The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is to be taken into account that the notes are in part very deficient and may not be regarded as being verbatim reports.

The Allegory of the Lost Word and its Quest in connection with the Whitsuntide Festival

Among the allegories and symbols we wished to discuss in these lectures, there is also the symbol of the so-called Lost Word, which is to be found again. We have spoken about the Temple which was lost and is to be restored; we can all the more appropriately add to that a brief account of the Lost Word and its quest, since this theme has some connection with the symbolic meaning of the Whitsuntide Festival. I did speak about some of the things to be mentioned today, a year ago.¹ But there are some amongst us who may not have heard last year's lecture; so it may not be superfluous to refer to these things again. Moreover, we are in a position to consider such matters annually, and treat them fundamentally and exhaustively; we have added somewhat to our knowledge, so that several things can now perhaps be discussed which could not yet be mentioned last year.

Pentecost is connected with just that symbol which is known both in the Church and in Freemasonry as the symbol of the Lost Word which is to be found again. But with it we touch on Christian mysteries of a real and extraordinary profundity. With it we touch again—and more thoroughly than could be the case last week—upon the purpose and mission of Solomon the Wise, and upon the whole future meaning of Christian truths.

Pentecost is connected with that perception of man's inmost being which was present in early Christianity, but which has been gradually lost in Christianity as it has survived in the various western Churches. Pentecost is the festival which should freshly remind man of his liberation, every year—of what we call the freedom of the human soul.

How has man really come to what we call his freedom—that is to say, to his ability to distinguish between good and evil, and in freedom to do either good or evil? You know that man has passed through a long sequence of evolution before arriving at the stage where he stands today, and that we have passed the mid-point of this evolution. The midpoint of the whole of human evolution lies roughly in the middle of the Atlantean epoch, which preceded our own epoch. Now we have already gone past this mid-point. Because of that we are the first missionaries of the second half [of evolution], the first apostles of an ascending arc: whereas man was in a descending arc until the time of Atlantis, was involved in a kind of descending evolution until he had submerged himself in the uttermost depths of material life. Now he is climbing back again towards spiritual development.

What we human beings did not possess before the midpoint of our earth evolution was freedom of choice between good and evil. Now we cannot talk about good and evil in the subordinate kingdoms of nature. It would be ridiculous to discuss whether a mineral wanted to crystallise or not; it crystallises if the appropriate conditions are present. It would be equally ridiculous to ask whether the lily wants to blossom or not; or to ask the lion to abstain voluntarily from killing and devouring other animals. Only with man, only in our phase of evolution, do we speak about what we call freedom of choice. Only to human beings do we ascribe the capacity to distinguish between good and evil. How man got this capacity is described in the Bible, in the great symbol of the Fall, in the scene of the temptation, where the Devil or Lucifer appears to Eve and persuades her to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Through that, man obtained free will; with it he began the second part of his evolutionary path. We can no more inquire into freedom, good and evil for man prior to that evolutionary mid-point, than we can for minerals, plants and animals. Something else is connected with that.

In all esoteric [teaching] our contemporary world and everything connected with it signifies the Cosmos of Love. And the Cosmos or Universe of Wisdom preceded this Universe of Love. We want to look at this in a rather deeper meaning.

You know that our earth evolution was cosmologically preceded by the Moon evolution.² A still more distant precursor of our earth was the Sun; earlier still was Saturn. Man has passed through these three evolutionary stages: Saturn, Sun and Moon. Our earth has passed through three cycles already, in which the Saturn development was repeated in the first Round, the Sun development in the second Round, and the Moon development in the third Round. Each of these Rounds commences thus: the planet forms itself as an exceptionally fine substance, as mind-substance. The earth was present as such a substance when it began its fourth Round, that is, the contemporary Cycle. Then it began to reiterate the three previous Rounds: the Saturn Cycle in Arupa, the Sun Cycle in Rupa and the Moon Cycle or Round in the astral. [See diagram at the end of the notes for lecture 10.]

Thus our earth passed once more through earlier material conditions before arriving at its present physical density. Before our present condition, it was astral. We denote the astral Globe as a kind of Cosmos of Wisdom. Each Cosmos or Globe is again divided into seven epochs. Thus we have seven Race-cycles [or Great Epochs] in our present Globe: the Polarian, the Hyperborean, the Lemurian, the Atlantean and now the Aryan Race [or Epoch] in which we live. The sixth and seventh Races are still to come. After that the earth will return to the astral condition. These Race-cycles constitute seven successive periods of our physical evolution on earth. The astral predecessor presents itself to us in like manner, in seven consecutive Periods, corresponding to seven Races. However, it is not quite correct to speak of Races here; the forms which then lived cannot properly be called Races. It stretches the analogy too far, to keep speaking of Races. There were other forms that manifested themselves. In esoteric language these previous astral periods are called the Kingdom of Wisdom, and their forms are called the seven Periods of Wisdom, in which the seven Kings of Wisdom, the seven Kings of the Dynasty of Solomon, were ruling. For in each of these periods lived a being of similar kind to the soul of Solomon, to the soul which incarnated in Solomon. This Cosmos of Wisdom was superseded by the earthly Cosmos proper, the Cosmos of Love.

Now let us be clear about what took place during, the formation of the earth, from our standpoint. As the earth began to form itself, it was still united with the sun and with that which we now call the moon. Together with these two bodies the earth formed a single whole. First of all the sun separated itself from the earth. The whole of earth life thereby became different. At this point death made its entry, somewhat in the form in which we know it in the cell-bearing plants; whereas before there could be no question of death, because there was continuous material life. So long as the plant consists of a single Cell, no decay sets in when the next cell is born. It is different when a whole organism is built up [out of many cells]; this [organism] decays into its parts, and the individual part is no longer the whole living [process]. This kind of death came in for the first time when the sun separated from the earth. The schism between the sexes began in the middle of the Lemurian Race, as a result of the splitting-off of the moon. The separation of the moon brought about the partition of the [being that is both] male and female into [beings that are either] only male or only female. Thus humanity took the shape that it now has in the world.

What then happened during these weighty cosmic events as first the sun and then the moon separated from the earth? If we want to become clear about that, it would be well to point out that at that time the earth was changing from a very thin but already physical matter into something continually getting thicker. The first physical substance was etheric substance, which was present in all human beings on earth, and which was a very fine substance, finer than our gas.

At present we distinguish three forms of matter on our earth—solid, liquid and gaseous bodies, the latter formerly known as air. Moreover we esoterically distinguish four forms of ether: firstly fire [or warmth] ether which makes all bodies capable of being permeated by warmth; secondly, light ether; thirdly, chemical ether, in which atoms are made to mingle according to certain laws of number (the ‘elective affinity’ of atoms); and fourthly the physical or life ether; in all, four kinds of ether bringing life to the earth. Next, the earth, essentially speaking, developed itself in these four types of ether. Then it condensed itself-put of these ethers. This densification took place for the first time during the Lemurian epoch. Before that, one has to think of an etheric earth, which was accessible to quite different forces than is our present physical earth. I wanted to clarify this to you.

When I say that this etheric earth was accessible to quite different forces, then be clear that all living beings, whether plant, animal or man, were indeed accessible to these forces, in their inmost being. The ether is accessible to what is called in esoteric language the ‘Word,’ the ‘Cosmic Word.’ I can also make clear to you how the etheric relates to what we call the ‘Word,’ in a preparation for initiation. As you know, man consists of physical, etheric and astral bodies, and then of the ‘I’ proper. The etheric body becomes visible if one [can bring oneself out of] the physical body. But man as he is today can in no way act upon his physical body; he is unable to move the tiniest blood corpuscle. The physical body is controlled by high cosmic forces; it is higher beings who can exercise power here today—later on man will have this ability. When he is able to control the forces of his own physical body—which the materialist speaks of as nature forces—then man will have become a God. To ascribe these powers to him today would be idolatry, for in truth we have to do with high beings who can influence the physical body.

When man is able to control the substance of fire ether, he will be able to control all that is physical. When he is able to control the physical in man, then he will also be able to control the rest of what is physical as well. This force is designated the Father Force, or simply the ‘Father’—everything through which a being joins with our earth, everything by which that being can control physical matter. When a person can penetrate into the physical body with such Father Forces, that is called Atma; this is how Atma can be assigned to the physical.

The second member of [man's] being is the etheric body, which corresponds to the Son principle, or the Logos, the ‘Word.’ The etheric body can be moved and inwardly shaped by Buddhi, set in vibration by the Son principle, just as the physical [body can be] by Atma.

The third member is the astral body. This we cannot at first control; only very few people at present have any significant control over their astral bodies. We say a man is endowed with Manas, to the extent that man can control his astral body from within.

Man began to work on his astral body during the middle of Lemurian times. If you could have observed a man at the stage he had attained when the Lemurian Race began, that is, when he was bisexual, you would have found that his body was built from elsewhere; but in the middle of Lemurian times, man then began to work on his astral body himself. Everything which man weaves into himself out of his ego, which he does out of duty or by command, to overcome the unwrought appetites and passions, helps to refine the astral body; when it has become completely permeated by the work of man's own ego, then we can no longer call it astral body, it has become Manas. When the whole astral body has been transformed into Manas, man can then begin to work upon his etheric body to transform it into Buddhi. What he weaves in there is nothing else than the individualised Word; Christian esotericism calls this the ‘Son’ or ‘Logos,’ and calls the astral body, when it has become Manas, the ‘Holy Spirit,’ and the physical body that has become Atma, ‘Father.’

What happens here on a small scale within man happens also on a large scale in the world at large. These world secrets were carried out in the mysteries, in initiation; thereby something was done which for most human beings would ordy happen in a distant future. Already, in the Egyptian mysteries one could only be initiated if one hac worked one's way through one's entire astral body, so that the astral body could be completely managed by the ego. Now such a person would stand before the initiating priest: he had no influence on his physical body, nor yet on his etheric body; but his astral body was of his own making. Now it was indicated to him how he could act on his etheric body and on his physical body. The physical body was brought into a lethargic condition—it had to remain in this state for three nights an three days—and during this time the etheric body was raised out of it. And since the initiate had become powerful in respect of the astral body, he could therefore now gain the power to act on the etheric body. He could learn to let what he had in the astral work on the etheric body. Those were the three days of the Entombment and the Resurrection in an etheric body that was completely permeated by what one calls the Holy Spirit. Such an initiate was called a man endowed with the Logos, with the ‘Word’. This ‘Word’ is nothing else than the Wisdom, Manas, which has been worked into the astral body. This wisdom can never enter the etheric body unless the astral body has first been permeated by it.

It was just the same for the earth. Not until the whole earth had been brought this far into the astral, could such an event occur. The condition which the neophyte in the Egyptian mysteries had to be in, corresponds to this time of the Astral Globe which I have spoken of as the immediate precursor of our earth; that is the Globe of Wisdom. All wisdom was worked into it by the cosmic powers. And this transfer of wisdom into the Earth Globe itself made it possible that after the separation of sun and moon from the earth, something could again be incorporated from above, from higher spheres [into the earth] just as this happened on a small scale in the initiation.

Seven times the Astral Globe [stage] of earth [see the chart at the end of the notes to lecture 10] came under the rule of the Wise, after the manner of Solomon. Then the earth clothed itself with an etheric body, and earthly matter was crystallised or formed. The ‘Word’ was laid into that; this Word is thus, as it were, entombed in earthly matter, but it must be resurrected. This is also the beautiful meaning of the myth of the God Dionysus. The Holy Wisdom of our earth's precursor is laid into all the earth beings of our earthly world. Take this as deeply as you are able. Take the human etheric body as every human has it. If you look at it clairvoyantly it has nearly the same form as the physical body. At death man's physical body dissolves, and the etheric body too; the physical body dissolves in the physical world, and the etheric body in the general cosmic ether. But this etheric body has been very elaborately created for man by the wisdom which first implanted it from out of the Astral Globe. This etheric body disperses after death. Only that etheric body which has been built up from within is a living body, that stays eternally. This is the etheric body of the Chela [the candidate for initiation]—and that does not dissolve after death. If you see a modern civilised man die, you may see the etheric body for a while, but then it dissolves. With the Chela it remains. The renunciation of Devachan by the Chela consists in the fact that the Chela stays on the astral plane and there makes use of his etheric body. With ordinary human beings a new etheric body has to be formed at each rebirth; the ability to create a new one is attained in Devachan. The etheric body which the Chela has built up from within will never be lost again; whereas that which is made by cosmic wisdom from elsewhere indeed dissolves itself again. It is the same with the etheric bodies of plants and animals. What is now etheric body still, came to be built up out of cosmic forces which flowed into it out of the Astral Globe [state] of our earth. This wisdom which you find in the astral earth is expressed in the legend of Dionysus.

Now in the Lemurian epoch the denser [state] had to form itself. Then the Father principle had to be worked in. That is the last [principle] to take possession of our earthly matter. What has been worked in, in this way, is deeply hidden in the physical world. First the Holy Spirit worked itself into the astral material. Then the Spirit allied to the astral matter—that is the Son—worked itself into the etheric substance; and then came the Father, who controls physical density. Thus the macrocosm was built up in a threefold progression—Spirit, Son and Father; and man, as he progresses further upwards, goes from the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. All of this takes place under guidance in the evolution of the earth.

Up to Lemurian times the only evolution was outward. Then this Trinity was drawn into our physical evolution. In the Aryan epoch, what had taken place in an earlier epoch was introduced into man's thinking as religion, making a stage by stage recapitulation.

We are in the fifth Sub-Race of the Aryan Root-Race (the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch]. Four other Sub-Races have gone before. The first Sub-Race is that of ancient India. This venerable ancient race was led by the ancient Rishis. We can only form a hazy conception of them. We are acquainted with their religion from the accounts which have come down to us in the Vedas. The teaching of the Rishis was far greater and mightier than our present traditions about it. Only during the third Sub-Race were records made, that are preserved for us in the Vedas. The original religion of the Rishis had great traditions from the divine predecessors of men, the astral initiates of the Dynasty of Solomon. Living in the spirit of the ancient Indian Rishis were archetypal forms; the great intuitions derive intelligence and knowledge not only from the laws of earth, but also from the archetypal forms, who themselves created the said wisdoms. This was the first religion, that of the Holy Spirit.

The second religion was fostered in the Near East; in it the Second Principle [of the Trinity] was revered as a recapitulation of the first time that the Son made His influence felt on earth. The thrusting down of certain beings accompanied the [coming in of] the Son Principle; there is no higher development without other [development] being thrust down into the depths. The mineral, plant and animal kingdoms were thrust down in this way. Whoever develops himself upwards, takes upon himself a tremendous responsibility, that is the great tragedy; the corollary of every saint is that a great number of beings are thrust down. There would be no development if this kind of thrusting down did not take place. A man must continually thrust others down, as he develops himself upwards. That is why all development which takes place out of self-interest is evil and reprehensible; it is only justifiable if done for the development of other beings. Only he who would raise up those who have been thrust down is fit for development. Thus, the evolution which manifested itself on earth and which had already been prepared on other cosmic bodies, the evolution aiming at endowing the etheric body with the Logos, with the Word, has been accompanied by the thrusting down of other beings connected with the earth's development. These [beings] were conceived as adversaries, as Luciferic principle. Thus we have precisely this duality—the principle of Evil accompanying the principle of Good—in the Persian religion. It is good if a man or indeed any being works Manasically into himself; but he is always confronted by evil. Ormuzd and Ahriman are the names for Good and Evil in the Persian religion.

We encounter the third stage with the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Egyptians; through [all of] these a recapitulation of the third stage of the Godhead takes place. Thus, from that time onwards, with all peoples, we encounter-the Trinity, the Three-in-Oneness of the Godhead. The second Sub-Race had no Triune Godhead, still less the first. [But] now, in this three-foldness, the ascent is gradually prepared for the whole of humanity. The initiates tread the path in advance ... [Gap ]³

In the first three Sub-Races there was a mirroring in the religious [sphere] of what had been active in macrocosmic processes. Now a new structure is formed: first Wisdom, then Son, then Father. The first gleam of wisdom came during the fourth Sub-Race, through the Semitic people, who arose during the third Sub-Race and continued into the fourth. From them Christianity derives. In the initiates of the Jewish people we find the whole course of past events on earth—all the events that had taken place in the heavenly sphere being repeated in the element of the intellect. Kama-Manas, which we call lower spirit, developed itself there; which has to be endowed with other forces. This endowment, this weft, is Christ Himself, the Word made Flesh, who points to the future Word, by which all human beings will be in a position to control their etheric bodies with their astral bodies, if they so work the Word into the etheric body that it wakens to life therein. The possibility of this development in the future is foreshadowed in the appearance of the Word made Flesh in the fourth Sub-Race. The whole of mankind must have attained control over the etheric, before the Logos can be incarnated in the etheric body. This, as an originating impulse, has proceeded from the Christ incarnated in the Flesh. When man, through the power of the Son, has gone through [this], he will then come to the Father.

Now the ascent must be re-enacted of the stages through which the whole of mankind gradually attains to what was achieved by Christ's appearance in the flesh. In the spirit which developed itself in Judaism, the higher Manas had to be kindled. Therefore, the new era begins with the descent of the Holy Spirit which will lead mankind through to the point in the sixth epoch when the Christ Principle, which is only hinted at in Christianity today, finds its fulfilment. ‘No man cometh to the Father save through Me,’ says the Son. He sent the Spirit to mankind so that it should be prepared for the time in the sixth epoch when Good and Evil will be separated. Man would never have developed this impulse without that other weft, which we have named as the so-called Evil Principle. Man had to receive free will so that his understanding could be called into play in deciding between Good and Evil. This weft of the Spirit's descent is consummated at Pentecost.

Spirit, Son and Father are as though entombed in the earth: the Father in the physical body, the Son in the etheric body and the Spirit in the astral body. However, man has developed his ego and has become self-aware. Now he must learn to work right down into the physical. That will be in the future. At present man is working into his astral body.. The symbol for that is the descent of the Holy Spirit into those who are to become the leaders of humanity. It is something in man which is akin to this Spirit which has taken it up.

Before the Son could become effective—which was in Hyperborean times—a part of the universal Principle of Spirit had to break away, be thrust down, and wander other paths. This is expressed in the Serpent, the symbol of knowledge, the Luciferic principle. It was this spark from the Spirit which made man into a free being and enabled him to desire the Good out of his own impulse. This Spirit which has come down to man through the great Whitsuntide Festival is akin to that Spirit which was thrust down, which is indeed embodied in Prometheus, which has blown the spark into a flame, so that our ego can make up its mind to follow the Spirit, just as it will later follow the Son and still later the Father. Man was certainly able to become evil, but on the other hand this potentiality for evil was the price of being guided back to the World of Gods from which he originated. That is the connection between Pentecost and the Luciferic principle. Thus the Whitsuntide Festival is also the festival of Prometheus and of freedom.

Now you will understand the connection between the Sons of Cain and the seven Salomonic Kings of pre-earthly times—of whom the King Solomon of the Bible appears as a descendant. Wisdom was first transmitted to man from outside. Later it had to spring up from within. Solomon built the Temple but only with the help of Hiram-Abiff; in association with this Son of Cain he appropriated the arts needed for erecting the Temple. Thus the streams run together again, that were flowing apart [from each other] in the world.

When the sun separated itself from the earth, the Word became entombed in the earth. It will be resurrected again when the earth has advanced as far as the sixth Root Race. Man will raise this Word from the dead, out of the earth; but first the spirit must live in him that will enable the Word to strike a chord in him. This was attained by the apostles at Pentecost. In Light on the Path⁴ we find the words: ‘Acquire knowledge and you will have speech.’ Speech comes with true knowledge, which descends like the tongues of fire on the apostles at holy Pentecost. When the inner Word comes, that is akin to the holy divine Word, and that sinks down into everything etheric, so as to make it come alive, then man will no longer speak out of himself but out of the divine Spirit. He is then the messenger of the Godhead and proclaims the inner Word of Godhead of his own free will.

Thus did the inner Word become alive in the apostles; thus did it spread its influence outwards from them. They proclaimed the fiery Word and were aware of their role as the messengers of the Godhead. Therefore the Holy Spirit hovered over them in the form of fiery tongues. They prepare humanity to receive the Logos. The great initiate, Christ Jesus, went on in advance. The Holy Spirit followed, fertilising the astral bodies so that they would become ripe for making their etheric bodies immortal. Once this has happened, then the Christ Principle will be drawn into humanity. This is what the initiates too had in mind when they said, somewhat as Heraclitus did: If, in escaping from the earthly,⁵ you ascend to free ether, with faith in immortality, you become an immortal spirit, free of death and of the physical.

Every single person will reach this point in the middle of the sixth Root Race. Now, however, man is still vulnerable to death, in that his etheric body has still not attained immortality. Christianity contains the secret of how man can gradually develop himself towards the resurrection of the etheric body. This is where the third great festival is connected with the other two Christian festivals.

I wanted to come to the conclusion here, that the Whitsuntide festival has infinite depths, and to show how man gradually develops a living awareness of the world around him, and that he is related to all the things around him, to everything which happens around him. In the names of the days of the week you will find what has transpired around us set forth.

Man celebrates Pentecost best by making it clear to himself what deep truths have been implanted in this festival by the wise. And to celebrate a festival really means to unite oneself in spirit with the Cosmic Spirit.

