The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Report in the “Frankfurter Nachrichten” of January 21, 1906

“The wisdom at the core of religions” was the subject of the third Theosophical lecture, which Dr. Rudolf Steiner from Berlin gave in the Gutenberg Hall on Friday.

All religions have certain similarities; they all have something fundamental in common. Only the theosophical school of thought, which is so much misunderstood, was called upon to shed new light on these mysterious things, for one of its main tasks is to research the wisdom teachings of all the religions of the world.

What is religion? The word means connection; through religion, the human soul is connected to the divine, it is the bridge between the soul and its spiritual-divine origin. All religions have become, have developed; they used to be different from what they are today. Recent natural science is convinced that a mainland once existed between Europe and Africa, between Africa and America – we call it Atlantis after the ancients – on which lived different people than we do today. They did not have the same intellectual powers as we do, but they had others that we lack, which are similar to the abilities that our soul develops in dreams. Their imagination was not based on sensory perception of things; instead, the outside world appeared to them in images, symbolically, as it does in dreams. They also felt their divine origin, because they felt at one with all life, with that of plants and animals.

This view of the Atlanteans is peculiar to all the early beginnings of religions. The soul's experience of all of nature, this empathic feeling for natural forces in higher spiritual vision, gave rise to the belief in the “Great Spirit”, which is revealed in every sound of nature. Then came the time when, out of the soul's dream state, out of symbolic contemplation, intellectual life in the modern sense developed. People scattered to different countries and adapted to their climate and other conditions. What had previously been felt as a spirit now had to take on a different form; religion had to be proclaimed in different forms to correspond to the changed circumstances. The Atlanteans developed the images from the soul world, but now the outside world approached man and was different everywhere. Consequently, the bond between the soul and its divine origin had to be knitted in new forms. Hence the diversity of religions, but also their common ground, the agreement regarding the basic truths, regarding the core of wisdom.

Spiritual leaders and guides of humanity, the “Brotherhood of Initiates”, have always existed, even among the Atlanteans; and it was they who proclaimed the wisdom core of the original religion to all times and all peoples and thereby preserved it. All the founders of religions, the authors of the Vedas, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the magi of the Chaldeans, the priests of the Babylonians, the world sages of the Greeks, the Zarathustras, Confucius, yes, the German mystics, Paracelsus, Angelus Silesius and Jakob Böhme – they were all, together with the greatest initiate, Jesus Christ, such guardians of humanity, such proclaimers of the religious core of wisdom. He explained what speakers understand by this core of wisdom using the example of the doctrine of the Trinity, which returns more or less developed in all religions.

It is important that we should speak about the higher degrees of Freemasonry, because this manner of instruction sets itself special tasks, certain aspects of which will be discussed in the near future. We are dealing, in the main, with a special rite, that is called the combined rite of Memphis and Misraim.¹ I have already mentioned that the Memphis and Misraim rite possesses a great number of degrees, that ninety-five degrees must be undertaken, and that usually the Supreme Leaders of the Grand Orients—i.e. those of Germany, Great Britain and America possess the ninety-sixth degree. These degrees are so arranged that up to the end of about the eightieth to eighty-ninth degree they are divided up in the way I shall presently describe to you.

From about the eight-seventh degree onwards start the real occult degrees into which no one can be initiated who has not made a thorough study of the subject. I always make the reservation that in Europe there is nobody who has undertaken all these degrees or who has really undergone an occult Freemasonry training. But that is of no particular concern as far as Freemasonry goes, because its renewed task still awaits it in the future, and, when the time comes, the Organisation will be available; the vessel will be there which is needed to carry out what has to be achieved.

Now I must mention the various branches of Freemasonry and their tendencies, even if I am only to indicate some thing briefly. First of all, it is to be borne in mind that the whole of the masonic higher degrees trace back to a personality often spoken about but equally very much misunderstood. He was particularly misunderstood by nineteenth century historians, who have no idea of the difficult situations an occultist can meet in life. This personality is the ill-famed and little understood Cagliostro. The so-called Count Cagliostro,² in whom an individuality concealed itself which was recognised in its true nature only by the highest initiates, attempted originally to bring Freemasonry in London to a higher stage. For during the last third of the eighteenth century, Freemasonry had fairly well reached the state that I have described. He did not succeed in London at that time. He then tried in Russia, and also at The Hague. Everywhere he was unsuccessful, for very definite reasons.

Then, however, he was successful in Lyons, forming an occult masonic lodge of the Philalethes [Searchers after Truth] out of a group of local masons, which was called the Lodge of Triumphing Wisdom. The purpose of this Lodge was specified by Cagliostro. What you can read about it is, however, nothing but the work of ignorant people. What can be said about it is only an indication. Cagliostro was concerned with two things: firstly, with instructions enabling one to produce the so-called Philosopher's Stone; secondly, with creating an understanding of the mystic pentagram. I can only give you a hint of the meaning of these two things. They may be treated with a deal of scorn, but they are not to be taken merely symbolically, they are based on real facts.

The Philosopher's Stone has a specific purpose, which was stated by Cagliostro; it is meant to prolong human life to a span of 5,527 years.³ To a freethinker that appears laughable. In fact, however, it is possible, by means of special training, to prolong life indefinitely by learning to live outside the physical body. Anyone, however, who imagined that no death, in the conventional sense of the word, could strike down an adept, would have quite a false view of the matter. So, whoever imagined that an adept could not be hit and killed by a falling roof slate, would also be wrong. To be sure, that would usually only occur if the adept allowed it. We are not dealing here with physical death, but with the following. Physical death is only an apparent occurrence for him who has understood the Philosopher's Stone for himself, and has learned to separate it. For other people it is a real happening, which signifies a great division in their life. For he who understands how to use the Philosopher's Stone in the way that Cagliostro intended his pupils to do, death is only an apparent occurrence. It does not even constitute a decisive turning point in life; it is, in fact, something which is only there for the others who can observe the adept and say that he is dying. He himself, however, does not really die. It is much more the case that the person concerned has learned to live without his physical body; that he has learned during the course of life to let all those things take place in him gradually, which happen suddenly in the physical body at the moment of death. Everything has already taken place in the body of the person concerned, which otherwise takes place at death. Death is then no longer possible, for the said person has long ago learned to live without the physical body. He lays aside the physical body in the same way that one takes off a raincoat, and he puts a new body on just as one puts a new raincoat on.

Now that will give you an inkling. That is one lesson which Cagliostro taught—the Philosopher's Stone—which allows physical death to become a matter of small importance.

The second lesson was the knowledge of the Pentagram. That is the ability to distinguish the five bodies of man one from another. When someone says: physical body, etheric body, astral body, Kama-Manas body, causal body, [higher Manas or spirit self] these are mere words, or at best, abstract ideas. Nothing, however, is achieved by that. A person living today as a rule hardly knows the physical body; only one who knows the Pentagram learns to know the five bodies. One does not know a body by living in it, but by having it as an object. That is what distinguishes an average person from one who has gone through such a schooling that the five bodies have become objects. The ordinary person does indeed live in these five bodies: however, he lives in them, he cannot step outside [of himself] and look at them. At best he can view his physical body when he looks down at his torso, or sees it in a mirror. Those pupils of Cagliostro who had followed his methods would thereby have achieved what some Rosicrucians achieved, who had basically undergone a training with the same orientation. They were in a school of the great European adepts, who taught that the five bodies were realities, and not to remain as mere concepts. That is called ‘Knowing the Pentagram’ and ‘Moral Rebirth’.

I will not say that the pupils of Cagliostro never achieved anything. In general they went as far as comprehending the astral body. Cagliostro was extremely skilful in imparting a view of the astral body. Long before the catastrophe broke over him, he had succeeded in starting schools in Paris, Belgium, St. Petersburg and a few other places in Europe, in addition to the one in Lyons, out of which later emerged at least a few people who had the basis for some to proceed to the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth higher degrees of Freemasonry. Thus, Count Cagliostro at least had an important influence on occult masonry in Europe before ending his days in the prison in Rome. The world should not actually pronounce judgment on Cagliostro. As I have already indicated, when people speak about Cagliostro, it is as though Hottentots were to speak about the erection of an overhead railway, because the relationship of apparently immoral outward acts to world happenings is not understood.

I remarked earlier that the French Revolution arose out of the secret societies⁴ of the occultists, and if these currents were investigated further, they would lead back to the school of the adepts.

It may be that what Mabel Collins depicted in her novel Flita⁵ is hard to understand. In it she describes, rather grotesquely, how an adept has the World Chessboard in front of him in a secret place, and lets the pieces play, and how he, so to speak, controls the Karma of a continent upon one very simple little board. It does not quite take place as it is described there, but something on a much greater scale than that does actually happen, of which what is described in Flita gives only a distorted picture.

Now the French Revolution certainly proceeded from such things as this. There is a well-known story contained in the writings of the Countess d'Adhémar. It related that, before the outbreak of the French Revolution, the Countess d’Adhémar, one of the ladies-in-waiting to Marie-Antoinette, received a visit from the Count of St. Germain.⁶ He wanted to be presented to the Queen and to beg audience of the King. Louis XVI's minister, however, was the enemy of the Count of St. Germain, who therefore was not allowed into the King's presence. But he described to the Queen with great accuracy and detail the major perils which were looming ahead. Regrettably, however, his warnings were ignored. It was on that occasion that he uttered the great saying which was based on truth: ‘They who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind’⁷ and he added that he had uttered this saying millenia previously, and it had been repeated by Christ. Those were words which were unintelligible to the ordinary person.

But the Count of St. Germain was right. I will only add a few more touches which are quite correct. In books about the Count of St. Germain you can read that he died in 1784⁸ at the court of the Landgrave of Hessen,⁹ who later became one of the most advanced German Freemasons. The Landgrave nursed him until the end. But the Countess d'Adhémar recounts in her memoirs¹⁰ that he appeared to her long after the year 1784, and that she saw him six more times long after that. In reality he was at that time, in 1790, with some Rosicrucians in Vienna¹¹ and said, which is perfectly true, that he was obliged to retire to the Orient for the span of 85 years, and that after that time people would again become aware of his activity in Europe. 1875 is the year of the founding of the Theosophical Society. These things are all connected to ether in a certain way.

In the school founded by the Landgrave of Hessen, also, there were two main concerns: the Philosopher's Stone and the Knowledge of the Pentagram. The Freemasonry founded by the Landgrave of Hessen at that time continued to exist in a rather diluted form. In fact, the whole of Freemasonry, as I have described it, is called the Egyptian rite, the rite of Memphis and Misraim. The latter traces its origin back to King Misraim who came from Assyria—from the Orient—and, after the conquest of Egypt, was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries. These are indeed the mysteries which originate from ancient Atlantis. An unbroken tradition exists from that time. Modern Freemasonry is only a continuation of what was established then in Egypt.

Before I go into details I would like to say that Freemasonry which extends to the higher degrees is something which, in its more intimate aspect, is quite different from the normal craft masonry. The ordinary craft masonry rests on a kind of democratic principle, and if the democratic principle is to be applied to matters of knowledge, it is obvious that it will lead to a state of affairs in which the brothers who have congregated together will mainly do nothing but bring forward their own views. Truth, however, is something about which one cannot hold one's own views. One either knows a truth or one is ignorant of it. No one can say that the three angles of a triangle add up to 725 degrees instead of to 180 degrees.

When people sit together and have a discussion they talk about their own views, sometimes also about the most elevated things. But all of this exists on the level of illusion, and is just as irrelevant as what a person says who is ignorant of the true sum of the angles of a triangle and only gives his own opinion about it. Just as one is unable to discuss whether the sum of the angles of a triangle have this or that many degrees, so one is also unable to have a discussion about higher truths. That is why the democratic principle is not applicable to matters of knowledge, for there is no basis of argument on which to discuss them. What distinguishes masonry of the higher degrees from craft masonry is that one learns to know the truth step by step. Whoever has recognised a thing can no longer hold more than one opinion about it. One has either recognised it, or one has not done so. The ninety-six degrees have, therefore, a certain justification

At the head is the so-called Sovereign Sanctuary, who is identical with what is known as the Grand Orient in Freemasonry, and is in possession of the real occult knowledge.¹² He knows the path and the speech of that which can be picked out in the masonic manifesto,¹³ and which makes it possible to hear the voice of the Wise Men of the East. When he has reached this step, he is certainly in a position to hear the voice of the Wise Masters. So far, however, must one have worked one's way up, that one is in possession of very definite knowledge, and also of definite inner qualities and inner capacities which by no means purely cover themselves with the conventional bourgeois virtues, but are something more meaningful and intimate. I would note that [compared with] what we have been speaking about here, what theosophical literature reveals of a theoretical or practical nature forms only an elementary part. So that the theoretical side of the higher degrees of Freemasonry far surpasses what can be divulged in popular theosophy. What can be disclosed there is dependent upon the permission given by the adepts to allow these things to be popularised up to a certain grade. But it is not possible to make all knowledge public.

It is correct to say that humanity will be astonished by some of the discoveries which will be made in the near future. But they will be rather premature discoveries and will thereby cause some havoc. The task of the Theosophical Society consists mainly in preparing people for such things. For instance, what I described at the beginning as the knowledge of the Philosopher's Stone was formerly much more universally known than it is today and, indeed, it was known already during a certain period of the Atlantean Epoch. At that time the possibility of conquering death was really something which was commonly known. I only wish to remark that I was not very happy about allowing this truth to appear in print recently. Therefore where this should have come in the discussion about Atlantean times in the Luzifer article, a row of dots was printed in place of those things which may not yet be communicated.¹⁴ It cannot even yet be communicated in its entirety. There is a very similar piece of information recorded by a very advanced medium, which appeared in the Theosophical Review¹⁵ dealing with exactly the same thing in a rather different form. The overcoming of death in Atlantean times is naturally preserved in the memories of the individuals concerned without their being aware of it. There are many people reincarnated today who passed through that period in their former lives and who are led to such revelations through their own memories. That will first of all lead to a kind of overrating of certain medical discoveries. People will imagine that medical science was the discoverer of such things. In reality people will have been led to them through their own memories of Atlantean times.

Certain things will mature in the near future and therefore we shall speak about them. This makes it necessary to see the need of a step by step advance in the gaining of knowledge. This step by step advance is therefore rightly emphasised by those who wish to revive the Misraim and Memphis Rite at the present time. Even if this does not succeed during the next year or two, one must not think that failure in such things is of any significance There is a man at the head of the American Misraim movement, whose significant character constitutes a sure guarantee of constancy in the advance. This is the excellent Freemason, John Yarker.¹⁶

It is difficult to say at the moment what form the matter will take in Great Britain and Germany. You will perceive that one must reckon with the human material concerned, and that the German movement, therefore—if it is to concern itself with such matters -will also have to reckon with what is available in this direction. If genuine occultists are to take part in such things they must needs be active in one or other direction. They will not always be able to take part in such things. Even the Masters, when they prescribe something of this kind, have to take their cue from great universal laws.

If, therefore, you hear something concerning the German Misraim-Memphis tendency, you should not imagine that this now has significance for the future. It is only the frame into which a good picture may later be put. This German Misraim Order stands under the overall guidance of a certain Reuss,¹⁷ who holds the actual leadership in Great Britain and Germany today. Then, the well-known Carl Kellner¹⁸ also works in this direction. The actual literary work is in the hands of Dr. Franz Hartmann,¹⁹ who serves the Misraim Rite with his pen to the very utmost. That is as much as I can impart to you in this or that fragment from here or there, concerning this movement.

Now I can only characterise what is involved here in general terms. There are four kinds of instruction given in the- Misraim Rite.²⁰ The ninety-six degrees can therefore be achieved through four different kinds of instruction or disciplines. These four disciplines, by means of which one advances, are the following: First, the so-called symbolic instruction or discipline. By means of this, certain symbols can be recognised as facts. The person concerned is instructed in the occult laws of nature, through which quite definite effects are produced through cyclic movements in humanity.

The second kind of instruction or discipline is the so-called philosophic one. It is the Egyptian hermetic discipline. It consists of a more theoretical kind of instruction. The third kind of instruction is the so-called mystical discipline, which is based more upon inner development, and which, if rightly applied, would lead above all else to the appropriate manipulation of the Philosopher's Stone, that is, to the overcoming of death. That is essentially expressed in one of the sentences which I read out to you which stated that by means of Freemasonry everyone is able to convince himself of the fact of immortality. It depends, however, as the Cabbala says, whether this is requested or not. The fourth kind of instruction is the Cabbalistic one. It consists in the recognition of the principles of world harmony in their truth and reality, the ten basic ... [Gap]

By means of each of the four paths one can rise to a higher perception through the Misraim Rite. But there is actually no one within the ranks of Freemasonry today who would accept the responsibility of giving practical guidance to anyone, because those concerned have not undergone these things themselves, and the whole affair is a provisional arrangement and only intended to provide a framework for something which is still to come. It is possible that this framework will be filled with occult knowledge. Occult knowledge has to be cast in existing moulds. The important thing is that such moulds exist in the world. If there is molten metal and no mould into which to pour it, you are unable to do anything but let it run out in one lump. So it is also with spiritual currents. It is important that moulds exist into which can be poured the spiritual metal. That is symbolised by the Molten Sea. That will become recognised when what is now seemingly only vegetating receives form for outward manifestation.

Last time I read to you from a speech by the English Prime Minister Balfour.²¹ From that, then, it is already noticeable that certain things are physical truths today, that are in primeval occult perceptions. If you read Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, you will find there a passage relating to electricity, which expresses word for word what physicists are now gradually arriving at. What is written there is, however, only a hint at what is actually involved. It is the physical atom which is in question. This was misunderstood by all outward—but not occult—science until four or five years ago. It was taken to be [body having] mass in space. Nowadays one is beginning to recognise that this physical atom bears the same relationship to the force of electricity that a lump of ice bears to the water from which it has been frozen. If you conceive of water becoming frozen to ice, so is the ice also water, and in like manner the atom of physics is nothing else but frozen electricity. If you can grasp this point completely and were to go through the statements about the atom contained in all the scientific journals until a year or two ago, and were to regard them as rubbish, you will have more or less the right idea. It is only very recently that science has been able to form a conception of what the atom is. It stands [in the same relationship to electricity] as ice does to water out of which it has been frozen. The physical atom is condensed electricity. I regard Balfour's speech as something of extreme importance.²²

It is ... [Gap] something which has been published since 1875 [1879?].²³ The fact has been known to occultists for millenia. Now one is beginning to realise that the physical atom is condensed electricity. But there is still a second thing to be considered: what electricity itself is. That is still unknown. They are ignorant of one thing: namely, where the real nature of electricity must be sought. This nature of electricity cannot be discovered by means of any outer experiments or through outer observation. The secret which will be discovered is that electricity—when one learns to view it from a particular level—is exactly the same as what human thought is. Human thought is the same thing as electricity, viewed one time from the inside, another time from the outside.

Whoever is now aware of what electricity is, knows that there is something living within him which, in a frozen state, forms the atom. Here is the bridge from human thought to the atom. One will learn to know the building stones of the physical world; they are tiny condensed monads, condensed electricity. In that moment when human beings realise this elementary occult truth about thought, electricity and the atom, in that same moment they will have understood something which is of the utmost importance for the future and for the whole of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. They will have learned how to build with atoms through the power of thinking.

This will be the spiritual current which will again have to be cast in the moulds which have been prepared for it by occultists over millenia. But because the human race had to pass through the era of the development of understanding and to look away from the true inner work, the moulds have become mere shells. But they still retain their function as moulds, and the right kind of knowledge will have to be poured into them.

The occult investigator obtains his truth from the one side, the physical scientist from the other. Just as Freemasonry has developed out of working masonry, out of the building of cathedrals and temples, so one will in future learn to build with the smallest of building blocks, with entities of condensed electricity. That will call for a new kind of masonry. Then industry will not be able to carry on any more as it does today. It will become so chaotic and will only be able to work purely out of the struggle for existence per se, as long as man does not know ... [Gap] Then it would be possible for someone in Berlin to drive into the city in a cab, while in Moscow a disaster which he had caused was taking place. And nobody at all would have any inkling that he had been the cause of it. Wireless telegraphy is the beginning of this. What I have portrayed is in the future. There are only two possibilities available: Either things go on chaotically, as industry and technology have done until now, in which case it will lead to whoever has the possession of these things being able to cause havoc, or else it will be cast in the moral mould of Freemasonry. *This last sentence appears as follows in the notes of Marie Steiner-von Sivers: ‘These things will either continue chaotically, as industry and technology have done until now, or harmoniously, as is the aim of Freemasonry; then the highest development will be achieved.’

Question: Why is the Catholic Church so antagonistic towards Freemasonry?

Answer: The Catholic Church does not want what is coming in the future. Pius IX was initiated into Freemasonry. He tried, through the Chapter of Clermont, to bring about a connection between the Jesuits and the Freemasons. That did not succeed, and therefore the old enmity between these two remained. Our Jesuits know little about these things, and the clergy are also unaware of what is involved. The actual clergy ... [Large gap]

The Trappists have to keep silent, for it is known that by doing so an important faculty of inspired speech in the next life is implanted. That is indeed only to be understood through a knowledge of reincarnation.

• 1 . According to legend the Memphis Rite is supposed to have originated with a man called Ormus, who was converted to Christianity by St. Mark in the year 46. It is said that the Crusaders carried this masonic knowledge with them from the Holy Land and founded a Grand Lodge in Scotland in the twelfth century. The legend derives the name Misraim from Mizraim, one of the sons of Ham. He came to Egypt, possessed himself of the country and called it after his name (Misraim or Mizraim—an old name for Egypt). The teaching about Isis, Osiris, Typhon, etc., is supposed to have come from him, cf. Schuster: Die geheimen Gessellschaften, Verbindungen und Orden (Volume 2, Leipzig 1906). According to Heckethorn: (Secret Societies, Book 8, Chapter 20), the Egyptian masonry was founded by Cagliostro. The Rite of Misraim is attributed (Heckethorn, Book 8, Chapter 10) to a foundation in Milan of 1805, i.e., ten years after the supposed death of Cagliostro, which foundation was laid by several masons ‘who had been refused admission into the Supreme Grand Council.’ The Rite of Memphis is said to be a copy of the Rite of Misraim and was founded in Paris in 1839. It is supposed to have been combined with the Misraim Rite towards the end of the nineteenth century, since when it has been known as the ‘Memphis-Misraim Rite.’ John Yarker (see note 16), the ‘Absolute Sovereign Grand Master in and for Great Britain and Ireland of the Combined Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Rite,’ established a Grand Orient (Grand Lodge) for Germany in 1902.
• 2 . Count Alexander Cagliostro, allegedly identical with the Sicilian Joseph Balsamo—a fact which he himself, however, always vigorously denied—died in the Vatican prison in 1795. He is regarded, along with the Count of St. Germain, as one of the most controversial figures of the eighteenth century. In an account of his life by Francois Ribadeau Dumas: (Cagliostro, Allen and Unwin 1967) the attempt was made to put the record straight. For instance, it was quoted out of the Protocol of the trial by the Inquisition that ‘it has not been possible to find a single witness among Cagliostro's accusers who had known Balsamo.’ Furthermore, a passage is quoted from the book by Cagliostro's ‘learned historian,’ Dr. Marc Haven, Le Maitre inconnu Cagliostro: ‘No one has proved that Balsamo and Cagliostro are one and the same person; neither Morands, nor Goethe, not the Commissary Fontaine, nor even the trial of the Holy Inquisition have produced a document which precludes all doubt.’
• 3 . In the notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers it is said to be 5,530 years. According to Heckethorn (Book 8, Chapter 20), 5,557 years (see note 13). Ribadeau Dumas (in the work quoted above) states that Cagliostro left many works behind him, among which is one entitled: The Art of prolonging Life. All of them, apart from his Egyptian Ritual, have disappeared. As Ribadeau Dumas says: ‘If they haven't been burned, they must reside in the Vatican archives. Let us hope that, in the light of the new ideas of the occumenical movement and reconciliation with the “separated Brethren”, the Vatican library will one day release these curious documents to which Cagliostro so often referred and through which he might be vindicated.’
• 4 . This almost certainly happened during lecture 5 given on the 4th November 1904, though it is not recorded in the notes.
• 5 . Mabel Collins (pseudonym for Mrs Kenningdale-Cook), 1851–1927, was one of the best authors of the Theosophical Society. Rudolf Steiner wrote an appreciation of her novel Flita, True Story of a Black Enchantress, when it first appeared in German translation. This was published March 1905 in the periodical Luzifer-Gnosis and is recorded in the complete edition in German of Rudolf Steiner's works in Volume 34, Luzifer-Gnosis.
• 6 . See note 4 to lecture 5 given on 4th November 1904.
• 7 . According to the account of Madame d'Adhemar, the Count said to her: ‘Madame, they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind; this is what Jesus said in the Gospels, perhaps not before I did but, anyway, his words have been preserved in writing, only mine could have been made use of.’ Quoted from Heyer: Aus dem Jahrhundert der Französischen Revolution, (Edition 1956). These words, however, do not appear in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament, Hosea, Chapter 8, verse 7. (See also the statement in lecture 5 of the 4th November 1904).
• 8 . He is reputed to have died in Eckernfoerde on 27th February 1784. As proof of this is the death register of the St. Nicholas Church in Eckernfoerde, according to which he was ‘quietly interred’ on 2nd March 1784.
• 9 . Prince Karl, 1744–1836, son of the ruling Landgrave Frederick II, Danish General and Governor of the Dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein. His Freemasonry writing: La Pierre Zodiacale du temple de Denderah, appeared in 1824. His memoires, which were dictated 1816/17, appeared in Copenhagen in 1861 and, in German translation, in Cassel in 1866. In the latter is to be found a report concerning the Count of St. Germain.
• 10. See Karl Heyer's: Aus dem jahrhundert der Französischen Revolution.
• 11. Rudolf Steiner apparently bases his statements on an article by Isabel Cooper-Oakley in the periodical Gnosis, of 15th December 1903, the pertinent passage of which reads (Quoted from: The Count of Saint-Germain, by Isabel Cooper-Oakley, Rudolf Steiner Publications, p. 145 and p. 140 et seq.):
  
  ‘Franz Graeffer left us the curious account of a journey by Saint Germain to Vienna. Unfortunately this description is not quite satisfactory. Graeffer himself confesses that it was written on 15th June, long after the event. He says: “A peculiar irresistible feeling has compelled me to set down these transactions in writing once more, after so long a time, just today June 15th 1843.” Further, I make this remark, that these events have not been hitherto reported.’
  
