline that manifested itself in the purely materialistic current. We can observe this frequently. And it is interesting to see how ascending and descending cycles alternate in what unfolds as human history.