• 1 . In his lecture of 23rd May 1904 (lecture 1).
• 2 . In connection with the following descriptions see the fundamental works of Rudolf Steiner: Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner Publications, New York, 1971, and Occult Science, An Outline, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1969.
• 3 . [Gap] A few very inadequately recorded sentences follow this in all texts. In Vegelahn's text it is as follows: ‘Then the astral body was permeated by Manas, Buddhi appeared in the etheric body and the Father-Principle in the physical body. This working went so far that a brain could be formed, up to the point where the being learned to say “I”. That was the case with the Ur-Semites.’
• 4 . Light on the Path, by Mabel Collins (1851–1927) a theosophical writer acknowledged by Rudolf Steiner by an exegesis to the work in question. (Printed in his: Guidance in Esoteric Training, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1972).
• 5 . Rudolf Steiner here draws his Heraclitus quotation from a work on philosophy by Vincent Knauer.

I have asked you to attend a short discussion on occult questions, because one must acknowledge that anyone participating in the theosophical movement should be clear not only about the outward things that are dealt with in the programme, but also about the direction in which this theosophical movement can lead. Now those occult streams which are living in the theosophical movement are in fact akin, in a particular respect, to earlier occult currents. The topic we mean to broach today concerns precisely one of these, which still persists to the present day: Freemasonry.

You know that, at least until the late seventeenth century, any kind of female member was, for Freemasonry, strictly taboo.¹ At that time, there was a good reason for this. When the reason for the Freemasons having no female members ceases at some point in world evolution to exist, then the time will have come for the work of Freemasonry on the physical plane to be taken over by the work of theosophy. Pro tem, the work of theosophy is preparatory work. Men and women will participate in the theosophical work on the same basis.

If I were now to be permitted to say briefly why women had to be excluded from the activities of Freemasonry, I could only say that one does not exactly give away one's secrets to the opponent; one hardly sends him one's plan of campaign. That is not done in the conduct of any war. And we will see that Freemasonry is in a particular respect in opposition to the female world.

Freemasonry is the continuation of very ancient secret societies and brotherhoods. Such secret societies—at least in the form in which they survive in Freemasonry originated just at the very beginning of our fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, that is to say in the same epoch in which Christianity later began.

You know that the outward compilation of the Bible is rightly ascribed to only a few hundred years before the birth of Christ.² But the biblical revelation was a [living] tradition for thousands of years before that. It was not the custom in antiquity to write such things down; they were instead passed on from mouth to mouth. Therefore it can be assumed that the secrets which Moses entrusted to the priesthood were only later written down.

Now in the same period as that when the Bible first made its appearance in world history as a document, what is known as the Freemasonry legend also came to be compiled and to be circulated.

In world evolution it is always to be regarded as a law, that what happened earlier is later briefly recapitulated. Every human being recapitulates, in the maternal womb, the stages through which the [human] race has already passed. Every planet repeats, in its initial stages, the previously completed steps of its evolution. What has already gone before is always briefly recapitulated. So is it with the races, too. Hence, the first, second and third Post-Atlantean races [epochs] are the recapitulation of earlier earthly conditions, only in a specific higher realm.

What began with Lemuria, developed itself throughout Atlantis, and was recapitulated in our three cultural epochs in a specific higher realm. So that we thus have a recapitulation of what occurred earlier, in Lemurian times, in a less-developed realm. Before the system of two sexes originated, there was a kind of bisexuality, a single [combined] sex, in so far as in each individual both sexes were represented. For the separation into two sexes only came later; only then did male-female become male and female. On a spiritual level something similar is recapitulated in our epoch. Actually, that kind of knowledge and wisdom which pertained to pre-Vedic ancient India had a male-female quality, and thereby, at the same time, something quite unconnected with any kind of duality or with any kind of outward principle. Then came the civilisation of the second cultural epoch; this was pre-eminently a spiritual culture having two sexes. Dualism then appeared—Ormuzd and Ahriman, Good and Evil. All this now merged with man's cognition.

Now we want to clarify how that came about. It came about thus: in the beginning, before there was a separate male and female sex, there was a twofold sexuality within each single individual. We must now ask: What was it that could become fertilised, and what was it that did the fertilising, in the one single individual? In ancient Greek mythology Zeus is portrayed with ample female breasts.³ A truth expresses itself therein, which was known in the old mysteries and which we also learn from the records, that the sex—if I may call it that—which immediately preceded our own, outwardly and physically resembled not the male but the female gender. So that, before the outward separation, we have thus both sexes in one individual that outwardly—in physical expression and in all perceptions and being—was female. Therefore at the beginning of the human race, we have to do with a bisexual individual tending towards the female. Only later did the male sex follow. Now we must be clear that in this individual, which had both sexes in it, a fertilising agent, or male seed, was also present. Woman contained man within her. When we have grasped the fact that the woman had the male principle within her, then we can conceive, with our ordinary scientific concepts, that reproduction was ensured. We want to bear in mind that at this time this happened via the woman.

Now came the time when things had to go their separate ways. What character did the fertilising principle in the woman then have, which on the physical plane would fertilise the female nature? What worked in the female [body] as a seed, was the male; and that was the spiritual, the wisdom. Woman contributed the substance; the spirit gave [it] form. Any structuring of the physical plane is a realisation of wisdom. Wisdom worked in the female. Now the two differentiated themselves, in that the two things which had previously worked as one now appeared as two separated poles. What was previously united in a single human organ, divided itself, whereby a duality in human development originated. This duality came about thus: first, the fertility—the ability of the female egg to fertilise itself—within the one individual, ceased [to function]. The female egg lost the possibility of becoming fertilised from its own body. So we are now dealing with a female which has become infertile and, above everything, the spiritual. The division of the two sexes came about through the separation of the physical organs, and the other sex was now endowed with the possibility of fertilisation. Two individuals appeared, one with physical femininity and the other with physical masculinity. With the man, wisdom has a female character, with the woman, it has a male character.

The separation is a very definite event, that one can follow; we will now have to be satisfied, however, with [just] indications. We are dealing, then, with male-tinged wisdom in the woman and female-tinged wisdom in the man. This female-tinged wisdom is passive, suited to receiving, listening, watching—to taking in from the surroundings. The male-tinged wisdom, the active wisdom, [is suited to] being productive. Thus we have a two-fold wisdom; the female wisdom that is active and that naturally will also be transferred to the men. So that there may indeed be plenty of men who take over the female wisdom, the race [propagates] itself below [on the physical plane]; and above, we are dealing with an active intuition stemming from women, and with a passive cognition, decidedly male in character.

This figures in the old mystery teaching as the antithesis between the Sons of Abel, or Sons of God, and the Sons of Cain, or Sons of Man. Abel represents the female, active intuition. Therefore he is unable to take hold of anything from the outside world which needs to be worked upon. He takes up the divine, which streams through him, that flows into his intuitiveness. The ‘Herdsman’ symbolises that. He tends and nurtures life, while intuition nurtures the divine life of wisdom. Cain has the male wisdom that receives the outward. This [wisdom] espouses the earth in order to till it; the material is outside [himself]. He is the ‘Field-builder’ [Literal meaning of German der Ackerbauer = ‘agriculturalist’]. What does the wisdom of Cain now achieve? This science of Cain's that, being a passive science, only receives—what does it accomplish?

Now there is a very interesting and important legend in which these truths are symbolically expressed for the Freemasons. That is the Temple Legend. And the reason for it is as follows:

The Bible itself, the Old Testament, derives from the female, the intuitive wisdom, and bears its stamp. The Old Testament is female wisdom. Male wisdom was not able to attain to intuition. It confined itself to building and work. It took stones and constructed buildings. It took metals and made implements. The Temple Legend puts it thus:

One of the Elohim impregnated Eve and Cain was born. Afterwards, another of the Elohim, Jehovah, also known as Adonai, created Adam. And Adam begat Abel by Eve. This legend counterposed the wisdom of Cain and the Biblical wisdom, so that, by the beginning of the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, we have two opposing currents: the Bible, representing womanly wisdom, and the Temple wisdom as its opposing male counterpart. Already, in pre-Christian times, what the man [male wisdom?] wanted stood in opposition to the female wisdom. Moreover, Cain slew his brother Abel. That too comes into the Temple Legend. Jehovah caused strife between the race of Cain and the race of Abel, and Cain killed Abel. That means nothing else ... [Some very obscure sentences follow here in the (German) transcript.]

What was the consequence of the appearance of this Cain wisdom? The outcome of it all was that the fruitfulness that propagated itself through its own wisdom was killed. By killing Abel the male knowledge in Cain killed the possibility of self-propagation, that had been brought into being by the gods. That means it is because knowledge has been transferred to the man, that the Abel in man has been killed.

That is a process in man himself.⁴ Through male knowledge the creative force, the Abel [within], has been killed. There now stand in hostile opposition to one another, the descendants of Cain and the race of those who were put in the place of Abel, the descendants of Seth. The descendants of Cain are those who use their masculine wisdom to build up the external world; the passive wisdom is applied to external construction. The divine wisdom does not stream down into it. Out of what is free, it must build in the world. It has no divine intuition. Through trial, through experience, results the harmonising of the purely mineral products of the earth. Thus Tubal-Cain is born out of the race of Cain and thus, later on, will Hiram-Abiff or Adon-Hiram be born from the same lineage.

I have reserved to myself …[See note].⁵

Among the Abelites, you find the strongest representative in Solomon. During the third cultural epoch all the representatives of the Abel line were priests. The ancient priestly wisdom was the intuitive wisdom which formerly worked in woman as the power of fertilisation, but was then transformed, at a higher level, to spiritual wisdom. Out of this priestly wisdom came the Bible; in this way the Bible came to be a feminine wisdom. This feminine wisdom is able to make great revelations about the Divine; and to say how this relates to the angels and spirits. The business of the Sons of Cain is to shape the earth. Thus the original father of all smiths is indeed Tubal-Cain. Therefore Solomon had to send for Hiram-Abiff, who could build the Temple for him. He built it for King Solomon, the inheritor of the ancient priestly wisdom; for him, for Solomon, who transformed this priestly wisdom into external power. Kingship, as an outward institution, derives from the rule of the priests.

Thus Solomon sent for Hiram-Abiff. And thus Solomon's Temple was built. But now the Queen of Sheba came to Solomon's court and a kind of betrothal was celebrated there between the two. Now the temple was shown to the queen, and she desired to be introduced to the builder of this marvelous temple. When she was introduced to Hiram-Abiff, something quite special happened in her. A glance from Hiram-Abiff fell on her, and that worked in her like fire. And then a second thing happened, as follows: She wanted to see the workers and to be shown how all this was accomplished on the physical plane, so Hiram-Abiff took the Tau Symbol, held it aloft and the workers all came streaming together like ants. Through this she [was so impressed that she] deserted Solomon [for Hiram]. Some of Hiram's apprentices, whom he had refused to make into Masters, came to Solomon's aid. Now they sought to spoil Hiram's masterpiece, the casting of the Molten Sea. Instead of it coming out as a work of art, streams of fire spurted out in every direction. Hiram-Abiff tried to quench it all with water, but all he achieved by this was a complete wreck. A rain of fire sprayed down on everything, including Hiram-Abiff. A voice called to him, however, not to be afraid, for out of this would come his greatest success. Then he was led by a figure to the centre of the earth. There he met Cain himself, to whom he had been led by Tubal-Cain, who founded the art of metal-working. Here an important wisdom was revealed to him. He was told: Now know the true Jehovah, who is the cause of your being here. Jehovah hates the Sons of Fire, and wants to destroy them; he wants to destroy his own creation. But you need have nothing to fear. To you will be born a son, whom you will not yourself see, but from whom shall spring a race, out of which a new fire worship will develop on the earth.—With the hammer which Tubal-Cain gave him, he was able to complete the projected Molten Sea, thereby rising still further in the Queen of Sheba's affections. During a walk, a bird appeared in the air, showing her the mystical Tau sign. From this the Queen's nurse realised that the wisdom of the future was hidden under this sign of the Tau. During a feast, at which Solomon became intoxicated, the Queen of Sheba took the betrothal ring back from his hand. Hiram-Abiff was however set upon by the apprentices and killed. He was only just able to write the secret word on a golden triangle and hide it. It was later retrieved and enclosed in a stone shaped in the form of a cube. The Ten Commandments are inscribed on this stone that conceals the hidden word.

That is the temple wisdom, which male science has counterposed to the female wisdom. These are things that need only to be clarified, to be examined as to their occult meaning, for their deep significance to be recognised.

Consider that Hiram-Abiff was brought before the original father of his race. He was told that Jehovah was the enemy of the Sons of Fire. Who are the Sons of Fire? They are those who could only come into existence after the separation of the sexes, through the penetration of a physical female by a physical male. Fire is the active principle in the male semen. In male semen lives fire, in the occult sense. Jehovah had to create this basic force, so that the race could propagate itself. Jehovah created the Sons of Fire, which was only possible on the basis of this [occult] fire. Hence he is the opponent of change. He it was, who cherished [?] the old kind of propagation. For it was an expedient [?] which had been created, and therefore he turned again to the priests and made them into his preachers. He caused the power and the glory of his own wisdom to be proclaimed through the priestly wisdom; through the priestly wisdom, Jehovah's wisdom came to be made known.

Hiram-Abiff is thus appointed to undertake the Molten Sea, which means the transformation of mineral kingdom through art. He was also told that a son would be born to him, who—even though he would not himself be able to see him—would bring forth a new race. This son is nothing else than the new race which will one day take the place of the old, the present one; the new race for whom it will no longer be necessary for two sexes to unite with one another, but will again be able to bring about propagation through the one human individual. This refers to a far distant future. The old female culture will be relieved by a male culture. The female, as a physical form, will die out. The male must then have the power in itself to produce another individual out of itself. And where is this power located?

Male and female used to be in one individual. And when these two separated themselves, an unfolding of today's individual took place. The upper part [of the human being] was formed. What [today] is the upper part was at that time combined with the sexual organs. The sexual organs of today are only half of the then [procreative] force. The power in the larynx is indeed the other half. Speech is not as yet creative, today. It has to be penetrated by the wisdom of Cain first, and then it must produce. When man has attained the power for his larynx so to develop that his word will be creative, so that he will produce his own kind through the Word, then the whole of the productive force will be transferred to the male. Then [the work of creation] which was once done by the gods, will be given over to man. When did the word come to be lost? When the system of two sexes originated. It was buried, hidden. The Sons of Cain had it only through the original father of their race. Hiram-Abiff was at least to have received the prophecy about it. However, he was killed immediately afterwards.

The Word lies buried, but it is still there. If it were not buried, man would be self-creative, just as the Elohim are self-creative. Therefore the ‘Word,’ of present-day Freemasonry is not the true Word but the false one. The true Word is concealed. The Ten Commandments are inscribed on the stone which contains the hidden Word. What are the Ten Commandments? They are the laws of the moral world order. They regulate the outer intercourse [of mankind], just as it now is—subject to the influence of a race having two sexes. Such laws will not be needed, when there are no longer two sexes. They are that human code which originated in the context of two sexes.

Thus we have, in Freemasonry, the preservation of the remembrance of the Lost Word, that those who work in Freemasonry must strive for, and which can only be gained when the passive male wisdom awakens activity in itself. The Freemasons therefore say: Everything which does not arise out of that generalised knowledge about the world, and proper to it, must then stem from the female priestly rule of ancient times. Rather than contenting ourselves with merely taking this over [conquering it?], we actually want to start on a new spiral of existence; we ourselves must give intuition to the male wisdom of Cain. That would be impossible if one took the female into the secret, which would take man's power from him. It would all be useless, the instant it was discussed in front of women.

It thus became necessary for the whole female sex to be excluded from Freemasonry. This hangs together with the link between the organ of speech and gender or sexuality. Therefore the man changes when he reaches puberty. The change [of voice] is nothing else than the expression of the former connection between the organs of speech and of sexuality. Now you too can grasp what the Freemason is saying: It is only the man who is appointed to utter the Lost Word at all and to re-establish it; only the male form of the larynx is in a position to say, to know, what can be regained through the Lost Word. When we grasp it in this way, one will understand why woman was not permitted to let the new pass her lips.—It is comic to see scholars give as the reason for this that women were not admitted because they blabbered out everything. The female larynx has remained, as a rudiment. It is the male larynx which will however form the organ of the future.

You see that deep and meaningful relationships are involved, and that the expression ‘Mason’ has to be taken as literally as possible. That is why the masons of Greek and Roman times were the builders of things made to express beauty. Cathedrals, temples and other significant buildings were built by these master builders.

The matter rests thus, that a part of what came to be accomplished by the Order of Freemasons had naturally to be taken over again from the old priestly wisdom. So, once again, we have an intermingling of womanly wisdom and male striving. In essence, the secret of Freemasonry is something which has not yet been revealed, which is not even there yet, so that it cannot be revealed, precisely because it does not yet exist. It is something which will be uttered when the word is once more imbued with productive force.

Those are a few words which will clarify the thinking of Freemasonry for the occultist. Up to the eighteenth century it was known that things were so. Only when the connection with higher worlds was lost did the consciousness of what was lost fade from Freemasonry too. And yet again, not so. One watered Freemasonry down, one said that one no longer knew its meaning. One must be clear, however, that everything which existed as symbols, was derived from the old priestly wisdom and that what is implanted therein, in the symbols, must still first come into the open. The true female wisdom is gradually becoming quite lost. Because of that, the so-called Higher Degrees of Freemasonry, which preserved the female wisdom, have been allowed to vanish. All that is still left is what is called Craft Masonry, which only concerns itself with worldly things, and only understands a little about them, in any case.

But that is, after all, quite natural; as materialism developed itself, then the priestly wisdom did indeed have to fade away. What can happen now? The old wisdom has gone away. We have to live in the external. What follows from that? This—that something better can come along again, only when a wisdom arrives which is again asexual, which is connected neither with the male nor with the female wisdom, neither with the female Bible, nor with the male Temple Legend. We find this wisdom in theosophy. In this wisdom both sexes understand each other. In it, the man that is in woman is at work on woman, and what is once more asexual is working on man. Male and female meet each other there in the knowledge of higher planes. It is therefore quite natural that the proper occult basis has come about in Freemasonry, and that a new start has been made. Something such as this is called a ‘vortex:’

In our time these things are thus intertwining in their influence. We must therefore think of them as interacting. Thus, theosophy has relied neither on the Biblical legend, nor on the Temple Legend, but asexually seeks the kernel of wisdom, that has to be restored again, in everything. Now you see how theosophy is the bringer of peace, the harmoniser.

How does this work together in our Root Race? Our Root Race recapitulates what already was there before. It brings the antithesis of what was already there in Lemurian times to meaningful expression in the spiritual realm. An opposition had therefore to come about, because the female sex was there originally, and follows a falling curve, whereas the male sex is in a rising curve, and is seeking in itself the procreative force which the female already has. When we remain in lower spheres, we have to make an exact distinction, through occultism: Whoever is racially an Atlantean man, need not also be Atlantean in his soul [qualities]. Hence, the soul is not tied to [a particular] sex either. The souls of the female gender work themselves through [this] until they can live equally with men in the bodies the latter have made out of and for themselves, and there will [then] be one sex on earth.

As long as men still stood in opposition to the female, they had to hold their tongues. The founding of the Adoption Lodges in the eighteenth century paved the way for the sexes to come together.⁶ The first of these was founded in 1775. A Freemasonry was practised in them, which had different symbols from the male Freemasonry. However, the induction of women in such Adoption Lodges of the male Freemasons did pave the way for the sexes to come together. The founder of our Society was indeed a [female] member of such an Adoption Lodge.⁷ What must be pointed to as the beginning of theosophy did indeed thus play a part in the matter. So, theosophy is a world task, connected with occult currents, and must take over where Freemasonry left off. Freemasonry could indeed still be reawakened, and could help us.

But the more profound thought is this: these one-sided male endeavours must be vanquished in theosophical circles. Throughout the Middle Ages there was a sublime preparation for spiritually engendering the opposite sex in man. Man developed in himself, by concentrating, at first as a thought, what had to become a reality in him later on. Therefore, as a preparation for this, the Cult of Mary resulted during the Middle Ages. This is nothing else than concentrating to engender the female in the male, while for the female the Cult of Jesus served the parallel purpose. The Cult of Mary had its origin in this foundation.

You will now see what confusion must result when an Order arose which broke with all this and sought to regain the female wisdom. It is world dominion which is at stake in this; if anyone wants to leave the old wisdom as it is, he will have to conquer the world for the old powers. There is such an Order: it is the Jesuit Order. It has consciously set itself this task. That is why the Jesuits and the Freemasons confront each other so sourly.

• 1 . See note 6.
• 2 . This was at the time of the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity in the fifth century B.C. by the Hebrew scribe Ezra.
• 3 . There is a Zeus type, several examples of which are still preserved in Asia Minor, in which the upper part of the body is covered by a number of breasts or humps similar to the famous statue of Artemis Ephesia: e.g., relief sculpture of the ‘Stratios Zeus’ and the figures on coins, among which is the ‘Labrandeus Zeus’ from daria.
• 4 . See in this connection the later descriptions which Rudolf Steiner gave in: The Effects of Occult Development Upon the Sheaths of Man. (Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company, London, and Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1945).
• 5 . The shorthand report is unclear at this point. The conclusion of the sentence has two possible renderings:
  
  1. ‘I have reserved to myself confessing (erzihlen) a bias (eine Neigung) about those of Abel's race and those of Cain's race.’
  
  2. ‘I have reserved to myself achieving (erzielen) a unification (eine Einigung) between those of Abel is race and those of Cain's race.’
• 6 . In Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries by Charles William Heckethorn (Book 8, Section 2 1) we learn that:
  
  ‘According to one of the fundamental laws of Masonry—and a rule prevailing in the greater mysteries of antiquity—women cannot be received into the order ...
  