  ‘One day the report was spread that the Comte de St. Germain, the most enigmatical of all incomprehensibles, was in Vienna. An electric shock passed through all who knew his name. Our Adept circle was thrilled through and through: St. Germain was in Vienna!
  
  ‘Barely had Graeffer, his brother Rudolf, recovered from the surprising news, than he flies to Hiniberg, his country seat, where he has his papers. Among these is to be found a letter of recommendation from Casanova, the genial adventurer whom he got to know in Amsterdam, addressed to St. Germain.
  
  ‘He hurries back to his house of business; there he is informed by the clerk: “An hour ago a gentleman has been here whose appearance has astonished us all. This gentleman was neither tall nor short, his build was strikingly proportionate, everything about him had the stamp of nobility ... He said in French, as it were to himself, not troubling about anyone's presence, the words: ‘I live in Fedalhofe, the room in which Leibnitz lodged in 1713.’ We were about to speak, when he was already gone. This last hour we have been, as you see, Sir, petrified ...”
  
  ‘In five minutes Fedalhofe is reached. Leibnitz's room is empty. Nobody knows when “the American gentleman” will return home. As to luggage, nothing is to be seen but a small iron chest. It is almost dinner time. But who would think of dining! Graeffer is mechanically urged to go and find Baron Linden; he finds him at the “Ente”. They drive to the Landstrasse, whither a certain something, an obscure presentiment, impels them to drive post-haste.
  
  ‘The laboratory is unlocked; a simultaneous cry of astonishment escapes both; at a table is seated St. Germain, calmly reading a folio, which is a work of Paracelsus. They stand dumb at the threshold; the mysterious intruder slowly closes the book, and slowly rises. Well know the two perplexed men that this apparition can be no other in the world than the man of wonders. The description of the clerk was a shadow against reality. It was as if a bright splendour enveloped his whole form. Dignity and sovereignty declared themselves. The men were speechless. The Count steps forward to meet them; they enter. In measured tones, without formality, but in an indescribably ringing tenor, charming the innermost soul, he says in French to Graeffer: “You have a letter of introduction from Herr von Seingalt; but it is not needed. This gentleman is Baron Linden. I knew that you would both be here at this moment. You have another letter for me from Bruehl. But the painter is not to be saved; his lung is gone, he will die July 8th 1805.
  
  ‘St. Germain then gradually passed into a solemn mood. For a few seconds he became rigid as a statue, his eyes, which were always expressive beyond words, became dull and colourless. Presently, however, his whole being became reanimated. He made a movement with his hand as if in signal of his departure, then said: “I am leaving (ich scheide); do not visit me. Once again will you see me. Tomorrow night I am off; I am much needed in Constantinople; then in England, there to prepare two inventions which you will have in the next century—trains and steamboats. These will be needed in Germany. The seasons will gradually change—first the spring, then the summer. It is the gradual cessation of time itself, as the announcement of the end of the cycle. I see it all; astrologers and meteorologists know nothing, believe me; one needs to have studied in the Pyramids as I have studied. Towards the end of this century I shall disappear out of Europe, and betake myself to the region of the Himalayas. I will rest; I must rest. In exactly 85 years people will again set eyes on me. Farewell, I love you”. [Said in 1790. Exactly 85 years later (1875) the Theosophical Society was founded.] After these solemnly uttered words, tie Count repeated the sign with his hand. The two adepts, overpowered by the force of such unprecedented impressions, left the room in a condition of complete stupefaction. In the same moment there fell a sudden heavy shower, accompanied by a peal of thunder. Instinctively they return to the laboratory for shelter. They open the door. St. Germain is no more there ...’
• 12. It would seem that a person, rather than a body of people, is here meant. Heckethorn, in talking about the Order of Memphis, says that: ‘it works 33 degrees and embraces a far more extensive ritual of workable degrees than any other rite, every one of its 33 degrees having its appropriate and elaborate ceremonial easily arranged for conferment and its titles are purged of ridiculous pretensions. Its government is strictly representative, as in our own political constitution. The 32 and 31 are the first, second, third and fourth Officers of the Chapter, Senate and Council and form the Mystic Temple and judicial Tribunal, the presiding Officer, or Grand Master of Light, having the 33rd degree to enable him to represent the Province in the Sovereign Sanctuary (33–95) or ruling body.’
  
  Dr. Steiner speaks at the beginning of this lecture about the Combined Rite of Memphis and Misraim having a great number of degrees, that 95 out of the 96 Degrees have to be undertaken by its members and that the Supreme Leaders of the Grand Orients usually possess the 96th Degree. It seems likely that it is this Supreme Leader who is in possession of the actual occult knowledge and knows the path and the language of the Freemasonry manifesto, through which is revealed the voice of the ‘Wise Men of the East.’
• 13. See preceding lecture of 9th December in which the text of the manifesto is given in full.
• 14. This relates to the articles which appeared in the periodical Luzifer-Gnosis, in December 1904 under the title ‘From the Akashic Records.’ See Cosmic Memory, Chapter 4, ‘Transition of the Fourth into the Fifth Root Race,’ p.66 (Rudolf Steiner Publications Inc., New York, 1961).
• 15. The article in question appeared in the December issue of the Theosophical Review of 1904 signed only ‘E.’ Its contents were the result of a combined exercise undertaken by ‘E,’ the interrogator, ‘T,’ the medium employed to transmit by automatic means the communications of ‘F,’ the spirit guide. What follows comprises only a few extracts of the original article.
  
  ‘F,’ though a politician and a man of the world, is an enthusiastic humanitarian ... He added that he felt very anxious, for soon an important discovery would be made which would give the doctors a greater power than they had even now, and that it would lead to more cruelty in experiments on animals, for the man who found it out would think he had learned it by vivisection. “But remember, it is not so, it is not a discovery, only a remembrance; for the man who will find it out was an Atlantean, and the Atlanteans were far more learned in medicine than we are; indeed the body had no secrets for them”. I then began to question him about Atlantis ...
  
  They commanded the elements, made fine weather or storm as it pleased them. There were no children, for by an effort of unnatural power they attained to the great secret of causing life without material union of the two forces. The soul returned and reincarnated by an effort of will, taking its form from the natural elements without any other medium. This was what ultimately ended their power, for it could not be allowed to continue. It is dimly figured in a late Hebrew legend by the “tree of life”. There was nothing left of progression, and therefore a cataclysm had to overtake this civilisation, and destroy even its memory.
  
  ‘They overset the balance of creation, and so ruined their civilisation. The material cause was that they withdrew the life-force of the earth, and exhausted all the supplies of the life-current. This caused convulsions of nature, and the storm broke, irremediable, terrible, and swamped them. The Titans vied with the gods but were defeated. All religions tell this tale as a note of warning.
  
  ‘Your earth is a living creature, and if you can tap its life-current you can work all miracles. The Atlanteans are the souls of today in some cases, but they have been discrowned ... They had to return into ordinary life by the simple way of being born as an ordinary infant.
  
  ‘I will now tell you a little more about the wonderful power of Atlantis, so as to make you realise what man has been, and will be in the future ages; for to tell the truth Atlantis was material perfection, to this man can never return, but to perfection he will come in future time.
  
  ‘The ways of life of the highest classes were most simple, for nourishment was obtained almost from the air alone. Like orchids, the rulers, and more especially the priests, drew all their sustenance from the substance contained in the atmosphere. Consult any botanist you like and you will see that I am right. You cannot do this, for you are not self-materialised; you are creatures born, and not made by your own will ...
  
  ‘It was only the discovery of the great secret, that of the “tree of life”, which simplified matters, and that you will never regain until you cease to care for the power for its own sake. I mean the secret of death and birth. There is no need for men to die. There is no reason for men to be born. I know the secret in part, but not fully, for I am not good enough to be permitted to recall the wonderful power. If I could do this I should at once be tempted to reveal it to you, for it would be, God willing, an eternity of happiness.
  
  ‘I will, however, try and define somewhat and give you an example. A man is entirely renewed each seven years; after a while, however, he deteriorates and slowly decomposes. This is owing to ignorance, for if he knew how to regulate the inflow of new particles, he would never choose worse but rather better particles, and the atoms would remain permanently polarised by his will. Man is really held in a single cell; this cell is immortal and descends from generation to generation, creating ever new forms in which a human spirit can manifest. If this cell is retained in the body, and there is no procreation or waste of conservative power, then there is no reason why man should not exist for ever, during the cycle. By his children, however, man reproduces himself, and so destroys his material self. To an adept, to marry is to become a lower creature subject to death. This is truth. Every man or woman who creates can only do so by handing on his immortality. Man is a spirit, and the spirit is the central point of the materialised form. The whole of mankind accepts death as a necessity, and therefore hypnotise themselves into a belief that they must, die, but there is no reason for it if the cell is still intact in them.
  
  ‘Think it over and understand that this is one of the chief Christian teachings that has been corrupted. Christ rose from the dead to be the first fruits of life.
  
  ‘I want to refer to the new discovery which will be made, and of which I have previously spoken. It was well known once, and will return to the fated man's memory, and he will be hailed as a benefactor of humanity. In the old days of Atlantis when the secrets of the body were entirely unveiled to the caste of rulers and priests, they learnt it in a far more terrible way even than that of vivisection, namely by the stultification of the soul, thus destroying or distorting the power of evolution in a creature. You do not know this, thank God! or the earth would be once more a land of devils ...’
• 16. Yarker, 1833–1913, was an Englishman who was active within English Freemasonry. When it is here said that he was at the head of the ‘American’ Misraim movement, this is on the grounds of a statement made in the Historical Edition of the Oriflamme, Berlin 1904, co-edited by him, to the effect that only America possessed a legitimate Charter and that Yarker had been appointed in New York in 1872 ‘by S.G.C. 33° as “Chief Representative” and “Guarantor of Friendly Relationships” with the Manchester Grand Orient of the Scottish Rite and Sovereign Sanctuary of the Memphis and Misraim Rite.’ As significant masonic author he had obtained high Degrees in many different connections. (See end of note 1 to this lecture).
• 17. Theodore Reuss, 1855–1923. Authorised by Yarker to inaugurate the setting up of the Memphis-Misraim Rite in Germany. Rudolf Steiner did not know Reuss at that time. An account of this is going to appear in the documentation of the history of Rudolf Steiner's ‘Esoteric School’ (untranslated).
• 18. Carl Kellner, 1851–1905, Austrian inventor and big businessman. According to Hugo Göring in the January issue, 1895, of the periodical Sphinx (Official organ of the German Theosophical Society, edited by Hübbe-Schleiden), he invented the process for the manufacture of cellulose and worked together with the medical doctor, Franz Hartmann. Kellner was the Sovereign Honorary General Grand Master for the Memphis and Misraim Rite in Great Britain and Germany and signed himself as such for the Historical Edition of the Great Oriflamme of 1904.
• 19. Franz Hartmann, 1838–1912. After an adventurous life and personal acquaintance with H.P. Blavatsky, he founded the so-called ‘Leipzig’ Theosophical Society. He was the editor of the theosophical periodical Lotusblüten. He is mentioned by Rudolf Steiner in his autobiography: The Course of My Life and in the second volume of Rudolf Steiner's letters.
• 20. The four kinds of instruction described by Rudolf Steiner are enumerated by Heckethorn (p. 299), where he deals with the ‘Organisation of the Rite of Misraim.’ He says: ‘Then arose the Rite of Misraim with ninety degrees arranged in four sections, viz. 1. Symbolic, 2. Philosophic, 3. Mystical, 4. Cabbalistic; which were divided into seventeen classes.’ ‘The Rite of Memphis,’ he says (p. 301), ‘is a copy of the Rite of Misraim and was founded in Paris in 1839. It was composed of ninety-one degrees, arranged in three sections and seven classes.’ Where Heckethorn speaks of the ‘Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry or Order of Memphis’ (pp. 253–256), he states: ‘The Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry works thirty-three degrees, divided into three sections, embracing modern, chivalric and Egyptian Masonry, as the latter was worked on the continent last century ... It embraces a far more extensive ritual of workable degrees than any other rite, every one of its thirty-three degrees having its appropriate and elaborate ceremonial easily arranged for conferment, and its titles are purged of ridiculous pretensions.’
  
  On the other hand, when speaking about the Egyptian Rite in connection with Cagliostro, Heckethorn says, (p. 352): ‘The Egyptian Rite invented by Cagliostro is a mixture of the sacred and profane, of the serious and laughable; charlatanism is its prevailing feature.’
  
  From this it appears that the ‘Memphis and Misraim Rite,’ referred to by Rudolf Steiner, is a complex mixture of those rites which confer the Higher Degrees. Heckethorn refers to these as ‘spurious masonry’ (p. 265), in contradistinction to ‘Blue’ or ‘Symbolic’ Masonry, which restricts itself to the three lowest degrees only.
• 21. This has not been recorded in the notes at our disposal. In connection with the speech itself, see note 19 to the previous lecture and the succeeding note to this.
• 22. The following extract of Balfour's speech is the part referred to. Under the heading: ‘Reflections suggested by the New Theory of Matter.’
  
  ‘But today there are those who regard gross matter, the matter of everyday experience, as the mere appearance of which electricity is the physical basis; who think that the elementary atom of the chemist, itself far beyond the limits of direct perception, is but a connected system of monads or sub-atoms which are not electrified matter, but are electricity itself; that these systems differ in the number of monads which they contain, in their arrangement, and in their motion relative to each other and to the ether; that on these differences, and on these differences alone, depend the various qualities of what have hitherto been regarded as indivisible and elementary atoms; and that while in most cases these atomic systems may maintain their equilibrium for periods which, compared with such astronomical processes as the cooling of a sun, may seem almost eternal, they are not less obedient to the law of change than the everlasting heavens themselves.
  
  ‘But if gross matter be a grouping of atoms, and if atoms be systems of electrical monads, what are these electrical monads? It may be that, as Professor Larmor has suggested, they are but a modification of the universal ether, a modification roughly comparable to a knot in a medium which is inextensible, incompressible and continuous. But whether this final unification be accepted or not, it is certain that these monads cannot be considered apart from the ether. It is on their interaction with the ether that their qualities depend; and without the ether an electric theory of matter is impossible.
  
  ‘Surely we have here a very extraordinary revolution.’
  
  It is interesting to note that Balfour does not use the term ‘frozen’ electricity or ‘coagulated’ electricity as the German translation does. He merely states that matter is the ‘mere appearance of which electricity is the physical basis.’
• 23. See note 20 to the preceding lecture.

I have always had respect for the historically given. In it lives the spirit that develops in the becoming of humanity. And so I was in favor of, if at all possible, the new arising being linked to the historically existing. («My Life's Journey,» Chapter 36)

Those who, like me, go their own way, must endure many a misunderstanding.

(Preface to the first edition of 1901 of the writing “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life and its Relationship to the Modern Worldview”, CW 7.

On the History of the Esoteric Section

Just as the volume “On the History and Content of the First Section of the Esoteric School 1904 to 1914” documents that and why Rudolf Steiner initially connected the first section of his Esoteric School to the existing School of the Theosophical Society for reasons of historical continuity, the present volume also documents why and in what way historical continuity with an already existing context working with cult symbolism was also maintained for the second and third sections of the School – the working group cultic of knowledge.

After it became known that this was the so-called Egyptian Freemasonry ^1a he was branded as a “Freemason” by certain quarters in a derogatory sense. He himself commented on this accusation twice. Once in a letter written shortly after the formal affiliation to the theosophist and freemason A.W. Sellin ^1b dated 15 August 1906 and then the section of his autobiography 'Mein Lebensgang' (My Life) (chapter 36) written a week before his death. Marie Steiner-von Sivers, co-founder and co-leader of the working group, responded to the attacks by National Socialist publicists that took place after his death with an essay entitled “Was Rudolf Steiner a Freemason?” All these and other documents are summarized in the first part of the present volume and in chronological order, except for the letter to Sellin, which was placed at the beginning because of its fundamentally enlightening content.

The question form that Marie Steiner-von Sivers chose for the title of her essay already indicates that there is indeed a problem here. This question can be answered both in the affirmative and in the negative. It can be answered affirmatively if one looks only at the external fact of the affiliation and not also at the reasons that led Rudolf Steiner to do so. The answer is negative because, despite the formal affiliation, he never saw himself as a “Freemason” in the usual sense, had no connections whatsoever with regular Freemasonry and was never regarded by the latter as belonging to it, since Egyptian Masonry is considered irregular.

To clarify this apparent contradiction and to make the fact of the connection understandable, the question of why Egyptian Freemasonry was chosen should be addressed first.

Why Egyptian Freemasonry was Chosen

We can take the whole of modern culture: it appears to us as a memory of ancient Egypt. ... We see this even in the initiation principle.²

According to its origin legend, Egyptian masonry traces its roots to the legendary first Egyptian king Menes – Misraim in Hebrew – who is said to have been a son of the biblical Noah, son of Ham. He is said to have taken possession of the country, given it his name (Misraim = ancient name of Egypt) and established the Isis-Osiris mysteries. At the beginning of the Christian era, Ormus, an Egyptian priest-sage who had been converted to Christianity by St. Mark, is said to have combined the Egyptian mysteries with those of the new law. Since then, they have been preserved as ancient Egyptian Masonic wisdom. In this sense, it was declared by those who brought the Misraim rite from Italy to France at the beginning of the 19th century to be the “root and origin of all Masonic rites”. ³ According to Rudolf Steiner, King Misraim, after conquering Egypt, was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries of that time, the secrets of which originated in ancient Atlantis. From that time on, there has been an unbroken tradition. The new Freemasonry is only a continuation of what was founded in Egypt at that time (Berlin, December 16, 1904).

The secrets of the ancient mysteries include the experience of the immortality of the human spirit. ⁴ And occult Freemasonry also wanted to convey this experience. The deeper reason for Rudolf Steiner's words (p. 67) may well lie in this direction, according to which he linked to the Memphis-Misraim order because it “pretended” to move in the direction of occult Freemasonry. In its “manifesto” of 1904, it was stated that he was in possession of practical means handed down from ancient mysteries, by which one would be able, already in this earthly life, to procure “proofs of pure immortality”. ⁵

When Rudolf Steiner, in keeping with the esoteric obligation of continuity, took up this tradition, he did not for a moment think that he was working in its spirit. From the very beginning, he insisted that modern times must seek a new wisdom that is appropriate for them, one that flows from the realization of the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha, and that real knowledge of immortality today can only be acquired through a deeper understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha (Berlin, May 6, 1909).

He once characterized the necessity of a new wisdom in one of his presentations of ancient Egyptian wisdom as follows:

”...Our time must give birth not to an ancient wisdom, but to a new wisdom that can not only point to the past, but must work prophetically, apocalyptically, into the future. We see an ancient wisdom preserved in the mysteries of past cultural epochs; an apocalyptic wisdom, for which we must lay the seed, must be our wisdom. We need a principle of initiation again, so that the original connection with the spiritual world can be restored. That is the task of the anthroposophical world movement.

Another revealing spiritual-scientific research result is that from the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean, mysterious channels lead to the fifth, the present post-Atlantean cultural period.

"We can take the whole of modern culture: it appears to us as a memory of ancient Egypt.... We see this even in the initiation principle. For when modern life was to receive an initiation principle in Rosicrucianism, what was it?.... That harmonious concord of Egyptian memory in wisdom with the Christian impulse of power.” (Stuttgart, August 16, 1908)

Elsewhere, Anthroposophy is spoken of directly as the new Isis wisdom of the new age. A new Isis legend is even developed and hinted at in connection with the wooden sculpture “The Representative of Humanity between Lucifer and Ahriman”, which was placed in a central position in the first Goetheanum building and was intended to make the basic impulse of anthroposophy visible to visitors in an artistic form. Another, “invisible” statue: the new Isis, the Isis of a new age (Dornach, January 6, 1918). Reference is also made to a deep relationship between the Isis mystery and the Grail mystery, which includes the Christianized re-emergence of the Egyptian mystery being, as well as to the figure of Parzival as a “model for our spiritual movement” (Dornach, January 6, 1918; Berlin, February 6, 1913; Berlin, January 6, 1914).

A further reason for linking to Egyptian masonry in particular is illuminated by the research result that today's humanity is in the opposite situation to that of ancient Egypt. Just as the spiritually oriented ancient Egyptians, by mummifying the human form, prepared world history for intellectuality, for thinking bound to the physical brain, so today's humanity must again acquire spirituality for intellectuality, and this must be done by way of an analogous phenomenon to the Egyptian mummy, namely the old cult forms. These are therefore analogous to the Egyptian mummies because, in contrast to ancient times, when it was possible to perceive how spiritual entities were attracted through ritual acts, this is no longer the case today, neither in lodges nor in churches. There is just as little spiritual life in their actions today as there was life in the Egyptian mummy of the person who had been mummified. Nevertheless, something is preserved in these mummified rites that can and will be resurrected once we have found a way to bring the power of the mystery of Golgotha into all human activity (Dornach, September 29, 1922).

These few examples of spiritual scientific research results should make it sufficiently clear why Rudolf Steiner linked his work to Egyptian Freemasonry.

Regarding the External Prehistory

I merely want my step to be viewed from the standpoint of occult loyalty.⁶

For the Theosophical context, the year 1902 was marked by three events. Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers took over the leadership of the German section of the Theosophical Society, which was founded in 1875 by H.P.Blavatsky and others. Annie Besant, Blavatsky's successor in the leadership of the Esoteric School of Theosophy - but not yet president of the Theosophical Society - was admitted to the so-called mixed Freemasonry. ⁷ John Yarker, honorary member of the Theosophical Society and Grand Commander of Egyptian Freemasonry, of the Order of the Ancient Freemasons of the Memphis and Misraim Rite for Great Britain and Ireland, granted Theodor Reuß, Heinrich Klein and Franz Hartmann, who belonged to both Freemasonry and the Theosophical Society in England, a foundation charter for this school of thought in Germany. ⁸

When Rudolf Steiner's autobiography states that some time after the founding of the German Section in 1902, he and Marie von Sivers were offered the leadership of a society working with the cultic symbolism of the ancient wisdom, this suggestion did not come, as might be assumed, from the main representative of the German MemphisMisraim Society, Theodor Reuss, but, as Marie Steiner reports in her essay “Was Rudolf Steiner a Freemason?” , from a person who had gained the impression that Rudolf Steiner understood spiritual matters better than any mason. In private, she added that it was a Czech. That this person must have been connected with the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry is clear from the remark in the “Life Course”: “If the offer had not been made on the part of the indicated society, I would have established a symbolic-cultic activity without historical connection.”

The offer must have been made around 1903/04. For since May 1904 a series of lectures had been preparing the way for a symbolic-cultic approach. On September 15, 1904, Rudolf Steiner met the freemason A. W. Sellin in Hamburg, where he was to give a lecture. He must have asked him about the German Memphis-Misraim Order, as can be seen from his report of December 12, 1904. But even before this first report from Sellin arrived, Rudolf Steiner had sought out Reuß on his own initiative. In his lecture in Berlin on December 9, 1904, in which he spoke about high-degree Freemasonry and the Memphis-Misraim Order, he had already quoted from the latter's organ Oriflamme, while Sellin was still trying to get it. Rudolf Steiner's first conversation with Reuß must therefore have taken place between September 15 and December 9, 1904. The further conversations cannot be dated. On November 24, 1905, Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers joined the Memphis-Misraim Order. However, the negotiations regarding the modalities for the charter to independently lead a working group dragged on until the beginning of 1906. The contract was concluded on January 3, 1906.

The fact that Rudolf Steiner did not mention the name Reuß in his autobiography, only Yarker, is often interpreted by opponents as if he wanted to conceal his relationship with Reuß, because Reuß had soon fallen into disrepute in Masonic circles as an occultist. This cannot have been the real reason, however, because by the time the autobiography was written, it had long been public knowledge that the document had been issued by Reuss. Rather, the motive of historical continuity may have been decisive here as well. For Yarker, already referred to in the lecture of December 16, 1904, as a “significant character” and “distinguished mason” - was at that time the representative of Egyptian masonry who was decisive for Europe and also a central figure in relation to the Theosophical Society. He was an honorary member of the Society, apparently because he had played a decisive role in its founding in 1875, as stated in the work by the Italian Vincenzo Soro, “La Chiesa del Paracleto” (Todi 1922, p. 334), which is in Rudolf Steiner's library: “The most select heads of international Freemasonry had cooperated in the founding of the Theosophical Society, among them John [H.] Reussner, a member of the high degrees of the Freemasons of the Orient, who had been initiated by the Great Orient [the French Grand Orient] in 1858.” (Todi 1922, p. 334): “The most exquisite heads of international freemasonry had cooperated in the founding of the Theosophical Society, among them John Yarker, the closest friend of Garibaldi and Mazzini.” ⁹

The Theosophical Society, originally with a distinctly Western character, was to become the pioneer for the popularization of supersensible truths necessary in modern times. Through the first great work of its founder, H.P. Blavatsky, “Isis Unveiled” (1877), a wealth of knowledge of ancient Western occultism had become public. For this, she received the highest degree of adoption of Egyptian Freemasonry from Yarker.¹⁰ They also discussed setting up a ritual for the Theosophical Society.¹¹ However, this plan was not realized at the time. When Blavatsky's successor, Annie Besant, later became active in the area of symbolic cults, she did so within a different masonic current.¹²

Rudolf Steiner therefore had good reason to mention only Yarker's name in his autobiography, because only he – not Reuß, who merely represented the order in Germany in a position that could not be avoided given Rudolf Steiner's intentions – represented everything that was crucial in terms of the necessary historical continuity.

Regarding the inner prehistory

One does not receive a reward, but a difficult task.¹³

A particularly telling testimony to this, and to how crucial Rudolf Steiner's own inner situation was for him, is the letter of November 30, 1905, addressed to Marie von Sivers a few days after entering the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry. It shows that he did not

on his own personal initiative, but in agreement with the “occult powers,” that is, with the spiritual world, and that since “for the time being it seems worthless to all occult powers,” he cannot yet say whether the matter can be done at all for his planned working group to be linked to this order. This question seems to have been resolved only in the last few weeks of the year. On January 2, 1906, the first lecture on the royal art held jointly for men and women in a new form rounded off the inner constitution of the circle. If it says in this lecture: “[...] and even today, Freemasonry can only be described as a caricature of the great royal art, we must not despair in our efforts to awaken the forces slumbering in it; a work that falls to us in a field that runs parallel to the theosophical work,” This statement is further substantiated by a word from a lecture on Freemasonry given shortly afterwards in Bremen on April 9, 1906. According to this, there is an inner relationship between Theosophy and Freemasonry in that Theosophy represents more the ideational, the studying, and the Masonic cult more the practical side of esoteric work. But while the Masonic world no longer understands the ceremonies and the effectiveness of the ritual forms, Theosophy can speak again of the inner truth of these ceremonies, of the spirit that underlies the ceremonies and symbols.¹⁴

A further testimony to the fact that he did not act arbitrarily is his oral statement that the task of saving the Misraim Service for the future had come to him as a result of his occult research at the time on the rainbow; one does not receive a reward, but a difficult task.

What the difficulty of this task might have been, he apparently did not explain directly. However, it may well be seen in connection with that weighty statement in the preparatory lectures: “I have reserved for myself the task of achieving an agreement between those from Abel's and those from Cain's family.” (Berlin, October 23, 1905, lecture for men). This intention - to overcome the polarization that occurred at the origin of humanity into two opposing main currents through the Christ impulse - was not only the basis of the Erkenntniskultic work, but of his entire work.

The statement that the task had come to him as a result of his rainbow research is in some ways justified by the fact that it was mentioned in lectures given during the period in which the Erkenntnis cultic working group was being prepared. It says:

"The rainbow has a special significance in occult wisdom. You know the rainbow that appears after the flood. Now we find this symbol repeated in Norse myths.” (A rainbow leads from Valhalla to Earth.)

It signifies the transition from the Atlantean to the post-Atlantean era. In the Atlantean era, the air was much denser and the water much thinner than it is today; a rainbow was not possible in those times. It was in truth a realm of mist, a Niflheim. In the north, the human race emerges from masses of mist. The water masses that flooded the continent of Atlantis were to form from this realm of mist. So there was no rainbow in the Atlantean age. Occult research has explored what this explanation means.” (Berlin, May 5, 1905)

And in an answer to a question given in a lecture half a year later, the question as to whether anything more could be said about Noah and the Flood is answered as follows:

"The question regarding Noah is connected with my very latest occult research. No one will find anything in Lucifer ¹⁵ find something that I did not know at the time I wrote the articles. But now I know a little more. Now the climatic conditions have become clear and vivid to me. I have learned to understand something that I would have mentioned at the time if I had understood it at the time. At the time, I took the part of Noah allegorically. It was a picture for the deep spiritual meaning. But now I know that this rainbow in the Bible corresponds to a real fact.

On the old Atlantis, the climatic conditions were different. The distribution of air and water was different ..., so that one finds that on the old Atlantis the formation of a rainbow was not yet possible. Such conditions only became possible when Atlantis was flooded and the new continents rose. Now it is hinted [in the Bible] how the rainbow emerges from the flood.” (Berlin, October 22, 1905, question and answer session)

If you ask yourself what the task of saving the Misraim service has to do with rainbow research, the answer becomes clear when the characterization of the Misraim service as “effecting the union of the earthly with the heavenly, the visible with the invisible” (Berlin, December 16, 1911) ¹⁶ is translated into the image of a bridge. Then the connection between rainbow research and the Misraim service becomes immediately apparent. On the one hand, the rainbow has always been a symbol of this bridge from the invisible to the visible, and on the other hand, from the very beginning, Rudolf Steiner's basic intention was to build such bridges for all fields.

How the building of bridges in the field of art was to be tackled in connection with the new Misraim service can be seen from the letter to Marie von Sivers of November 25, 1905, in which it says about the day before the connection to the old Misraim current was completed: “It would now be the task to catch the masonic life from the externalized forms and give it birth again (...), to shape religious spirit in a sensually beautiful form.“ ¹⁷

The first opportunity for this arose soon after, when the German Section was responsible for organizing the annual congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society at Whitsun 1907. The Section shaped the congress according to Rudolf Steiner's models, sketches and indications in such a way that a harmonious scientific-artistic-religious experience could be conveyed. The rainbow also appeared in the seal pictures of the Apocalypse of John, painted according to Rudolf Steiner's sketches, as a new element in contrast to their traditional depictions. And with the performance of the “Sacred Drama of Eleusis”, which, in terms of cultural history, signifies the birth of the dramatic arts in Europe, there should be, even if only in the weakest form, a “link to the ancient mystery tradition”.¹⁸

This latter reference is given a special nuance by the tradition that the Eleusinian mysteries were to be renewed through the Misraim rite.¹⁹ The founder of these most famous mysteries of antiquity, the goddess Demeter, personified for the Greeks the same as Isis for the Egyptians.

A few years after the Munich Whitsun Congress of 1907, Rudolf Steiner's first mystery drama was created and work began on building a structure for it. After a wealth of new art forms had been created for it in a short time, these too, like the spiritual science itself, were characterized as a “synthesis between the understanding of heaven and earth”.²⁰ So again - figuratively speaking as a bridge. Later, he himself would use the word 'bridge-building'. In describing how art is an outstanding representative of the bridging between the invisible and the visible because it makes visible and outwardly embodies that which otherwise remains inwardly in the soul, he said, looking back on his twenty-year effort, together with Marie Steiner-von Sivers, “to let the occult current flow into art,” literally: “Everything that has emerged in the anthroposophical movement has arisen from the impulse to build a bridge between the spiritual and the physical.” ²¹

If the intention to build a bridge from the invisible to the visible was behind both anthroposophy as a science of the spirit and the artistic language of forms developed from it, then it was also behind the efforts to build social life on new insights. This can be seen precisely from the facts about the establishment of the new Misraim service.

Regarding the establishment of the new Misraim service

So what I have established has nothing to do with what used to be called the “Memphis-Misraim Grade” in Germany.²²

The constitution took place completely independently of the negotiations with Reuss about the legal authorization to lead an independent and completely independent working group. If the negotiations had not led to a result, Rudolf Steiner would have set up his working group regardless of historical continuity. He had already begun the preparations some time before the negotiations began, namely immediately after he had settled the external matters regarding the first section of his Esoteric School with Annie Besant in London in mid-May 1904: through a series of lectures that extended from May 23, 1904 to January 2, 1906 (“The Legend of the Temple and the Golden Legend,” CW 93), and an esoteric course of 31 lectures (“Fundamentals of Esotericism,” CW 93a) held from September to November 1905.

There are no records of when and how Rudolf Steiner informed the members of the German Section of his intention to establish a knowledge-cultic approach. Only from the letter of a Leipzig member ²³ dated February 17, 1905, that he had told him that he would soon try to introduce the occult teachings of Theosophy into Freemasonry, by which, of course, he meant Freemasonry as an entity and not as an organization. In his Berlin lecture of December 16, 1904, he had already said: “If you hear something about the German Memphis-Misraim direction, you must not believe that this already has a significance for the future today. It is only the frame into which a good picture can be placed one day.” It is also recorded that at the end of his Berlin branch lecture on October 16, 1905, he announced that he wanted to speak at the general assembly of the German section on October 22 about issues related to Freemasonry and that, therefore, as many external members as possible should be invited. At the General Assembly, he then announced that the next day, “according to ancient custom”, which was only overcome in the theosophical world view, he would speak separately for men and women about occult questions in connection with Freemasonry. Thereupon he spoke, in preparation for the next day's topic, about the fundamental relationship of the Theosophical Society to occultism. The next morning (October 23rd) there followed a lecture, first for men and then for women, on Freemasonry and human development.

Two days later, on October 26, 1905, the main social law of the future was developed for the first time in a public lecture, not in an external but all the more in an internal connection with the intentions of the work of the School of Knowledge: that work must, on the one hand, be freed from its character as a commodity by being separated from its remuneration, and, on the other hand, can be sanctified as a sacrifice of the individual to the community. In the future, we will work for the sake of our fellow human beings because they need the product of our labor.²⁴

The connection between the public presentation of this social main law of the future and the beginning of the knowledge-cultic work arises, on the one hand, from the importance of pictorial thinking for social life and, on the other hand, from the underlying motif of the knowledge-cultic work, to impulsing to selfless social action from moral self-responsibility, just as the instructions for moral life were once given from the mysteries. Thus, in the sense of Goethe's saying “Nothing is inside, nothing is outside, because what is inside is outside”, the constitution of the new Misraim service and the simultaneous publication of the social main law of the future can be seen as two poles of one and the same impulse. The intention to build a bridge can be clearly perceived here.

The inner constitution was rounded off with the lecture on the royal art in a new form, held jointly for men and women on 2 January 1906. The following day, the written agreement with Reuß was concluded, according to which Rudolf Steiner was entitled to set up an independent symbolic-cultic working group. Marie von Sivers was authorized to admit women, but from the very beginning, women and men had always had equal rights in Rudolf Steiner's working group. The following revealing note can be found in Marie von Sivers's notes from the lecture on Freemasonry in Bremen on April 9, 1906: “Because the Freemason wanted to keep the woman in the family, he excluded her from the lodge. On higher planes, something happened that makes it a necessity for women to be drawn into all cultural work. The occult cooperation of man and woman is the future significance of Freemasonry. The excesses of male culture must be held back by the occult powers of woman.“ ²⁵

From the beginning of 1906, wherever there were esoteric students of Rudolf Steiner, work was also being done on the Knowledge cult. The first lodges to be set up were in Berlin, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart. After the hundredth member was admitted at the end of May 1907, the leadership of the Misraim Rite in Germany passed to Rudolf Steiner, as agreed. From that point on, he was the sole spiritual and historical legal representative of the Misraim service until he declared it dissolved after the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914. By then, around 600 members had been admitted.

“Falling asleep” of the working group due to the outbreak of the First World War and the war-related statement against Freemasonry

A cause that should serve all of humanity without distinction of race or interest turns from a good one into a bad one when it becomes the basis of power for individual groups of people. ²⁶

In his autobiography, My Life, Rudolf Steiner describes how the Erkenniskult organization fell asleep with the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914 because, although there was nothing of a secret society, it would have been taken for one. Marie Steiner reports in her essay 'Was Rudolf Steiner a Freemason?' that he declared the institution to be dissolved at that time and, as a sign of this, tore up the document referring to it.²⁷ The latter obviously because it had become clear to him through the outbreak of war that through certain Western secret societies, Freemasonry, as an “originally good and necessary thing” that should serve all of humanity without distinction, had been placed in the service of “national egoism and the selfish interests of individual groups of people”.

It was this abuse for particular political ends that he held responsible for the disastrous developments that were ushered in by the 1914 World War, and he condemned it in the strongest terms. This is explained in detail in lectures from the war years 1914 to 1918.²⁸ At that time it was extremely important to him to contribute as much as possible to forming a judgment about the occult background that led to the outbreak of the war and, above all, to openly clarifying the question of war guilt. That is why he also wrote a foreword to the essay “Entente Freemasonry and the World War” by Karl Heise when he was asked to do so by the latter. However good or bad this essay may be, it was in any case the first attempt to substantiate the tendencies pointed out by Rudolf Steiner with external documents.

The harsh condemnation at the time of the special political tendencies of certain Western secret societies did not, of course, apply to Freemasonry as such. This is confirmed, for example, by the fact that shortly after the end of the war, he advised a member of his “dormant” symbolic-cultic institution to seek admission to Freemasonry. This is clear from his letter to Rudolf Steiner dated February 25, 1919, which states, among other things: “On February 13, I now, also following your advice, let myself be admitted to the Freemasons. And in fact I joined the association of the Great National Mother Lodge in the Prussian States, called “To the Three Globes” St. John's Lodge ‘From Rock to Sea,’ the same lodge to which our friends A. W. Sellin and Kurt Walther, as well as Hackländer in Wandsbeck, belong. I hope that in the course of time I will be able to awaken and maintain an interest in anthroposophically oriented occultism in this circle. It is with this in mind that I have taken this step. I hope that it will soon be possible to resume our occult community meetings too!“ ²⁹

Tolerance towards the masonic cause was expressed again a few years later, when in 1923, when the English national society was being formed, the question arose as to whether the man designated as Secretary General could really be considered for the post because he was a mason. Rudolf Steiner replied as follows:

"[...] I have always said, when the question has arisen as to whether someone should enter the anthroposophical movement from some other movement (in this case, freemasonry was meant): It is really not a matter of what someone is in another movement, but rather that when he enters this anthroposophical movement, he is a good anthroposophist. So it is really not a matter of whether someone also belongs, say, to a shoemakers' guild or a locksmiths' guild. I am not making any comparisons, I am just stating the principle: the fact that someone belongs to a shoemakers' or locksmiths' guild, etc., does not in any way affect what is anthroposophical in them. If he is a good anthroposophist, that is what matters for the anthroposophical movement. Whether he is a good, bad or mediocre freemason is none of the Anthroposophical Society's business. (...) It would be an unwise judgment to make the value of a member as an anthroposophist dependent on whether he is a freemason or not.

I have said [before] that a number of the oldest and most valuable members are Freemasons. I cannot imagine how an obstacle could arise from some form of Freemasonry for belonging to the Anthroposophical Society. I cannot imagine it. I think the Anthroposophical movement wants to be something in itself. It would not be able to bear fruit in the world if it did not let out of itself — let me use the expression — out of its own seed in a positive way. What matters is what it has a positive effect on. How it turns out when compared to one thing or another is not what matters. When I buy a suit, it is important that it suits my taste and arises out of my intentions. What does that have to do with someone coming along and saying: That suit doesn't look like the one the other person is wearing. It is really not at all about putting on the other person's suit, but one's own. You don't put on freemasonry when you become an anthroposophist. So it is actually quite impossible to make this judgment.

But of course there is something else behind such a thing. You will forgive me for saying so, but in my opinion anthroposophy is not always appreciated highly enough by its members. There is a tendency in present-day humanity to always value more highly that which is older, which has more fuss about it, which acts more mysteriously, and so on, and to disparage that which appears openly and honestly simple, judging it by the standard of the fuss and the like, which presents itself in an indefinite way. It is a kind of disparagement of the anthroposophical movement when it is judged in such a way that one says it can be harmed by the fact that this or that member comes from this or that other movement. It would have to be terribly weak if it could be harmed by such things!“ ³⁰

Why Rudolf Steiner did not want his circle to be understood as a ‘secret society’

“A secret society was not created by this.” ³¹

For Steiner, it was not primarily a matter of the principle of secrecy, but rather of the fundamental difference between his kind of symbolic-cultic work and that of the so-called “secret societies”. He saw it as a primary requirement that what is expressed by symbols, signs, gestures and words, etc., can also be understood through corresponding explanations derived from a real spiritual view. However, “explaining” should not be understood to mean that one says this symbol means this and that symbol means that, “because then you can tell anyone anything”, but rather that the teaching must be designed in such a way “first reveal the secrets of the course of evolution of the earth and of humanity and then allow the symbolism to arise from them”. This means that one must first have grasped what can be grasped by the intellect: the content of spiritual science.

In contrast to this, working with mere contemplation of symbolism, as is usually the case in occult societies today, is no longer a legitimate continuation of what was legitimate in earlier times. This is because in those times, people had a stronger sensitivity of their etheric body, which enabled them to have a corresponding inner experience. For the person of the modern age of consciousness, for whom the mind, bound to the physical brain, has become decisive instead of the sensitive etheric body, symbols, signs, gestures and words must remain something external; he cannot connect them with his consciousness soul. Nevertheless, they had an effect on the etheric body, i.e., on the unconscious. But in our time it is not allowed to act on the unconscious without first going through the conscious. For the consequence of this is that one

"if you want, you can make people docile tools for all kinds of plans, quite naturally. Because if you work on the etheric body without the person knowing it, you switch off the same powers that he would otherwise have in his mind if you do not then give the mind something that must be spiritual science today. You switch them off, and then you turn such brotherhoods into a tool for those who want to pursue their plans, their goals. You can then somehow use such brotherhoods to pursue any political goals, or you can establish the dogma that 'Alcyone is the external physical carrier of Christ Jesus'. ³² And so those who are prepared will make themselves instruments to carry this out into the world. Then one need only be dishonest and unrighteous in the appropriate way, and one can achieve anything in this way by first creating instruments.

And now – isn't it true that all things follow from real knowledge? – anyone who knows how the fifth post-Atlantic period differs from the fourth post-Atlantic period – and this is said again and again in our group – knows why it has to be so: first there must be an acquaintance with spiritual science and only then can an introduction to symbolism be given. Wherever the intention is truly to establish a spiritual movement, this process is naturally adhered to. For anyone who has only become acquainted with what is contained, for example, in my Theosophy or in the Secret Science and has tried to understand it, will never be harmed by any transmission of symbols.

Behind the modern-day aversion to so-called “secret societies” there may thus instinctively lie the justified feeling that it is not right to exploit ceremonial effects for special purposes. Rudolf Steiner always condemned this in the strongest terms, but he always emphasized that this by no means applied to all, but only to certain occult associations.

On the basis of the above and the fact that in his symbolic-cultic activity everything was geared to the general human and the fully conscious penetration of cult symbolism - hence the term “cult of knowledge” - it can be understood why he did not want his circle to be understood as a “secret society”, despite the obligation of secrecy.