  ‘But we have seen that Cagliostro admitted women to the Egyptian Rite; and when at the beginning of the eighteenth century several associations sprang up in France, which in their external aspect resembled Freemasonry, but did not exclude women, the ladies naturally were loud in their praise of such institutions, so that the masonic brotherhood, seeing it was becoming unpopular, had recourse to the stratagem of establishing “adoptive” lodges of women, so called because every such lodge had finally to be adopted by some regular masonic lodge. The Grand Orient of France framed laws for their government, and the first lodge of adoption was opened in Paris in 1775 ...
  
  ‘Similar lodges spread over Europe, Great Britain excepted; but they soon declined and are at present confined to the place of their origin.’
• 7 . This refers to H.P. Blavatsky (1831–1891) who was awarded the highest adoption degree of the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry in 1888 by John Yarker (see note 16 to lecture 9 of 16th December 1904) after she had published her first great work: Isis Unveiled.

If you follow the spirit of the studies we have made here during the last few days, you will find it comprehensible that not only a guiding and directing of the events on our Earth and above all in human evolution takes place through the Beings and forces of the various hierarchies, but that the Beings of these hierarchies themselves go through a sort of evolution, a sort of development. In the last lectures we spoke of how the Beings of this or that hierarchy intervene and guide, how for instance the Spirits of Form in normal and abnormal development organize the races.

Now let us ask ourselves the following: Do these spiritual Beings with whom we are now dealing also progress in their own development? As regards certain spiritual Beings we can during our own period of evolution witness the spectacle that they are, so to speak, progressing a stage further in their own development. Since the Atlantean catastrophe, ever since the post-Atlantean development began, we are living in an age in which certain Archangels, certain Beings of the hierarchy of the Archangeloi are ascending into the Hierarchy of the Archai, or Spirits of the Age. It is extremely interesting to notice this, for when we observe how the Folk-spirits, the Folk-souls whom we designate as Archangels ascend to a higher rank, then only do we obtain a correct conception of what is actually going on in the great world. This ascent is connected with the fact that into that distribution of humanity, which we must look upon as the division into races, there has been sent, since the Atlantean epoch, a second stream of humanity, of peoples. We must, as a matter of fact, look back very far indeed, back to early Atlantean times, if we want to find the period when the division into the five principal races of which we have spoken took place, if we wish to enquire when those men came to that particular spot in Africa where they then formed the black or Ethiopian race; when those other peoples came to Southern Asia, who compose the Malay race. We should have to look back to early Atlantean times. But later on other streams were sent after these early ones.

While therefore the Earth was already colonized with the foundations of these races, others were sent afterwards to those colonized parts of the Earth. Thus we have to do with a later stream, with a stream which came in later Atlantean times. If we wish to comprehend what was thus accomplished in Europe, Africa and America, in the way of the division of races, whilst Atlantis was gradually crumbling away, and what was then sent later on, towards the end of the Atlantean epoch, and part of which was only sent during the post-Atlantean evolution,—then we must clearly understand that we are dealing with that mighty stream of humanity which pushed forward into Asia, into Indian territory, and that, as has often been pointed out, bodies of people remained at the different points, from which then the various peoples of Asia, Africa and Europe arose. We have to deal therefore with an earlier division and a later advance,—with a second stream. The purpose of this second stream was, that companies of peoples who were each under the guidance of an Archangel were sent out from the West to the East. But these Archangels who were the guiding spiritual powers of these tribes that were sent out, were at different stages of development, in other words, they were nearer to or further away from the rank of a Spirit of the Age.

We have to look in the Far East for that stream of peoples whose Archangel was the first one to attain the rank of a Spirit of the Age. It was that stream of peoples who formed the ruling class of that land and laid the foundations of the first post-Atlantean civilization after their Archangel had become the Spirit of the Age, after he had been promoted to the first Spirit of the Age or Archai of the post-Atlantean age of civilization. Now this Spirit of the Age guided the primal sacred culture of India and made it the leading one in the first post-Atlantean age of civilization. The other peoples of Asia who were gradually developing, were for a long time under the guidance merely of Archangels.

Those peoples of Europe who had remained behind when the migration from West to East took place, were also under the guidance of Archangels for a long time after the Archangel of India had risen to the rank of an Archai and then acted through intuition upon those great Teachers of India, the Holy Rishis, who because they were aided by this exalted and important Spirit were able to fulfill their high mission in the manner already described. This Spirit of the Age worked on for a long time, whilst the people lying to the north of ancient India were still under the guidance of the Archangel. When the Spirit of the Age of India had fulfilled his mission, he was promoted to the guidance of the entire evolution of post-Atlantean humanity.

At the time which we designate as the Old Persian age, we have that Spirit of Personality, the Spirit of the Age, who was the guide or intuitor of the great Zarathustra or Zoroaster, the Zarathustra of ancient times. This again is an example of how an Archangel, a Folk-soul, rises to the rank of a Spirit of the Age, that is the very spectacle which, as we stated at the beginning of our lecture to-day, we are experiencing in our own time, that the Archangels work themselves up, through the mission they accomplish, to the rank of guiding and ruling Spirits of the Age.

A later rise in rank resulted from the Egyptian people and its Archangel on the one hand and from the Chaldean people and its Archangel on the other. Then took place the event in which the Archangel of the Egyptian people rose to the rank of a guiding Spirit of the Age, and undertook, so to speak, the guidance of that which formerly devolved upon the Chaldean Archangel; so that the leader in the Chaldæan-Egyptian age became the third mighty guiding Spirit of the Age who had gradually evolved himself up from the rank of the Egyptian Archangel. But that was also the age when another important development took place, which ran parallel with the Egyptian-Chaldæan civilization and with which is connected that to which we had to draw special attention in our last lecture.

We have seen that everything belonging to the Semitic tribes assumed special significance, and that from these Jahve or Jehovah had chosen one in particular and made that His own people. Hence, because He had elected one particular race to be His special people, He employed at first, while this race was gradually growing up, a sort of Archangel to be His representative with the people; so that in ancient times the gradually growing Semitic people had an Archangel who was under the continuous inspiration of Jahve or Jehovah, and who then later on grew up into a Spirit of the Age. Hence, besides the ordinary, evolving Spirits of the Age of the Old Indian, Old Persian and Old Chaldean peoples, there was yet another one who played a special part by working in a single people.

Thus we have a Spirit of the Age who in a certain respect appears in the mission of a Folk-spirit, one whom we must call the Semitic Folk-spirit. His was a very special task. This will be comprehensible to you if you call to mind that in reality this particular people was lifted out of normal evolution and had a special guidance, that so to say, special arrangements were made for the guidance of this people. Through these special arrangements this people had received a mission which was really of quite special importance and significance for the post-Atlantean epoch, and which was distinguished from the missions of all other peoples. One can best understand this mission of the Semitic people by taking it in connection with the missions of the various other peoples of the post-Atlantean epoch.

There are two spiritual currents in mankind. The one must be called, if we wish to designate it rightly, that which proceeds from plurality, which we might also say proceeds from Monadology, which therefore conceives the origin and source of existence as consisting primarily of a number of Beings and forces. You may look round wherever you will in the world, and you will see that, in some way or other, the peoples of the post-Atlantean epoch started from several gods. Begin with the trinity of ancient India, which was later expressed as Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. Look at the German mythology; there you find the trinity of Odin, HSnir, LSdur, and so on. Everywhere you will find a trinity and this again divided into a larger number. You find this peculiarity not only where myths and teachings about the gods appear, but also in the philosophies, in which we meet with the same thing again as monadology. This is the current which, because it proceeds from a number, may assume the greatest possible variety. We might say, that in the post-Atlantean epoch, from the farthest East in India and in a wide curve through Asia across to Europe, this worship of a number,—which on the whole is expressed in our Anthroposophy by our recognition of a number of different Beings belonging to the various hierarchies,—has acquired its manifold representations and forms.

This worship of many had to be opposed by a synthetic, all-comprising movement which proceeded strictly from the Monon, Monism. The actual inspirers, the impulse-givers of all Monotheism and Monism, of the worship of a single Divinity, are the Semitic peoples. It is in their nature, and if you remember what was said in the last lecture you will know that it is in their blood, to represent the one god, the Monon.

If man were however to look out into the great cosmos, he would not get very far if he were always to emphasize that there is only unity, a Monon at the foundation of the world. Monism or Monotheism, considered alone, can only represent a final ideal, but it would never lead to a real understanding of the world, to a comprehensive and exact view of it. Nevertheless in the post-Atlantean age the current of Monotheism had also to be represented, so that the task was given to one people to introduce the impulse, the ferment for this Monotheism. This task was given to the Semitic people. Hence you see how the Monistic principle is represented by this people with a certain abstract severity, with an abstract relentlessness, and how all the other peoples, in so far as their different Divine Beings are comprised in unity, received the impulse for this from them. The Monistic impulse has always come from that quarter. The other peoples have pluralistic impulses.

It is extremely important that this should be borne in mind, and one who examines the continuation of the old Hebrew impulse can still see at the present day Monotheism ruling in its greatest extreme among the learned Rabbis, in their learned Rabbinism. It is the task of this particular people to give as an impulse that the world-principle can only be unity. Therefore we might say: All the other nations, peoples, and Spirits of the Age had an analytic task, the task of representing the world-principle as being composed of different Beings; for example, the most extreme abstraction of the Monon in India was soon divided into a trinity, as the one god of Christianity is divided into Three Persons. All the other peoples have the task of analyzing the foundations of the world and thus to fill their several parts with rich contents, to fill themselves with rich material for conceptions that may lovingly comprehend the phenomena. The Semitic people has the task of ignoring all plurality and synthetically devoting itself to the unity; hence, for example, through this very impulse, the power of speculation, the power of synthetic thought is the greatest imaginable in the Kabbalistic studies.

All that could possibly ever be spun out of the unity by the synthetic, inclusive activity of the ‘I’, has been spun out by the Semitic Spirit in the course of thousands of years. That is the great polarity between Pluralism and Monism, and that is the significance of the Semitic impulse in the world. Monism is not possible without Pluralism, and the latter is not possible without the former. Therefore we must recognize the necessity for both.

The objective language of facts often leads to quite different knowledge from that to which the sympathies or antipathies which reign here or there lead. Therefore we must thoroughly understand the several Folk-spirits. Whereas the leaders of the several peoples over in Asia and Africa had long since risen to the rank of Spirits of the Age or Spirits of Personality and some of them were even already expecting to transform themselves from Spirits of the Age to the next higher stage, to Spirits of Form,—just as for instance that Spirit of the Age who was active in old India had in certain respects already risen to the rank of a Spirit of Form,—the several peoples of Europe were still for a long time guided by their several Archangels. It was only in the fourth post-Atlantean age that the Archangel of Greece raised himself out of the various peoples of Europe (who were being guided by their Archangels), to a leading position, by becoming the chief Spirit of the Age of the fourth, the Greek age of the post-Atlantean epoch; so that we see the Archangel of Greece rise to the rank of an Archai, a Spirit of Personality. That for which this Archangel of Greece had prepared himself became manifest, when he had become the Spirit of the Age, in Asia, Africa and Europe, whose centre the Greek people had become. The Archangel of the Greeks developed into an Archai, the active Zeitgeist of the Egyptians and also that of the Persians had risen to be a sort of Spirit of Form. What we are now coming to is something exceptionally interesting in the course of post-Atlantean evolution. As a result of all the development which the Archangel of the Greeks had formerly gone through, he could pass comparatively quickly through that which enabled him to take a specially prominent position as Spirit of the Age. Hence, however, something of the greatest significance occurred in the fourth age of post-Atlantean civilization.

We know that at that time the event occurred which we describe as the reception by humanity of the Christ-impulse. The Christ-impulse was received, the Mystery of Golgotha took place. The impulse then given was, in the course of the following centuries and thousands of years, gradually to spread over the whole earth. This required not only the fact that this event took place, but it required certain guiding and directing Beings from the ranks of the hierarchies; and then occurred the most remarkable and interesting event, that—at a definite moment of time, which practically coincided with the coming to Earth of the Christ-impulse—the Greek Spirit of the Age renounced for this our present period his ascent into the region of the Spirits of Form, which would at that time have been possible to him, and became the guiding Spirit of the Age, who then acts on through the ages. He became the representative guiding Spirit of exoteric Christianity; so that the Archai, the guiding Spirit of the Greeks, placed himself in front of the Christ-impulse. Hence the Greek nation crumbled away so quickly at the time when Christianity developed, because it resigned its guiding Spirit of the Age that he might become the leader of exoteric Christianity. The Spirit of the Age of Ancient Greece became the missionary, the inspirer, or rather the ‘intuitor’ of the out-spreading exoteric Christianity. Here therefore we have before us the spectacle of a renunciation such as we have spoken of, in a concrete case. The Spirit of the Age of the Greeks, because he had fulfilled his mission in the fourth post-Atlantean age of civilization so exceptionally well, might have risen into a higher sphere, but he renounced that, and by so doing became the guiding Spirit of the out-spreading, exoteric Christianity, and in that capacity he worked further among the various peoples.

Another such renunciation occurred on another occasion, and this second renunciation is particularly interesting, especially to those who call themselves Anthroposophists. Whereas over in Asia and right down to the Egyptians and Greeks the several Archangels develop into the Spirits of the Age, we have on the whole in Europe various peoples and tribes who are guided by their several Archangels. Thus whereas the corresponding Archangels who were once upon a time sent from the West towards the East, had ascended to the rank of Spirits of the Age, we still have an Archangel in Europe who worked in the Germanic and above all in the Celtic peoples; in those peoples who, at the time when Christianity started, were still spread over a great part of Western Europe, as far as the present Hungary, across South Germany and the Alps. These peoples had the Celtic Folk-spirit for their Archangel. The peoples belonging to the Celtic Spirit were also spread far up towards the north-east of Europe. They were guided by an important Archangel who, soon after the Christian impulse had been given to humanity, had renounced becoming an Archai, a Spirit of Personality, and decided to remain at the stage of an Archangel and to be subordinate in future to the various Spirits of the Age who should arise in Europe. Hence also the Celtic peoples as one combined people dwindled away, because their Archangel had practiced a special resignation and had undertaken a special mission. That is a characteristic example of how in such a case the ‘remaining-behind’ helped to inaugurate special missions.

Now what became of the Archangel of the Celtic peoples, when he had renounced becoming a Spirit of Personality? He became the inspiring Spirit of esoteric Christianity; and in particular of those teachings and impulses which underlie esoteric Christianity; the real true esoteric Christianity comes from his inspirations. The secret, hidden place for those who were initiated into these Mysteries was to be found in Western Europe, and there the inspiration was given by this guiding Spirit, who had originally gone through an important training as Archangel of the Celtic people, renounced his further ascent, and had undertaken another mission, that of becoming the inspirer of esoteric Christianity, which was to work on further through the Mysteries of the Holy Grail, through Rosicrucianism. Here you have an example of a renunciation, a remaining behind of one of these Beings of the hierarchies, and at the same time you have a concrete example in which you can at once recognize the significance of thus remaining behind. Although this Archangel could have risen to the rank of an Archai, he remained in that of an Archangel and was able to lead the important current of esoteric Christianity, which is to work on further through the various Spirits of the Age. No matter how these Spirits of the Age may work, this esoteric Christianity will be a source for everything which may again be changed and metamorphosed under the influence of the various Spirits of the Age. Thus we have another example of how such a renunciation taken place, whilst on the other hand we are experiencing in our age the mighty spectacle of Folk-spirits being promoted to the rank of Spirits of the Age.

Now in Europe we have the various Germanic peoples. These peoples who originally were guided by one Archangel, were destined to come gradually under the guidance of many different Archangels, in order to form individual peoples in various ways. It is of course exceedingly difficult to speak impartially of these things,—difficult only for the reason that in certain respects passion and jealousy may easily be aroused. Hence certain mysteries belonging to this evolution can only be lightly touched upon. From among the number of those Archangels proceeded the Archai who is the guiding Spirit of the Age of our fifth age of civilization in the post-Atlantean epoch. He took the precedence long, long after one of the Archangels of the Germanic peoples had gone through a certain training. The Spirit of the Age who was the Folk-spirit in the Græco-Latin age became that Spirit of the Age who, as you know, was at a later time occupied in spreading exoteric Christianity. Later Roman history was also guided by a kind of Spirit of the Age, who had risen from having been the Archangel of the Roman people and had united his activity with that of the Christian Spirit of the Age. Both of these were the teachers of that Archangel who guided the Germanic peoples, who had been one of their guiding Archangels and had then raised himself to be the Zeitgeist, or the Spirit of the Age of the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization.

There was a great deal to be done, but above all it was necessary that a strong individualizing and intermingling of the various folk-elements should take place in Europe. This was only possible because, whilst over in Asia and Africa the Archangels had long since ascended to Spirits of the Age, in Europe the guidance was still carried on by the Archangels themselves, because the several small peoples were guided by their Folk-souls and, without troubling about the Spirits of the Age, were completely devoted to the impulses of the Folk-spirits themselves. At the time when the Christian impulse passed over humanity, there was in Europe an intermingled activity of several Folk-spirits who were filled with a sense of freedom; every one of them went his own way and therefore made it difficult for a guiding Spirit of the Age to arise for the fifth age of civilization, to lead the several Folk-spirits. In order to make possible that people which occupies the country of France there was an intermingling of the Roman, Celtic and Frank folk-elements, and on account of this the whole guidance naturally assumed a different form. It passed from the several guiding Archangels,—who had received other tasks,—over to others. (In the case of the guiding Archangel of the Celts, we have said what his mission was; and in the same way we could state what were the missions of the Archangels of the other peoples.) Hence among the peoples which arose through such interminglings came other Archangels, who entered upon their office when the various elements intermingled. Thus in fact for a long time even in the Middle Ages, in Central and Northern Europe the leadership was chiefly in the hands of the Archangels who were only gradually influenced by that common Spirit of the Age who went in front of the Christ-impulse. In many cases the several Folk-spirits in Europe became the servants of the Christ Spirit of the Age. The European Archangels placed themselves in the service of this universal Christ Spirit of the Age whilst the several peoples were hardly in a position to allow any of the Archangels to rise to the rank of a Spirit of the Age. Only in the sixteenth to the seventeenth century (beginning from about the twelfth century), was preparation made for the development of the guiding Spirit of the Age of the fifth post-Atlantean age, under whose guidance we still are to-day. He belongs just as much to the great directing Spirits of the Age, as those who were the great directing Spirits of the Age during the Egyptian-Chaldæan-Babylonian, Old Persian, and Indian ages of civilization. But this Spirit of the Age of our fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization worked in a very unique manner. He had to make a kind of compromise with one of the old Spirits of the Age who worked before the Christian-impulse, viz., the Egyptian Spirit of the Age, who, as we have heard, had in a certain respect risen to the rank of a Spirit of Form. Thus it comes about that our fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization, in which we now are, is really ruled by a Spirit of the Age who is in a certain way very much under the influence and impulses of the old Egyptian civilization, and of a Spirit of Form who is only at quite an elementary stage.

That caused the many rifts and divisions in our age. Our Spirit of the Age in the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization is striving in a certain respect to raise himself up to spiritual heights and to raise the fourth post-Atlantean age of civilization to a higher stage. But that includes the materialistic tendency and inclination, and according as the various Archangels, the various Folk-souls, have greater or less inclination towards this materialistic tendency, does a more or less materialistic people arise under the guidance of this Spirit of the Age of the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization, and the people itself gives a more or less materialistic shade to the Spirit of the Age. On the other hand an idealistic people is one which gives the Spirit of the Age a shade which is in the direction of Idealism.

Now from the twelfth to the sixteenth century something gradually developed, something which in a certain respect worked beside the Christian Spirit of the Age,—who is the on-working Greek Spirit of the Age,—so that in fact, in a wonderful manner, that which we call the Christian Spirit of the Age,—who was united with a real Archai of the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization,—streamed into our culture; and besides this, the influence of old Egypt was also active, whose Spirit of the Age had raised himself to a certain rank among the Spirits of Form. Now for the very reason that such a triad is at work in our whole culture, it has become possible for the many different kinds of culture and the various Folk-souls to appear in our fifth age. It became possible for the Spirit of the Age to manifest the most varied colors and shades in his activity. The Archangels, who received their orders from the Spirit of the Age, worked in very many different ways.

Those of you who dwell in the North will be interested in something which in our next studies we shall have to go into more closely. The following question will especially interest you: How did that Archangel work, who was once upon a time sent up to Norway with the northern, the Scandinavian peoples, and from whom the various Archangels of Europe—especially those of Western, Central and Northern Europe—received their inspirations? In the world outside it would be reckoned as folly that the very spot in the continent of Europe should be indicated, from whence at one time the greatest impulses streamed forth in all directions, the spot which was the seat of sublime Spirits before the Celtic Folk-Spirit as Celtic Archangel had founded a new Centre in the noble citadel of the Grail. From that spot which in ancient times was the centre for the outpouring of the spirituality of Europe, there also streamed forth that which was first of all given to the Archangel of the Northern peoples as his mission. To the external world it would, as I say, appear folly, if we were to indicate the spot from which radiates that which works into the various Germanic tribes, as that part which now lies over Central Germany, but is really situated above the earth. If you were to draw something like a circle, so that the towns of Detmold and Paderborn were to lie within it, you would then arrive at that neighborhood from whence poured forth the mission of the most exalted Spirits who extended their mission to Northern and Western Europe. Hence, because the great centre of inspiration was there, later on the Saga said that Asgard had actually been situated on this part of the earth's surface. There, however, in the distant past, was that great centre of inspiration, which later on transferred its chief activity to the centre of the Holy Grail.

The peoples of Scandinavia, with their first Archangels, were at the same time given quite different tendencies, tendencies which at the present time are really only still expressed in the unique form of the Scandinavian mythology. If we compare, in the occult sense, the Scandinavian mythology with other mythologies which have reigned upon the earth, we may know that this Scandinavian mythology represents the primal tendencies of the Archangel who was sent up here to the North, the primal tendencies which have retained their original form, such as we would have to see in a child, when particular talents, latent genius, etc., remain at the stage of childhood. In the Archangel who was sent to Scandinavia we have those tendencies which were expressed later in the unique form of the Scandinavian mythology. Hence the great significance of the Scandinavian mythology for the comprehension of the real, inner being of the Scandinavian Folk-soul. Hence also the great significance which the understanding of this mythology has for the further development of this Archangel, who certainly had within him, in a certain way, the tendency to rise to the rank of an Archai. But to that end several things are necessary. It is necessary that in quite a definite way those tendencies should develop which in certain respects have to-day withdrawn behind the dim and shadowy influence of that Spirit of the Age who had placed himself in front of the impulse of Christianity. Although several things in the Germanic-Scandinavian mythology may appear curiously like the presentations of the Greek mythology, it must nevertheless be said that there is no other mythology on the earth which, in its remarkable construction and unique development, gives a more significant or a clearer picture of the evolution of the world than this Scandinavian mythology, so that this picture may be taken as a preparatory stage for the Anthroposophical picture of the evolution of the world.

In the way in which it has been developed out of the tendencies of the Archangel, Germanic mythology is in its pictures most significantly like that which, as the Anthroposophical picture of the world, is gradually to grow for humanity. The point in question will be, how those tendencies which once upon a time an Archangel brought with him into the world, may be developed after he has had the advantage of being educated by the Christ—Spirit of the Age. These tendencies will be able to become an important part in the guiding Spirit of the Age, if at a later stage in its development, this people understands how to bring to perfection the tendencies it has received at an earlier epoch.

This gives only a slight indication of an important problem, an important evolution of a European Archangel; we have indicated, in how far he has the foundations for a Spirit of the Age. At this point we shall stop for a little while, and then continue our studies in such a manner that, from the configuration of the Folk-soul, we shall endeavor to enter into an esoteric study of Mythology; and, in doing so, the description of the very interesting character of the Germanic and especially also of the Scandinavian mythology, will be brought before us as a special chapter.

In these lectures I have said many things which may, with some justification, be deemed strange and unfamiliar, in view of the materialism of our time. But it is the case that the knowledge which is gained from spheres beyond the Threshold has to do with a region of the universe other than that of the sense-perceptible facts to which science, so called, is alone willing to pay attention.

Let us remind ourselves at this point of the way in which the outer form and figure of man indicates his connection with the cosmos. The head, in its whole shape and form, is a structure which could not have come into being within Earth-existence as such, but is a product of the Moon-forces, and its individual form, in every case, is the outcome of a man's former incarnations. We have also heard that the human body (other than the head) is preparing to become head in the next incarnation. In the form of the human head, therefore, we have an indication of the previous incarnation; in the processes of the human body, we have indications of the next incarnation. In this way the human form is directly connected with the preceding and the following incarnations.

Study of the being of man in this light leads us to a knowledge of great cosmic connections.

It is well known to you that knowledge which is a remnant of the wisdom of ancient times relates the outer form of man to the twelve constellations of the Zodiac.¹ Without speaking the superficial language that is characteristic of most modern astrological lore, it is right to call attention to the fact that behind the connections which are said to exist between the human form and the universe, deeply significant mysteries lie hidden.

Astrology, as you know, relates the human head to Aries; the throat and larynx to Taurus; the shoulders, together with all that comes to expression in the arms and hands, to Gemini; the breast to Cancer, the heart to Leo; the lower part of the trunk to Virgo; the region of the loins to Libra; the sexual organs to Scorpio; the thigh to Sagittarius; the knee to Capricorn; the shank to Aquarius; the feet to Pisces.

There we have the relation of the body, with all its parts, including the head, to the forces reigning in the cosmos and which in a certain way can be pictured or symbolised in the fixed constellations of the Zodiac.

We have spoken of the head as being a transformation of the whole body, the body as it was in the previous incarnation. The organs of sight again are of a twelve-fold constitution.

The whole human body is related, as we have seen, to the twelve constellations but each part of it must also, in turn, be related to all these twelve constellations.

I must point out, too, a certain characteristic of all the great laws of the universe.—Whenever we have a “twelve-hood,” then one member of the twelve-hood, while it belongs to the whole, is at the same time an independent member. The head, for instance, is related to one constellation but is, in turn, derived from all the twelve. Hence in the next incarnation, what to-day is the whole head, will be represented by one sense-organ; what to-day is the larynx (including the neighbouring organs of speech) will be transformed, will undergo a metamorphosis, and in the next incarnation will serve another part of the organism; the arms, another, and so on.

As we stand in the world we may say that our whole body is transformed, metamorphosed to become head in the next incarnation, and in so orderly a way that the twelve-fold constitution of our present body appears again in the next incarnation in the twelve-fold constitution of the head.

It may be asked: where is there any indication that the head is really twelve-fold in its constitution? Most of you will know that twelve main nerves go out from the human head. If these twelve nerves were rightly explained—not in the miserably confused way in which they are mentioned by modern cerebral physiology—we should be able to recognise in them that which, in the previous incarnation, was contained in the whole body. It is not necessary to be puzzled by the strange dictum that, for example, the hands will be transformed into some part of the head. Even in a crude sense we may understand what is meant. Can we not observe in the hands something that points, in germ, to organs of speech? Do not the gestures of hands and arms speak an eloquent language in themselves? Is it then so impossible to imagine them changed into something different, some thing which, at another stage of existence, will appear as a sense-organ of the head? And the idea that what is physically expressed in the knee is preparing (when spread over the whole body) to become the sense of touch, will only be laughed to scorn by those who have no conception of the phenomenon of metamorphosis in life. It is not difficult to conceive that the marvellous structure of the human knee with its knee-cap and peculiar sensitiveness (a sensitiveness different from that of the organ of touch which is spread over the whole body) is preparing to become the organ for the sense of touch in the next incarnation.

The whole of our being undergoes metamorphosis and a study of this metamorphosis opens up deep mysteries before us. But if we are to penetrate these mysteries in the right way, we must not adopt the attitude of the science of to-day which is often that of cynicism. We must have true reverence for existence if we are ever to read its mysteries.

The physical organism of man and technical discoveries.

For some long time now, modern man has brought his dreadful pride and presumption into all his conceptions of the universe. When these qualities are expressed in an extreme form in individual characters, this is not a matter of surprise to those who realise that it is precisely in the intellectual and scientific life of humanity that pride and presumption are the ruling factors, albeit this is unobserved by the majority of men.

In the course of our studies in Spiritual Science it has often been necessary for me to draw attention to this canker that has made its appearance in the more modern phase of evolution. Think of the way in which men write and of what they write about the achievements of the human race. Think of what can be read in school-books or in other works about the genius of discovery, about the invention, let us say, of paper. Paper is something that may well be a cause of regret when we think of the kind of stuff that is printed on it nowadays! Much has been said in praise of that capacity in man which has reached such a zenith of achievement! But as I have said before, a wasp's nest is composed of a substance that is the same as paper. Millions of years ago, the elemental Beings who stand behind the preparation of a wasp's nest, had already forestalled man in this discovery. And the same could be said in a thousand other instances. Take the telescope which can be turned in two directions, upwards-downwards, backwards-forwards. Schmieg, a man who tried in many ways to draw attention to such things, pointed to this very example of the telescope. Just think what it is that man has really achieved here. The twofold movement of the telescope—upwards-downwards, backwards-forwards—is made possible by a double apparatus for rotation: an upper apparatus known in mechanics as a hinge-joint, and a lower apparatus known as a pivot-joint. In this way, provision is made for the double rotatory movement. Now it would be absurd, as can easily be proved in the case of the telescope, to construct it the other way round, putting the pivot in place of the hinge or the hinge below the pivot. This would be quite useless. That such an adjustment of movement has been achieved may be lauded as a deeply significant discovery on the part of man. But in a much more ingenious way—and I use the word ‘ingenious’ in the objective and not in the subjective sense—you all possess this apparatus in your own bodies at the place where the head is poised upon the cervical vertebrae: above—a hinge joint; below—a pivot joint. And because of this you are able to move your heads upwards and downwards and from side to side. You see, therefore, that in the human organism itself we have exactly the same thing.

In the human organism there is to be found everything that man, through his discoveries, has made, or will yet make in the way of mechanical appliances, everything, that is to say, that can really contribute to human evolution. Only such things as can contribute nothing to human evolution are not to be found in man, or are only to be found there inasmuch as they have been inserted into his being by forces quite outside the natural course of his evolution. If, therefore, we look back to very early times, we shall say that there must have been a time when these peculiar joint-mechanisms and a great deal more as well, came into being. They are now in actual existence. We can go further and further back in human evolution (that is to say to phases of evolution when man already possessed the form that is his to-day), and we shall never find these organic arrangements absent. If, moreover, they are said to be the outcome of purely mechanical forces, how can this possibly be explained? Just think how wonderfully suitable for its purpose this particular apparatus is—so much so, indeed that it is possible even to use it on a telescope. No other arrangement would be anything like so suitable. According to a well-known principle of superficial Darwinism (I say ‘superficial’ expressly) it is the fittest who survive. But in this case, of what is the less fit supposed to consist? The less fit would make it impossible for man as he now is, to live at all. He simply would not be able to exist in the way he now exists; it is quite unthinkable that this is a case of transition from the less fit to the fit. Those who know the real truth as opposed to the dicta of superficial students of Darwinism, have always called attention to these things.

How will man in the future gain enlightenment on the subject of his connection with the cosmos? On this matter too, I have already said things that will have seemed puzzling and strange. I spoke of the modern belief that the Heavens are to be explained by the Heavens, and said that this was a mere catchword. The truth is that the secrets of the Heavens which can be investigated—and which by the Copernican school are considered to yield their own explanation—these secrets can explain what exists on the Earth; the mysteries of the Earth in their turn, can explain the mysteries of the Heavens.

Strange as it may appear, in times to come, in order to understand the Heavens, men will study the embryo (as it develops out of the cell) and its environment, up to the point of the existence of man as a complete and finished being. And the observations made will serve to reveal the mysteries of the great universe. The revelations of the Heavens will be explanatory of processes which, on the Earth, take their course in animal, plant and man—above all in embryonic life. The truth is that the Heavens explain the Earth, and the Earth the Heavens. This still seems a paradox to the modern age but it is a principle of real knowledge for the future and one that must be amplified and developed in many directions.

Aberrations in Occultism

Let me now speak again of problems connected with Lucifer and Ahriman. With some justification we look for the manifestations and revelations of Lucifer in human emotions and in the passions and feelings of men. We regard the Luciferic influence as operating more from the inner being. That Eve could set about making herself fair to look upon, could become a being who realised her own beauty and through her beauty proceed to bring about the temptation—this necessitated the help of Lucifer. When the other influence was destined to appear in the course of earthly evolution, namely, that the Sons of the Gods should find the daughters of men fair, i.e., should find the objective world beautiful, the intervention of Ahriman was required. It was necessary for Lucifer to work through Eve in order that she might realise her beauty and through her beauty bring about the temptation. That the objective world should work as beauty and influence the human soul, Ahriman was needed.

The first event fell in the Lemurian epoch, the second in the age of Atlantis.

It behoves us to increase our knowledge and understanding of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences. I can, of course, only describe certain details, but these details must then be put together in order to build up a knowledge of the nature of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences as a whole.

Some of you are possibly familiar with strange things that are apt to take place in circles where occultism, pseudo-occultism, occult charlatanism and the like, are cultivated. These strange things happen again and again. Suppose, for example, that a Society which likes to call itself an ‘Occult Society,’ numbers among its adherents, certain celebrities. In these so-called ‘Occult Societies’ there are always celebrities whose word is taken for law. Something said or done by these celebrities is immediately laid down as dogma. Suppose it becomes a dogma that one or another of these persons is the reincarnation of some great individuality, has achieved something quite out of the common, has uttered sublime truths, thousands of printed copies of which are sent out into the world. The utterances are considered to be of a lofty order although they may be commonplace in the extreme. That, however, makes no difference! It happens again and again that the most superficial nonsense, if delivered with the necessary veneer of sentimentality, is accepted by thousands of people as the most profound truth.

When something of the kind happens—and I am not now speaking of a particular instance but of typical occurrences—a good many people will be roused, protesting vigorously that they will submit to no dogma that it is all nonsense, that they do not want it, and they will never believe in it. Opposition will immediately be set on foot against them. But then some celebrity comes along and meets one of these rebels. What happens? In a few hours the rebel is converted into the most rabid supporter! Sometimes, indeed, the conversion is effected in less than an hour. Such things happen again and again. People are puzzled, very naturally. They say ‘Yes, but he or she (and it is not by any means always a ‘she’ but quite often a ‘he’)—he or she used to think so clearly about these things. How could one short conversation suffice so completely to change them over that they now believe anything and everything?’

There are people sitting here who know that such things have actually happened. But can it really be said in such a case that true conviction has been brought about? No, indeed! There can be no question of what is known as conviction in ordinary waking life. The occurrence must be regarded in quite a different light and in order to understand it we must consider the character of Ahriman.

One of the main characteristics of Ahriman is that he absolutely ignores the unbiased relationship to truth which is a determining factor in the life of man on Earth. This unbiased relationship to truth, where we strive for truth as the accordance of idea with objective reality, is beyond Ahriman's ken. He neither knows nor is concerned with it. Ahriman's position in the universe makes it entirely a matter of indifference to him whether, in the forming of a concept, this concept agrees with reality. In everything which Ahriman conceives as truth (in the human sense, of course, one would not call it ‘truth’) he is concerned only with effects. What is said, is said not because it fits the facts, but in order to produce an effect. This or that is said in order that some particular effect may be produced. It would therefore be ‘Ahrimanic’ if I were to speak to someone about our Building, let us say, with entire indifference as to its truth, but merely for the sake of inducing the person in question to undertake this or that, knowing that he will acquiesce if I ask him to do so.

I am sure you realise that these things actually happen: that a man may think out some scheme, be utterly indifferent as to whether his ideas are in accordance with objective reality or not, and then make use of them in such a way that they will have a certain effect upon those who listen to him. On a small scale this happens every day and one can think of many examples. Just think of all the things match-making ladies say when they want to bring two young people together, of all they say of the doings of the future couple! The match-makers are quite unconcerned as to the truth of what they say. Their only aim is to bring off the match under the influence of what is said.

That, of course, is a very trivial example and Ahriman himself is above such trivialities. What I mean to convey is that in human life we can find analogies for everything. The point with Ahriman is always the effect that will be produced by what is said and he formulates his utterances in such a way that when it comes to the point of communicating them he can step in to help.

Now it would serve Ahriman's purposes well if there were to arise on Earth a number of human beings who hold such a definite belief as that of which I spoke just now. If a man has been initiated into the mysteries of corrupt occultism and as a result of the initiation he has received has no inclination to place himself in the ranks of true occultism, then he can enter into a pact with Ahriman and declare a truth which in the human sense, of course, is not truth at all but which will produce certain definite effects. There is always some element of this kind at work in events such as I have described: where in an incredibly short time an out-and-out rebel succumbs to suggestion practised by means of Ahrimanic arts. In league with Ahriman a man can easily induce another to believe that some personality is an incarnation of a great individuality. It is merely a question of knowing the art of sowing the seeds where they will find responsive soil—in this case the soil of humanity itself—in such a way that the effects alone, and not the fact of agreement with objective reality, are of importance.

Such things go on in many circles which like to consider themselves ‘Occult.’ In many such circles it is not a question of ideas which accord with reality but of saying things to serve a definite aim and produce definite effects in one direction or another. Certainly, there are people who are so dull-witted and simple-minded that they immediately respond to Ahrimanic impulses quite unconsciously and without any direct application of Ahrimanic arts. But it does actually happen that Ahrimanic arts, that is to say, arts practised in direct association with Ahriman, are applied in human life. In our times, things that are done as an outcome of alliance with Ahriman play a part of great significance. For much of what has been going on for a long time now in human affairs is only to be understood in the light of a knowledge of secrets which have been lightly touched upon here.

We find, therefore, that Ahriman is never concerned as to whether an idea fits the facts but only with the effects produced.

With Lucifer it is not quite the same. Lucifer has other characteristics of which we have often spoken. But one characteristic in particular shall be mentioned here in order to further our knowledge. Like Ahriman, Lucifer is never concerned with the agreement of an idea with actuality. Lucifer is out to cultivate such ideas as will generate in man the highest possible degree of consciousness. Understand me well: I mean by that, cultivation of the most enhanced consciousness, of the widest possible expansion of consciousness. This expanded consciousness in which Lucifer is interested is associated with a certain inner voluptuousness in man. This again is Lucifer’s sphere. You remember perhaps that in speaking of At1antean times I once said that all sexuality was then an unconscious process. Beautiful myths of the different people point to this unconsciousness of the sexual process in ancient times. Only in the course of time was it raised to the realm of consciousness. Lucifer plays an essential part in raising this unconsciousness greater and greater consciousness.Prematurely to induce consciousness in man, that is to say, to call forth consciousness whereas under proper conditions this particular degree of consciousness should unfold at another period of time—this is the aim of Lucifer. Lucifer does not want the attention of men to be directed altogether to externalities. He would like everything that works into the consciousness to work from within. Hence all visionary life—which is, as it were, an exudation of forces in the inner organs—is of a Luciferic nature.

When Lucifer is known—and he must be known because it is a question of keeping him in his rightful sphere and we are here concerned with spiritual forces in the universe—we realise with horror that he has not the very least understanding pf any harmless delight or amusement which a man may take in things of the outer world. Lucifer has not the remotest sympathy for harmless, amused delight aroused by something outside. What he does understand is any emotion that is kindled by the inner being of man. Lucifer well understands when a desire in man awakens voluptuousness and when some process that would otherwise remain unconscious is called in this way into the region of consciousness. But in spite of his wisdom—and Lucifer has, of course, sublime wisdom—he simply cannot understand a harmless joke occasioned by some outer event. This lies outside his province. And one can protect oneself against the attacks which Lucifer is so prone to make, precisely by taking innocent joy and delight in the world outside. Lucifer cannot bear this; it vexes him terribly, for instance, if we take delight in a good caricature.

Such are the connections which are disclosed when we pass from the world of sense to the region lying beyond the Threshold, the region where things are not as they are in the world of sense but where all is Being, living Being. Even in the world of the Elements everything is living.

It is therefore correct to say that both Ahriman and Lucifer are equally unconcerned as to whether ideas agree with actuality. Ahriman is concerned with the effects of what is said; Lucifer's aim is to bring about an enhanced consciousness in man of what, in a particular situation, should really not become conscious.

In these two ways it is possible to achieve ends which could not be achieved if care were taken to ensure absolute agreement between idea and objective reality. And just as an alliance with Ahriman is the aim of corrupt occult circles, for reasons already indicated, so too, attempts are made to enter into a pact with Lucifer, that is to say, efforts are made to influence human beings in such a way that vision is induced as the outcome of inner voluptuousness—vision that is kindled from the inner being.

What is consciously achieved in these corrupt occult circles, namely, a pact with Ahriman on the one side and with Lucifer on the other, enables Ahriman and Lucifer to work into the unconscious regions of man's being. And much of the criticism which must be directed against the character of the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch in the way it is expressing itself in the world, is to be traced to Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses. That there is so much lying, direct and indirect, that so much is said with utter indifference as to whether it agrees with the objective reality or not but simply for the sake of satisfying some feeling or passion—all these things are directly traceable to the fact that Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences have gripped the world to-day and are causing chaos in human affairs. For at our present stage of evolution we should not be capable of making statements as the outcome of passion without any attempt to discover whether they are really in accordance with reality or not, if we only lent ourselves to the Powers of Good! During the Atlantean epoch and even afterwards—at any rate up to the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean period—the forces in man's own inner being enabled him to ensure agreement between his ideas and the corresponding objective realities. This faculty, as we know, has been lost. And our present phase of evolution is there precisely in order that men may learn to observe the outer world, to investigate it—not to make statements which are merely instigated by their own passions! To-day, when conclusions well up from the inner life and no attempt is made to ensure their agreement with objective reality, a Luciferic influence is mingling with an Ahrimanic influence, the one inducing misplaced consciousness, and the other, lying and untruthfulness. These things are very widespread at the present time. Many souls to-day ignore the necessity of ensuring that an idea shall absolutely accord with objective reality. Moreover, few enough efforts are made in this direction. When they are made they are not understood and cause, to say the least, a considerable amount of surprise! Least of all does one find understanding when one tries to give such characterisations of reality as are supported by what actually exists, simply taking the things of the world as they are and reproducing them in ideas. People do not understand that this is something radically different from things that are done and said as the outcome either of personal or national passion. Here lies the radical difference which is unobserved to-day. Statements are made and conclusions are formed by men in accordance with their own lines of thought and without regard as to whether such statements and conclusions agree with the facts or not. That statements should agree with objective facts—upon this the fate of our age depends. For only so can we hope to pass onwards to an epoch wherein the spiritual world can be perceived in its true nature. Unless we acquire the faculty for the perception of truth in this physical world we shall never be able to unfold it in regard to the spiritual world. The capacity to find our true bearings in the spiritual world must be developed here in the physical world. It is for this purpose that we are placed in the physical world, where it behoves us to seek agreement between idea and objective reality, in such a way that this may become natural to us, may become a habit and a faculty which we then carry with us into the spiritual world.