• 1a. A documented history of this direction, which is not recognized by regular Freemasonry, does not exist. Based on various literary traditions, the following picture emerges.
  Egyptian Freemasonry is primarily understood to mean the Misraim Rite, while the Memphis Rite is considered to be its imitation, created in the 19th century. Both rites were combined, but are said to have always been practiced separately, so that the term “Memphis-Misraim” refers not to one rite but to two different rites.
  The Misraim Rite became widespread in France in the first half of the 19th century, was banned on various occasions, and then more or less disappeared in the second half of the century. It had somehow found its way to America, and it was from there that Yarker got his charter for these two rites for Great Britain and Ireland. He combined the Memphis and Misraim Rites and the Scottish 33° Cerneau Rite in a single organization. In 1902, Yarker gave Reuß, Hartmann and Klein a charter to introduce this “United Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Masonry” in Germany. The man who had suggested and arranged this was the Austrian industrial magnate and inventor Carl Kellner (1850-1905), according to Möller/Howe (op. cit. $84 in the note about Reuß) one of “the most remarkable occultists of that time in the German-speaking area”. He had the idea of a Masonic academy and believed that he could best realize it through the system of Egyptian Freemasonry. The name “Oriental Templar Order” (O.T.O.) is attributed to him. However, these designations actually mean nothing. They were constantly being changed. Compare how differently they appear even on Reuss's documents. For Rudolf Steiner, all this was of no importance. He merely allowed himself to be nominally authorized by this current, out of an occult obligation to maintain historical continuity, in order to establish and lead his own symbolic-cultic work independently. It is clear to any expert that the ritual texts he used are his original creations. Anyone who wants documentary proof of this is referred to the published German translation of the “Rituals of the Misraim Rite (Rite Egyptien dit de Misraim)” by Bernh. Beyer, printed in “Das Freimaurer-Museum. Archive for Masonic Rituals and Historical Research. In zwangloser Folge herausgegeben vom Geschichtlichen Engbund des Bayreuther Freimaurer-Museums». Schriftleiter: Dr. Bernh. Beyer. Band 7, Bernhard Sporn Verlag, Zeulenroda/Leipzig 1932.
• 1b. Sellin, Albrecht Wilhelm (Berlin-Ludwigslust 1841-1933 Munich)
  Colonizer in Brazil, later a merchant in Hamburg. Played a role as a co-founder and pioneer of the Berlin Society for Experimental Psychology. In this context, he experimented with Max Dessoir, Albert Moll and others in 1888-92 to answer the question of the difference between animal magnetism and hypnotism. At that time, he also became acquainted with Blavatsky's Theosophy, which, however, did not satisfy him. From 1902, editor of the Masonic journal Bundesblatt, the organ of the Grand National Mother Lodge of the Three Globes, and later Grand Archivist of this grand lodge. When he heard Rudolf Steiner lecture in Hamburg in 1904, he immediately became a member of the German Section and an esoteric disciple of Rudolf Steiner. Since he was retired soon after, he devoted himself entirely to the study of anthroposophical spiritual science and worked as already 70-year-old still in the performances of mystery plays by Rudolf Steiner in Munich in the years 1910-1913 in supporting roles. W. Sellin, 'Erinnerungen aus dem Berufs- und Seelenleben eines alten Mannes', Konstanz 1920. See page 45ff.
• 2. Stuttgart, August 16, 1908. In this sense, Rudolf Steiner's four mystery dramas, in the two scenes of initiation in an Egyptian temple (the seventh and eighth scenes of “The Awakening of the Soul”), the initial motifs for the destiny-linked bond between the personalities who are portrayed as modern spiritual seekers in the mystery dramas are to be found in the Egyptian period. See also lecture Dornach, December 27, 1918.
• 3. Lennhoff/Posner, Internationales Freimaurer-Lexikon, article “Misraim-Rituss”; cf. also Rudolf Steiner's remarks Berlin, December 16, 1911 on page 94 of this volume. In his major work “Comparative Handbook of the Symbolism of Freemasonry with Special Consideration of the Mythologies and Mysteries of Antiquity”, Schaffhausen 1861, the Freemason Joseph Schauberg also proves the cultural-historical accuracy of the Egyptian origin of Masonic symbolism in volume II.
• 4. In this context, it is interesting that according to Rudolf Steiner, the “Egyptian Book of the Dead” is the only document of the ancient mystery wisdom that has been almost completely preserved. This is how it was handed down orally by the Egyptologist Gregoire Kolpaktchy, who translated the Egyptian Book of the Dead at the suggestion of Rudolf Steiner, because, as Steiner said, this could only be done by someone who had not only the hieroglyphic but also the occult key. See “The Egyptian Book of the Dead”, translated and commented on by Kolpaktchy, Otto Wilhelm Barth Verlag, 1970.
• 5. See the lecture in Berlin on December 9, 1904, in which the manifesto of the Grand Orient of the “United Scottish, Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry” was discussed in connection with the question of immortality.
• 6. )

• 7. Yarker, John (1833-1913)
  Originally high-ranking within regular Freemasonry. Due to his experience that, because of the way Freemasonry was governed, it had become “the workshop, almost the paradise of the bon vivants, the amiable hypocrites”, the “paradise of the sellers of useless masonic baubles... the paradise of the masonic “emperors” or charlatans who beat power and money out of the aristocratic pretensions,” he left regular Freemasonry and founded various high-grade systems on a mystical basis. Since 1872 he had been the representative of the Egyptian rites for Great Britain and Ireland. According to H.P. Blavatsky (H.P.Blavatsky, “Isis Unveiled”, 2nd volume, 8th chapter), he was one of the highest masonic authorities of his time, of great erudition and genuine knowledge. He played a decisive role in the founding of the Theosophical Society (see page 51 of this volume) and was an honorary member. After the publication of H.P. Blavatsky's first major work “Isis Unveiled” (1877), he conferred on her the highest degree of adoption of Egyptian Freemasonry on November 24, 1877. In 1902, he issued a charter for the introduction of the same in Germany (see the note “Egyptian Freemasonry”).
• 8. Reuß, Theodor (Augsburg 1855-1923 Munich)
  It is almost impossible to get a clear picture of this enigmatic personality, although a biography has recently been published in which a great deal of material has been compiled. See Helmut Möller/Ellic Howe, Merlin Peregrinus: From the Occult Underground of the West (Würzburg, 1986). Reuss's life was essentially shaped by politics, writing and freemasonry. Occasional writings of a political and Masonic nature are insignificant, the testimonies about him are contradictory and uncertain. What is certain, however, is that he was always short of money and that his Masonic activities also served as a means of making a living. In his later years, Masonic interests took precedence over everything else. He was involved in numerous groups, some of which, however, existed only on paper. In 1902, Yarker, together with Franz Hartmann and Heinrich Klein, received a charter to introduce the “United Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Freemasonry” in Germany (see the reference to “Egyptian Freemasonry”). Rudolf Steiner, who for reasons of historical continuity wanted to link his own working group on symbolism and cults to the ancient Egyptian mystery tradition, negotiated with Reuss from the end of 1904 until the turn of the year 1905/06 regarding the conditions under which to be able to establish his circle nominally independently and secured in the process by contract (see document on page 82f.) that the leadership of the Misraim Rite, as soon as he has admitted the 100th member to his circle, will pass over to him alone. This was the main reason why he had entered into contact with the German representative office of the Egyptian Freemasonry. In his 'Autobiography', Rudolf Steiner responded as follows to the accusation of having associated with a man like Reuss:
  It is of course easy in retrospect to consider how much 'wiser' it would have been not to tie in with institutions that could later be used by detractors. But I would like to remark, in all modesty, that at the age in question here, I was still one of those people who assumed that others with whom they had dealings would be straightforward in their ways and not devious. This belief in human nature was not altered by spiritual vision. The latter should not be misused to probe the inner intentions of fellow human beings if this research is not desired by the people concerned. In other cases, the investigation of the inner soul of another remains something forbidden to the spiritual seer, just as the unauthorized opening of a letter remains something forbidden. And so one stands vis-a-vis people with whom one has to do, as does anyone else who has no spiritual insight. But there is the difference between taking the other person at face value until you have experienced the opposite, or having a hostile attitude towards the whole world. Social interaction between people is impossible in the latter case, because it can only be built on trust, not on mistrust.
• 9. According to Robert Ambeain, “Cérémonies et rituels de la maçonnerie symbolique”, Paris 1978, the Italian freedom fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi (1802-1882) is said to have become Grand Master of Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry in Italy in 1881. Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872). For more on both of them, see Rudolf Steiner's lecture Stuttgart, 9 April 1924.
• 10. On November 24, 1877. Perhaps it was a mere coincidence, but Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers actually made their personal connection to the Misraim current on November 24 as well (1905).
• 11. Josephine Ransom, A short History of the Theosophical Society, Adyar 1938, pp. 99f.
• 12. Cf. on this under “Individual References”.
• 13. Personal statement by Rudolf Steiner, as reported by Marie Steiner-von Sivers and Klara Walther.
• 14. According to notes by Marie Steiner-von Sivers, cf. p. 137.
• 15. The magazine “Luzifer”, later “Lucifer-Gnosis” and the essays “From the Akasha Chronicle” (GA no. 11), see the article “Our Atlantean Ancestors”, is meant.
• 16. Cf. on page 94.
• 17. See the letter on page 80.
• 18. See “Bilder okkulter Siegel und Säulen. The Munich Congress at Whitsun 1907 and its Effects», GA 284.
• 19. Cf. Karl Heise in “Entente-Freimaurerei und Weltkrieg”, Basel 1919, p. 115.
• 20. Lecture Dornach, September 20, 1916.
• 21. Lecture Torquay, August 20, 1924.
• 22. Letter to Sellin.
• 23. Rudolf Jahn, from 1905 to 1908 chairman of the Leipzig branch.
• 24. Lecture in Berlin, October 26, 1905 on “The Social Question and Theosophy,” reprinted in “Contributions to the Rudolf Steiner Complete Works” No. 88. In the essay “Theosophy and the Social Question” (today “Spiritual Science and the Social Question”), which began in the October 1905 issue of the journal “Lucifer-Gnosis”, the main social law is not discussed until the third part, which was not published until a year later, in September 1906.
• 25. In an undated letter from Paula Moudrä, a writer from Bohemia who had spoken to Rudolf Steiner in Prague in November 1907 about her admission and had been asked by him to send him a written request, it says: “You pointed to an important event in the astral world in November 1879, after which the woman is now admitted to the initiation. I think it is most important that my approach to you and my request for acceptance happened in November 1907."
• 26. From Rudolf Steiner's preface to Karl Heise's “Entente Freemasonry and the World War,” Basel 1919, reprinted in “Contributions to the Rudolf Steiner Complete Edition” No. 24/25 Easter 1969.
• 27. Not to be confused with the 'Treaty and Brotherly Agreement' on $. 82 in the present volume.
• 28. See the seven-volume series “Cosmic and Human History”, in particular “Contemporary Historical Reflections. The Karma of Untruthfulness”. Part One and Two, 'Central Europe between East and West' and 'The Spiritual Background to the First World War', CW 170ff.
• 29. Johannes Geyer, at that time pastor in Hamburg, from the autumn of 1919 teacher at the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart. From 1912 a member of Rudolf Steiner's Esoteric School. According to the biography in “Der Lehrerkreis um Rudolf Steiner in der ersten Waldorfschule”, Stuttgart 1977, he is said to have given numerous lectures in a Masonic context on the spiritual origins of Masonic symbolism from the point of view of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, and thereby gained high recognition.
• 30. London, September 2, 1923.
• 31. “My Life”, see page 95 of this volume.
• 32. Alcyone = name of the order for Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), for whom the order “Star of the East” was founded by Annie Besant and C.W.Leadbeater in 1911. The then very young Krishnamurti was proclaimed as the bearer of the expected rebirth of Christ as the coming World Teacher. The order quickly spread throughout the entire Theosophical world. Only Rudolf Steiner vigorously rejected this as occult nonsense. That is why the German section led by him was officially excluded from the Theosophical Society in 1913. Krishnamurti then dissolved the order himself in 1929 and publicly distanced himself from the role intended for him. He also severed his connection with the Theosophical Society, since in his opinion any organization can only hinder spiritual development. 32

There is also profound wisdom hidden in everyday things. The names of the days of the week also have a deep meaning. They reflect the long development that our earth has undergone since it was in a molten state. It has passed through various stages, within which man has developed to his present organization and form.

We belong to the fifth root race of our Earth. The first tribes were the Atlanteans who had come over, who once lived on Atlantis, the submerged continent. The tradition of the great flood that destroyed Atlantis is preserved in the story of the Flood in the legends of all religions. What distinguishes our race most of all from the Atlanteans is the gift of intellect. The Atlanteans did not yet have a mind. They had only just developed memory and language. The third race, the Lemurian, also lacked language. The bodies of the Atlanteans were not yet fully formed. They lacked the forebrain, which was still developing. They could not reason or draw conclusions, but they had an excellent command of the lower forces of nature, through which they could exert a strong influence on humans and animals.

The Lemurians, the third race, inhabited a continent between present-day Asia, Africa and Australia. Volcanic catastrophes dissolved this part of the world. The Lemurians had no memory yet. The last remnants of this race, in whom these facts can be observed, are still found in Australia. Their language consisted only of sounds that did not serve as a means of communication but were used as magic spells. The words had magical powers. The bodies of these people were still soft. They had the ability to extend their limbs by means of their willpower, just as lower animals can extend and retract tentacles today. — In the middle of the Lemurian period, they developed self-awareness, which is what distinguishes humans from animals. Animals have the physical body, etheric body and astral body in common with humans; only the sense of self makes humans human. The meaning of the ego is unique in its depth. “I” is the unspeakable, the divine. No one can say “I” to the other. And it is both confidential and intimate. I can only say “I” to myself. It is the only word that cannot be applied to anyone else.

Man possessed the three lower principles, sthula sharira, linga sharira and the astral body, from the moon. This higher principle, the new self, was brought over from the world of Mars by the guides of humanity. Before that, the astral body was only able to function through the suggestion of the initiates; man first had to see spiritually in order to feel. Mars is a predecessor of the earth. There, the astral bodies were already more developed than on earth. Now an influence took place that we can call the Martian stage.

In the middle of the Atlantean race, in the fifth sub-race, the Ursemites, thinking was added. But they could not yet combine, it was memory work. Thinking came through a Mercury impact that gave man the ability to develop further. From this fifth sub-race of the fourth root race, the fifth root race later developed. In esoteric teachings, “Earth” refers to Mars and Mercury.

Before the Lemurian race, bodies were air-shaped, and even earlier they were ethereal on an astral world body, which then condensed into the ethereal-earthly.

The first earthly forms were repetitions of earlier states and rounds. On the moon, the large one, not yet separated from the sun, the Hyperborean race and the polaric race lived. It was only during the Lemurian epoch that the moon split off. At the time of the Hyperboreans and Polar Men, the sun and moon were still united. Osiris, the sun, and Isis, the moon, gave birth to Horus, the earth, and also the human soul. And even earlier, the universe had already undergone other metamorphoses through a whole pralaya. Before the Lemurian epoch, the sun, moon and earth still formed a whole. There the astral body was formed. The possibility of lust and suffering was developed. Minerals and plants were still very similar. The minerals grew, similar to the plants. Man lived on a swamp floor. The earth had not yet taken on its solid form. Plants emerged from the mineral kingdom. The mineral also lived. Everything lived, the living grew on the living. We see a remnant of this epoch in the parasitic animals and plants. Mistletoe is a parasite that can only live on other plants. It is an example of a retarded creature that has not transcended the lunar state. It plays an important role in Nordic mythology: the evil Loki kills Baldur with mistletoe. Only this parasite from the moon could have had a deadly power over Baldur, the sun god, because it was before the sun. There are also lower animals that have not completed the lunar cycle, and these therefore surround themselves with a shell to protect themselves from the outside world; otherwise they would not be able to withstand the terrestrial influences.

The solar epoch precedes the lunar epoch. The body of the sun was the dwelling place of all of us, we are children of the sun. Our pranic life force comes from there. Before that, man had only a physical body. There he received the etheric body.

Before the Sun there was Saturn. As a planet, it was physical. This physical matter was the origin of the mineral kingdom. It formed the human body. The other bodies were still resting in God.

We should not think of the transition from Saturn to the Sun, from the Sun to the Moon as a leap, but rather something like this: Saturn encompassed the whole area of the later solar system. The Sun separated itself from the surplus parts that human beings did not need for the formation of their physical body. This is referred to as “splitting off”.

The human etheric body was formed on the sun, which now also included the moon and the earth, by receiving the pranic life force. When the sun had split off, the large moon, including the earth, moved around the sun but without rotating around itself. It was not yet mobile enough for this, because the astral only developed on the moon. And only when this life force had been absorbed by humans and the earth did the moon split off from the excess matter, the slag, and form the earth's satellite, as we know it. On earth, the manas was then added to the four lower principles, and its task is to develop man up to the budhi stage.

In the middle of the Lemurian race, the impact of Mars occurred. From it we received self-awareness. Mercury is the source of the Budhi principle. The Budhi stage encompasses clairvoyance, the continuity of consciousness, which is then no longer interrupted by sleep and death. Consciousness then extends into devachan and to the planets. This is the development from manas to budhi. This is to reach perfection in the sixth and seventh races.

Far beyond that is the development of Jupiter and Venus. Vulcan is not yet visible; it can only be perceived by the initiated.

The state on Jupiter is such that if an ordinary person could be transported there, he would go mad, for he would lack all means to comprehend what is going on, and he would not be able to make himself understood to the inhabitants there at all. Communication there occurs only through thoughts that evoke a light effect. The luminous figures that are evoked are only apparent, whereas on Venus the thought forms are not only objective, but real entities. The power of thought there is so great that it creates real beings. The volcano cannot be thought of by beings who are endowed with brains. In order to keep these seven stages of planetary development constantly in people's minds, the great sages, the custodians and guides of humanity, gave the names of the stars to the seven days of the week. The original names have not been preserved in all languages, but they can be traced in many modern languages.

The counting of days began with the ancients on Saturday, the day before the sun was worshiped. The seven days of the week should be a constant reminder to man that he has grown out of the cosmos.

When mankind united in states ruled by laws, when parliaments emerged as we have them today, they forgot the origin of these laws. It used to be different. People were well aware of the great spiritual laws. They knew the one truth and knew that there could only be one truth.

The fifth root race developed from the Primitive Aryans. We can divide it into seven cultural epochs. The first, the Primitive Indian, was led by the seven wise Rishis. It was directed entirely towards the supernatural, the all-embracing divine. The Primitive Medes and Persians had a dual-god system. They saw light and shadow, and called them Ormuzd and Ahriman, the good and the evil principle. Among the Babylonians and Egyptians, the cult of the gods took on further form and shape. In all these cultures, the priests alone possessed the wisdom and ruled the peoples, who themselves were not yet intellectually developed. The development of the states and the rule of the priests existed side by side for a long time, merging into one another.

Let us now take a schematic look at the epochs that have passed us by. Seven to eight thousand years ago, when the Atlantean culture was transitioning into the post-Atlantean culture, the wise recognized that every culture has to go through seven phases.

1st phase: The great divine impact is determined by laws.
2nd phase: Love shall rule everything.
3rd phase: The effects of passions.
4th phase: Kama-Manas, - arts and sciences.

5th, 6th and 7th phase: Manas, Buddhi, Atma principle take effect. This overview for a future cultural epoch, this seven-part plan was set down in the Sibylline books. Thus the sages did not act on mere foresight, but rather built on a very definite plan, ordered by high divine beings according to eternal laws.

Many things from prehistoric times have been handed down to us in myths and legends. The Trojan War, for example, illustrates the struggle between the third and fourth sub-races. Troy and its gods were outwitted by the cunning of Odysseus. His cleverness, embodied in the wooden horse, brought down Troy. The Laocoön Group also gives us a picture of the struggle of the intellect with the power of priestly wisdom; or, better said, the priestly culture is overcome by cleverness.

Aeneas, the son of Anchises and Aphrodite, became the progenitor of the Romans. The seven Roman kings are to be regarded mythically, as is already being done by historians. Romulus symbolizes the lasting cosmic substance of the physical body; Numa Pompilius the whole power of life, the warlike element, self-confidence, and worship. The conquest of Albalonga took place under Tullus Hostilius. The Alba longa was the robe of the priests. The conquest by the Romans means that the higher law of the Budhi will gain the upper hand over the rule of the priests, in which the individual human being received knowledge of the higher laws only through the priests, while he should gradually strive for the highest in self-awareness and self-responsibility. The emergence of the plebeian class coincides with this period of the development of the lower manas. Ancus Marcius: expansion of the state and city. Founding of the port city of Ostia. The Roman citizen as a provisional ego carrier. Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth Roman king, the Etruscan, who comes from outside. He represents the part of the Manas, the spiritual self, that connects the three lower limbs with the three higher ones. Servius Tullius: Division of classes according to wealth, census, elevation of the Plebeians, impact of the Budhi. Tarquinius Superbus, the Exalted: highest education of the absolute royal power, goal: Atman, the spiritual man.

Theosophy also brings order into the chaos of historical research. States, too, are built according to very definite laws. We always find the seven-fold division according to which everything develops. The secrets and confusions that otherwise seem insoluble to us are solved by this thread.

Answering questions

Mr. Hube asked a question about the development of the senses. Dr. Steiner replied:

The sensory organs on the moon were quite different from those that later developed on Earth. For example, salt could be perceived, but not seen in the present sense of the word. Only through what is seen does the image arise in the astral. There are four types of ether: heat ether, light ether, chemical ether and life ether. The life ether or prana has two poles: electricity and life.

The Lemurians first had cold blood; the earth itself gave them the necessary warmth; this process is aptly described in the words: “The Spirit brooded over the waters” - matter. Only the astral body could generate warmth in man.

The sensation of light only arose gradually when the sun separated from the earth. At first there was only a sense of light and darkness; a visual organ gradually developed that no longer exists today but is still preserved in the myth of the one eye of the Cyclops. With the development of the eyes, which could only arise when the sun gave light to the earth, man lost the ability to perceive the soul in his surroundings. The soul became more and more a mirror of the outside world.

The ethereal ancestor of man was basically a single organ of hearing; the ear developed only later. The sense of touch has remained with man; it is distributed over the whole body, which feels.

The significance of the moon in its present state

It still has certain effects on the astral body, and also influences reproduction, ebb and flow, and common fertilization.

When asked about the canals on Mars, Dr. Steiner said,

that even science describes this discovery as a mistake. The development of the Martians is much higher than ours; it cannot be measured by our standards.

The days of the week in German, Swedish and French:

Humanity originally had an all-embracing basic approach which then took different forms depending on the character of nations and the climatic conditions in which they lived. Like the Lord's Prayer, all religious formulae and confessions contain the basic ideas of what is known in the spirit. Some may say these are mere dreams, but they are indeed present. How did they get there, however? Here we must understand that the things we are taught today were not presented in the same way in earliest times. The formulas of religious confessions differed greatly through the ages. The earliest views were in images, not concepts like those we have today. Those images were held on to, in a way, and we find them again and again. Thus insight is always referred to as a light, and wisdom as flowing water. But why was it that earlier peoples were spoken to in images? Let us try and understand how religious teachers would speak to the people before Hermes, before Buddha, Zarathustra and Moses and before the Christ as greatest founder of a religion.

We have to distinguish between everyday and image-based consciousness. We have our everyday object-bound conscious awareness from morning till night. We then see things the way they present themselves to the senses. The other levels of consciousness are hidden from us to begin with. We have all heard of the state of dreamless sleep. This means something very different to an initiate than it does to an ordinary person. The initiate is in a conscious state from going to sleep to waking up. He perceives a world, though in a very different way than one normally does. Ordinary people know nothing of this condition. The level of consciousness one has in dream-filled sleep is better known. We will therefore let dream-filled sleep serve to explain dreamless sleep to us.

Dream-filled sleep shows everything in symbols. It is similar to the state of consciousness an initiate has in the world of the spirit. The initiate also sees images, though these, too, are constantly changing. On the physical plane everything has just one form—a table, for example, or a stone. But the higher we go the more do forms keep changing. The plant changes and moves, the animal even more so, and human beings are most capable of change of all. In the devachan everything is continually changing. One can do certain exercises that will make the colour lift away from a plant one is observing, so that it floats and moves freely in space. One then has to learn to guide such free-floating colours and also sounds to particular objects and spirits. The colour then gives expression to the inner life. The human aura works like this in colour and form. Inner life experience comes to expression in it. But it is never at rest. It is eternal motion, eternal motion being the essence of the higher world. This is also what makes the world of the spirit so confusing to anyone entering into it for the first time. An inexperienced individual is confused by the fleeting manifestations. No entity endowed with spirit can hide its inner life from those who see with the eyes of the spirit. An ordinary person has to consider the outer aspect to draw conclusions as to the inner life. In the world of the spirit, the inner nature of every entity lies openly revealed. There we are united with the inmost nature of things. Today only initiates can have this; they are able to add the inner nature of things to their outer aspect. It is something they do in full conscious awareness. A long time ago, people were able to do this unconsciously.

The further back we go the less were people able to do the things we can do—they could not calculate, nor count. They knew nothing of logic. That is how it was around the middle of the Atlantean period. The Atlanteans could do something else instead, however. Looking at a plant, for example, they could feel a quite specific feeling arise in them. Our own feelings are pale and shadowy compared to theirs. The early Atlanteans did not yet have such definite ideas of colour as we have. They would see a colour rise like a mist from a plant and float freely. Nor would they have seen the colour of a crystal. They would, for instance, see a corona of colours around a ruby, with the ruby itself just a break in it. Even earlier, human beings would not even see the outlines of people, animals and plants. But if they approached an enemy they would see a form arise that was coloured a browny red. A beautiful bluish red would indicate a friend. They thus perceived the inner life in single shades of colour.

If we go even further back, to Lemurian times, all will impulses were also different. The will still had magic powers, showing its relationship to the powers of nature outside. When someone held his hand above a plant and let his will be active, it would immediately begin to grow. When man enclosed himself in a skin, his powers became more remote from those of nature.

Powers of thought are least like those of nature. Even earlier there were entities that would have considered it a monstrous thing to say: ‘I form an idea of something outside me.’ They would see the idea at work outside as an entity. Originally things made up ideas. Today we look at a watch and get an idea of it. But we would not be able to form the ‘watch’ idea if someone had not at one time formed the idea before there were any watches and then made a watch. It is the same with the ideas for all things. The ideas we have about the things in the world were realities in the far distant past. At that time they were put into the things. Everything arises according to such ideas, which is what people still do today when they are creative. The spirits that existed at the time were watching the master mechanic of things, as it were. They had a creative intellect. They were not yet incarnated in the flesh. The principle which dwells in the human body today was still in the keeping of the godhead at that time. Physical life already existed down below on earth, with life forms that were between today's animals and humans and were ready to receive the human soul. We can use a metaphor for this. If many tiny sponges are dipped in water, each will absorb droplets of water, and so the water is divided up into lots of single drops. The physical earth with its teeming throng of creatures was surrounded by spirit then where it is surrounded by air today. Individual souls only came into being when each had absorbed a droplet of the spirit. This also started the process in which man developed a separate object-related conscious mind.

Before that, the soul received everything as though from within from the cosmic soul, for the cosmic soul knew everything. That is the difference between knowledge now and knowledge then. The inner world goes down into the darkness of dreamless sleep when bright daytime consciousness arises. It is the astral body which perceives the outside world, seeing colours, hearing sounds, feeling pleasure and pain, but it cannot do this without the physical body. The astral body is the same as the one that once was part of common soul substance. If everyone were to go to sleep at the same moment and their astral bodies would be all mixed up, with the part of the general world soul that has not entered into individual bodies also mixed in, dreamless sleep would end, colours and sounds would arise in the astral bodies the way it was in the past when all souls still rested in the cosmic soul. Night, as we know it today, was then filled with light, filled with perceptions made in the world of the spirit. The whole of humanity once had this kind of astral perception.