But in these days there are so many who make statements with utter disregard of their conformity with objective fact, simply out of their feelings and emotions! This tendency is the very reverse of what is needed for the onward progress of humanity. Thinking in accordance with reality has become terribly foreign to our materialistic age under the influences which have here been described. Thinking in accordance with reality is rare in the extreme and when it is honestly striven for it comes into clash with whole world of unreal thinking. A terrible example of this is afforded by the conflicts that arise between our Anthroposophical Movement and unreal thinking;—conflicts which must be spoken of, however unwelcome this may be, because the facts are there and because one cannot be silent about them if one is sincere in regard to the Movement.

These conflicts of thinking that is in accordance with reality with thinking that is inimical to reality (inimical in the sense explained above) are an example of what is at stake when efforts are made really to serve the interests of truth.

In every age the fight with the opposing powers has had to be waged but the particular form this fight assumes in every age and the metamorphosis it undergoes must be recognised and understood. The influence of the Scribes and Pharisees has not died out! It is still working to-day, in a different form. And we shall only make progress with the clarity that is essential when we really understand this difference between thinking that is in accordance with reality and thinking that is inimical to reality.

• 1. See also Cosmic Forces in Man. Christiania, Nov.–Dec., 1921 Anthroposophical Publishing Co.

Yesterday we brought our observations on the characteristics of imaginative knowledge to a certain point of view and emphasized that everything that a person consciously brings into their consciousness through imaginative knowledge is actually already within them. I have used the comparison that in a dark room there are various objects, or for that matter people, which cannot be seen with the physical eyes in a dark room. Then one enters with a light, and everything inside is illuminated; nothing is new in it, everything was already there before. The only difference is that the things are seen and perceived afterwards, and not before. It is the same with what imaginative knowledge presents to us. Everything that imaginative knowledge brings to consciousness is present in man, reigns and works in man down there in the hidden depths of the soul; it belongs to what lives and moves in man. And what is especially important for man on the physical plane is that he is continually increased or diminished in his powers in some way through what he absorbs, experiences and lets sink down from his imaginative life into the depths of consciousness.

I shall have more to say to you on this subject on a later occasion, for the process is very incompletely characterized when one says: Here [it is drawn] is the threshold of consciousness; here is an idea that sinks down into the subconscious and is now down there like a living being. As I said, the process is quite incompletely described. But we want to ascend slowly and gradually to the true facts in this area.

What I want to say today is that we are becoming aware of how these imaginative cognitive facts are, of course, - as you can see from the discussion - thoroughly and deeply connected with all the conditions of human life, even on the physical plane from birth to death. But they belong to the unconscious or subconscious conditions of life. So that from what we have considered, we can also gain the important truth that man, as he lives on earth, is dependent on conditions that do not enter into the bright day-consciousness that we have from birth to death, except when we sleep. So we are dependent on life factors that cannot be known with ordinary normal consciousness.

But from the way I have presented it, these life factors that prevail down there – and we said yesterday, in the etheric body – are still quite close to the person, so close that, because they are related, they connect with what the person continually lets sink down from his world of ideas. For man can, so to speak, when he transforms his thoughts into memories, transform his thoughts himself into the substance that is down there in the subconscious. It is, after all, substantively quite the same as what we think. When what we think is down there, it is just as much a seething, swirling world as what lives and moves down there, which is basically a living thought life. But this is the etheric body, which has come into the etheric body from the cosmos. And because it is related to our conscious thought life, it is still very close to the human being. And just as it lives and moves in us today in our unconscious, so it was basically fully present during the old moon existence. This [moon thinking] was - if you imagine it as a dream, if you think that it is completely immersed in dream life - generally proceeding as when you dream, but perceive the living weaving of thought in the dream. That is the old moon dweller's concept of the imagination. It is only during our life on earth that we have to make an effort to have thoughts, to form thoughts through our own efforts. The old moon dweller did not form thoughts through his own efforts. He lived in dream images, which were not as dead as our thoughts, but were living, weaving images, forming thoughts.

You can see from what I have described to you that when we immerse ourselves in the imaginative world, we gain something and lose something at the same time. We lose the reassurance of the peaceful earthly experience of thoughts; we no longer have that in our power because thoughts themselves are living inner forces. In ordinary life we feel that we are the masters of our thoughts; we do not have them in the imaginative world; but in return we also grasp a life that is just life. The thoughts we have in physical life are dead; what we grasp there lives and moves. And so it was already during the old moon existence for people, only they had it in dreams, and not consciously. Then, in the evolution on earth, there is an ascent to consciousness. And from the conscious realization of that which was a dream during the old moon existence, imaginative knowledge emerges as the first step from which spiritual-scientific knowledge must be taken. This imaginative knowledge is therefore still very much related to the human being.

Now, I said, one gains something and one loses something. People would agree with the first part, gaining something, but they do not agree with the losing. And from this, countless errors arise; very, very many errors arise from this. You see, it is not so easy if you do not make an effort to imagine what this dream-like imaginative imagining was like during the moon phase. When we live here on earth, it is inconvenient, because of the physical developmental period, to always have to form ideas and thoughts only on the basis of earthly facts. That is precisely the inconvenience of studying. One must really weigh the facts, judge the facts, and connect the facts, and one must slowly work one's way through one's own efforts into the worlds of thought and imagination, which one masters as an earthly human being with an earthly will. Some people find it much more comfortable to have the living world of thought simply handed to them, so that they only need to wait for it: when they receive the 'enlightenment' from it, it enters into their soul life, and they no longer need to develop thoughts. That is how they think, but it does not take them any further than they are. One stands much higher as an earth human than as a moon human, because one has developed further. Compared to the dreamy moon-imagination, the earthman, who combines facts and forms concepts from life experiences with his rational judgment, stands much higher than the moonman and than the one who longs for this moonman existence, which is supposed to consist of illuminations that have not been worked out through thought.

One can have peculiar experiences there. Not that a person, when he sinks back to this moon-like realization, has no thoughts. He has thoughts, but they come by themselves, he does not need to do the work of thinking. That seems rather comfortable. One can experience a certain, very important, specific experience over and over again, which must be considered if one wants to understand these things at all.

There are people who develop a certain visionary clairvoyance. This dream-like imagining, this visionary clairvoyance, always involves a regression to a lunar nature. For real clairvoyance that can be desired for the earth must be based on a higher level, on an even greater development through the world of thought than the recognition of the physical plane. The regression is not an elevation, not a development upwards for the person, but a development downwards, a becoming less intelligent than one is as a normal earth person. And then the strange experience occurs, which one can have again and again. There are people who have a certain visionary clairvoyance, but are not really intelligent at all. Yes, their clairvoyance is almost directly related to the fact that they shun intelligence, that they do not want to develop the intelligence that one has to develop as an earthly human being. It is precisely this attenuation of ordinary earthly intelligence that is very often associated with a certain degree of visionary clairvoyance, which is a lunar atavistic one. And then perhaps the following occurs: Such people can then make notes of their images. These notes are not thoughtless, but interwoven with thoughts - the thoughts come with the images and within them are interwoven spiritual, very spiritual images. And then the puzzle can arise: Yes, there is a person who describes in pictures, in very beautiful pictures, Atlantis or other things that come to him in a visionary way, and that is absolutely logically intelligent. But I never perceived such intelligent logic in that person when he was supposed to explain things of the physical plane; then he does not have it. He has not become enough of an earth person. But if he is allowed to fall back into lunar intelligence, then the intelligence comes. But then it is not his intelligence, then he is merely a medium for the lunar intelligence, then the lunar intelligence works in him. One can receive beautiful descriptions of spiritual worlds from people who have sunk a little back into the lunar stage, and who, when they want to apply their earthly acquired intelligence, cannot themselves understand what they have actually produced, and in most cases do not even want to do so.

I said: In the ascent to imaginative knowledge one must gain something and lose something, and that people usually do not want to lose anything. I also pointed out that people who have spirit do not want to lose it. These are not the people who love visionary clairvoyance, for they are quite willing to lose ordinary intelligence, ordinary thinking. But there is another group that does not want to lose this intelligence. They want to maintain this intelligence as it is on the physical plane, they just do not want to develop it further. They do not want to work on this intelligence so that the person comes to use the concepts more freely than they are used in the processes of the physical plane. And then such people come to allegorizing, to symbolizing, which is after all again only an activity of the physical plane, because it does not further the thinking, but leaves it standing, and then puts outer thought-capes on it from all kinds of exquisite occult things. It is very important to bear that in mind.

And you see, that was already in the consciousness of those who slowly and gradually worked or wanted to work their way up to the points of view that we must have in spiritual science today. Today, in spiritual science, we really must bring humanity something of clear thinking, combined with the possibility of knowing something of spiritual worlds, but in clear, completely clear thinking. It has taken a long time for the possibility to arise – and hopefully it has now – to see through these things in this way. And many people have worked their way through to this. People of such great clarity as Goethe, for example, have come very close to complete clarity. But many have worked their way through to this. Just think how Jakob Böhme wrestled with the transition points of the materialistic age, with the chaotically writhing, moving, whirling and tumbling concepts. He had already had them, but to really work through them so that what emerged is what stands with Jakob Böhme as a profound illumination of some secrets of the spiritual world.

Another person has expressed a wonderful sentence – I would say, as if illuminating the field of vision wonderfully, as dawned on modern times – from which one can see, or at least from what he has otherwise achieved, one can see how he was not able to penetrate with a completely clear view to what spiritual science should be today, but he was still able to come so far as to represent the most important nerve. The man I am talking about realized in the 18th century that if you want to know the human being, you have to penetrate through the darkness, through the confusion of external material knowledge. Even if you are at the first stage of imaginative knowledge, this is necessary. Because we have seen what weaves down there in the depths of the soul, you can't reach that with physical knowledge. You have to penetrate through the darkness. But that is not the only thing you have to do. You also have to penetrate through the confusion of ordinary concepts to knowledge, you also have to dispel these confusions. So you also have to get beyond the ordinary thinking that works on the physical plane.

And then this man coined a very beautiful sentence. The first part of this sentence is readily followed, the second part is almost never followed. But it is important to follow it. You see, most people today who want to become or be mystics in some way or other admit that one must strip away the sensual, the material, that one must strip away the confusions of the material in order to penetrate into the spiritual. But that one must also discard the forms of the spiritual that adhere to conceptual thinking, very few people admit; for they would like to take them with them, would like to manage them in the same way as on the physical plane, would like to find the thought down there in the subconscious as a possibility for remembrance in exactly the same form as it has up there.

But it would be a mistake to believe that the clairvoyant, when he looks into the human mind, finds the thoughts there in exactly the same form as the person who has them in his head. That is not true. Down there they are transformed, they are living entities, an elementary world. The world of thoughts that man has here on the physical plane is not found in the spiritual world. That is why that man coined a beautiful sentence that I want to write down for you, because it can really be seen as a kind of trial in one's own mind: how can one possibly get to know something about the worlds that lie outside the earthly world? He said, [it was written on the board]:

Dissipez vos ténèbres matérielles ei vous trouverez l'Homme

With this part of the sentence: To disperse the material darkness and confusion - people who want to be mystics agree. But people today still hardly understand the second part of the sentence. [It was written on the blackboard]:

Dissipez vos ténèbres spirituelles et vous trouverez Dieu

whereby we have to imagine the whole content of spiritual science for “Dieu”, because that is still colored by religious ideas. Not true, he could not yet find the expression that can be found today.

Now you can surely imagine that when someone reads the sentence today: “Dissipez vos ténèbres matétrielles et vous trouverez l'homme”, they think: Yes, fine, that's how I enter the spiritual world, that's what I want. But when he reads, “Dissipez vos ténèbres spirituelles et vous trouverez Dieu,” he says, “Yes, but what will remain for me then? I will have nothing?”

Yes, what remains there? Precisely that remains, which is the content of today's spiritual science. This is necessary: the content of knowledge of the physical plane, which is usually believed to be the only correct one, must be dispelled just as the material darkness is dispelled. Now notice how this is taken into account in our spiritual science... [space in the transcript].

This sentence is a sentence of the so-called “philosophe inconnu”, of Saint-Martin, who saw himself as a disciple of Jakob Böhme. Thus, we already find in Saint-Martin a deep longing for that which is to come to light in spiritual science. But he calls himself “philosophe inconnu”, unknown philosopher, because what he carried within him remained foreign to those who saw him, of course, saw his nose, saw his hands, heard the words he spoke. The actual philosopher Saint-Martin remained unknown to them, quite unknown.

So, after the discussions we had yesterday, the appropriation of imaginative knowledge is a return, a conscious return to the way in which man had his relationship to the world during the lunar time. So that we can say - you remember, we have already presented this from a different side here in lectures: In man, today, still prevail, but supersensibly, as spiritual-supersensibles, the events, which are not actually normal events on earth, but were normal events during the moon time. He has preserved these moon events; he can fall back in a certain sense. Then he produces knowledge in a completely different way than the earth man can produce such knowledge. He can have visionary clairvoyance, have subdued intelligence and pose the very riddle I spoke of earlier, namely that if one were to induce him to work reasonably scientifically, or even to make reasonable conclusions about the most ordinary, everyday events, he cannot do it, that he does not succeed; but when he writes something out of the vision, even about the events that took place at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, he only writes pictures, remains in the moon life, but still writes terribly cleverly. And what he writes does not match what is otherwise known about the person. So, theoretically he can do nothing, but he writes very cleverly in a mediumistic way, so that one can be amazed at the cleverness. But that is not a further development, that is a regression of the human being. Of course, that does not exclude the possibility that truths can come to light through such a person, because he is, after all, in an earthly existence and connected to the earthly existence and, in addition, has this lively moon life in him.

I have tried to depict the different types of people in the Mystery Dramas, and also to draw a character who falls back into the lunar, who is therefore unintelligent on the physical plane and yet can reveal correct things, who is therefore below the level of the normal earthly human being: that is Theodora. Theodora is a figure who is meant to be a regression into lunar consciousness. That is very clear. I would like to say that it is very clearly indicated there, as it is, by saying at the one point where Theodora appears: “Theodora, a seer. In her, the will element is transformed into naive seership.” Naive seership means, of course, naive visionary. It is a naive seership, and that is how the character is developed. And for this reason, it is also that in the last mystery, Theodora herself can no longer appear, but only her soul, because she cannot go through certain things. These Mystery Dramas should be taken very, very literally. Perhaps some of you will one day realize that hardly anything that has happened here in recent days could not already be read in the Mysteries in some form or other. If one had read it as the things were meant to be read, we would not have needed these confusions.

So let us remember: what is experienced as the imaginative world is still relatively close to the human being. What can be experienced as the inspired world, on the other hand, is much less close to the human being. For when one first enters into the inspired world, it encompasses those facts that did not take place during the moon's existence but already during the old sun's existence and that the human being has also retained. So you penetrate into even greater depths of the human soul when you work your way through to the inspired world. And the inspired world that you encounter first has a certain peculiarity.

You see, when a person works his way through to the imaginative world, he encounters facts that took place during the old moon's existence. If you imagine the old moon in the phases when it was separated from the then sun (you can read about this in “Secret Science”), then at certain times, man lived on this moon that was separated from the sun. And what the human being experienced there is what one encounters first when one returns with the old, dream-like, imaginative clairvoyance. But when one enters the inspired world, then one experiences in the return not a being split off from the sun, but a being directly inside the sun; thus the facts that the human being experienced together with the sun. One experiences truly correct solar facts. And these solar facts, you see, are actually no longer related to man. Because the way man is now, during his earthly existence, if he does not look into the depths of his soul, does not look at what is in the deeply hidden reasons of his soul, he is actually, through what he is on earth, really more of a shell. It is not a real human being, it is more of a shell. First of all, there is the physical form itself, which has been created during the earthly existence as it appears to us on the physical plane. But there are forces at work within it that cannot be seen and that are not even sought by current science.

A friend of ours has been encouraged to search in this direction with the biological material at his disposal. The friend is putting a lot of effort into it and perhaps after some time - such things require a great deal of study - will be able to come up with a way to bridge the gap to these hidden parts of human nature. But for this it is necessary to search out those biological facts that are not taken into account by present-day science, that the present-day researcher, who experiments, leaves lying, as it were. So one has to search through the preparations for what does not interest the other researchers at all, what they leave lying. Of course, a lot is still missing, and a lot of new research has to be done. It is quite possible that it will take many years of work before it can be completed. But it would be an eminently important work because it could show us what can still be achieved by physical science of what lives in human nature from the old moon. It will result in a completely new embryology, a new part, a new side to embryology. It is necessary that this be done. But that is really all; more cannot be found by looking at the human being from the outside. For what can be found today in the human being from the outside is actually not older, not even as old as the oldest time of the old moon existence. But from such research, of which I have just spoken, conclusions can be drawn about processes of the old moon existence. These will correspond with what is described in “Occult Science”. But, as I said, we do not get very far back when we look at human beings as they are today; not even to the beginning of the ancient moon existence, let alone to the ancient sun existence.

If you want to go back to the old solar existence, then you have to take much, much less material in the human being than can be taken in the science I just spoke of. Because what it is about is that something actually penetrates into human nature, which man on earth can bring to revelation, but does not have to bring to revelation. He can, but he does not have to, bring it to revelation. When, for example, an artist or poet is truly inspired, then these inspirations come from the spiritual world of the existence of the sun. They really come from the spiritual world of the existence of the sun. It is just that our time is so terribly poor in spirit that what comes from the inspirations of the existence of the sun is rejected, and people actually only ever want to create in a naturalistic way, to stick to the model, that is to say to the earthly, while what can come from the model is only the material for what one should actually create. The arts that protect the individual artist from becoming attached to the model, from falling back on the material, are architecture and music. Architecture cannot reproduce anything; it often does it quite badly. And music cannot reproduce anything either, because it is not real music if you reproduce bird calls and cat meows, as you reproduce models in painting and so on. In music, only the very highest material of sound can be used. But it should be the same in every art. Just as much as the musician takes from music, the painter must take from the model. What the tones are for the musician, the form and color must be for the painter. The model should not give him more than the material. So the artistic cannot be taken from the model, but arises from inspiration, which leads back to the ancient solar existence. Hence the strangeness to the earth of truly great works of art. I said that man can live without artistic inspiration, he can, he can indeed bring it in, but he does not need to bring it in. The Botokude, doesn't he say: Man can also live without art.

But now you can – and those who experience things in a deeper sense will do so sooner or later – you can raise an important, crucial question: Yes, if we have a Saturn existence, a Sun existence, a Moon existence, an Earth existence, all with certain facts, and in imaginative knowledge, to the sun in inspired knowledge, and from this it follows that we return to Saturn in intuitive knowledge; yes, if this is so, that we do not have new facts but return to the old facts, why then does man need further development at all?

Someone might ask this question: Why further development? Why the whole earthly existence, which detaches us from the facts through which we have developed, so that the insights are pushed down into the unconscious, and we must first recognize them again? Why the whole thing?

Yes, you see, it is only through this that we become true human beings, because only through it can we truly perfect our true nature. And this can also be seen outwardly if one really studies those personalities who had something of the flexible concepts, of this conceptual mind, as I have mentioned to you in the examples of Goethe's “Metamorphosis of Plants” and “Metamorphosis of Animals”. Such natures must be studied. And such natures show at the same time that they, when they are completely true to themselves inwardly, stand in a very definite relation to yet another world of the soul. This is especially evident in Goethe. Study “Wilhelm Meister”, study all of Goethe's poetry, and you will find that in his work there is a remarkable way of judging and passing judgment on the world. If you look into these things, you will find that in the same measure as Goethe's idea of metamorphosis develops, so does a truly genuine, magnificent inner soul tolerance. A wonderful tolerance develops in his soul, a remarkable way of relating to the world and to life, a soul tolerance! And this is connected with very deep facts.

You see, if we look at the animal world, this animal world has the most diverse forms. If we compare, for example, the hyena, which has its carrion-craving written all over its face and which carries its nature in its entire posture, with the lion, with the wolf, and if we in turn compare these animals with the eagle and the eagle with the vulture, then these animals in comparison with turtles, snakes, worms, the various insects, if we take all these different animal forms, we must still ask ourselves: How does this relate to the spiritual world?

This can only be studied by studying the old moon existence. Because why? You see, during the old moon existence, man did not yet exist in his present form. The corresponding forms that existed at the human level were the angels. The Angeloi, the angels, had very different judgments and a very different way of thinking [than we have today]. The angels were at the same level back then that people are at today, but they were not in a physical body like the people on earth today. They had a very soft, flexible body, because the spirits of form had not yet been involved in forming a solid body. Now, these angeloi thought in terms that were much more alive compared to our earthly concepts, and this was not during their time on earth but during the time on the moon. These concepts, however, have something very peculiar in addition to their liveliness. They were steeped to a high degree in impulses of feeling. Inspired by the archangels, the archai, the spirits of form, the spirits of movement, and so on upwards, the angels grasped the concepts during the lunar time. But these are living, impulsive concepts; much more impulsive than we find the concepts in today's people, who alternately become either “rapture nickels” or “poison nickels” when they put their emotions into how they judge life. There are such people, and they can be the best of people, but they will alternately be enraptured, enraptured about something, or be quite pronounced “poison nickels”, so that the whole soul is in what they express and the whole goes out in the concepts, doesn't it. Now that was present in a much higher degree - directly creative - in these angels on the moon.

Imagine a moon dweller who thinks in this way! He says to himself: Yes, I must now grasp a concept. Inspiration gives me: Wretched creature, who carries his back rising from behind to the front, who makes a repulsive face out of longing for carrion! - That is how this creature came into being, condemned to be a hyena. The creative concept is there. The forms of the animal kingdom are intimately connected with this creative thinking, which creates according to the principle of good and evil. And the whole animal kingdom in its various forms is such a manifestation of good and evil.