What has humanity been perceiving since then? What has man gained for himself since? His self-awareness, the ability to say ‘I’ to himself. The whole of that earlier consciousness was only an enhanced dream consciousness, and people had no self-awareness. self-awareness was given to human beings when they descended into the body. And this is on the increase all the time. It is the content of present human evolution. ‘I am the I am’ has revealed itself to humanity. That is the true name of Jahveh,⁹⁰ or, more fully: ‘I am he who is, was and shall be.’ In those far distant times human beings had no awareness of this. Where did an ‘I am’ awareness exist then? In the spirit who had all the souls in it like drops in water. The holy spirit is the one who had I-consciousness before there was embodiment. It is the spirit as such which comes to I-awareness in human beings.

In that remote past, teaching was a pouring out of wisdom which came from inside, not outside. Between that time and our own there was an intermediate period, the Atlantean age. When this was at its mid-stage, human beings were able to see outlines of objects and life forms. But everything was still enveloped in a mist of colours for them, with sounds alive in it that had something to say, that were wise. A teaching then developed that later became religious teaching as we know it. Aeons of time ago⁹¹ they had a great school for adepts. Everything we learn today comes from those Turanian adepts.⁹² Pupils passed it on right to the present day. But people taught in a different way in those times. It had to be taken into account that humanity was in an in-between stage. Even the wisest men could not have counted up to five. But by reacting to their inner reality it was possible to illuminate them, teach them wisdom in images. They could not have been given the wisdom in words, for those would not have been understood. Human beings did not have the bright daytime consciousness that we have today. On the other hand it was easy to put them in a state where the godhead illumined them from inside. The teachers would put the pupils into a hypnotic state. This would not have been the hypnotic state used to cause so much mischief today, but it was similar. The teachers would use this sleep state to illuminate the pupils.

They had occult writing at that time, something we might also call occult language. We still have mantras that rank higher in value than thoughts. They are mere shadows, however, compared to the sound compositions of those early times. These were simple, but when a note was sounded, the lost capacity for illumination would be restored. The world of inner illumination then came to people artificially and they would see the cosmic spirits at work as in earlier times. The pupil would receive formulas and specific drawings from the teachers. This would give direct perception of cosmic secrets. This sign, for instance, would tell him how a new plant grows from a seed (Fig. 3).

Today people need to have this explained if they are to think or feel anything as they see it. In those days, the sign had an immediate effect on those who saw it or heard the beat of it. The founders of religions taught the formulas used in those times to the people of later ages.

The further we go back, the more was the cosmic soul still all one. In sleep, the astral bodies of all human beings are still fairly alike. In Atlantis the astral bodies were all alike in this way. It was then possible to give one original wisdom to all people. When the great flood had passed over Atlantean humanity, wisdom could no longer be the same for all. It was then necessary to teach in India the way the Indian body needed it, and differently in Persia and again in Egypt, differently for the Greeks and Romans, and do it differently again for the ancient Germans. But the origins live on in all true forms of religion. In Atlantis, illumination was to have life conveyed to one, not to be taught. The sign of the vortex would arouse an immediate inner response. Today our feelings need concepts to catch fire. The seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer would in the past have been presented like a scale of seven notes, connected with seven particular colours and smells.

The Atlantean pupil thus came to have living experience of the sevenfold nature of man. The Christ, the greatest of the religious teachers, put this into the Lord's Prayer. The power of the Lord's prayer is given to everyone who says it. It is not an actual mantra, though it may have mantric powers. It is a thought-mantra. It did of course have its greatest power in the original language, but because it is a thought-mantra it will not lose its power even if it is translated into a thousand languages. Just as we are able to digest food without knowing the laws that govern digestion, so we may have the benefit of the Lord's Prayer even if we do not have higher knowledge. Someone with higher knowledge will, of course, have even greater benefit of it.

That is the route which has been followed by religious truths. All our souls were somnambulant once in the cosmic soul. This then became differentiated and was drawn down into many bodies. Spiritual perception became obscured, as did the possibility of restoring people to the original state. The religious teachings, and especially the formulas taken from the world of the spirit are only an echo, being now in concepts and words. The wisdom of the Old Testament still speaks of primal ideas and ideas. A faint reflection of primal ideas lives on in ideas. But that original wisdom has not been lost. It still rests in our dormant souls. It is the task of the science of the spirit to bring it to clear conscious awareness. When man will have knowledge of the whole of the outside world after his last incarnation, he is received into the original clairvoyance and brings new illumination, clairvoyant consciousness with him. In the East, it is said that redemption is gained by giving oneself up to universal consciousness. But it will not be like that. Once, before man's first embodiment, there was no self-awareness. But it will be there after the last incarnation. Every drop of soul fluid takes on a specific colour, each a different one. Every one will in the end bring its own colour, and the water, formerly bright and clear, will shimmer in infinitely beautiful, luminous colours, each of which will be separate, however. Everyone brings his own colour, his individual conscious awareness that can never be lost. Universal consciousness will ultimately be all conscious awarenesses in harmony. The many will be one of their own free accord! We have to imagine this in its true nature. Every individual consciousness is then wholly within the universal consciousness.

This human evolution has its purpose. Yes, life has meaning, and the most beautiful meaning is that in the end the human being will lay down a piece of human existence on the altar of the godhead that he has gained for himself And from this the garment will be woven which the Earth Spirit is spinning, as Goethe put it so beautifully and in such rousing terms:

In flooding life and storm of activity up and down I flow, moving to and fro! Birth and the grave, an eternal sea, going one way and t' other, a burning life thus I work at the roaring loom of time making the godhead's living garb.⁹³

• 90. Exodus 3: 14
• 91. One of the sets of notes on the lecture has ‘about 200 000 years ago’.
• 92. Turan was the name of the realm beyond the Amu Daria (formerly Oxus) river in Central Asia.
• 93. Goethe, Faust 1, 4: 501-9.

A Mongolian Legend. The Hermaphrodite. Man’s Victory over the Physiognomy of Death; the Skeleton. The Flight of Birds.

The different lectures given on the subject of sagas and myths have shown us that ancient knowledge of the spiritual world is contained in narratives which have survived among the peoples or have spread in some other way through humanity. The spirit of man has preserved in these myths a kind of thinking and feeling which once enabled humanity to possess a far higher form of knowledge than can ever be attained by the intellectual observation that is bound up with the outer senses. But one who has the gift of real discernment can perceive the deep wisdom-truths radiating from these brief legends and narratives.

We know that there was once a great migration from West to East; as certain sections of the Atlantean peoples moved from the West across to the East, they carried with them remembrances of conditions prevailing in old Atlantis and in still earlier times. In those who ponder the indications contained in the legends of these peoples with insight quickened by Spiritual Science, a knowledge of ancient times will begin to dawn and feelings that may well be stirred by these wisdom-truths then find their bearings in the divine World Order. The more closely wisdom approaches intellect, the colder, more devoid of feeling it becomes; the higher it ascends, the warmer, the more full of feeling it becomes.

Is there anyone whose feelings glow with real warmth while he is studying some scientific theory? The theory of physical heredity or adaptation never stirs the feelings. But if someone hears how humanity has lived through the conditions of Saturn-, Sun-, and Moon-existence, through the epochs of Lemuria and Atlantis—if he hears these things and remains inwardly unmoved, then the state of his soul cannot be really healthy. Such narratives strike chords in the very heart of a man whose mind and feelings are open and unbiased. Truths of this nature are contained in the sagas and myths and even if a man does not understand them, he will surely glimpse something of their profundity and wisdom in the feelings which arise in him.

Among the Mongolians in Asia there is a simple tale which has found its way to regions in Europe where Mongolian sagas still survive. It is a short, deeply moving narrative.

There is a mother who has at the top of her head a single eye. She wanders despairingly through the world, for she has lost her only child. On her wanderings she picks up every stone she sees, holds it in front of this eye and then, in utter disappointment, casts it away so that it splits into a thousand fragments. She has realised that this is not her child. Believing that she will find the child in every object, she seizes it, holds it in front of her eye and casts it from her. And so she hurries on, never at rest, always meeting the same experience.

This narrative is nothing else than a remembrance living in the peoples who wandered farthest to the East and who in Atlantis had still known of primeval conditions of our Earth, when men themselves were still able to see into the spiritual worlds. You all know that the bones at the top of a child’s head close only by degrees. In very ancient times there was, at this place in the head, a channel of communication between the human being and the outside world. If one had been able to see this connecting-link, it would have appeared as a body of light at the top of the head, raying outwards into the world.

This organ was not an eye but an instrument of feeling—particularly for warmth—by means of which the human being was able to look out freely into the astral world, to perceive not only bodies but the beings within those bodies around him. This organ has shrivelled away to become the pineal gland, as it is called, now covered by the vault of the skull. But as a heritage of this ancient organ which enabled him to experience the spiritual worlds, man still has something within him today, namely, the longing for those worlds which have been shut away from him by the closed door of his head. This longing in the souls of men finds expression in the religions. Just as in days of yore man saw around him beings aglow with warmth and feeling, so nowadays he sees himself surrounded by physical objects.

Truly it is a moving narrative. The woman, the mother of humanity who has the power of clairvoyance, wanders through the world, seeking for something that will satisfy her longing but she does not find it in any of the outer objects which are disclosed to mankind today through the senses. It is with this profundity that the spirit of man speaks to us in the sagas and myths whose real meaning can only be discovered with the help of Spiritual Science. It might be thought that the story is sufficiently explained by linking it with the remembrance of a condition actually prevailing among mankind, but in reality it is far deeper. With these narratives it is not only a matter of what is said but also of how it is said. They contain something deeper still.

There may seem to be a contradiction in the fact that the woman in whom this organ is preserved perceives and recognises external objects with a single eye, whereas the things of the outer world can be perceived only with the two eyes as they are today. But precisely here lies a deep mystery-truth, only to be fathomed by turning our gaze to the happenings in which humanity has been involved. We shall see how applicable this knowledge is in practical life when it is viewed in the light of Spiritual Science.

When a scientist is examining a human body in the dissecting room or studying physiological processes from outside, he feels that the same approach can be made to every one of the organs; he uses the same instruments when dissecting the heart or the stomach; he thinks that the only matter of real importance is that of the particular chemical constituents of which these organs are composed. He has no inkling whatever that they differ fundamentally, according to the sources of their form and structure. None of these organs would exist if an astral body were not membered into man, and because the nervous system is excreted, as it were, from this inner member, the nerve-substance is, in its very essence, different from other substances. The shapers and architects of the nerve-substance have their life and being in the astral world.

In certain realms there are forces, akin to the human ego, which gave the primary impulse for the formation of the red blood. Ego-beings are the shapers and architects of this red blood. They were working from outside before the Ego was able to come down into man. The animals have not an Ego; they are ‘possessed’ by the red blood. But man attains freedom because he is possessed by his ‘I’, by his own very self. It was necessary that he should take possession of himself in order that he might be able to achieve self-mastery.

In the glandular organs the etheric body is working—that is to say, the beings who are active in etheric space. In order to understand the glands we must be clear about one thing;—if there had been no astral body in man, but only an etheric body, then only such beings as are active in etheric space would have worked on the organs in animal and man; the organs we know as glands could never have arisen but only organs similar to those we find in the plant-kingdom around us, for there too the etheric body is working. Every new and additional principle works upon and transforms whatever is already in existence.

Because the astral body penetrates into man and builds the nerve-system, it also works back upon the ether world and transforms the original plant-organs in such a way that they become glands.

If we go back to the original organs from which the liver or spleen or gall-bladder have been formed, we find something altogether different from what comes to light when these organs are dissected with ordinary scientific instruments. When our knowledge of organs is drawn from the higher worlds and then applied in practice, medical science which can be effective in the real sense, will come into being. This is only in the preparatory stage today but will become reality in the future.

In studying the human body it is particularly important to know that certain organs have assumed their present form at a comparatively late stage, whereas others have existed in their present form since primeval times. The organs which only received their present form at a late stage are destined, in a not far distant future, to decay, to wither and fall away from the human body. Other organs are only now in their initial stage of development. These latter organs are destined in the future for an important role in everything that comes to pass through man. Everything connected with the heart and with the larynx will be a creative force. The heart and larynx are still only at the beginning of their development. They will become organs of reproduction, of procreation. An indication of this can be found in the change of the male voice at puberty. Heart and larynx will be transformed into greater and greater perfection of form and later on will bring forth human beings.

On the other hand the procreative organs as they are at present, are in the dying stage; they will harden more and more and sever themselves from the human body. We only understand man’s body when we know how the dying part is related to the progressive part in its evolution. Man has within himself something that is on the way to death and something that is budding more and more into new life. Occult observation can confirm in the case of each of man’s organs whether it is on the way to death or whether it is in the youthful stage.

Once upon a time the pineal gland was very active and powerful; it has now become an organ of almost no importance. The methods for attaining clairvoyance will again conjure forth a new organ from the present pineal gland. Certain organs are imbued with life again when they have reached the stage of death; others die off entirely, disappear from the physical plane and then arise in a new form. Let us study those organs in man which are most obviously on the descending path leading to death, and those in which young life is unfolding on the upward path. The organs of greatest importance are those in which both death and life are contained. The use to which they are put is, from a certain point of view, of supreme importance.

You are all acquainted with the elementary fact that man consists of physical body, etheric body and astral body; within the astral body is the ‘I’, the Ego. The ‘I’ works, to begin with, upon the astral body, continually transforming one part of it. When the ‘I’ came down from the bosom of the Godhead and began for the first time to work upon the astral body, this astral body was, in point of fact, a gift bestowed upon man. Let us picture man at the moment when the ‘I’ penetrated into him. The physical body, the etheric body were there, and penetrating them, the astral body. Then, from above, the ‘I’ strikes into this body and begins to work in the human being. The part of the astral body that is shaped by the ‘I’ is therefore twofold—one part is also possessed by the animal and another arises in the human being because the ‘I’ has worked upon the astral body. In the animal there has been no such incision of the ‘I’; the astral body of the animal has been formed in a particular way, but by powers outside. Everything that comes from the higher worlds shapes and brings about new transformation in the old organ. It is from this standpoint that we must study the relations between these three bodies.

The physical body is composed of the physical and chemical substances existing in the external world; with these alone, without the other bodies, it would simply be mineral. But the ether body, or life body, permeates it in all directions.

What is the function of the life-body? At every moment it counteracts the destruction of the physical body, fights against this destruction; without the life-body the physical body would succumb to the chemical and physical forces and disintegrate, as indeed it does as soon as the life-body has abandoned it at death. While the two are united during life, the etheric body fights all the time against this disintegrating process.

And what is the function of the astral body? It is very important to study this. In a certain sense the astral body is occupied during waking life—not during sleep—with killing the etheric body all the time, with suppressing the forces unfolded by the etheric body; hence the body becomes exhausted during the day. The astral body is constantly destroying the etheric body. But if this did not happen no consciousness would arise. Consciousness is not possible without the gradual destruction of life. The spiritual activity of life which we are describing, the wonderful, scintillating life in the ether-world and the constant suppression of this rhythm by the astral world—this is what gives rise to consciousness. These processes in the spiritual worlds express themselves in the physical world in the following way:—The moment consciousness shoots into what is merely life, a process of hardening, of ossification, begins in the physical body. The more the soft, organic life-masses are permeated inwardly by hard, bony formations, the nearer does the animal approach to a conscious state. In the molluscs and snails these hardened inner organs do not yet exist; the hard shell is excreted in order that the dim consciousness possessed by these animals may arise. In animals with a higher degree of consciousness, all osseous substance is secreted as a secondary activity; the hard, cartilaginous tissues and bony structure are separated out from soft, gelatinous masses. In the highest animal this process has almost reached its culmination in an organic system that is practically finished and complete.

In man, something special happens:—A new incision takes place which partially transforms the astral body. A new direction is given to the earlier tendency towards ossification. If man had left the astral body unchanged and had worked only in the direction of skeleton-formation, no culture would have been possible on the earth. The part of the astral body which was kept separate, brought about a new tendency, a particular task. The hardening process in the skeleton-formation is governed by the astral body.

How does this tendency make itself manifest? Whereas the former tendency led more and more towards hardening, towards fixing a culminating point for the astral system in evolution, the astral body in man keeps something back, something that has a tendency to soften again. This makes it possible for evolution to advance. If this tendency had been absent, if everything had streamed into the bony system, there would be no progress, no culture. Animal species do not progress; the evolution of the tiger species, the lion species, has reached its culmination and goes no further. Man, however, with the part of the astral body which has been kept separate, is able to take what has hardened back again and new organs, soft and pliable organs, can be formed. This is extraordinarily significant! In the animal there is no such tendency.

Let us think of a living human being, with his tendency towards hardening on the one side and on the other, his tendency to hold something back. We see that these two tendencies separate when the human being reaches the age of seven—the time of the change of teeth. The tendency which culminates in ossification is manifest in the teeth. But the human being keeps back sufficient life-force to enable him to evolve. Up to the seventh year in the life of the human being it is only what belongs to the species, the genus, that can come to expression. At this point he is able to take his place in the cultural progress of the times and the school period begins. These two things are inwardly connected: the hardening tendency which comes to expression in the formation of the teeth and the tendency towards softening where something must be kept back, something that the etheric body—which becomes free at the seventh year—needs for its development. The two are connected.

There are many phenomena between which it is difficult to perceive any connection if they are not observed from the vantage-point of the spiritual investigator. Puerperal fever,¹ as it is called, usually goes together with faulty teeth. The connection between the two tendencies, the tendency to hardening in the teeth and the tendency to carry evolution forward, to give play to the procreative force, becomes evident here; if the one has been impaired, the other is injuriously affected. It is important for these two tendencies to be kept in balance and endeavours must be made to adjust life accordingly. It may happen that the tendency to softening gets the upper hand. For example, workers on the land—whose place in civilisation is essentially different from that of town-dwellers—may be brought into the towns. They would be able to adjust themselves if they and their forefathers had grown up in these conditions; but as things are, there is no harmony, no equilibrium between the hardening and the softening forces of their organism. One of the two will get the upper hand. But if the hardening tendency preponderates, the soft tissues of the organism will begin to harden in a remarkable way. Then when the hardening process becomes unduly strong tuberculosis appears.

As long as animals live in their right environment, no illness of this nature will befall them. But if they are removed from this right environment they too will be prone to this disease in which the hardening tendency preponderates—as for example, in the case with monkeys.

Thus do the spiritual worlds work into our physical world and we can only understand the latter by going back to its spiritual foundations. Just let us reflect how closely everything that has been said is connected with man’s happiness or suffering. Equilibrium in the life of man depends upon his organs having assumed their right form in the evolutionary process at the right time. If an organ remains at an earlier stage, if hardening or softening comes about in the wrong way, a life of unhappiness is the result. Each organ must reach a definite stage in its evolution at a definite time. The development even of those organs in man which are not visible may lag behind or hurry too far ahead. In future times, tuberculosis will no longer be injurious because then certain parts of man’s organism must harden. Diseases that are due to the conditions of civilisation differ from all others.

Do we not hear an echo of this in the tale of the Mongolian woman who vainly seeks her lost child? She has the organ in her head at the wrong time. It brings her woe; never pausing, she hastens through the world and finds nothing that can give her eye satisfaction. She seeks in vain for what belongs to her. What deep wisdom has been woven by the Leaders of humanity into this legend!

Let us now go further and consider man as he is today; he consists of organs on the ascending and descending lines of evolution. Stage by stage the astral body has been membered into him. There was a time when his organs were like plants, of the nature of plants. As the result of the astral body having built the nerve-system, the plant-body took flesh upon itself. This process was only gradual and did not affect all the organs at the same time. If we were to go back to pre-Lemurian times in evolution we should find that the human body still had organs of an entirely plantlike nature.

All the organs in the human body in which the sensual desires work less strongly were the earliest to be transformed into organs of flesh; the organs in which the sensual appetites work most strongly—the sexual organs—were the latest to be so transformed. For long, long ages these organs retained their plant-nature and they will be the first to wither away and pass over into a plantlike existence. It was not until sensual desire had already taken deep root in the human being on his path of descent that the sexual organs were transformed from their plant-nature into organs of flesh. Spiritual Science looks back to a godlike age in remote antiquity when the sexual forces were as yet unknown to man. Such a being could have been seen in the ancient Mysteries—a human being still without sex. At the places where the sexual organs are now situated we should have been able to see in this being creeper-like plant-formations, organs permeated by the etheric body only, untouched as yet by the astral body. Such a being was the figure of the Hermaphrodite in the Mysteries; he appeared in the form which Spiritual Science can confirm as having been a man’s actual form in those remote ages. He has plant organs at the place where the organs of reproduction are situated today and creeper-life plants go out from his loins. We can now understand why among very ancient people and in the Bible legend, the fig-leaf is spoken of. It was not there as a cover but pointed to an ancient, sacred existence when the human being was still plantlike at this place in his organism.

But there is still more to be said. We can observe this overcoming of the hardening tendency in man in yet another way. It is noteworthy that in the occult schools particular account was taken of this. When the ‘I’ of man descended to the Earth from the bosom of the Godhead, it was necessary for this hardening tendency to be overcome. But even before that time there were other creatures in whom this development had already taken place, namely the birds. The birds have an ‘I’ but an ‘I’ that lives much more in the outer external world. Therefore there is something in which they have not shared, something that is important for all human occult development. It is what comes to expression in the development of certain parts of the skeleton, in the development of the bone-marrow. The bones of the birds are hollower than the bones of a human being and the other animals; they have retained a much more ancient condition which man, and the higher animals too, have left behind.

Man sends the forces of the ‘I’ right into the marrow of the bones and a considerable part of his occult development consists in changing the passive relationship in which he stands to his bone-marrow into a conscious one. At the present time he can only work upon what is contained within the bones of the skull, upon his brain, but preparation is being made to enable him to work upon that semi-fluid element which permeates the bones. The fact that the essential force in man penetrated into the very bones, made his present evolution possible; in future time he will acquire the forces to work upon the actual substance in his bones and so to transform his body down to the very bones. First of all he gains dominion over his blood and the blood will then be the instrument whereby he can work right into the bone-substance. The bones are a mineralisation of man’s being. When, down to the very bones, man has gained full mastery over what expresses itself, at the wrong time today, as rickets, then he himself will create his own form; he will transform himself into Atma.² He has then gained the victory over the hardening principle, the principle that leads to death, that which expresses its real physiognomy in the human skeleton. The skeleton is a true image of death.

Man will conquer the physiognomy of death when he controls through the power of the spirit the form he now controls from outside through the mechanical organs of the muscles. His thoughts today penetrate into his bones; later on it will be his feelings—and then he will have gained the victory over the physiognomy of death.

What abundant blessing the sciences will bring to man when they come to know about the hardening and softening processes! That is what is meant by saying that Spiritual Science must be put to practical application in life. If legends like the ancient Mongolian fairy-tale have still survived, the truths it contains will be expressed in a different form. Man will observe the world with different senses and be able to understand many of its riddles—for example, the secret of the flight of the birds will then be unveiled. By miraculous ways they travel hundreds upon hundreds of miles from the cold North to the warm South and then back again in the spring by different routes. I have said that the birds are a species that has remained behind at earlier stages of existence.

Progress on the Earth in the real sense began only when the Moon separated from the Earth; before then, when the two were united and there was only Sun and Earth-Moon, this Earth-Moon moved around the Sun with one side always turned towards it. All living creatures on the Earth moved once around the Moon during one of the Moon’s revolutions in order to receive the forces and influences of the Sun. And in the flight of the birds, something of that journey round the planets has been preserved. The birds split off from the progressive course of the evolution of humanity before the ‘I’, the Ego, came to the Earth. With advancing physical evolution, the sexual element entered into possession of each single body. Previously, the astral body—which is filled with desires and works upon the single bodies—was not present. The desires were previously a cosmic force, streaming from the ancient Sun to the ancient Moon. This was the force which directed those ancient movements around the planets, for it determined the manner in which procreation took place. The circling of the birds around the planet is thus nothing else than a bridal procession. In the birds the sexual element is still in the surrounding world and this cosmic force is the directing power, guiding and leading the migration. It guides the birds from outside, whereas in the other case it has penetrated into the single bodies. These are the same forces which work within the body and lead one human being to another in the different sexes. The sexual force that works in man does not work from within in the case of the birds; it comes to expression in the flight around the planets.