The people [of Earth] were not supposed to learn this. One who did not want to let go of the culture of the moon seduced people into recognizing good and evil in the way he had experienced it during the lunar period. The... [gap in the transcription] judged thus; but people should learn to judge differently. This strong identification of the emotions with the concepts should not go down into deeper psychological levels. That had to be discarded, that had to give way to a more objective, more relaxed form. Therefore man had to progress from lunar to earthly development. And if he continues to progress, he will become even more tolerant. A lunar angel, yes, he hated the hyena in an incredible way because for him it represented evil. He hated the snake, hated everything that was ugly and loved everything that was beautiful. Good and evil belonged to the realm of creative life. Man had to unlearn this. Man could not develop an earth science if he were to classify animals, as the moon angels did, into beautiful and ugly – no, we classify differently, according to objective terms – into decent and indecent animals, into playful, into cunning animals, and so on. The moon angels had all that. But it would not be scientific today, for example, if a learned book were to say: “The weasel - characteristic: cunning.” This may be the case in a satirical poem, but in science today this must be suppressed; it cannot be so today.

So in order to make progress in this field, one must be able to rise to a level at which one regards the animal kingdom without emotion in the same scientific way as one regards the natural world when one has the most intense emotions in one's earthly life. And we can see this in this peculiar distillation of Goethe's mind. For him, human life is to a much greater extent a calm stream, which he observes like natural phenomena. That is precisely the wonderful inner serenity of Goethe's view of life, that for him part of human life also enters into the stream of natural facts. This is how he was able to be so objective.

Now, from this point on, we have to take up the matter again and continue the deliberations tomorrow.

I have been speaking to you about the secrets connected with the mummy and with cult and rites, indicating how the mummy enshrined secrets of antiquity before the Mystery of Golgotha, whereas cult and ceremonial rites in their more modern forms enshrine secrets whose full significance will be revealed only in the future. Today and tomorrow I want to add something to what has already been said and to begin with I will give you a picture in the form of a kind of narrative.

If you had been able to participate in many a scene in the Mysteries during a certain epoch of Egyptian development, in times when the custom of the mummification of bodies was at its height, you would have experienced something like the following. The Priest-Instructor in the Mysteries would have tried, first, to explain to his pupils that in the human head all the mysteries of the world lie concealed, in a very special sense. He would have bidden them regard the earth, the dwelling-place of man, as a mirror, a reflection of the whole cosmos. In very truth, everything that exists in the cosmos is also to be found in the earth itself. Looking upwards to the world of stars, we see the moon as our nearest neighbour among the heavenly bodies. Think of the earth and the moon circling around the earth.¹ We can picture the course taken by the moon as it moves around the earth and all that lies between the earth and the orbit of the moon. Those who rightly understand how to interpret what they find when they dig down into the earth, will say: What is present in the environment is mirrored, and condensed, in an outermost layer of the earth itself.

And now take another planet, which together with the earth, circles round the Sun. We can picture this planet, Venus, and its path. This sphere is filled with delicate, aeriform, etheric substance. Again a lower layer in the earth must be pictured as a reflection of what is outside in the cosmos. Proceeding in this way we have the whole earth as a mirror image of the universe, remembering that what exists out yonder in a state of extremely delicate, ethereal volatility is condensed and still further condensed when it is found in the earth's strata. Thus at the centre of the earth, the outermost periphery of the universe would be condensed into a single point.

In the epoch to which I am now referring, the Initiate of Egypt spoke to his pupils of those things I have very briefly outlined. But the Initiate also said to his pupils: To understand the interaction between the cosmos and its mirror image, the earth, let us study the human head. The human head is formed in the mother's body through the combined working of the whole universe and the earth. But—so the Initiate would have said to his pupils—no observation of the human head can, in itself, enable us to understand its real nature, for the head in itself does not reveal its secrets. It contains innumerable secrets and mysteries but they remain concealed.

The human head is active from the earliest period of germination in the body of the mother until death but it does not contain within itself the effects of its own activity. The mystery of the human head is that it is infinitely active, but the effects of its activities are to be found in the other parts of the organism, not in the head itself.

An Egyptian Initiate would have spoken to his pupils just as I am speaking to you now, except that he would, of course, have used the forms of expression current in those days.

Diagrams were sketched on the blackboard, of circles one inside each other, the smallest indicating the earth in the centre and the larger circles the paths around the earth of the moon and other planets with their interpenetrating spheres

He would have made the following intelligible to his pupils. When the human eye looks at a colour, the perception of the colour gives rise to a change in the brain. What is thus produced in the human eye, with the resulting change in the brain is, in truth, a deed of the outer world. The processes that take place in the brain itself are deeds of the outer world. But the brain itself does something. When the brain receives a colour-impression from outside and a nerve-process arises inwardly as a result, the brain brings about something in the astral body and Ego. The actual effect of this, however, manifests in the other parts of the organism, not in the brain itself. Whereas the working of the external world results in a change in the brain, the brain, for its part, works, for example, upon the heart or upon some other organ of the human body. You can only perceive what the human head does when you know exactly what happens in the human physical body—so would the Initiate have spoken to his pupils.

The Egyptians had knowledge of these things, but because the possibilities that had existed in still earlier times were no longer at their disposal, the Initiates were obliged to adopt methods different from those used by the Initiates of ancient Persia or ancient India. The Initiates of ancient India let their pupils carry out exercises of Yoga, made them breathe in a particular way; and by transforming the breathing process into a sensory process the pupils acquired knowledge of the human physical body. And how did they acquire it?

We know that when man breathes in, the breath-impulse passes through the lungs into the whole of the body, through the spinal canal into the brain. In the brain, the breath-impulse combines with the other processes there, and then recoils. It was this recoil that the pupil of Yoga observed. The breath-impulse passes first into the lungs, through the spinal canal into the brain, and there expands; then it recoils and passes through the different organs, into the chest, and so on. Observing the recoil of the breath downwards into the organism, the pupil of Yoga was able to watch what the brain was doing in the chest, in the abdominal organs and so on. In the recoil through the spinal cord and the expansion through the whole body, the pupil of Yoga was able to observe what the head brings about in the organism. Such was the art connected with the breath, in times when the breathing process was made into a sensory process, when through observation of the breathing, a human being could answer for himself the question: How does my head work in my organism?

I told you in the last lecture that at a certain stage of the Egyptian epoch, this art had been lost and the Egyptian Initiates were obliged to resort to other means. The Initiates of Egypt led their pupils to the mummies, taught them to mummify the human organism, taught them, through observation of what was there presented to them, something that had once been learned by inner means, through contemplation of the breathing process. But I told you, too, that although the pupils of the Egyptian Initiates were no longer capable of following these spiritual processes, which are revealed as the deeds performed by the brain in the human organism—and that was the point of importance—nevertheless the Initiates were helped, as they spoke to their pupils, by the spiritual Moon-Beings. These spiritual Beings who would otherwise have wandered homeless about the earth, found dwelling places in the mummies. These were the Beings who could be observed, whose speech was still understood in that period of ancient Egyptian development and through whom the first science of nature was imparted. What the pupil of Yoga was able to perceive inwardly, through cultivation of the breathing process—these things were now taught somewhat in the following way. The Initiates would say to their pupils: The human head is involved in a constant process of dying. It is really dying all the time, and every night the organism must make efforts to counteract this dying process in the head. But what the head does during this dying process between birth and death results in the influx of new life into the other organs of the body, so that inasmuch as the forces of these other organs—not their substance, of course, but their forces—are sent on into the future, during the period between death and a new birth they become head, the head of the next earthly incarnation. But the Initiates impressed upon their pupils the necessity of understanding what is contained in the actual forms of the organs, and it was for this reason that such scrupulous care was given to the preservation of the mummies. By way of the forms in the mummy, the Moon-Spirits were able to reveal the secrets of the organs, their connection with the human head, and how they bear within them those forces of germination by means of which they become head in the next earthly life. Such was the teaching given by the Initiates of Egypt to their pupils, by means of the mummy.

At a certain period, then, it became necessary to teach in an external way what had once been inner teaching in the days when the Yoga philosophy and religion were at their prime. This, indeed, was the great transition that took place from the culture of ancient India and ancient Persia to that of Egypt: what had once been a teaching by inner means was now taught by external means.

The teaching given by the Initiates of Egypt was brought to a majestic climax when they said to their pupils: And now steep yourselves in the plastic quality of the forms lying before you in the mummy. Here you have very faint indications of that which during the life of man on earth is perpetually passing away, namely, the inner components of the human head. But you have before you in great clarity and precision the forms of the rest of the human organism. Contemplation of the mummy will not help you to study the life-processes, or the perceptive processes; but the plastic quality of the forms of the inner organs of the human body, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the stomach, and so forth—all this you can study from the mummy. Try to picture the following. During life, the breath is drawn back into the head and then streams out into the organism. In this breath there is a plastic force, which has the tendency to shape the breath into the form of a mummy. The breath, in its drive from the head towards the body, has the tendency towards mummy-formation. And it is only because the body works against this impulse and brings about out-breathing, that this “nascent” mummy is transformed back again. Thus what is seen streaming from the human head into the other part of the organism, taking shape there as the breath passes onwards, is a form like the mummy, a form that takes shape rapidly. In that the breath is breathed out, it dissolves again. All that remains of it is a form of appearance of the etheric body, which is almost always there, notably during waking life. Observation of the etheric body gives the feeling that from the head outwards the etheric body is trying all the time to form itself into a mummy and is in turn dissolved into a kind of resemblance with the human physical organisation. The inner, plastic force of the human etheric body tends to make it assume the form of a mummy, and then to dissolve this form again so that finally the etheric body resembles the physical organism. This was taught as an apotheosis of all the manifold teachings given by the Initiates of ancient Egypt to their pupils with the help of those super-sensible, elementary Beings whom we may call the Moon-Spirits.

The Egyptian Initiates directed the attention of their pupils especially to the past, to the inner experiences of human beings in very ancient times. This, in truth, was the essence of Egyptian culture, which for us today is so fraught with riddles. Sphinxes, pyramids, mummies—they are all enigmas. But these enigmas are unveiled to spiritual science when we know that the sphinxes represent forms that were actually visible to men in the time of Atlantis, and when we remember that the teachings concerning the mummy given by the Egyptian Initiates to their pupils were an echo of the Yoga teaching imparted, for example, by Initiates of ancient India to their pupils. It was not difficult for an Initiate of ancient India to give such teaching because in those remote times the slightest impetus would enable a man to perceive within a human physical organism this momentary birth of the ether-mummy and its retransformation.

It is deeply interesting to contemplate how these mysteries were unveiled in the Egyptian centres of instruction where such intimate connections were thus established with death. Through the methods adopted in Egypt, death preserved forms, which, during life, are hidden from observation but of which there must be knowledge if the being of man is to be truly understood.

The mummies were displayed before the eyes of the ancient Egyptians and I have told you that there is something analogous for human beings who have lived since the Mystery of Golgotha. For them, cults and rites in many forms have been preserved. I told you that at the time when men needed such forms, they began to “mummify” ancient cults and rites. In its first, faint beginnings, this custom arose in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., but it comes more and more to the fore with the passage of time. In occult and other Brotherhoods, rituals are studied and enacted, but there is never anything essentially new in them. Ancient forms, ancient rituals, are preserved. Indeed those whose task it is to preserve these rites and ceremonies, who have to lead them, lay great stress upon the fact that the ceremonies and customs date back to very ancient times, that they have been preserved from remote antiquity. But we never find that the ceremonies or the effects produced by the rituals are really understood.

To “understand” such rites and ceremonies—what does this really mean? What does it mean to understand the nature of acts performed in rites and ceremonies? To answer this question we must go back to the times, say, of ancient India and ancient Persia and try to discover how ceremonies and rites were understood then. A man today is aware of a difference when, let us say, he touches a rose made of papier-mâché and when he touches a real rose. He is also aware of the difference, through his sense of smell, when he is near a rose. He is aware of the difference and says that the papier-mâché rose is a dead object whereas the rose picked from the rosebush is alive. In very early times, dating back to four or five thousand years before Christ, a man with true perception of the world seeing someone working with a machine or tool, say for cutting wood, would have called this a “dead” process; for even with the eye of spirit he would have seen not the physical substance but a kind of dead, shadow-image. But in ritualistic and ceremonial enactments he saw Spiritual Beings from the surrounding elementary world approaching and pervading all the forms and actions of the rite. He beheld spiritual reality in these enactments.

If you were to ask people today whether they have ever seen Spiritual Beings weaving and streaming through rituals and ceremonies in Churches or Lodges, you would find that this is never the case. In these ritualistic enactments today there is no more spiritual life than there was life in the Egyptian mummy of the human being who had been mummified. But inasmuch as these rituals were preserved, as the form of the human body was preserved in the Egyptian mummy, inasmuch as human enactments and rites were preserved by tradition—“mummified”, as it were—something was preserved that can and will be wakened into life when men have discovered how to bring into all their deeds the power that streams from the Mystery of Golgotha.

Men today have very little understanding of how to draw into their actions the power of the Mystery of Golgotha. Through the centuries, however, there were always individuals here and there who had some conception—even if not so clearly as in earlier times—of how the spiritual impulse that can live in the human being may be guided into all his actions, and of how the human being himself can be an intermediary between the Spirit and what comes to pass through him in the outer world. The right impulse must, of course, be at work before this can happen. Think of a man like Paracelsus. He was one of those isolated individuals who had an inkling, at least, that the spiritual must so live among men that it streams out from them into their actions. There is a great difference between man's mode of life today and what Paracelsus, for example, desired. Today people make a sharp distinction between certain domains of their life. For instance, they practise medicine, but according to materialistic conceptions. A doctor today may, of course, also be a religious man or woman in the modern sense; but the two domains are separated. Medicine is practised on the basis of materialistic principles and people seek what their souls need in an entirely separate sphere of religion—into which, as a result, a highly egoistical element finds its way. People only turn to religion when they want to know what is to become of them after death or how what they do tallies with what a God would be able to make of their deeds. Paracelsus had a very different attitude. He wanted to be a man of piety and religion as a doctor. He wanted each medical, each therapeutic deed also to be a religious deed. He regarded what he did with a sick man as the union of an external, human deed with a religious act. To Paracelsus, healing was still a sacred enactment and it was his constant ideal to make it so. His contemporaries had little understanding of this and today there is even less. It makes one's heart ache to hear the tradition which still persists in Salzburg, that Paracelsus was a drunkard and that returning to his house late one night in a state of intoxication, he met his death by falling over a rock and breaking his skull. If the real truth were told, one would, of course, have to point to the work of his enemies. Paracelsus' drunkenness was less responsible for his broken skull than were people who then proceeded to spread the fairy-tale about his habits.

Customs today are less violent in such matters—less violent but not so very different. A time will come when a deeper conception of the cult and of all ceremonial enactments will take root in men. And then the true teachers will be able to reveal to their pupils something similar to what was revealed by the Initiates of Egypt with the help of the mummy. The Egyptian Initiate was able to make his pupils realise that they could behold in the mummy something, which in still earlier times, became actual experience through transformation of the breathing process into a sensory process. And so, when the cult can once again be truly understood, those who possess this understanding will be able to make clear to their pupils that enactments in sacred cults and rites have an immeasurably greater significance for the cosmos than deeds performed by men in the external world with mechanical tools or the like. Tools, as you know, also play a part in cult and ritual. When true ceremonial, true ritualistic enactments are again established in place of what is customary today, Initiates will be able to say to their pupils: An enactment in cult or rite is a call to the spiritual Powers of the universe who through the deeds of men should be able to unite themselves with the earth. Such an enactment, performed according to a true rite, is different from an act of a purely technical nature. An act that is purely technical or mechanical, however, does bring something about, for with machines many things can be made and used in life. Clothes, for instance, are made with a sewing machine. The clothes are worn and eventually wear out. This is what happens to the products of machines. But it is not so with sacred enactments. I told you in the last lecture that provided a man has the requisite faculty and the true conception of sacred enactments, he can come into contact with spiritual Beings who are as closely connected with the earth as the Spirits who spoke to the Egyptians out of the mummies were connected with the moon. Through machines, through external technical devices, man comes into contact with the physical nature-forces of the earth. Through the sacred enactments of cult and ritual he comes into contact with the elementary-spiritual Powers of the earth, with those Powers who point the way to the future.

And so in times to come an Initiate will be able to say to his pupils: When you participate truly in a sacred enactment of cult or ritual, you are engaged in something of which the materialist says that it has no reality, or, if he is a cynic, he will say that it is all child's play. Nevertheless the enactments of a true rite contain spiritual power. The elementary spiritual Beings, who are evoked when such a rite is enacted, have need of the rite because from it they draw nourishment and forces of growth.

A time will come when the earth will no longer exist. Everything that is around our physical senses, everything that is present in the kingdoms of minerals, plants, animals, in air and clouds, even the radiance of the stars ... all this will pass away and, as I have described in An Outline Of Occult Science, the earth will prepare to pass over to the Jupiter embodiment. This future Jupiter planet will be a subsequent incarnation of the earth just as our own future earthly life will be a reincarnation of our present existence, save that the periods of time involved are immeasurably longer. Of the substance present today in minerals, plants, animals, in wind and clouds, not a single particle will remain in that distant future. The processes set up by machines and technical devices will have performed their task—and they too will have become things of the past. But within what was once earth, within what was once external, technical civilisation, something different will have been prepared.

Think of the earth and within it the different processes of nature and plant life. Machines are there, with all that they bring about on the earth; animals and the physical bodies of men move over the earth ... All this will pass away. But on this earth, in future time, sacred rites will be enacted out of a true understanding of the spiritual world. Through these rites and sacred enactments, elementary spiritual Beings are called down. As I have said, a time will come when the material substance in minerals, plants, animals, clouds, the forces working in wind and weather and also, of course, all the accoutrements used in rites and ceremonies, will pass away, will be dissipated in the universe. But the spiritual Beings who have been called down into the sphere of the rites and sacred enactments—these will remain when the earth approaches its end. They will remain, in a state of more perfect development, within the earth, just as in autumn the seed of next year's plant is concealed within the present plant; just as the dry, withered leaves fall away from the plant, so the substance in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms will disintegrate in the universe, but the perfected elementary Beings will be there, living on into the Jupiter existence as a seed of the future.

And so once again an Initiate will be able to bring the teaching given to his pupils to a grand climax. He will be able to say: “Just as the Initiate of Egypt, standing before the mummy, was able to explain to his pupils all the mysteries of the human head and therewith all the mysteries of the earth and the cosmos around the earth, I am able to explain to you how the earth will arise from its destruction—rise again through the spiritual Beings who develop onwards to the future in cults and rites enacted with true understanding.”

In the evolution of our epoch this conception has a glorious beginning. It can be pictured as follows. Human beings satisfied their hunger and thirst by what lay on the tables before them. But there came the Being Who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, Who gathered His closest disciples around Him and said: “Here is bread, here is wine. Do not now look upon what your outer eyes see in bread and wine, upon what your tongue can taste and your physical body digest. All that is earthly bears within it the seeds of decay. But if you have within you the true impulse you can permeate earthly substance with the Spirit of the earth. For then it is no longer bread, nor is it wine, but something that can live in the inmost depths of man himself, something that lives and has its being in his body and that he can spiritualise and that will be carried over into the future when everything on the earth has passed away.” Christ entered into the body of Jesus of Nazareth and in his whole being, Jesus of Nazareth was spiritualised. He could point to bread and wine, saying: “This is not the true form of bread and wine. Their true form is what indwells the human being—this is My Body, this is My Blood.” And the words receive their full significance from those other words of Christ: “Heaven and earth will pass away but My Words will not pass away.”

I have said many times: The kingdom of plants, of animals, of minerals, all that lives in wind and storm, in clouds—even the radiance of the stars—will be dispersed and scattered; not one particle will remain. But what man prepares spiritually—this will remain.

In earlier times of the evolution of humanity it was known that words contain Spirit. The modern view is that when we speak, movement is brought into the air through the speech-organs and these movements then beat upon the drum of the ear [(Trommelfell, drum of the ear, so-called because the modern view is that the movements of the air, “drum” or beat upon the membrane.)], the nerves begin to move, and there the process ends. In earlier times it was known that words enshrine the movements of elementary Spirits, that forces in words spoken in sacred ritual, for example, stream into the external action and that the Spirit living in man unites with this external enactment. Thereby the elementary Spirits who are developing onwards to the future enter, in actual presence, into the sphere of the sacred rite. Men who understand these things can realise what the “word” signified in olden times. Today it means little more than “noise and smoke”, and Goethe was justified when he used the expression Schall und Rauch. But in days of yore the “word” signified the indwelling Spirit, not the abstract, conceptual properties, but the spiritual reality inherent in the word. In the word there is much that is spiritual. Christ indicates that the life with which man imbues the word is contained in what comes to pass in sacred enactments of rite and cult, namely, a process whereby elementary Spirits are borne on-wards to the fulfilment of their existence, and He said:

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Words will not pass away.”

And now think of the beginning of St. John's Gospel: “In the Beginning was the Logos, the Word ...” The Logos is the Christ. What, then, are the Bread and the Wine in the service of Holy Communion? The Bread and the Wine are the Body and Blood of the Logos. And as we have heard, the Logos relinquishes what is transient, seizes what is in the becoming, prepares what is to come.