When man has acquired the faculty to be united with the whole cosmos, he will also possess the power to work outwards again into the cosmos. The woman of the Mongolian legend too will then again be present. But those forces of spiritual perception which are an attribute of the single eye in the head and which being unappeased made her cast aside and shatter every created thing—those forces will then permeate man. He will then perceive not merely the outer physical objects, but that which lies behind and expresses itself in them. The now hardened physical body will then again be spiritual; the woman of the Mongolian legend will live again and look out as of yore into the spiritual world. And what she then takes hold of she can press lovingly to her heart; she can find in a world made spiritual that which she can hold in her loving embrace.

The evolution of man is towards ascent into the cosmos. Were man unwilling to share patiently in this evolution, the force, the fluid contained in the eye of the men of ancient time would not stream through his whole being, would not permeate his organs. This force would spend itself and man would wither away from lack of love. But the mission of man is to permeate with love everything that lives upon his planet, to pour his forces into the universal All. There can be no redemption of the individual without the redemption of what lies outside us. Man has to redeem his planet together with himself. There can only be redemption when man pours his forces into the cosmos; he must not only be one who is himself redeemed, but he himself must become a redeemer.

• 1. Puerperal fever is fever caused by uterine infection following childbirth.
• 2. Atma or Atman (anthroposophical term: ‘Spirit Man’) is the highest principle of the human being which is now only in its germinal state and will be fully developed only in the last stage of the cosmic evolution from the Old Saturn to the future Vulcan.

It has been said on a number of occasions, and also two days ago when I presented the subject from a slightly different point of view, that it is important for us to consider the evolution of the human race in the light of spiritual science and grow aware of the gravity of the present moment. We shall then have to act out of our realization of the gravity of the situation, irrespective of our position in life.

Today I should like to add some further building stones to an edifice that seen in its entirety can show us the present-day tenor of the human mind and spirit and how we shall have to work for the further progress of humankind by taking this state of mind and spirit as our basis. To begin with let us refer to things which in the main are already known to us.

We know that the human race in its present state of civilization has by and large descended from the human race that evolved before disaster befell the continent of Atlantis. It has been said on a number of occasions that Atlantis occupied an area between present-day Europe, Africa and America that is today covered by the Atlantic Ocean. We know that under the influence of that disaster—in the course of its preparation and later as it proceeded—the peoples of that time migrated first in an eastward direction, populating Europe and then Asia as they moved on, and that the European and Asian peoples of the present day are in fact the descendants of the peoples of Atlantis. We also know that civilization then took the opposite route and people coming to colonize Europe brought civilization with them, as it were: cultural contents that had first been achieved in Asia. These then spread further from a number of centres in Europe. Thus I would say that the physical basis for modern civilization is provided by the peoples of Europe and Asia, descendants of the ancient Atlantean race that moved from the west to the east. Civilization itself however moved from east to west. These two movements can only be properly distinguished on the basis of spiritual-scientific investigation. The two are confused in conventional anthropology and it is not realized that only the culture, the civilization, has been transplanted from east to west, whilst the physical basis comes from migrations that proceeded from west to east.

People always have some relationship to the locality where they live. We relate in some way to the soil under our feet, to everything this soil produces, to the way the soil comes to expression in climatic conditions and provides a habitat. You can conclude from this—and spiritual science fully confirms it—that the peoples who went further into Asia in the course of those post-Atlantean migrations inevitably had to develop in a different way from those who had remained in Europe. In ordinary terms this means that the soil of Europe had a different effect on the descendants of the Atlanteans than the soil of Asia. In a way, we can define the difference between the populations of Asia and of Europe. The difference is that particularly during the earliest periods of post-Atlantean civilization, during the 9th, 8th, 7th and 6th millennium BC and the millennia that followed, the people of Asia adopted intellectual thinking, thinking as we know it, in a different way. This type of thinking did not fully emerge until the 15th century, as I said on the last occasion, but it was in preparation for centuries and indeed millennia before that.

This form of thinking as we know it today only developed in very recent times, assuming its true character in intellectual thinking as the soul itself became inwardly active. But the whole of our evolution, particularly in post-Atlantean times, has been tending towards this intellectual approach. It is significant that the post-Atlantean population of Asia accepted all that we may call intellectual more into its soul elements. We can say that due to local conditions the peoples of Asia were specifically predestined for the early stages of intelligence to enter into their souls. The most remarkable aspect of Asian civilization is that the soul element as such became the instrument for adopting the intellectual principle.

It was different with the people who had remained in Europe. Quite specifically the situation was that physical development, the physical organization that later on was to become the real instrument of intellectual development, evolved in such a way that even at an earlier stage it became the essential characteristic of these peoples, constituting itself in a way that was particularly suited to be the vehicle for the intellectual principle. If we therefore wish to characterize the descendants of the Atlanteans' earliest descendants, that is ourselves, we have to say that the Asian peoples got more into the habit of thinking with their souls; the Europeans got into the habit of thinking more with their bodies. That is in fact the major difference between the civilizations of Asian and Europe. If you want to show up the clear difference which exists between the kind of intelligence apparent in the Vedic writings or Vedantic philosophy and other cultural streams in Asia compared to European culture you have to say to yourselves: Asians are thinking more with their souls, Europeans more with their bodies.

The people of Asia may thus be said to have taken the intellectual element into a higher aspect of their human nature, with the result that an advanced civilization developed much earlier. This however was a civilization of the soul that had fewer abstract concepts, a culture that found its own ways to higher things, using the human soul and spirit to reach the soul and spirit of the world without resorting to abstract concepts. That is where the spiritual nature of Asian civilization lies—inasmuch as it is essentially a civilization based on soul qualities. The peoples of Asia largely left their bodies unused when it came to thinking; they merely carried their bodies with them through life on earth. The life of the mind was nurtured entirely at soul level. You cannot understand the peculiar nature of Asian culture unless you look at it from this point of view.

Europeans were basing their thinking more and more on the physical body. That is also why the foundations were more strongly laid among them than in Asia for a culture in which freedom can be the central principle. The people of Asia, endowed with intelligence at soul level, still were more part of the whole cosmic organism. The human body specifically isolates itself from the rest of the cosmic organism. Using it as the instrument for our intellectual life we become more independent, though this independence is more bound up with the body than is the case with the people of Asia who have developed intelligence within the soul principle and are consequently less independent.

As the time approached in the history of humankind that was to bring the Mystery of Golgotha, an advanced culture of soul and spirit had evolved in Asia. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha it had already reached its culmination and was in the early stages of decline. Do not let us deceive ourselves: European ideas do not make it easy to grasp the great culture which had grown out of the soul and spirit of the Asian peoples. When people who are thoroughly European in their way of thinking, people for whom the physical body is the instrument of thinking, want to get Europeans to appreciate Asian ideas, as Deussen⁴ has done, for example, the outcome in no way represents the contents of Asian civilization of soul and spirit, for everything alive in it has been translated into European thought. It has even happened that interpretations of certain spiritual streams in India caused a sensation in Europe—those published by von Garbe⁵ for instance, yet it was nothing more than European materialism producing a garbled translation of Asian soul and spirit culture. Publications of this kind contain a trace of the real spirit of ancient Asia. It is necessary to point this out very firmly because, as I have said before, belief in authority has reached an extreme degree and people really have nothing in them that permits them to acknowledge the validity of something, except the fact that it has been written by university professors. There is of course no real inner reason why Deussen's or Garbe's botchwork should be considered important in any way, except that there is this belief in authority in Europe which is going sadly astray. People are no longer in a position even to find any kind of inner reason; they merely believe one thing or another to be right because some outer authority says so. It does not help to avoid saying the truth about these things—even if it means making more enemies—for the gravity of the present situation absolutely demands that there shall be no compromise where certain things are concerned and that the truth must be clearly stated.

The advanced culture of the spirit in Asia was already to some extent in decline when the event of Golgotha occurred. This event of Golgotha—it cannot be sufficiently stressed—was first of all taken in and understood by minds that were the product of Asian culture. It is important to distinguish between the Mystery of Golgotha as a historical event that happened in the Near East at the beginning of Christian era and the notions people have of this Mystery of Golgotha. At the time when the event occurred, Europe did not have the capacity to grasp it fully, for it was an event that could only be grasped in soul and spirit. European civilization, however, had spread by using physical matter as its instrument. The event which occurred at the beginning of our Christian era could not be directly grasped in a civilization based on physical and material things. Asian civilization on the other hand had an intellectual life based on soul and spirit and out of this was able to find concepts with which to grasp the event of Golgotha. The event that happened in Palestine was thus poured into the conceptual world of the Orient. In that form it travelled westward through Greece and Italy and came to Europe as a tradition.

People can be given something in an external way that they cannot yet grasp in their hearts and minds. Things may come to them in the form of a tradition or through the written word. Europe initially was given the explanation, its understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, out of the oriental tradition. Christianity was understood in the light of oriental wisdom, a wisdom of soul and spirit that was truly great at a time when the Mystery of Golgotha, and the way Christ related to the whole of Earth evolution, were still perceived gnostically. It dwindled more and more as Europeans were increasingly blending their own unique characteristic into this tradition. They had to bring their particular characteristic of an intellectual life bound to the physical body into the way they saw these things. The following happened, particularly in Europe: In early times the human bodies of Europeans were very much the instrument of their kind of elementary intellectual thinking, but then this body gradually began to die. Physical evolution of European humanity until the 15th century and even to this day consisted in the physical body growing more and more dead. Our physical bodies are growing denser and denser and more and more bony. We cannot demonstrate this with the methods of ordinary anatomy and physiology, but it is true. We no longer have bodies as inwardly alive as those of people living in the 1st, 3rd and even the 10th and 11th centuries. Our European bodies of today have grown bony, paralyzed, compared to those ancient bodies that were inwardly alive. Thus you have on the one hand a tradition designed for the soul and spirit of Asian people who preserved the ecclesiastical creeds, and on the other hand a more and more European body that increasingly felt those Asian traditions to be alien and in the end no longer found itself able to take in the ideas coming from Asia.

From the middle of the 15th century onwards the influence of the bony European body has been such that in the end that old tradition only survived in empty outer phrases among religious communities. For many centuries the tradition had been so much alive that little regard was paid to the Gospels and people took their cue from life itself. As the European body came to die off people felt impelled to say: Let us cast off the old tradition; we want to put our faith only in the Word, the Word as it is written. People believe they have the Word when in fact they only have a poor translation of it. It gradually came about—though no one is willing to admit it—that really all one had was the outer shell of the Word of old that once held within it the tidings of the Mystery of Golgotha in the garb of oriental wisdom, a wisdom of soul and spirit.

This oriental wisdom is little understood by the people who generally interpret or translate the Gospels; they understand little, if any of it. The point is that it is necessary to see the Mystery of Golgotha in a new light. However, unless we Europeans get beyond what a dying physical body is able to give we will be unable to do so. We must develop through spiritual science and come to grasp the spiritual world in a way where we are independent of this body. Our future salvation entirely depends on our ability to grasp the spiritual world in this way, independently of our physical bodies, going straight for the spirit. It will have to be different in essence from the oriental culture of soul and spirit, which came as though of its own accord as human beings evolved. Europeans of the present time will need to achieve it by their own efforts. They will have to nurture spiritual science. They will have to create an educational system where from the bottom rung upwards spiritual science is not presented as a theory but flows into everything we do as we teach and train the children. Spiritual science should also flow into higher education and should be alive in everything connected with art, literature and so on, everything that is our common cultural life. This European culture must provide for the nuturing of spiritual science itself. On the basis of such a spiritual science the Mystery of Golgotha will then be seen in a new light. We shall have to say that those were the old times when the Mystery of Golgotha was only interpreted in the light of the wisdom of spirit and soul that belonged to the Orient. A new wisdom will have to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha in a new and living way.

We have spoken about these things quite often and in many respects. It is necessary, however, that they take hold of our soul from all sides. It is necessary that we come to experience a seriousness that absolutely fills our hearts and minds with the realization that new insight has to be gained into the Mystery of Golgotha. This is something that makes the seriousness that is required particularly in Central Europe even more austere.

Looking with more profound insight at what has become cultural life in the second half of the 18th and first half of the 19th century particularly in Central Europe you really have to say this: The bodies of people in Central Europe were already dying, but they still were so much alive that the people were able to rise to a world of ideas more alive than ever seen before in the evolution of humankind. Nowhere else did human minds rise to abstract ideas in such a way that whilst living in these abstract ideas one was not in the sphere of death but in the sphere of life. That was achieved in Goetheanism, for instance, and by German idealist philosophers. It is not something to be found anywhere else in human evolution. It was also in a way a culmination, one merely has to get this quite clear in one's mind. People today no longer want to know how Schelling, for instance, to take just one of the Goetheanists, moved in a sphere of abstract thoughts and yet, whilst speaking in quite abstract terms, was alive in the way he moved in the sphere of abstract thoughts: as alive as people usually are when they speak of food and drink. The same applies to Fichte. This was an area of human evolution where we are especially aware of an ability to descend into the sphere of concepts and ideas in a way that was very much alive. Something quite special exists therefore for this Central European population, special in the whole context of human evolution in more recent times. They have their own characteristics that enable them in particular to take up the vocation of humankind for the present day: namely, to enter into spirituality again. These characteristics only came to be submerged beneath other things in the second half of the 19th century.

It is terribly painful to be aware of a very sleepy human being in Central Europe today walking over the graves of Lessing and Goethe and Herder and Schelling. This human being considers its role to be that of a soul asleep. If we were to pick up the thread of the writings and thoughts of those great minds, not in an external way but entering into the spirit in which they wrote, we would find the element that can raise Europe to the heights. Europe cannot be made to rise to the heights by Gospel words repeated parrot-fashion in the churches that no one understands. Europe can only be made to rise if people seek to grasp the spiritual worlds by developing further what Herder, Goethe and others have been working towards. There is however hardly any awareness of this at the present time. It is a sad sign of the times for example that in a cultural community which possesses treasures like Fichte's ‘Goal and Purpose of the Human Being’, Schelling's Bruno and Schiller's Letters on Aesthetic Education⁶ and there are many more I could mention; that in such a cultural community people could follow a trend that led to the inane and superficial Americanisms of Ralph Waldo Trine⁷ and the like. We have things that are much more sublime but we let them sleep and turn to other things.

The further we penetrate into the actual life of the mind and spirit the more it becomes apparent that something new is emerging in the life of humankind today. Central Europeans are far from understood by Western Europeans; Western Europeans are far from understood by Central Europeans, even in ordinary life. People are not aware of this, however. They think they understand each other. They do not realize that they are not communicating their thoughts. I am not referring to the way Americans and Europeans fail to communicate, but Central and Western Europeans. You come across some odd things in this respect.

The last time I was here I told you that vilification is rife not only within Germany but also outside its borders.⁸ I told you about this man Ferriére,⁹ for instance, who spread one of the strangest tales in a Swiss-Belgian journal, saying that it was of course generally known that I was ‘Rasputin’ to William II¹⁰ and had a major share in all the bad advice William II was given in those terrible days. This slanderous story came to be widely known particularly in French-speaking Switzerland and I therefore defended myself by writing down the truth of the matter, stating the bare facts. I said that I had only ever seen the former emperor briefly and from a distance, had never spoken with him at all and never sought to contact him even through others. These are the bare facts I stated in a letter to Dr Boos¹¹ who then gave Mr Ferriére the necessary set-down. The matter was published in the journal in question together with Ferriére's reply. This went more or less as follows: Once again the great difference between the Latin and the Germanic mind is demonstrated. The Germanic mind takes everything so seriously. ‘My readers’, Ferriére wrote, ‘will of course not have been deceived; they will have realized that what I wrote was intended to be plaisanterie and not méchanceté.¹² Apart from that let me state that it is possible to learn that something we may have heard from people whom we think we can believe need nevertheless not be true, even if it is a widely believed rumour. I am taking note of this.’ And so on.

That was the elegant reply the ‘Latin mind’ was able to give, with a plaisanterie concerning the Germanic mind. At least one has the satisfaction that these things have come to the fore; very often they are not even noticed.

They assume even greater significance where a more profound view is taken of the world, at the point where they relate to initiation knowledge and everything connected with this. This is a sphere where it is indeed necessary to mention these things just for once, though some people consider it highly dangerous to touch on them even today. I want to talk to you today about a matter that in the opinion of representatives of initiation knowledge, Western representatives in particular, should not be discussed.

Western representatives of initiation knowledge will tell you again and again that it simply will not do for anyone to spread initiation knowledge they have gained for themselves. You will find that when genuine initiates in the West present initiation knowledge in books available to the public they always deny having personal experience of the things of which they are writing. You will find that it is quite typical—such things have appeared particularly in America—to have a preface, that is part of the whole technique, which says the following: ‘None of these things are my own, of course, for if they were just my own I would not mention them’. Take a look, you will find this kind of thing in many documents published particularly by Western initiates. If you ask why it is done like this you will be given an answer that within certain limits is certainly true for Western initiation science. You will be told that anyone learning something directly from the spiritual world, who knows the secrets of the spiritual world, cannot tell another person that he has it from personal experience—these will be the words used to answer the question—for if he betrays the fact that he has initiation knowledge from personal experience he becomes dependent for life on the person to whom he betrayed his secret.

This attitude has its roots in the essential nature of Western initiation science. The effect is that anything to do with initiation is discussed in a very superficial way among Western initiates in their societies, and that there are indeed initiates moving around among Western humanity of whom nobody knows that they are initiates. This is an attitude that has to be overcome in the new age; it cannot hold true in Central Europe, and the spirit which must arise in Central Europe will have to fight this attitude. It will have to fight it by coming to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in the new and spiritual way I have talked about. It will have to come to understand the presence of the Christ in huMan life.

Here lies a major secret. The usual initiation knowledge in Western countries is far removed from Christianity; otherwise the Theosophical Society would not have excluded or caricatured the Christian faith and presented a purely oriental, pre-Christian Indian wisdom as something new. It is a peculiar characteristic of this Western initiation knowledge that its initiates only have something of their initiation if they have at least one pupil who reiterates their ideas. There is no point whatsoever in having initiation knowledge just for oneself. If your eyes look straight ahead you will not see a single object. In the same way you will not encounter your own ideas of the spirit as a Western initiate unless you can see your own ideas repeated by someone else. There are all kinds of indications of this, but it is not properly realized.

Indeed, if this is the case then it is true that someone who betrays to another person the fact that he is an initiate will be in the power of that other person for the rest of his life. The other could then refuse to serve him and say: I am not going to repeat your ideas. That implies some degree of dependence. That essentially is a characteristic of the initiation knowledge I have frequently referred to in other respects, referring to it as the dominant initiation science in the West.

There is only one way out of this dependence on one's followers and that is to be in communion with Christ, who can truly be found on earth since the Mystery of Golgotha. We are not then in communion with a human being who is not perceptible to the senses but with the first among brothers who has come among men, with the living Christ walking among us. If we are in a communion with Christ the way we had to be in communion with other persons in pre-Christian initiation, we need not be afraid to share our own wisdom with our fellow human beings. There is no other way in the present time in which original initiation wisdom can be directly communicated than by being in communion with Christ. There is no other way. A genuine initiation wisdom of the present age will have to look for such communion with Christ.

If this initiation wisdom were not there to be found we could make no progress in social understanding. It is no longer possible to evolve social ideas nowadays unless we base ourselves on initiation. Yet we have need of social ideas. A social system born wholly out of Western initiation wisdom would depend on that initiation wisdom being kept secret even at its lowest levels—certain higher levels cannot be made known today because people must have the necessary preparation. Keeping things secret in this way is not compatible however with the principle of people being equal, a principle modern Europeans and indeed the whole civilized world consider important today. So you see that exactly when it comes to initiation wisdom a colossal difference shows itself between the Central European and the Western mind. The difference becomes even more apparent in the case of initiation wisdom than in the situation where people talk above each others heads in the present time and believe humankind can be brought to an abstract uniformity. That cannot be done. Human beings are differentiated and this differentiation shows itself particularly if one takes a more profound look at initiation knowledge. This is an important subject and it will no doubt be necessary for me to explain it in more detail during the time I am here. When it comes to genuine spiritual insight one simply cannot be slipshod about things, and a lack of seriousness concerning the truth is unacceptable. It simply will not do. Truthfulness is of the essence.

• 4 . Paul Deussen, philosopher and Sanscrit scholar.
• 5 . Richard von Garbe, Sancrit scholar.
• 6 . Johann Gottlieb Fichte, German philosopher. Die Bestimtnung des Menschen 1800.
  
  Friedrich Wilhem Joseph von Schelling German philosopher. Bruno, oder über das göttliche and natürliche Prinzip der Dinge. Ein Gespräch (Bruno, or concerning the divine and natural principle of things. A dialogue).
  
  Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, German dramatist, poet and historian. Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (letters on aesthetic education) 1795.
• 7 . Ralph Waldo Trine, American writer.
• 8 . Stuttgart, 21 December 1919. In Weltsilvester and Neujahrsgedanken GA 195. English in The Cosmic New Year. London: Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1938.
• 9 . A. Ferrière. La loi du progres economique et la justice sociale. Suisse-Belgique Outremer juillet-aout 1919; 1:no.3-4
• 10. Grigoriy Efimovich Rasputin, reputed ‘holy man’ who influenced the Tsarina and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
  
  TN. William II (1859–1941), third German emperor and ninth king of Prussia.
• 11. Dr Roman Boos. anthroposophical lecturer, writer in the field of social sciences. Pioneer of the Threefold Movement.
• 12. TN. plaisamerie—joke; méchanceté—spitefulness, malice.

From the foregoing lecture it will be clear to you that it is only possible to gain a correct view of the historical evolution of humanity when one takes into consideration the totally different conditions of mind and soul that prevailed during the various epochs. In the first part of my lecture I attempted to define the Asiatic period of evolution, the genuine ancient East, and we saw that we have to look back to the time when the descendants of the races of Atlantis were finding their way eastwards after the Atlantean catastrophe, moving from west to east and gradually peopling Europe and Asia. All that took place in ancient Asia in connection with these peoples was under the influence of a condition of soul accustomed and attuned to rhythm. At the beginning of the Asiatic period we have still a distant echo of what was present in all its fullness in Atlantis—the localised memory. During the Oriental evolution this localised memory passed over into rhythmic memory, and I showed how with the Greek evolution that great change came about which brought in a new kind of memory, the temporal memory. This means that the Asiatic period of evolution (we are now speaking of what may rightly be called the Asiatic period, for what history refers to is in reality a later and decadent period) was an age of men altogether differently constituted from the men of later times. And the external events of history were in those days much more dependent than in later times on the character and constitution of man's inner life. What lived in man's mind and soul lived too in his entire being. A separated life of thought and feeling, such as we have to-day was unknown. A thinking that does not feel itself to be connected with the inner processes of the human head, was unknown. So too was the abstract feeling that knows no connection with the circulation of the blood. Man had in those times a thinking that was inwardly experienced as a “happening” in the head, a feeling that was experienced in the rhythm of the breath, in the circulation of the blood, and so on. Man experienced his whole being in undivided unity.

All this was closely connected with the altogether different experience man had of his relation to the world about him, to the Cosmos, to the spiritual and the physical in the Cosmic Whole. The man of the present day lives, let us say, in town or in the country, and his experience varies accordingly. He is surrounded by woods, rivers and mountains; or, if he lives in town, bricks and mortar meet his gaze on every hand. When he speaks of the cosmic and super-sensible, where does he think it is? He can point to no sphere within which he can conceive of what is cosmic and super-sensible as having place. It is nowhere to be laid hold of, he cannot grasp it: even spiritually, he cannot grasp it. But this was not so in that ancient oriental stream of evolution. To an Oriental, the world around him which we to-day call our physical environment, was the lowest portion of a Cosmos conceived as a unity. Man had around him what is contained in the three kingdoms of nature, he had around him the rivers, mountains, and so forth; but for him this environment was permeated through and through with Spirit, interpenetrated and interwoven with Spirit. The Oriental of ancient time would say: I live with the mountains, I live with the rivers; but I live also with the elemental beings of the mountains and of the rivers. I live in the physical realm, but this physical realm is the body of a spiritual realm. Around me is the spiritual world, the lowest spiritual world.

There below was this realm that for us has become the earthly realm. Man lived in it. But he pictured to himself that where this realm ends another realm begins, then again above that another; and finally the highest realm which it is possible to reach. And if we were to name these realms in accordance with the language that has become current with us in anthroposophical knowledge—the ancient Oriental had other names for them, but that does not matter, we will name them as they are for us—then we should have above, for the highest realm, the First Hierarchy: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; then the Second Hierarchy: Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai; and the Third Hierarchy: Archai, Archangels, Angels.