Thus we can point to the Mystery of Golgotha as a glorious climax, just as teaching in days of old culminated in the revelation of the ether-body assuming the shape of a mummy and then immediately changing into a form resembling that of the human physical body. But I have emphasised over and over again that man will have to re-establish his connection with the spiritual world if the earth is to attain its goal. Just as the predecessors of the Egyptians, perceiving the breath and its expansion in the organism, inwardly experienced a nascent mummy-formation and its immediate re-transformation, so, in the future, men must perceive in the out-breathing process, in the passing of the out-breathed air into cosmic space, the communication to cosmic space of what takes shape within the human organism, the spiritualisation of the environment through the human being himself. The ancient Egyptians said: The mummy represents a form which the human being strives inwardly and spiritually to assume with every indrawn breath. Initiates of the future will say: Every out-breathing is a manifestation of man's striving to become a cosmos, a whole world. Contemplation of how the inbreathed air surges down from the head into the organism—this brings understanding of the human being. Contemplation of how the indrawn air is breathed out again by man into the world—this can bring understanding of the cosmos. Understanding of the cosmos will be born when Imaginative Knowledge is able to span the world; with Imaginative Knowledge we can also recognise what the human being himself sends forth into the external world with his out-breathing. It is what he is preparing for the future.

Thus what man does in the course of history and what comes to pass in the cosmos are interwoven, intermingled. Without realisation of this there can be no understanding of the world, for history must be studied in its cosmic aspect and historical happenings must reveal to us the workings of the cosmos.

The task that has been set here in these reflections over the past few weeks has been to place the human being in the universe in an understanding way. Yesterday I tried to indicate how, on the one hand, the human being is part of the cosmic world of thought, from which he is also formed in terms of his entire organization, so that, on the one hand, by looking at that which is not grasped by ordinary consciousness in his sensory perception, his ordinary experience of himself, the human being in relation to this organization of his, he must think of himself as belonging to the cosmos and only in relation to the ordinary life of thinking, which, as I have shown, is situated between, on the one hand, cosmic thinking and, on the other hand, thinking that can be perceived as an undercurrent of ordinary consciousness, must he think of himself as belonging to himself in the sense of his own self. The latter would now also belong to what man, as it were, has to regard as belonging to his own self. Yesterday we tried to throw some light on man in so far as he has a thought experience or is placed in the world of thought.

The more one rises to this view, the more one will learn to place the human being in all world-becoming, in all that makes him appear as a piece of cosmic becoming. And when we become so attentive to that part of the human being that is composed of the ordinary life of thought and of the undercurrent that I characterized yesterday, then we will also understand how the human being, through the possession of this part that has been so to speak set apart from the cosmos, is a free, self-reliant entity.

This consideration of the human being can be taken even further, and today we want to try to place the human being in the context of the other kingdoms of nature. I need only point out that I have said many times how wrong it is to consider the relationship of the human being to the animal kingdom, for example, merely in terms of today's anatomy and physiology. Of course, if we first consider the human being in terms of his overall form, and how this overall form is composed of the individual organs, then we will notice that the human being has roughly the same number of bones, muscles and so on as the higher animals, and that these organs or organ systems have been transformed, metamorphosed. We will be able to include the human being in the animal series. But something quite different arises – and I have often discussed this – when one considers what places the human being in a very special way in the cosmos. It must be noted that the column of the animal's back, the backbone, lies essentially horizontally, parallel to the earth's surface; the human backbone stands upright on the earth's surface. If one does not believe that everything is based on the coarse material, but if one comes to the view that what exists is based in its essence on the whole being placed in a coherent world system, then one will attach a corresponding importance to this special position of the human backbone. As a result, the human head is placed in a completely different position to the entire organization. And if one has only once risen to the view: The cosmos is interwoven and interwoven by thoughts - then, insofar as the cosmos is to be regarded as spatial, one will see in the currents of thought that go through the cosmos, an essential and one will be able to see that it makes a difference whether the current that runs along the spine in humans is aligned with the radial direction of the earth or whether, as in animals, it runs parallel to the surface of the earth.

This being placed of the human being in a certain way in the cosmos must then be looked at with regard to the overall organization, and thus also for the individual organs. Each organ and each organ system is located differently in relation to the cosmos in humans than in animals. This is not affected by the fact that someone might say that the human backbone is horizontal when sleeping. It does not depend on the individual position, but on how the whole growth is assessed, how an organ system is integrated into the whole organism. And if we bear in mind that we have the animal backbone parallel to the earth's surface and the human backbone perpendicular to it, then we shall be able to appreciate in the right way other processes that can be observed in man. And here I would first like to draw your attention to a different system of the soul than the one we looked at yesterday. Yesterday we looked at the thought system; today we want to look at the will system.

We can also look at this will system by becoming aware that the human being's life rhythmically breaks down into the states of sleeping and waking. During waking hours, the human being is completely devoted to his physicality; during sleep, the I and the astral body are outside of physicality, both the physical and the etheric physicality. When we wake up in the morning, I told you yesterday, we bring with us at most a faint memory from the thoughts of the universe. So that we can become aware: In the whole time from falling asleep to waking up, we were immersed in a surging sea of cosmic thoughts. But what we bring with us when we wake up and what then determines us throughout the day while we are awake is the will, that is, emerging from this nocturnal, or let us say, during our sleep, our element-forming thought-sea of the cosmos. We emerge with the will, which, as I have characterized it, introduces logic into our inner soul life. We may still notice, when we wake up, in the dreams that crowd in, what our soul life would be like if this will, which we bring with us when we wake up, did not penetrate it logically.

In a sense, then, this will strikes into what is surging and swirling in the human organism. Let us take a very close look at this impact of the will. Let us become aware of where the will is striking into: It is precisely the chaotic swirling of dream images and also of those dream textures that we have as undercurrents of our ordinary consciousness. So that we can say: While we sleep, this web of thoughts is released from the organic mechanism within us, completely drowned out by the web of thoughts interwoven with logic in the waking state, from waking to falling asleep. It is this chaotic jumble of dream images and dream ideas that the will strikes, which we bring into our organism from the cosmos when we wake up. Let us see what this will initially brings with it.

This will that strikes in initially has the effect that thoughts do not arise as they are in this dreamy chaos. We would get off badly in life if thoughts arose as they do in this dreamy chaos. What must thoughts be like when they arise in normal mental life? They must somehow be connected with our life. They must be able to remember in some way. That is, in a sense, the first thing that the will, which has made an impact, does with our thoughts. It organizes them in such a way that we carry the right memory image within us. We can therefore say: we have, as it were, the chaotic web of thoughts swirling up out of our organism (see drawing, red). It is something that is particularly strong in dreamy natures, who are often not satisfied with indulging in the normal memories of life, who take pleasure and delight when thoughts come together and separate again after allusions and similarities. Dreamy natures are overwhelmed by this chaotic web of thoughts. But even a person who is well aware of himself will always notice, if he lets himself go just a little during waking life, I would say, that this confusion of thoughts is present in the main, underlying current. The will, which strikes there when one wakes up, it strikes this web of thoughts. Where does it come from?

Now, in bed lay the physical body (blue) and the etheric body (yellow). What I have drawn schematically on the board here is basically what we leave in bed when we fall asleep and what we encounter again in the morning. We allow our will to be woven into it. I will characterize this will that is woven into it through these lines here (see drawing, arrows from above). So the first thing that the will has to do is to reshape this chaotic web of thoughts into our normal memory. We can therefore say that, initially, this will that is woven into it shapes the web of thoughts into normal memory. One might say: the etheric body, the physical body, that is what we encounter in the morning, is still very powerful in our memory. These thoughts are reflected back to us. But it is the will that strikes and really has something to do by striking. You can see that. Just try to remember how, when you wake up in the morning, everything swirls up like currents from the soul like an event you experienced at the age of five, at the age of seven, again at the age of six year, again in the fifteenth year, in the sixty-fifth year for all I care, then in the twenty-first, seventeenth year, again in the eighth year, how it all swirls and tumbles in a colorful mess. The will has to strike into this. Then, in a sense, it organizes it all again so that it is a proper memory, so that an event that took place in the ninth year does not get mixed up with what happened in the eighth year and the like. So the will strikes into it, and it forms memory out of this chaotic web of dreams. In memory, you still notice little of the will. Most people will not want to see the will at all in memory. But it is there, it is just that the impact of the will, in so far as it forms memory, is much more unconscious.

The second is something that a person can already recognize as their will. This is what this will, which we bring with us when we wake up, makes out of this surge of thoughts: this is the imagination, this is the fantasy (see drawing). That is the second element. There you can already see that you can move in it with your arbitrariness. While the memory is being formed, you still have to be constrained by your organism; the physical body and etheric body are very influential. In the imagination, this is less so, and you can move about in it with your will. But there is an enormous difference between a person who is imaginative and a person who dreams, who simply surrenders to the surge of arbitrary thought. A person who lets his imagination run wild knows how his will rules in these interweaving images, and he shapes them according to his will.

But now for the third. The third is something that, on the one hand, is really completely given over to the will and, on the other hand, is such that the will does not move as freely as in imagination. It is logical thinking, on which we depend in life and in science. There, in this logical thinking, our will is certainly active; but it surrenders its own freedom and submits to the laws of logic. Yet it is its doing that it submits to the law of logic. So that is the third thing: logical thinking.

Why is logical thinking, on the one hand, absolutely subject to the will? If we did not form our logical thinking out of our own will, it would be obsessive thoughts. We must form our logical thoughts out of our own will. But we form them in such a way that we orient ourselves to the external world, which, after all, is essentially the great teacher of logic in the first place. We imbue the chaotic world of images with the laws of logic. We thus surrender to these laws of logic through our will; in a sense, we surrender to the arbitrary workings of logic. On the one hand, the will is free in thought; on the other hand, it surrenders its freedom in favor of logic. But in these three stages – memory, imagination, logical thinking – the will is active; that will that from falling asleep to waking up does not work in the human physical and etheric organism and that in the morning when waking up into the physical and etheric organism, and which this, I would like to say, indeterminate fire of the etheric and physical body, kindled in the surge of thought, is divided into memory, imagination, logical thinking.

It is already the case in logical thinking that we are no longer completely in control with our will. We are not. When we let our imagination run free, in which we clearly notice our will, then we know how we are within ourselves; when we let our logical thinking run free, we are no longer completely within ourselves. We know that we adapt ourselves completely to the cosmos, but not only to the extra-human cosmos, but to the whole cosmos, which includes the human being. For it is self-evident that logic applies not only to the extra-human cosmos, but also to the cosmos plus the human being. Logic is neither subjective nor objective, but logic is both at the same time.

In a sense, we can see the part that what we bring with us from the world of sleep into our soul life in the morning plays. And we can also know approximately: when what has entered as will withdraws back into the cosmic world of thought, only what rises up from the physical body and etheric body rules in us again.

Now this is one aspect of the will that rules in us. It is, so to speak, the cosmic side of the will, the side that we take out of us in the evening and bring back into us again in the morning. But self-reflection will indeed teach people that not only this will is present in him, of which I have just spoken, because this will expresses itself essentially in the so-called soul life, in memory, in imagination, in logical thinking. But when we walk, when we grasp, when we somehow use an instrument, the will is also active. In these activities, the will is not only active in the soul, as I have just described it; in these activities, the will takes hold of our physical organization and our etheric organization. Therefore, I cannot characterize the will only in these arrows here, but I must also depict the will permeating the physical and etheric bodies (see drawing on page 157, arrows from below). So I have to say: The will is also present in that which remains in the bed during sleep. The will, which must be characterized in this latter sense, comes, as it were, towards the other will, which is not in the physical body of the person during sleep. And this latter will basically becomes an external activity. So this will, which lives in the organs, which lives in the physical and etheric organization, is called upon by the other will coming to meet it. But when we are active as an awake person, we can clearly distinguish these two spheres of will.

Please note that on the one hand there is a will that counteracts the will coming from the other side. We have, so to speak, the interaction of two currents of will. One of these currents of will swirls through the human organism and the whole context shows you that you have to look at it as swirling from bottom to top. The other current swirls from top to bottom. Here the directions in the cosmos come into play, and we notice that it must be different in animals, in that the main direction of their bodily organization is precisely perpendicular to the main direction of the bodily organization of humans. The directions of will are differently integrated into the cosmos. So, too, when we, I would like to say, go into the differentiations of the human being, when we realize how this human being is composed of individual currents, then we notice the importance of the human being's being placed in the cosmos.

Now let us take a closer look at these two currents of will. As with many things in spiritual science, you will not be able to proceed in such a way that you, I might say, derive one from the other as in mathematical derivation, but in spiritual science the way to arrive at the truths is as follows: one truth is juxtaposed with the other and one must then seek the connection. With superficial simpletons this very easily leads to the objection that one does not “prove”. It is just as if someone, when he sees a horse and a cow standing side by side in a field, and they are certainly standing side by side for some reason, were to demand that someone should prove to him from the horse that the cow is standing beside it. Of course, one cannot prove from the essence of the horse that the cow is standing next to it. This is roughly the content of the objection that many people raise with regard to proof in spiritual science.

I would now like to present you with another fact, in addition to the one I have just mentioned, which you must gradually try to put into the appropriate context, based on what I have just discussed.

Everything that is in the soul of a person is also expressed in the physical body, and is imprinted in the physical body. The human being is organized in such a way that he awakens memory, imagination, and logical thinking by waking up, and that he allows them to rest within him, so to speak, while sleeping. This is a kind of rhythm. This rhythm is juxtaposed with another: the stream of will, which I have indicated here as being located in the organs. What confronts each other as two currents, you can, I would like to say, find it depicted in the human being: you can find it by looking at the system that is given by the human breathing rhythm. A few days ago, I already pointed out how the breathing rhythm can really be thought of in connection with falling asleep and waking up. Even if breathing naturally outlasts sleep, one still recognizes the connection in everything that somehow impairs calm breathing during sleep, for example. This connection between breathing and the rhythm of waking up, falling asleep, waking up, falling asleep is not so obvious, but this connection, this relationship is there nevertheless. And when we consider the human being in relation to his upward striving, we have to consider the breathing rhythm as something essential that is connected with this upward striving, the whole respiratory system, also insofar as it is expressed in the speech system. We breathe, we speak as human beings essentially upwards, even if this is transformed by the position of our throat into speaking forwards. There we have one rhythm, a unified rhythm.

We have another rhythm, we have the rhythm of circulation, the rhythm that is given to us in the pulse, and we know that the pulse rhythm is roughly related to the respiratory rhythm as four to one. You need only reflect a little on the anatomical and physiological aspects to realize that the pulse rhythm, the rhythm of circulation, is intimately connected with the metabolic-limb system of the human being. The actual rhythmic system is, I would say, separated out in the respiratory system. The more one engages with a characteristic of the respiratory system on the one hand and a characteristic of the pulse system on the other, the more one notices that everything that is present as an organ for the formation of memory, imagination, logical and that everything else that is connected with the will that flows through the organs can be related to the pulse rhythm by expressing itself upwards. Just as the will that is in our organs coincides with the will that we bring with us from the cosmos when we wake up, so the respiratory rhythm coincides with the pulse rhythm, with the circulation rhythm. And there we have in the interaction of the respiratory rhythm and the pulse rhythm, in a very physical way, what comes up from below and what strikes down from above, but in such a way that what strikes down from above is four times slower than what comes up from below. If I were to take this stroke as the time consideration for the breathing rhythm, I would have to take four for the pulse rhythm.

In fact, everything that man develops in the way of art, of rhythmic art, is based on this relationship between the pulse rhythm and the respiratory rhythm. I have already said this on the occasion of the discussion about the art of recitation. You can go into more detail. You can think that if you base it more on the pulse rhythm, you get: short syllable, long syllable. If you combine the breathing rhythm with the pulse rhythm, you get, for example, the meter of the hexameter, and so on. All meters are based on these relationships of rhythms that are within the human being itself.

Now, when you look at the blood rhythm, you look, so to speak, more at the physical; when you look more at the breathing rhythm, you look at the soul. The breathing rhythm is much more closely related to the soul than the blood rhythm. The breathing rhythm also opens outwards, just as logic and logical thinking open outwards. Now, irregularities in these rhythms are the cause of irregularities in human life. You can well imagine that if there really is such a ratio of four to one or one to four, then it must mean something if, let us say, the breathing rhythm becomes too long or the pulse rhythm too short. And yet this can be the case with humans. It can even be the case in a very insignificant way; then it manifests itself immediately.

Now I will present the radical cases. Imagine a person gets excited. He begins to become passionate. He starts ranting about something. This can go as far as raving. Or a person gets into the state that is described as follows: the thoughts do not want to, they stand still; one cannot think properly, they stay away. Just as the raving was the most radical expression of the process, from becoming passionate through ranting to becoming raving, it is the same with thoughts standing still, gradually leading to a kind of unconsciousness. The former, becoming passionate, becoming emotional, is based on the pulse rhythm becoming too fast. The stopping of thought and the fainting are due to a slowing of the respiratory rhythm.

So you see, the human being is interwoven with the rhythms of the whole world. And how we are within this world rhythm determines how we appear to us physically and mentally. The emotional life also expresses itself physically: the current that flows through the organism from bottom to top becomes too fast, it shakes the organs, and when it comes to raging, you can see how the organs are shaken. The current that flows from top to bottom becomes too slow; thoughts do not want to go from top to bottom. Here again we see how important it is that we can form a picture of man's place in the whole cosmic context, how he fits into it, and how it is mere childishness to count the bones, muscles, etc., and say: Man is only a higher animal formation — and not to take into account that what matters is this placing in the whole cosmic context.

Now I will tell you something that seems very far removed from what I have just explained, but which, in tomorrow's lecture, will nevertheless be linked to what I have just explained to form a whole. Let us now move from human existence to human development. You know that we are now living in the so-called fifth post-Atlantic period, which began around 1415 or 1413 and will continue. It is preceded by the fourth, which began around 747 BC before the Mystery of Golgotha, and this in turn is preceded by the third, which goes back to the 4th millennium.

Now, if we consider these periods, we can form the following schematic picture of their succession. Please imagine that the Atlantean period was preceded by what I called the Lemurian period in my “Occult Science”. I will assume here only the last phases of this Lemurian period, and now draw the seven successive cultural conditions of the Atlantean period: and now we have, in succession, the primeval Indian, primeval Persian, Egyptian-Chaldean, Greek-Latin, and now our fifth period; that would be the last period. I have schematically presented the successive periods to you.

You now also know from my “Secret Science” and from other presentations that I have given that such a period lasts approximately until the vernal point of the sun has completed the entire passage through the zodiac. It is only approximate, but for what we want to consider now, this approximation will have its good meaning. In 747 BC, before the event of Golgotha, the vernal point entered the zodiacal sign of Aries. It remained in this zodiacal sign until the 15th century. Then it passed over and is now in the zodiacal picture of Pisces. Before 747 the vernal point was in the sign of Taurus, so throughout the entire Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period the sun rose in spring in the constellation of Taurus; hence the bull service. Then came the ancient Persian period; the sun rose in the constellation of Gemini. During the time of ancient India, the sun rose in the constellation of Cancer. Then we come back to the Atlantean time and have the seven cultural periods in the Atlantean time. Now I ask you to consider the following and to visualize it as a question that we are initially presenting today.

Let us draw the sequence of the zodiacal constellations. So we have: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. We will now schematically draw here how it stands with the successive cultural periods. We know that we are now in the Pisces sign at the vernal equinox, and have the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period. We go back (see drawing, page 165, dark hatched): Aries fourth post-Atlantic cultural period, Taurus third post-Atlantic cultural period, Gemini second post-Atlantic cultural period, Cancer first post-Atlantic cultural period. We are now returning to the Atlantean period. The seven periods of the Atlantean period (light shading): Leo the seventh, Virgo the sixth, Libra the fifth, Scorpio the fourth, Sagittarius the third, Capricorn the second, Aquarius the first; and now we are returning to the Lemurian period and we are back to Pisces.

You see, when you consider the important time of the last culture, the last cultural epoch of the Lemurian period, and when you read about this important period of the development of the earth and humanity in my book “Occult Science”, you will be faced with a big question. If you take what I have presented in my “Occult Science in Outline”, especially in the presentations that appeared separately as “Our Atlantean Ancestors”, then you will see how one can actually speak of humanity, insofar as it is humanity today, only from this period onwards, and this period is the one in which the vernal point was in the same zodiacal constellation as it is now. We have, as humanity, gone through a complete cycle around the heavens and, in a certain sense, have arrived back at the starting point.

What I have just said relates to human becoming. We have often tried to show how the human soul life has changed in the time since the Atlantean period. We know how different this entire human soul life was in the time of the ancient Indians, and how it was still different in the Atlantean period. But if you read my writing about the Atlantean ancestors, you will see that we go back to a time in the Atlantean period when the human configuration manifests itself physically in the same way as the human soul was at that time. While in the post-Atlantean period the soul life works essentially differently, during the Atlantean period the whole body is metamorphosed. We thus come back more and more, I would say, from the region which I characterized above as the soul region, to what is here below the bodily region, which is permeated by the other stream of will. And as we go further back in Atlantis, we come back to the metamorphoses that relate to the shaping of the body. So that we can say that during the passage of the vernal point through Pisces, human beings were scarcely present in the bodily form as it is (light shading). Here it is taking on more and more of a bodily form. And here it is only just beginning to take on a soul form, in order to return to the point from which it once emerged in terms of its bodily form. So that you can say, the zodiac signs of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Sagittarius, Scorpio, Libra, up to Virgo (light shading) correspond to the transformation of the human physical form; and only these upper zodiac signs correspond to the transformation of the human soul for us.