And now comes the fourth realm where human beings live, the realm wherein according to our method of cognition we to-day place the mere objects and processes of Nature, but where the ancient Oriental felt the whole of Nature penetrated with the elemental spirits of water and of earth. This was Asia. Asia meant the lowest spirit realm, in which he, as human being, lived. You must remember that the present-day conception of things that we have in our ordinary consciousness was unknown to the man of those times. It would be nonsense to suppose that it were in any way possible for him to imagine such a thing as matter devoid of spirit. To speak as we do, of oxygen and nitrogen would have been a sheer impossibility for the ancient Oriental. To him oxygen was spirit, it was that spiritual thing which worked as a stimulating and quickening agent on what already possessed life, accelerating the life-processes in a living organism. Nitrogen, which we think of to-day as contained in the atmosphere together with oxygen, was also spiritual; it was that which weaves throughout the Cosmos, working upon what is living and organic in such a way as to prepare it to receive a soul-nature. Such was the knowledge the Oriental of old had, for example, of oxygen and nitrogen. And he knew all the processes of Nature in this way, in their connection with spirit; for the present-day conceptions were unknown to him. There were a few individuals who knew them, and they were the Initiates. The rest of mankind had as their ordinary everyday consciousness a consciousness very similar to a waking dream; it was a dream condition that with us only occurs in abnormal experiences.

The ancient Oriental went about with these dreams. He looked on the mountains, rivers and clouds, and saw everything in the way that things can be seen and heard in this dream condition. Picture to yourself what may happen to the man of to-day in a dream. He is asleep. Suddenly there appears before him a dream-picture of a flaring fire. He hears the call of ‘Fire!’ Outside in the street a fire engine is passing, to put out a fire somewhere or other. But what a difference between the conception of the work of the fire-brigade that can be formed by the human intellect in its matter-of-fact way with the aid of ordinary sense-perception, and the pictures that a dream can conjure up! For the ancient Oriental, however, all his experiences manifested themselves in such dream-pictures. Everything outside in the kingdoms of Nature was transformed in his soul into pictures.

In these dream-pictures man experienced the elemental spirits of water, earth, air and fire. And sleep brought him again other experiences. Sleep for him was not that deep heavy sleep we have when we lie, as we say, ‘like a log’ and know nothing of ourselves. I believe there are people who sleep so in these days, are there not? But then there was no such thing: even in sleep man had still a dull form of consciousness. While on the one hand he was, as we now say, resting his body, the spiritual was weaving within him in a spiritual activity of the external world. And in this weaving he perceived the Beings of the Third Hierarchy. Asia he perceived in his ordinary waking-dream condition, that is to say in what was the everyday consciousness of that time. At night, in sleep, he perceived the Third Hierarchy. And from time to time there entered into his sleep a still more dim and dark consciousness, but a consciousness that graved its experiences deeply into his thought and feeling. Thus these Eastern peoples had first their everyday consciousness where everything was changed into Imaginations and pictures. The pictures were not so real as those of still older times, for example the time of Atlantis or Lemuria, or of the Moon epoch. Nevertheless they were still there, even during this Asiatic evolution. By day, then, men had these pictures. And in sleep they had an experience which they might have clothed in the following words:—We ‘sleep away’ the ordinary earthly existence, we enter the realm of the Angels, Archangels and Archai and live among them. The soul sets itself free from the organism and lives among the Beings of the higher Hierarchies.

Men knew at the same time that whereas they lived in Asia with gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders, that is with the elemental spirits of the earth, water, air and fire,—in sleep, while the body rested, they experienced the Beings of the Third Hierarchy in the planetary existence, in all that lives in the whole planetary system belonging to the Earth.

There were however moments when the sleeper would feel: An utterly strange region is approaching me. It is taking me to itself, it is drawing me away from earthly existence. He did not feel this while immersed in the Beings of the Third Hierarchy, but only when a still deeper condition of sleep intervened. Though there was never a real consciousness of what took place during the sleep-condition of the third kind, nevertheless what was then experienced from the Second Hierarchy impressed itself deep into the whole being of man. And the experience remained in man's feeling when he awoke. He could then say: I have been graciously blessed by higher Spirits, whose life is beyond the planetary existence. Thus did these ancient peoples speak of that Hierarchy which embraces the Kyriotetes, the Dynamis and the Exusiai. What we are now describing are the ordinary states of consciousness of this ancient Asiatic period. The first two states of consciousness—the waking-sleeping, sleeping-waking and the sleep, in which the Third Hierarchy were present—were experienced by all men. And many, through a special endowment of Nature, experienced also the intervention of a deeper sleep, during which the Second Hierarchy played into human consciousness.

And the Initiates in the Mysteries,—they received a still further degree of consciousness. Of what nature was this? The answer is astonishing; for the fact is, the Initiate of the ancient East acquired the same consciousness that you have now by day! You develop it in a perfectly natural way in your second or third year of life. No ancient Oriental ever attained this state of consciousness in a natural way; he had to develop it artificially in himself. He had to develop it out of the waking-dreaming, dreaming-waking. As long as he went about with this waking-dreaming, dreaming-waking, he saw everywhere pictures, rendering only in more or less symbolic fashion what we see to-day in clear sharp outlines; as an Initiate however he attained to see things as we see them to-day in our ordinary consciousness. The Initiates, by means of their developed consciousness, attained to learn what every boy and girl learns at school to-day. The difference between their consciousness and the normal consciousness of to-day is not that the content was different. Of course the abstract forms of letters which we have to-day were unknown then; written characters were in more intimate connection with the things and processes of the Cosmos. Reading and writing were nevertheless learned in those days by the Initiates; although of course by them alone, for reading and writing can only be learned with that clear intellectual consciousness which is the natural one for the man of to-day.

Supposing that somewhere or other this world of the ancient East were to re-appear, inhabited by human beings having the kind of consciousness they had in those olden times, and you were to come among them with your consciousness of the present day, then for them you would all be initiates. The difference does not he in the content of consciousness. You would be initiates. But the moment the people recognised you as initiates, they would immediately drive you out of the land by every means in their power; for it would be quite clear to them that an initiated person ought not to know things in the way we know them to-day. He ought not, for example, to be able to write as we are able to write to-day. If I were to transport myself into the mind of a man of that time, and were to meet such a pseudo-initiate, that is to say, an ordinary clever man of the present day, I should find myself saying of him: He can write, he makes signs on paper that mean something, and he has no idea how devilish it is to do such a thing without carrying in him the consciousness that it may only be done in the service of divine cosmic consciousness; he does not know that a man may only make such signs on paper when he can feel how God works in his hand, in his very fingers, works in his soul, enabling it to express itself through these letters. Therein lies the whole difference between the initiates of olden time and the ordinary man of the present day. It is not a difference in the content of consciousness, but in the way of comprehending and understanding the thing. Read my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, of which a new edition has recently appeared, and you will find right at the beginning the same indication as to the essential nature of the initiate of olden times. It is in point of fact always so in the course of world-evolution. That which develops in man at a later period in a natural way had in former epochs to be won through initiation.

Through such a thing as I have brought to your notice, you will be able to detect the radical difference between the condition of mind and soul prevalent among the Eastern peoples of prehistoric times and that of a later civilisation. It was another mankind that could call Asia the last or lowest heaven and understand by that their own land, the Nature that was round about them. They knew where the lowest heaven was.

Compare this with the conceptions men have to-day. How far is the man of the present time from regarding all he sees around him as the lowest heaven! Most people cannot think of it as the ‘lowest’ heaven for the simple reason that they have no knowledge of any heaven at all!

Thus we see how in that ancient Eastern time the Spiritual entered deeply into Nature, into all natural existence. But now we find also among these peoples something which to most of us in the present day may easily appear extremely barbarous. To a man of that time it would have appeared terribly barbarous if someone had been able to write in the feeling and attitude of mind in which we to-day are able to write; it would have seemed positively devilish to him. But when we to-day on the other hand see how it was accepted in those times as something quite natural and as a matter of course that a people should remove from West to East, should conquer—often with great cruelty—another people already in occupation and make slaves of them, then such a thing is bound to appear barbarous to very many of us.

This is, however, broadly speaking, the substance of oriental history over the whole of Asia. Whilst men had as I have described, a high spiritual conception of things, their external history ran its course in a series of conquests and enslavements. Undoubtedly that appears to many people as extremely barbarous. To-day, although wars of aggression do still sometimes occur, men have an uneasy conscience about them. And this is true even of those who support and defend such wars; they are not quite easy in their conscience.

In those times, however, man had a perfectly clear conscience as regards these wars of aggression, he felt that such conquest was willed of the Gods. The longing for peace, the love of peace, that arose later and spread over a large part of Asia, is really the product of a much later civilisation. The acquisition of land by conquest and the enslavement of its population is a salient feature of the early civilisation of Asia. The farther we go back into prehistoric times, the more do we find this kind of conquest going on. The conquests of Xerxes and others of his time were in truth but faint shadows of what went on in earlier ages.

Now there is a quite definite principle underlying these conquests. As a result of the states of consciousness which I have described to you, man stood in an altogether different relation to his fellow man and also to the world around him. Certain differences between different parts of the inhabited Earth have to-day lost their chief meaning. At that time these differences made themselves felt in quite another way. Let me put before you, as an example, something which frequently occurred.

Suppose a conquering people has made its way from the North of Asia, spread itself out over some other region of Asia and made the population subject to it. What has really happened?

In characteristic instances that are a true expression of the trend of historical evolution, we find that the aggressors were—as a people or as a race—young, full of youth-forces. Now what does it mean to-day to be young? What does it mean for men of our present epoch of evolution? It means to bear within one in every moment of life sufficient of the forces of death to provide for those soul-forces that need the dying processes in man. For, as you know, we have within us, the sprouting, germinating forces of life, but these life forces are not the forces that make us reflective, thoughtful beings; on the contrary, they make us weak, unconscious. The death forces, the forces of destruction, which are also continually active within us—and are overcome again and again during sleep by the life forces, so that not until the end of life do we gather together all the death forces in us in the one final event of death—these forces it is that induce reflection, self-consciousness. This is how it is with present-day humanity. Now a young race, a young people, such as I have described, suffered from its own over-strong life forces, and continually had the feeling: I feel my blood beating perpetually against the walls of my body. I cannot endure it. My consciousness will not become reflective consciousness. Because of my very youthfulness I cannot develop my full humanity.

An ordinary man would not have spoken thus, but the initiates spoke in this way in the Mysteries, and it was the initiates who guided and directed the whole course of history.

Here was then a people who had too much youth, too much life forces, too little in them of that which could bring about reflection and thought. They left their land and conquered a region where an older people lived, a people which had in some way or other taken into itself the forces of death, because it had already become decadent. The younger nation went out against the older and brought it into subjection. It was not necessary that a blood-bond should be established between conquerors and enslaved. That which worked unconsciously in the soul between them worked in a rejuvenating way; it worked on the reflective faculties. What the conqueror required from the slaves whom he now had in his court was influence upon his consciousness. He had only to turn his attention to these slaves and the longing for unconsciousness was quenched in his soul, reflective consciousness began to dawn.

What we have to attain to-day as individuals was attained at that time by living together with others. A people who faced the world as conquerors and lords, a young people, not possessed of full powers of reflection, needed around it, so to say, a people that had in it more of the forces of death. In overcoming another people, it won through to what it needed for its own evolution.

And so we find that these Oriental conflicts, often so terrible and presenting to us such a barbarous aspect, are in reality nothing else than the impulses of human evolution. They had to take place. Mankind would not have been able to develop on the earth, had it not been for these terrible wars and struggles that seem to us so barbarous.

Already in those olden times the Initiates of the Mysteries saw the world as it is seen to-day. Only they united with this perception a different attitude of mind and soul. For them, all that they experienced in clear, sharp outlines—even as we to-day experience external objects in sharp outlines, when we perceive with our senses—was something that came from the Gods, that came even for human consciousness from the Gods. For how did external objects present themselves to an Initiate of those times? There was perhaps a flash of lightning (to take a simple and obvious illustration). You know very well what a flash of lightning looks like to a man of to-day. The men of olden time did not see it thus. They saw living spiritual Beings moving in the sky, and the sharp line of the flash disappeared completely. They saw a host, a procession of spiritual Beings hurrying forward over or in cosmic space. The lightning as such they did not see. They saw a host of spirits hovering and moving through cosmic space.

The Initiate also saw, with the rest, this spiritual host, but he had developed within him the perception that we have to-day, and so for him, the picture began to grow dim and the heavenly host gradually disappeared from view, and then the flash of lightning could become manifest.

The whole of Nature, in the form in which we see it to-day, could only be attained in olden times through initiation. But how did man feel towards such knowledge? He did not by any means look on the knowledge thus attained with the indifference with which knowledge and truth are regarded to-day. There was a strong moral element in man's experience of knowledge. If we turn our gaze to what happened with the neophytes of the Mysteries, we find we have to describe it in the following way. When a few individuals, after undergoing severe inner tests and trials, had been initiated into the view of Nature, which to-day is accessible to all, they had quite naturally this feeling: consider the man with his ordinary consciousness. He sees the host of elementary beings riding through the air. But just because he has such a perception, he is devoid of free will. He is entirely given up to the Divine-spiritual world. For in this waking-dreaming, dreaming-waking, the will does not move in freedom, rather is it something that streams into man as Divine will. And the Initiate, who saw the lightning come forth out of these Imaginations, learned to say: I must be a man who is free to move in the world without the Gods, one for whom the Gods cast out the world-content into the void.

Now you must understand, this condition would have been unbearable for the Initiate, had there not been for him moments that compensated for it. Such moments he did have. For while on the one hand the Initiate learned to experience Asia as God-forsaken, Spirit-forsaken, he learned also to know a still deeper state of consciousness than that which reached up to the Second Hierarchy. Knowing the world bereft of God, he learned also to know the world of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

At a certain time in the epoch of Asiatic evolution, approximately in the middle—later on we shall have to speak more exactly of the dates—the condition of consciousness of the Initiates was such that they went about on Earth with very nearly the perception of the kingdoms of the Earth which is possessed by modern man; they felt it, however, in their limbs. They felt their limbs set free from the Gods in a God-bereft earthly substance.

In compensation for this, however, they met in this godless land the high Gods of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. As Initiates they learned to know, no longer the grey-green spiritual Beings that were the Pictures of the forest, the Pictures of the trees, they learned as Initiates to know the forest devoid of Spirit. Theirs, however, was the compensation of meeting in the forest Beings of the First Hierarchy, there they would meet some Being from the Kingdom of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

All this, understood as giving form to the social life of humanity, is the essential feature in the historical evolution of the ancient East. And the driving force for further evolution lies in the search for an adjustment between young races and old races, so that the young races may mature through association with the old, with the souls of those whom they have brought into subjection. However far back we look into Asia, everywhere we find how the young races who cannot of themselves develop the reflective faculties, set out to find these in wars of aggression.

When, however, we turn our gaze away from Asia to the land of Greece, we find a somewhat different development. Over in Greece, in the time of the full flower of Greek culture, we find a people who did indeed know how to grow old, but were unable to permeate the growing old with full spirituality. I have many times had to draw attention to the characteristic Greek utterance: Better a beggar in the world of the living than a king in the realm of the shades. Neither to death outside in Nature, nor to death in man, could the Greek adapt himself. He could not find his true relation with death. On the other hand, however, he had this death within him. And so in the Greek we find, not a longing for a reflective consciousness, but apprehension and fear of death.

Such a fear of death was not felt by the young Eastern races; they went out to make conquests, when as a race they found themselves unable to experience death in the right way. The inner conflict, however, which the Greeks experienced with death became in its turn an inner impulse compelling humanity, and led to what we know as the Trojan War. The Greeks had no need to seek death at the hands of a foreign race in order to acquire the power of reflection. The Greeks needed to come into a right relation with what they felt and experienced of death, they needed to find the inner living mystery of death. And this led to that great conflict between the Greeks and the people in Asia from whom they had originated. The Trojan war is a war of sorrow, a war of apprehension and fear. We see facing one another the Greeks, who felt death within them but did not know, as it were, what to do with it, and the Oriental races who were bent on conquest, who wanted death and had it not. The Greeks had death, but were at a loss how to adapt themselves to it. They needed the infusion of another element, before they could discover its secret. Achilles, Agamemnon—all these men bore death within them, but could not adapt themselves to it. They look across to Asia. There in Asia they see a people who are in the reverse position, who are suffering under the direct influence of the opposite condition. Over there are men who do not feel death in the intense way it is felt by the Greeks themselves, over there are men to whom death is something abounding in life.

All this has been brought to expression in a wonderful way by Homer. Wherever he sets the Trojans over against the Greeks, everywhere he lets us see this contrast. You may see it, for instance, in the characteristic figures of Hector and Achilles. And in this contrast is expressed what is taking place on the frontier of Asia and Europe. Asia, in those olden times, had, as it were, a superabundance of life over death, yearned after death. Europe had, on the Greek soil, a superabundance of death in man, and man was at a loss to find his true relation to it. Thus from a second point of view we see Europe and Asia set over against one another.

In the first place, we had the transition from rhythmic memory to temporal memory; now we have these two quite different experiences in respect of death in the human organisation. To-morrow we will consider more in detail the contrast, which I have only been able to indicate at the close of to-day's lecture, and so approach a fuller understanding of the transitions that lead over from Asia to Europe. For these had a deep and powerful influence on the evolution of man, and without understanding them we can really arrive at no understanding of the evolution we are passing through at the present day.

The Christmas festival, which we are about to celebrate, gains new life through a deepened spiritual world view. In a spiritual sense the Christmas festival is a sun festival, and as such we shall become acquainted with it today. To begin, we shall hear that most beautiful apostrophe to the sun that Goethe puts in the mouth of Faust.

Refreshed anew life's pulses beat and waken
To greet the mild ethereal dawn of morning;
Earth, through this night thou too hast stood unshaken
And breath'st before me in thy new adorning,
Beginst to wrap me round with gladness thrilling,
A vigorous resolve in me forewarning,
Unceasing strife for life supreme instilling.—
Now lies the world revealed in twilight glimmer,
The wood resounds, a thousand voices trilling;
The vales where mist flows in and out lie dimmer,
But in the gorges sinks a light from heaven,
And boughs and twigs, refreshed, lift up their shimmer
From fragrant chasms where they slept at even;
Tint upon tint again emerges, clearing
Where trembling pearls from flower and leaf drip riven:
All round me is a Paradise appearing.

Look up!—The peaks, gigantic and supernal,
Proclaim the hour most solemn now is nearing.
They early may enjoy the light eternal
That later to us here below is wended.
Now on the alpine meadows, sloping, vernal,
A clear and lavish glory has descended
And step by step fulfils its journey's ending.
The sun steps forth!—Alas, already blinded,
I turn away, the pain my vision rending.

Thus is it ever when a hope long yearning
Has made a wish its own, supreme, transcending,
And finds Fulfilment's portals outward turning;
From those eternal deeps bursts ever higher
Too great a flame, we stand, with wonder burning.
To kindle life's fair torch we did aspire
And seas of flame—and what a flame!—embrace us!
Is it Love? Is it Hate? that twine us with their fire,
In alternating joy and pain enlace us,
So that again toward earth we turn our gazing,
Baffled, to hide in youth's fond veils our faces.

Behind me therefore let the sun be blazing!
The cataract in gorges deeply riven
I view with rapture growing and amazing.
To plunge on plunge in a thousand streams it's given,
And yet a thousand, downward to the valleys,
While foam and mist high in the air are driven.
Yet how superb above this tumult sallies
The many-colored rainbow's changeful being;
Now lost in air, now clearly drawn, it dailies,
Shedding sweet coolness round us even when fleeing!
The rainbow mirrors human aims and action.
Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing
Life is but light in many-hued reflection.¹

Goethe lets his representative of mankind speak these mighty words in the presence of the radiant, rising morning sun. But it is not this sun, awakening anew every morning, with which we have to deal in the festival we will speak about today. This sun is a being of much profounder depths, and the nature of it shall be the leitmotif of our present considerations.

We shall now hear the words that reflect the deepest meaning of the Christmas Mystery. These words have been heard by the pupils of the Mysteries of all ages before they entered the Mysteries themselves:

Behold the Sun
At midnight hour,
And build with stones
In lifeless clay.
So find in world decline
And in the night of death
Creation's new beginning
And morning's youthful strength.
Let heights above reveal
The Gods' eternal word,
May depths preserve and seal
The peaceful treasure-hoard.
In darkness living
O now create a Sun!
In substance weaving
O know the Bliss of Spirit.²

Die Sonne schaue
um mitternächtige Stunde.
Mit Steinen baue
im leblosen Grunde.
So finde im Niedergang
und in des Todes Nacht
der Schöpfung neuen Anfang,
des Morgens junge Macht.
Die Höhen lass offenbaren
der Götter ewiges Wort;
die Tiefen sollen bewahren
den friedensvollen Hort.
Im Dunkel lebend
erschaffe eine Sonne.
Im Stoffe webend
erkenne Geistes Wonne.³

Many people who today merely know the Christmas tree with its candles believe that to have a tree symbolizing Christmas is a traditional custom dating from ancient times. This, however, is not the case. On the contrary, the custom of decorating a tree at Christmas is most recent and does not date back more than a few centuries. The custom of decorating a Christmas tree is a recent phenomenon, but the celebration of Christmas is old. The festival at Christmas time was known in the most ancient Mysteries of all religions everywhere, and has always been celebrated. It is not merely an outer sun festival, but one that leads man to a divination of the sources of existence. It was celebrated annually by the highest initiates in the Mysteries at the time of year when the sun's force was weakest and bestowed least warmth upon the earth. It was also celebrated by those who were unable to participate in the entire celebration, but were permitted to experience only the outer pictorial expression of the highest Mysteries. This imagery has been preserved throughout the ages and has assumed forms in accordance with the various religious confessions. The celebration of Christmas is the festival of the Sacred Night, which, in the great Mysteries, was celebrated by those personalities who were ready to bring about the resurrection of the higher self within their inmost being. Today we would say, "Within their inmost being they gave birth to the Christ."

Only those who know nothing of the fact that, besides the chemical and physical forces, spiritual forces are active, and that, just as the chemical and physical forces have definite times in the cosmos for their action, so likewise have the spiritual forces—only such people can remain indifferent when the awakening of the Higher Self occurs. In the great Mysteries man was permitted to behold the active forces in colored radiance, in brilliant light. He was permitted to perceive the world around him filled with spiritual qualities, with spiritual beings, to behold the world of the spirit around him in which he underwent the greatest experience possible.

This moment will arrive at some time for everyone. All men will ultimately experience it, even though perhaps only after many incarnations. The moment will arrive for everyone when the Christ will rise within them and new seeing, new hearing will awaken within them.

Those who were prepared for the awakening, as were pupils of the Mysteries, were first taught what the awakening signifies in the great universe; only then was the rite of awakening performed. It took place at the time when darkness on earth is greatest, when the outer sun has reached its lowest point at Christmas time, because those who are acquainted with spiritual facts know that at that time of year, forces stream through cosmic space that are favorable to such an awakening. In his preparation, the pupil was told that the one who really wished to know should not merely know what has taken place during thousands and thousands of years on earth, but he must learn to survey the entire course of human evolution, realizing that the great festivals have their place within this, and that they must be dedicated to the contemplation of the great eternal truths. The pupils directed their thoughts toward the time when the earth had not yet become what it is today. Sun and moon did not yet exist but were both united with the earth, and the earth, sun and moon still formed one body. Man already existed at that time but he had no body; he was a spiritual being upon whom no external sunlight shone. The sunlight was within the earth itself. Its nature differed from the present sunlight, which shines upon beings and things from without. It had the quality of being able to radiate within itself and, at the same time, to radiate within the inner nature of every earthly being. Then the moment arrived when the sun separated from the earth and its light fell upon the earth from without. The sun had withdrawn from the earth and the inner being of man had become dark. This was the beginning of his evolution toward that future time when he is to find the inner light again radiating in his inner nature. Man must learn to know the things of earth by means of his outer nature. He will evolve to the time when in his inner nature the higher man, the spirit man, will glow and radiate again. From light, through darkness, to light—such is the course of the evolution of mankind.

The pupils were prepared by these teachings, which were constantly impressed upon them. Then they were led to their awakening. The moment arrived when, as chosen ones, they experienced by means of their awakened spirit organs, the spiritual light within them. This holy moment came when the outer light was weakest, on the day when the outer sun shines least. On that day the pupils were gathered together, and the inner light revealed itself to them.

Those who were still unable to participate in this celebration were able to experience at least an outer likeness of it from which they learned that for them, too, the great moment would come. "Today," they were told, "you behold only an image; later you will experience what you now see as a likeness." These were the lesser Mysteries. They showed in pictures what the neophyte was to experience later. We shall hear today of what took place in the lesser Mysteries on Christmas eve. It was the same everywhere -in the Egyptian Mysteries, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Mysteries of the Near East, the Babylonian-Chaldaic Mysteries, as well as in the Mysteries of the Persian Mithras cult and the Indian Mysteries of Brahman. Everywhere the pupils of these Mystery Schools had the same experience at the midnight hour on the Night of Consecration.

The pupils gathered in the early evening. In quiet contemplation they had to make clear to themselves what this most important event signified. In deep silence they sat together in the darkness. By the time midnight drew near, they had been sitting in the dark room for hours. Thoughts of eternity pervaded their souls. Then, toward midnight, mysterious tones arose, resounding through the room, up welling and diminishing. The pupils who heard these tones knew that this was the music of the spheres. Then the room became dimly lit, the only light emanating from a dimly lighted disc. Those who saw this knew that this disc represented the earth. The illumined disc became darker and darker, until finally it was quite black. Simultaneously the surrounding space grew brighter. Those who saw this knew that the black sphere represented the earth. The sun, however, which ordinarily irradiates the earth was concealed; the earth could no longer see the sun. Then around the earth-disc, at the outer edge, rainbow colors formed, ring upon ring. Those who saw it knew that this was the radiant Iris. At midnight a violet-reddish circle gradually arose in place of the black earth sphere. On it a Word was written. This Word varied according to the peoples whose members were permitted to experience this Mystery. In our language the Word would be Christos. Those who saw it knew that this was the sun, which appeared to them at the midnight hour, when the world around rests in deepest darkness. The pupils were now told that what they had experienced was called, "Seeing the sun at the midnight hour."

Whoever is really initiated learns to experience the sun at the midnight hour, for in him all matter is obliterated. The sun of the spirit alone lives in his inner self and radiates over all the darkness of matter. This is the moment of highest bliss in the evolution of man, when he has the experience that he lives in the eternal light freed from darkness. Year after year, at midnight on the Night of Consecration, this moment was thus represented in the Mysteries. This image represented the fact that alongside the physical sun there is a Spiritual Sun, which, like the physical sun, is born out of darkness. In order to make this clearer to the pupils, after they had experienced the rising of the Sun, of the Christos, they were led into a cave in which there was seemingly nothing but stone—dead, lifeless matter. There they beheld stalks of grain arise from the stones as a sign of life, as a symbolical indication of the fact that from apparent death life springs forth, that from dead stone, life is born. They were told that just as the sun force, after it had seemingly died, waxes anew from this day on, so does new life forever arise out of dying life.

The same event is indicated in the Gospel of St. John in the words, "He must increase, but I must decrease." John, the herald of the coming Christ, of the Spiritual Light, whose festival day falls in the course of the year in mid-summer—John must decrease, and simultaneously with his decrease the force of the coming light waxes, increasing in strength as John decreases. In like manner the new, the coming life prepares itself in the seed that must wither and decay in order that the new plant may spring forth from it. The pupils of the Mysteries were to experience that in death life resides, that out of decaying matter the new, glorious blossoms and fruits of spring arise, that the earth teems with the forces of birth. They were to learn that at this time something happens in the inner being of the earth—the overcoming of death by life that is present in death. This was shown them in the conquering light. This they felt and experienced when they saw the light arise and shine in the darkness. They beheld in the stone cave the sprouting life arising in splendor and abundance out of the seemingly dead.

Thus, faith in life was fostered in the pupils. Thus were they led to arouse in themselves what may be called faith in man's greatest ideal. Thus they learned to look up to the highest ideal of mankind, to the time when the earth will have completed its evolution and the Light will shine forth in all mankind. The earth will then crumble to dust but the spiritual essence will remain with all men who have become radiant in their innermost nature through the spiritual Light. Earth and humanity will then awaken to a higher existence, to a new phase of existence.

When Christianity arose in the course of evolution, it bore this ideal within it in the highest sense. Man felt that within Christianity the Christos was to appear as the great Ideal of all men, that He had been born on the Night of Consecration about the time of deepest darkness as a sign that out of the darkness of matter a higher man can be born in the human soul.

In the ancient Mysteries, before men spoke of a Christos, they spoke of a Sun Hero who embodied the same ideal as is connected with the Christos in Christianity. The bearer of this ideal was called the Sun Hero. Just as the sun completes its orbit in the course of the year bringing about an increase and decrease in light, and its warmth apparently withdraws from the earth and then again radiates anew, just as it contains life in its death and lets it stream forth anew, so like wise does the Sun Hero, through the power of his spiritual life, become master over death and night and darkness.

In the Mysteries there were seven degrees of initiation. First the degree of the "Ravens," who were able to approach only as far as the portal of the temple of initiation. They became the intermediaries between the external world of material life and the inner world of spiritual life, and no longer belonged to the material nor yet to the spiritual world. These Ravens are to be found everywhere. They are always the messengers who pass to and fro between the two worlds and transmit messages. They are to be found in the Germanic sagas and myths also. The Ravens of Wotan, the Ravens who fly around the mountain of Kyffhäuser.

In the second degree the disciple was led away from the portal into the interior of the temple of initiation. There he matured until he reached the third degree, the degree of the "Warrior," who stepped before the world to proclaim the occult truths that he was permitted to experience in the interior of the temple.

The fourth degree, that of the "Lion," was attained by one whose consciousness was not merely that of an individual human being, but encompassed an entire tribe. Thus the Christ was called "the Lion of the Tribe of David." A man whose consciousness encompassed a whole nation had attained the fifth degree. He no longer had a name of his own but was designated by the name of his nation. Thus, people spoke of the "Persian," or the "Israelite." Now we can understand how it was that Nathanael, for instance, was called a "true Israelite." It was because he had reached the fifth degree of initiation.

The sixth degree was that of the "Sun Hero," and we must understand what this name signifies. We shall then realize what awe and reverence passed through the soul of the pupil of the Mysteries who knew something of a Sun Hero, and who experienced at Christmas the Birth Festival of a Sun Hero.

Everything in the cosmos takes its rhythmic course. The stars as well as the sun follow a great rhythm. Were the sun to change this rhythm but for a moment, were it to leave its orbit only for a moment, a revolution would result in the entire universe of quite unheard-of significance. Rhythm rules all nature, right up to man. Only with man does the situation change. The rhythm that rules until death throughout the course of the seasons in the forces of growth, propagation, etc., ceases with man. He is to stand in freedom, and the more highly civilized he is, the more does this rhythm decrease. Just as the light disappears at Christmas, so apparently has rhythm disappeared from the life of man and chaos prevails. Man, however, gives birth to this rhythm out of his own initiative out of his own inner nature. He must so fashion his life out of his will that it takes its course within rhythmical boundaries, steadfast and sure, like the course of the sun. Just as a change in the course of the sun is unthinkable, even so is it unthinkable that the rhythm of such a life be interrupted. The embodiment of such a life rhythm was to be found in the Sun Hero. Through the strength of the higher man born in him, he gained the power to rule the rhythm of the course of his life. This Sun Hero, this higher man, was born in the Night of Consecration.

Christ Jesus was also a Sun Hero and was conceived as such in the first centuries of Christianity. His birth festival was, therefore, placed at the time of year when, since primeval days, the birthday of the Sun Hero has been celebrated. This is also the reason for all that was linked with the life story of Christ Jesus. The Midnight Mass, which the first Christians celebrated in caves, was in memory of the Sun Festival. In this Mass an ocean of light streamed forth at midnight out of the darkness as a memory of the rising sun in the Mysteries. Christ was thus born in a cave in remembrance of the cave of rock out of which, symbolized in the growing stalks of grain, life was born. Earthly life was born out of the dead stone. So, too, out of the lowly, the Highest, Christ Jesus, was born!

The legend of the three priest-sages, the three kings, was linked with the Christ Birth Festival. They brought to the Child gold, the symbol of the wisdom-filled outer man; myrrh, the symbol of life's victory over death, and finally, frankincense, the symbol of the cosmic ether in which the spirit lives.

Thus, in the meaning of the Christmas Festival, we feel something echoing to us from the most ancient ages of mankind, and it has come down to us in the special coloring of Christianity. In its symbols we find images for the most ancient symbols of mankind. The Christmas tree with its candles is one of them. For us, it is a symbol of the Tree of Paradise, which represents all of material nature. Spiritual nature is represented by the tree in Paradise that encompassed all Knowledge, and by the Tree of Life. There is a narrative that imparts clearly the significance of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Seth stood at the Gates of Paradise and begged to be allowed to enter. The Archangel guarding the portal let him pass. This is a sign for initiation.

Seth, now in Paradise, found the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge closely intertwined. The Archangel Michael, who stands in the presence of God, let him take three seeds from these intertwining trees, which, standing there as a single tree, pointed prophetically to the future of mankind. Then the whole of humanity shall have been initiated and shall have found knowledge. Only the Tree of Life will still exist and death will be no more. For the time being, however, only the initiate may take the three seeds from this Tree, the three seeds that signify the three higher members of man.

When Adam died, Seth placed these three seeds in Adam's mouth, and from them grew a flaming bush. From the wood cut from this bush, new shoots and green leaves continually burst forth. Within the flaming circle of the bush, however, was written, "I am He Who was, Who is, Who is to be." This points to the entity that passes through all incarnations, the force of evolving man repeatedly renewing himself, who descends from light into darkness and ascends from darkness into light.

The rod with which Moses performed his miracles was carved from the wood of the flaming bush. The portal of Solomon's Temple was fashioned from it. This wood was carried to the waters of the pool of Bethesda, and from it the pool derived its power.

From the same wood the Cross of Christ Jesus was fashioned, the wood of the Cross that shows us life passing into death, but which at the same time bears the power in itself to bring forth new life. The great world symbol stands before us here—life, which overcomes death. The wood of this Cross grew out of the three seeds from the Tree of Paradise.

The Rose Cross also expresses this symbol of the death of the lower nature and, springing from it, the resurrection of the higher. Goethe expressed the same thought in the words:

As long as you have not
Died and been reborn,
You are but a gloomy guest
Upon the darkened earth.

What a wondrous connection there is between the Tree of Paradise and the wood of the Cross! Even though the Cross is a symbol of Easter, it also deepens our Christmas mood. We feel in it how the Christ Idea streams toward us in new welling life on this night of Christ's Nativity. This idea is indicated in the living roses that adorn this tree.⁴ They tell us that the tree of the Sacred Night has not yet become the wood of the Cross, but the power to become this wood begins to arise in it. The roses that grow from the green symbolize the Eternal that grows from the Temporal.

The square is the symbol of the fourfold nature of man: physical body, ether body, astral body and ego.

The triangle is the symbol of the higher man: Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man.

Above the triangle is the symbol of the Tarok. Initiates of the Egyptian Mysteries knew how to read this sign. They also knew how to read the Book of Thoth, which consisted of seventy-eight cards on which were recorded all world events from beginning to end, from Alpha to Omega, and which could be read if they were joined and assembled in the right way. The Book of Thoth, or Hermes, contained in pictures the life that fades in death and again sprouts forth anew into life.

Whoever could combine the right numbers with the right pictures was able to read it. This wisdom of numbers and pictures has been taught since primeval ages. In the Middle Ages it still played an important role, but today there is little left of it.

Above the Alpha and Omega is the sign of Tao. It reminds us of the worship of God by our primeval ancestors because this worship took its origin from the work Tao. Before Europe, Asia and Africa were lands of human culture, our ancestors lived on Atlantis, which was submerged by a flood. In the Germanic sagas of Niflheim, the land of the mists, the memory of Atlantis still lives. For Atlantis was not surrounded by pure air. Its atmosphere was filled with enormous masses of mist similar to the clouds and mists in high mountains. The sun and moon were not seen clearly in the sky, but were surrounded by a rainbow, and sacred Iris. At that time man still understood the language of nature. What speaks to him today in the lapping and surging of the waves, in the whistling and rushing of the wind, in the rustling of the leaves, in the rumbling of thunder, is no longer understood by him, but at that time he could understand it. He felt something that spoke to him from everything about him. From the clouds and waters and leaves and winds the sound rang forth: Tao (the I am). Atlanteans heard it and understood it, and knew that Tao streamed through the whole world.

Finally, all that permeates the cosmos is present in man and is symbolized in the pentagram at the top of the tree. The deepest meaning of the pentagram may not now be mentioned, but it is the star of mankind, of mankind developing itself. It is the star that all wise men follow as did the priest-sages in ancient ages.

It symbolizes the earth that is born on the Night of Consecration, because the most sublime light radiates from the deepest darkness. Man lives on toward a state when the light shall be born in him, when one significant saying shall be replaced by another, when it will no longer be said, “The Darkness does not comprehend the Light” but when the truth will resound into cosmic space with the words, “Darkness gives way to the Light that radiates toward us in the Star of Mankind, Darkness yields and comprehends the Light.”

This shall resound from the Christmas celebration, and the spiritual light shall radiate from it. Let us celebrate Christmas as the festival of the most lofty ideal of the Idea of Mankind, so that in our souls may rise the joyful confidence: Indeed, I, too, shall experience the birth of the higher man within myself. The birth of the Savior, the Christos, will take place in me also.

• 1. From Goethe's Faust, translated by George Madison Priest; copyright by, and reprinted here with permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
• 2. Translated by Henry B. Monges.
• 3. By Rudolf Steiner.
• 4. This lecture was delivered beside a lighted Christmas tree adorned with the signs depicted here, as well as with thirty-three wax candles and fresh red roses.

Only those who view mythologies superficially can overlook the profound wisdom that is expressed in them, and only they can fail to recognize that something much deeper is hidden there than mere poetic fantasy, popular fantasy. Real spiritual research knows that there have always been select personalities who stood higher than other people. Such superior personalities were, for example, Buddha, Pythagoras, Moses and the greatest initiate, Christ Jesus. These are individuals who are far ahead of other people; it is such individuals who know the higher worlds from their own experience, who have knowledge of what lies hidden behind the physical world. They know the spiritual world themselves. They have brought a part of the truth to the nations to which they came. The wisdom is the same at all times. But it must be brought differently to different peoples at different times. That which is true is preserved by the great leaders, the initiates of humanity, and they clothe it in those concepts that any people can understand at a particular time. The various religions are the one truth, adapted to different peoples according to their aptitude and their character.

The collective wisdom, which we also call the secret doctrine, expresses itself in the most diverse religious beliefs. To understand why one people have these ideas and another people have different ideas, we must get to know the nature of the people. We must examine the nature of the ancient Germans and the Indian peoples.

First, we will give a brief sketch of the secret doctrine, which is preserved by the initiated leaders of humanity. The basic tenet of the common secret doctrine of all these different peoples is that man is a dual being, that he consists of a spiritual-soul part and a physical-corporeal part, and that the spiritual-soul part is called upon to uplift, ennoble, purify and bless the physical-corporeal part. Schiller speaks of the purification of the lower parts of man in the letters on the aesthetic education of the human race. There he speaks of how the whole development of man consists in purifying and refining the lower nature. The whole development of man consists in his ascending to ever higher and higher levels in this purification. This view connects the Secret Doctrine with a very specific idea about the relationship between man and the world. All mysticism calls man the microcosm in comparison to the macrocosm, to the great world. If you now go through the natural kingdoms and then examine the powers, abilities and qualities of man, it turns out that man is a confluence of all the powers that are out there in the world. Paracelsus said: “When you look out into nature, you see the letters everywhere, and man is the word that is composed of these letters.” Schiller wrote to Goethe about his conception of man: “I see how you take all of nature to explain man. You look for the parts everywhere to explain man from the totality of appearances.” All the essences of the individual forces of nature have merged in the essence of man; this is how the Secret Doctrine presents man.

Man's foundation is also an image of that cosmos. The battle between the lower and higher nature in man is an image of the great cosmos. Man is a battleground of the spiritual against the physical. This is also the case in nature. But man is still in the middle of the battle. He looks back to a time when he was still in the midst of the battle and to a future when he will have overcome the struggle. The spiritual, the physically invisible forces, are fighting against the physically visible world. This struggle is presented in various ways to the most diverse peoples in the Secret Doctrine. The story of the battle of spiritual forces of nature can be found among all peoples. Out in the world, the battle has already been decided. There the lower nature kingdoms have been left behind. When man in the future has cast off his lower nature, he will have achieved what the gods have already achieved. The nature kingdoms are the traces left behind by the gods. Man looks up to the divine beings, who give a picture of what man will one day be. The gods are the elder brothers of man. Man is on the way to becoming a god. Outside in the world, man also sees the conquest of the lower nature by a higher one. This is expressed in the old legends and myths in some images common to them. In ancient India we find the god Dhyans, in new India the god Indra. He conquers the serpent. In Germanic mythology we find the god Dhin or Dhinz. It is said that he overcame a dragon in ancient times. The gods Wotan, Wille and Weh overcame the giant Ymir and formed the microcosm out of him. The old gods Wotan, Wille and Weh emerged from what remained in nature. Another concept of the Secret Doctrine is that man is the younger brother of the gods and that he who is an initiate comes closer to the gods. He has passed through certain stages to become divine. The various mythologies have regarded nature as the traces left behind by the gods. This secret doctrine found different expressions depending on the different dispositions of the peoples. The Germanic peoples had a very special expression for it.

To understand how the ancient Germans arrived at their ideas, one must delve deeper into their way of thinking. The ancient Germans did not simply make up their sagas as scholars have believed. German scholarship could have provided a good basis for a correct understanding. There is a work that presents a thorough study of legends: Das Rätsel der Sphinx (The Riddle of the Sphinx) by Ludwig Laistner. He used to take the same view as the old German scholars of legends that people have symbolized natural phenomena. In his work, Die Rätsel der Sphinx, he has succeeded in getting to the bottom of the legends that still live in the people today. There is a widespread legend, the legend of the Noon-Day Woman. If a farmer stays out in the fields instead of going home at noon, the Noon-Day Woman appears and asks him three questions. Those who cannot answer these questions will be killed by the Noon-Day Woman. In some areas, it is said that you can only ward her off by reciting the Lord's Prayer. Ludwig Laistner has shown that this legend is nothing more than a reflection of what a person actually encounters when they stay out in the fields at midday. They fall asleep and enter a state in which they perceive their surroundings as the symbol of the witch of noon.

Dreams are symbolic. The ticking of the clock next to our bed is perhaps symbolized as the clatter of horses. Dreams are symbolic, even when they are about external sensory events. That is the peculiarity of dream experiences: they are symbolic.

Everything in the world has developed, including consciousness. The present day consciousness has developed from a kind of somnambulistic consciousness. Everything has gradually come into being. Thus, from a certain clairvoyant consciousness, today's consciousness has emerged. Some organs that used to serve a purpose are now only present as rudiments. The dream is also a rudimentary state. It is the last remnant of an earlier so-called astral consciousness. In the clairvoyant, out of the dream consciousness, the clairvoyant consciousness is developed. He attains a consciousness that is not only the physical consciousness, but also a spiritual consciousness. The somnambulists seek to tune down the ordinary physical consciousness in order to induce the so-called trance consciousness. With the advent of the day consciousness, people have lost the astral trance consciousness. In the past, people needed a somnambulistic, clairvoyant consciousness. In the future, the earlier clairvoyant consciousness will return and will be developed alongside the daytime consciousness. People who have less developed intellect often still have traces of the old clairvoyant consciousness. It is not uncommon for people in the countryside to have a clairvoyant consciousness.

If we go back in time, we would find people who use their senses very little but still have the old Atlantean clairvoyant consciousness. They knew that the gods are nothing more than creations of the old astral consciousness. The soul of the people has retained remnants of the astral consciousness. Germanic mythology is an expression of spiritual experiences. Our ancestors still had spiritual consciousness. The ancient Germans preserved their astral experiences in their mythology. The ancient German saw the gods fighting with the lower forces of nature in the astral world. The whole of Germanic mythology comprises tales of experiences within the astral world. The sagas describe how ancient clairvoyant humanity moved downwards. Baldur once dreamt that he would soon die. All creatures swore an oath not to harm him. But Loki used mistletoe, which had been forgotten, to make Hödur, the blind Hödur, kill Baldur. Humanity, which has become blind to the spiritual world, is Hödur. His ancestor with the old somnambulistic consciousness is Baldur. Only that which belongs to him can kill him: mistletoe, which dates back to an earlier epoch of development. At that time there was a mineral kingdom on earth that was half plant-like; plants grew in it as if in a living being. Mistletoe is a remnant of that plant kingdom that can only grow on another living plant.

The ancient Germans realized that the spiritual world is also a world of light, but that humans cannot perceive it. Baldur is a man of light from this spiritual world. He can perceive the astral world. Hödur, however, is the new man who does not see the astral world. Germanic mythology also expresses that man is a younger brother of the gods. In Germanic mythology, we are told how Wotan hung on the gallows of the cross for nine days and nine nights and that Mimir gave him a drink. This is reminiscent of Christ Jesus. Here, too, the crucifixion is presented as a symbol. Wotan is portrayed here as an initiate. It is then said that Wotan crawls through the crevices of the earth as a snake and that he reaches Gunnlöd, the Valkyrie. He stays there for three days and three nights. She hands him the potion of wisdom. The initiate remained in the cave in lethargy for three days and three nights. There he was to unite with his higher soul. The higher consciousness of man has always been represented as something feminine. The feminine is the higher consciousness that man attains when he enters the realms of the spiritual world.

The story of Wotan is adapted to the abilities of the human race at that time, which is told by all initiates. Gunnlöd is the Valkyrie. She is the higher consciousness. This is also referred to as the Valkyrie in other Germanic legends. Siegfried also reaches the Valkyrie when he attains his higher consciousness. — This portrayal of the Valkyrie Gunnlöd takes us deep into Germanic mythology. The Germanic peoples were a warlike people who placed the greatest value on bravery. A warrior who fell on the battlefield was led to Valhalla by the Valkyrie. Those who fell on the battlefield reached their higher soul part. This came to meet him as the Valkyrie. The human being who passed through the gate of death had to unite with the Valkyrie. That is why Wotan stayed with Gunnlöd. In Germanic mythology, every initiate was thought of as being connected to the Valkyrie.

Siegfried is said to have worn the magic hood of invisibility. The initiate is hidden in a certain way. People do not recognize the initiate. The hood of invisibility hides him from people. Siegfried is an initiate; he unites with the Valkyrie Brunhild. He becomes invulnerable like all initiates. He remains vulnerable only where he carries the cross, between the shoulder blades. A greater initiate is promised, who will also be invulnerable there. Because the ancient Germans had retained their astral beliefs for a long time, the secret teachers were able to give them the teachings in the astral consciousness.

Almost all Asian peoples are descended from the ancient Atlanteans. Their ancestors came from Atlantis. The ancestors of the ancient Germans had also come from Atlantis. They had remained in Europe, while another part had continued to migrate as far as Asia. Those who had advanced further had first developed sensory consciousness and intellectual consciousness. They were already living with advanced spiritual ideas. Hence the urge arose in India to take an artificial path to penetrate into the other worlds. For this, the Indian needed an artificial path. This is what is called yoga, a certain training that leads from the sensual world to the spiritual world. A yogi is a person who seeks to find his way back to the spiritual world. In India, the intellect found expressions for the artificial clairvoyance that was developed through the practice of yoga. The ancient Germans also had astral vision. In India, on the one hand, artificial clairvoyance developed, and on the other hand, intellectual philosophy. Those who no longer have astral vision need external symbols and rituals, as found in Indian symbolism. These are sensual expressions for the spiritual worlds. In India, what had now developed in its most glorious form was also in Christianity. Germania had also been pointed to Christianity. In Siegfried, one saw an initiate who was invulnerable except for the one spot. Kriemhild pinned the cross to that spot. This is a picture that prophetically points to the future of Germania. Here is the place where the cross will lie, making it invulnerable. Thus the old saga points here to Christianity, which made this place invulnerable.

Because the Germanic world felt so close to what came over through Christianity, that is why Christianity found such an entrance there. Within Europe, there was no need for Indian philosophy. We could do without it altogether. What is gained from the correct immersion in the Germanic sagas of the gods must appear even more profoundly.

These concepts will come to life again when that which is still alive, albeit veiled, in the soul of the people is awakened to life. This treasure will be unearthed; then we will understand in a unique way what our European ancestors have to say to their descendants.

Theosophy is intended to create a brotherhood across all of humanity, causing people to carry into the future what they understand from the past.