These things must first be considered from the point of view of spiritual science, and it will be seen that only then can concepts and ideas be formed about the essence of the human being. On the other hand, however, it may at least cast a light on what I have often said here, that we live in an important age. For while we have developed as humanity on Earth, the vernal point of the Sun has gone around the whole universe and has returned again in our era. We must therefore fulfill tasks that are, so to speak, guided by the fact that humanity has returned to its starting point, that it must undertake something in its soul life that corresponds to this return to the starting point. Today I only wanted to hint at what can be derived from such a consideration of the importance of the present human period of time. What I have said applies to the most advanced members of civilized humanity; but in the end it is they who are actually important for the development of humanity.

We will continue our discussion tomorrow, and focus on how these things relate to the latter.

Today's lecture will add further details to an image which I finally hope to present in its entirety tomorrow.

We are living at a time—yesterday's lecture will have given you an idea of this—of which we can say that much will have to change in the way people think, feel and use their will. Our inner aims will have to change. It is especially with regard to our innermost being that old, inherited and acquired habits will have to go and a new way of thinking and feeling develop. This is what our time demands. I think it can have a profound and truly significant effect on people to ponder the truth I presented yesterday which is, to put it simply, that there can only be one of two things: destructive processes here on the physical plane, or the spiritual development of humanity. Just think what it means—that, knowing this truth, we shall be compelled to feel socially at one with the dead, the departed. Our inner response to present events on this physical plane is one of deep pain, and it is right this should be so; on the other hand, we should not forget that the number of people who have taken up spiritual life in recent decades is small, and the souls of those who have not done so are thirsting for destructive processes here on the physical plane because these will give them the powers they need for the life of soul and spirit which comes after death. In practice this means we are challenged to do everything we can to encourage spiritual life as the only way of freeing future humanity from those destructive forces. It has to be clearly understood, of course, that this was different in the past, when the fact that an age of materialism must inevitably summon up an age of wars and devastation did not hold true to the same degree. It will, however, hold true in future.

Humanity is labouring under numerous illusions that have their origin in the past. The consequences of these have not been as serious in the past as they will be in the future evolution of humanity. I think it is fair to say that, generally speaking, human souls are still very much asleep at the present time, and fail to notice many of the tremendous changes now taking place. Sometimes, however, some of this comes through at an instinctive level, and individuals are then aware of the great riddles of the age. However, many are not fully active inwardly and therefore not yet able to experience these riddles in their full depth.

Taking note of the turbulent and destructive events of today, some individuals are becoming aware of one such riddle. Yet they are in many respects quite unable to find the answers. The riddle I am speaking of is the discrepancy between intellectual and moral development in human evolution. Strangely enough, recent developments in materialistic thinking have lead none other than the Darwinists to this conclusion. Haeckel, too, has commented to this effect in his Welträtsel.¹ Now, in these times of war, it can be seen again and again that this imbalance between intellectual and moral life in human evolution is beginning to puzzle people. They say to themselves, quite rightly, that the life of the intellect, the rational mind, has made tremendous advances. This is what many people call the realm of science today; it provides the basis for the modern materialistic view. Consider the tremendous advances made as the laws of nature have been penetrated, studied and finally used to build all kinds of instruments—most recently especially the instruments for murder! People will also begin to consider other things in the light of this science of theirs. They will analyse foods for their constituents and manufacture chemical foods, never realizing that chemical foods are not the same as those provided by nature, even if they do have the same constituents.

Intellectual, or we may also say scientific, development has shown an upward trend. Moral development has not progressed to the same extent. Surely the present world catastrophe could not have arisen, or taken the course it has taken, if moral development had kept pace with intellectual development. It would be right to say that because moral development has not progressed, intellectual development has assumed something of an amoral character and has in many respects become downright destructive. Many people are beginning to notice that the moral development has not been keeping pace with the intellectual development of humanity today. However, no one asks at the present time that issues like these should be gone into sufficiently deeply so that they may serve a truly human evolution. No one asks that they should be tackled at the point where it is fully evident that modern people simply cannot penetrate to the deeper sources of human thinking and human actions, because elements which are separate and distinct in man and relate to quite different regions of the universe are all mixed up in people's minds.

Modern scientists are faced with a human being consisting of physical body, etheric body—the body of generative powers—astral body and ego; but everything is mixed up. People do not make the distinction in modern science. How can we arrive at a science that will enable us to grasp these things if everything is mixed up together? The truth is that these different aspects of human nature belong to entirely different regions and spheres of the universe. Our physical body and our generative powers relate to the physical world; with the astral body and the ego we enter a totally different world every night, and initially this has extraordinarily little to do with the world in which we are awake during the day. The two worlds really only work together in so far as they are brought together in the human realm.

Consider also that the human ego and astral body are much younger than the physical and etheric bodies. The first beginnings of the physical body go back to the time of ancient Saturn. That early body progressed through four stages—Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth—to reach its present level of evolution on earth. The etheric body has gone through three stages, the astral body through two stages. The ego has only come in during Earth evolution; it is young and belongs to an entirely different cosmic age. The apparatus or instrument of our human intellect is intimately bound up with the physical body. It has reached a great level of perfection because the physical body has gone through such a comprehensive process of development in the Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth periods. We can see this from the level to which the nerves, the brain and the blood have developed. This, then, is the highly developed instrument we use for our intellectual activity.

On a previous occasion here in Dornach I suggested that the human being is much more complex than we are inclined to think. When we say ‘physical body’ we are speaking of something that is far from simple. It is based on principles that go back to ancient Saturn. Then the etheric body was added. This created its own element in the physical body; the astral body also created its own element in the physical body, and so did the ego. The physical body thus really has four elements to it. One of these relates to the physical body as such, one to the etheric body, one to the astral body and one to the ego. The etheric body has three elements—one related to itself, one to the astral body, one to the ego.

Let us stay with the physical body for the moment. We find that during the night, when we are asleep, the element of the physical body relating to the physical body continues in the usual way. The element relating to the etheric body can also continue, for the etheric body stays with the physical body. But what happens to the element relating to the astral body, which is organized to meet the needs of an astral body that wants to go outside, and with the element relating to an ego which has also gone outside? During the night, these two elements—let us call them the astral physical body and the ego's physical body—are forsaken by the principles on which their whole organization is based. The ego and the astral body are then outside the parts of the physical body to which they belong. For as long as we live between birth and death we are really leaving something behind in bed every night which is not taken care of by the principle to which it relates. It clearly has to function differently during the night than it does during the day; I think you can see this. During the day the astral body and the ego are active and aglow in it; during the night they are not. People do not enquire into these things today because everything has merged into one and become mixed up in their minds, as I have said. They do not distinguish between the different aspects of their body, though these can be quite clearly distinguished.

During the night when we are asleep the ‘astral physical’ element in the physical body exercises powers very similar to the powers of Mercury, the mercurial powers that make mercury liquid, and so on. The part of the physical body relating to the ego acts like salt during sleep. Human beings thus have Salt and Mercury flowing through them during sleep.

Up to the fourteenth century, those alchemists who must be taken seriously still knew of these things. After this, sectarianism came into alchemy and the books were written which are generally read today. The old knowledge was still to be found with Jacob Boehme,² however, who used the terms Salt, Mercury and Sulphur.

These are some of the secrets of human nature. We say, then, that when we are asleep we look down on a body that has become mercurial and salty. The fact that the body becomes mercurial has highly significant consequences and we may be able to say more about this in the course of these weeks. The fact that it becomes salty—well, I think it is not at all difficult for people to discover this for themselves when they get up in the mornings.

What is the significance, however? It is more or less like this: On waking, the ego and astral body, having been outside in the world of the spirit during sleep, enter into the salty, or mineral, principle in the human body and into the mercurial principle, which flows within the human being as a vitalizing principle. Principles which have been separated during the night now come together. As they interact, opportunity is given for the things acquired in the world of the spirit to be brought in. Mercury and Salt have been resting; now the ego and astral body enter and fill them with what they have gained in the world of the spirit. As a result, the physical body, the instrument which has evolved from ancient Saturn, is enriched still further. On the one hand the physical body is the instrument we use for intellectual activity and it is truly venerable and highly developed because it has evolved over such a long time. Yet, on the other hand, the process I have just described can bring the influence of the spiritual world to bear in the present time. As a result, human beings are now able to influence the instrument of the intellect from the world of the spirit and intellectual thinking can play such a significant role in the present age.

The world in which we are between going to sleep and waking up again does, however, have one peculiarity—there is nothing in it by way of moral laws. Strange as it may seem, between going to sleep and waking up again you are in a world devoid of moral laws. We might also say it is a world that is not yet moral. When we wake up, the impulses we bring from this world may take hold of the physical body and the etheric body with regard to the intellect, but cannot in any way take hold of them in any moral sense. This is quite impossible, for the world in which we are between going to sleep and waking up again does not have moral laws. People who think it would have been better for the gods to arrange things in such a way that humans did not have to live on the physical plane at all are very much mistaken; for in that case people could never become moral. Human beings acquire morality by living here on the physical plane. In short, we bring wisdom to the physical body from the world of the spirit, but not morality.

This is tremendously important and significant, for it explains why humanity must inevitably lag behind when it comes to moral principles, whereas the gods have made excellent provision for their intellectual development, not only providing them with an instrument which has evolved through the Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth periods, but also giving them the wherewithal by which to maintain the intellect by filling them with wisdom in the world which they enter during sleep. It will not be until later periods, in the second half of Venus evolution, that we make connection with a moral world during sleep. Clearly, it is therefore tremendously important for us to see to it that our social life becomes truly moral.

These are the things modern humanity does not want to consider. Some are aware of the riddles, as I have said, but people do not want to consider the deeper reasons, for that would be too much of an effort. They want to take human nature as it presents itself and refuse to consider that in many respects it extends into the worlds of the cosmos, beyond space and beyond time, and that human nature cannot be explained if we merely look at it the way in which it normally comes to expression and do not take account of these other aspects. It is a magnificent and awesome truth that sleep helps our intellectual thinking, even our genius—for geniuses, too, bring back elements from sleep that enter into their mercurial and salt principles—in fact, it is this which makes someone a genius; but morality can only be provided for if human beings gradually let the moral element enter into them here on the physical plane.

For humanity here on earth, the Christ impulse is the heart of the moral life. It is therefore most important—I have stressed this before, from other points of view—that human beings encounter the Christ impulse here on the physical plane. We have to look at this from many different points of view. So it seems we can now understand why people who have all kinds of impulses based on wisdom at an instinctive level—for these impulses are given in sleep—and are able to invent tremendously complex machines, playing a role in the advance of science and technology, need not connect this in any way with morality, for morality belongs to a totally different sphere.

People do not like to hear or know such things today. Yet they will have to be known if we are to escape from the chaos that has arisen in the world. And this is a very serious matter. Human evolution will not progress unless these truths become part of our life on earth. The gods did not intend human beings to become automatons which they could influence like automatic machines. They wanted them to be free individuals who realize what will take them forward. It is wrong to ask why the gods do not intervene. Attempts have to be made; and if one such undertaking should go awry, we should not draw the wrong conclusions. Instead, those who come later must let this give them an even greater impetus to work in a way that helps to encourage such an attempt at further development in the spirit. I have recently been much concerned with a significant attempt made in the past which did not entirely come off. I discussed this in the first part of my essay on The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz: Anno 1459—it is to be continued in Das Reich.³ The work was written in the early seventeenth century. People were given it to read as early as 1603, and it was published in 1616. The author, Johann Valentin Andreae, also wrote Fama Fraternitatis and Confessio Rosicruci, unusual works which attracted all kinds of comment, some sensible but most of them absurd. All I want to say about them today is that although they may at first sight appear to be satirical, they nevertheless represent one great impulse—to deepen insight into nature in its spiritual aspect to a point where deeper knowledge of the laws of nature also discovers the laws that govern human social life.

This is an area where people find it particularly difficult to distinguish between maya—illusion—and reality. The motives we ourselves or others tend to ascribe to our actions are not the true ones. It is painful to have to realize this, but—I have spoken of this on several occasions—they are not our true motives. Nor are the outward positions people hold in social life their true positions. People are usually completely different inside from the way they present themselves in the social sphere and also from the way they see themselves. People believe so strongly that their actions are based on a particular motive. Some think their motives are entirely selfless, when in reality they are nothing but the most brutal egotism. People are not aware of this because they have such illusions concerning themselves and their social connections. This is another area where we can only discover the truth if we look more deeply into the whole scheme of things.

Johann Valentin Andreae was someone who wanted to look more deeply. What mattered to him, among other things, was to see beyond maya into reality. He was not the kind of superficial person who thinks he can do this with all those harangues profound educationists and others today think will reform the world; he realized that one must look more deeply into the whole scheme which lies behind the world of nature if one is to find the spirit in nature. Then one will also find the threads which truly connect human beings with the spirit. And only then shall we really know the social laws that are needed. You cannot reflect on social relationships today if you think the way people do in modern science, for this will only give you the surface of nature and the surface of social life. Johann Valentin Andreae looked deep down to find nature and the social life, for only there do they come together. It really is like this: Think of the borderline between maya and reality—there you have a peep-hole on nature on the one side and a peep-hole on social life on the other. And you have to look deeper before you realize that they actually only meet a long way back.

People will never reach this point, however. They will continue to look at some of the laws of nature at a surface level and will then speak about social life out of their feeling, out of superficiality. This will not help us to see the scheffle of things, however, that Johann Valentin Andreae sought to find. At most we shall get to be—excuse me calling a spade a spade—a Woodrow Wilson. Andreae wanted to discover the scheme of things, and his desire to do so fills such works as his Fama Fraternitatis and Confessio Rosicruci. He was addressing the leaders, the statesmen of his time; it was an attempt to establish a social order based on truth and not illusion. The Fama appeared in 1614, the Confessio in 1615, and The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in 1616, though it had already been written in 1603. The year 1618 marked the beginning of the Thirty Years War,⁴ which brought conditions in which the truly great things aimed at in the Fama and the Confessio were swept away.

We are now living in an age when one year of war is equal to more than ten years of war in the seventeenth century, because war has become so much more destructive. By the standards of those times we have more than a Thirty Years War behind us already.

Try and see this as something that can guide you towards the will and endeavour that arose in the seventeenth century but was brought to a halt by the Thirty Years War. As I have said, if there have been such attempts and a beginning has been made, we must not let ourselves be put off by this but rather let it spur us on to even greater activity; then a later attempt may not end in failure. The first condition is, however, that we really come to know life.

I now want to relate this to matters I discussed with you last year and at the beginning of this year. I drew your attention to the strange course that the whole of human life and human evolution is taking. Individuals will gain in years, being 1, 2, 3, 4, years old, and later 30, 35, 40, and so on, years old; but the opposite is true for humanity as a whole. Humanity was old to begin with and is getting younger and younger. If we go back in time—for our present purposes we need only go back as far as the watershed between Atlantean and post-Atlantean life when the catastrophe happened on Atlantis—we come first of all to ancient Indian times. Conditions were very different then; humanity as a whole remained capable of further development beyond the 50s. Today we are only capable of developing in such a way in childhood and up to a certain time of our youth, for only then is our physical development directly connected with the development of soul and spirit, and the two run parallel. This soon comes to an end, however. In ancient Indian times, development in soul and spirit continued to be dependent on physical development until well into the 50s. People went on developing the way a child develops, and this only came to an end when they were old men and women. This is the reason why people looked up with such humility to their old people.

During the time of ancient Persia, people were no longer able to develop to such a high level but only into their 40s and early 50s; and in Egyptian and Chaldean times only into their 40s. In Graeco-Latin times, this kind of development went only as far as the thirty-fifth year. Then came a time—you will remember, the Graeco-Latin age began in the eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha—when human beings were only capable of development up to their thirty-third year. That was the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. The age of humanity then matched the age at which Christ went through the Mystery of Golgotha.

After this, the human race got younger and younger. By the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age, in the fifteenth century, humanity was only able to develop up to the age of 28, with no further development after this, and today we have reached a point where people only reach the age of 27, if this is left to nature. In the past, human beings naturally remained capable of development into a ripe old age. Today people must conclude such development as comes of its own accord and is tied to the physical body by the age of 27, unless they take up a spiritual impulse in their inner life and push on from within. People who do not take up anything spiritual remain 27 years old even if they live to be 100. It means they have the characteristics of 27-year-olds. And with people refusing to look for inner spiritual impulses we now have a culture and a social life that is 27 years of age. We do not grow beyond the age of 27 in our outer social life. This age now rules humanity. If we go on like this, humanity will go down to 26, 25 and 24 years, then in the sixth post-Atlantean age to the twenty-first and later to the fourteenth year.

These things must be looked into, and they should not be taken pessimistically; instead they should give us the inner impulse to go towards the life of the Spirit and set out on an inner quest to look for the elements nature is unable to provide.

This is another point of view from which it is apparent that spiritual impulses are needed in civilization. The most characteristic people of our age, those who take the lead today, are people who do not get beyond their twenty-seventh year. The question is, what would really make someone a present-day leader? Well, let us say we have someone who is born and is very much alive, who does not take in much by way of tradition but only what comes by nature, without undue influence from outside; this individual would be very much determined by what comes of its own accord. Education usually gives colour and nuance to this in most people. But let us take a really typical individual who essentially shows only the characteristics of the present age, someone born into poverty perhaps and not given an education that puts much emphasis on tradition, but who would only be influenced by whatever arises from circumstance. Such a person would grow up, would be very active initially, for it is Part of the present age that one is active up to the seventh, fourteenth and twenty-first year, and perhaps be a forceful personality up to his twenty-first year. But unless he is able to develop spiritually, then, being very much a representative of the age, he will come to a halt at the age of 27. Now if he were to be truly representative of the age, something like the following would have to happen: At the age of 27 he would come to a key point in his life, to such effect that the circumstances he creates for himself at the age of 27, committing himself for life, would not allow him to progress beyond this. In modern life this could take the form, for instance, that such a person, a self-made man with tremendous energies and all kinds of impulses arising from the time itself, gets himself elected to parliament at the age of 27. To get oneself elected to parliament means one has committed oneself and there are some things that now have to be maintained. And so the individual remains as he is—which is entirely due to this development in the present age—and he is highly representative of the present age. Parliament being the great ideal in the present day and age, this would be a key point in the life of an individual who would then refuse to accept anything capable of growth for the future and who would have become completely adapted to external circumstances or, in a word, remained 27 years of age. And so at the age of 27 this would be a strong, powerful individual imbued with the impulses of the age who now entered parliament. After some time he would even be a minister and advance to become one of the leading figures. But he would merely be a man of our time, a typical 27-year-old.

There is such an individual, someone born into such circumstances who only took in what came, nothing by way of tradition. He grew strong and powerful under these circumstances—someone who would go through thick and thin for anything that came to him in the first twenty-seven years of his life and who did, in fact, become a Member of Parliament at the age of 27. He was a thorn in the flesh at first, being in opposition, but soon rose further and has become a kind of axis of rotation at the present time—and this is Lloyd George.⁵ No one is more characteristic of the present age than Lloyd George. ‘His own man’, he committed himself for life within a week of his twenty-seventh year by getting himself elected to the House of Commons. This and the rest of his life story show him to be a typical representative of life in the present age, a life we should not follow, for spiritual impulses should have taken over in the twenty-seventh year.

If one is able to penetrate the inner aspects of life one sees the most important events of the present time to be events to which other people are asleep. To anyone who can take a wider view it is immensely significant that such a self-made man is elected to the British Parliament exactly at the age of 27 and thus commits himself.

These are the realities which people must gradually learn to observe and consider, for they reveal the deeper connections in life. People like to skip over them today because they are not easy. Reluctance is felt because people prefer to give free rein to their passions, the emotions they create for themselves in the outer world and to their instincts, rather than seek to gain insight. They want to live the life of the world, basing themselves on these emotions and not on their true selves.

• 1. Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834–1919), German naturalist. His Welträtsel first appeared in 1899. Rudolf Steiner was probably referring to the following statement from the first chapter:
  
  Today we feel justifiably proud as we see the tremendous advances made in the pure and applied science of nature in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately the picture is entirely different and far from pleasing when we consider other aspects of modern civilization that are no less important. Much to our regret, we have to agree with Alfred Wallace who wrote that compared to our remarkable progress in the physical sciences and their practical application, our system of government, the justiciary, national education and the whole of our social and moral organization was still in a state of barbarism.
• 2. Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), shoemaker in Goerlitz, Germany,. was a mystic whose influence went beyond Germany to Holland and England. He was studied by Henry More, Newton and William Law among others. His main works were Aurora (1612), Vom irdischen und himmlischen Mysterium (title translates as ‘The mystery of earth and heaven’—not available in English) and Der Weg zu Christo in acht Buchern (title translates as ‘The road to Christ in eight books’—not available in English).
• 3. Das Reich was a quarterly published in Munich and Heidelberg by Alexander Freiherr von Bernus. Rudolf Steiner contributed three consecutive essays on the subject in Nos. 3 and 4 of the second and No. 1 of the third volume (October 1917 and January and April 1918). These have been Philosophie und Anthroposophie (GA 35) 1965. Johann Valentin Andreae's (1586–1654) work was translated into modern German and published by Walter Weber in Dornach in 1942; 2nd improved edition, Stuttgart 1957. Available in English as The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz: Anno 1459, as translated by Edward Foxcroft in 1690. Minerva Books, London (no date).
• 4. The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648, devastated Central Europe. It held great terrors for the civilian population, which have lived on in people's memories, in tales, legends and in the literature and were still very real to people in Germany up to the Second World War. (Trans.)
• 5. David Lloyd George, later Lloyd George of Dwyfor (1863–1945), elected as an Advanced Liberal for Carnarvon Boroughs in 1890, Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1916 to 1922.

Also known as: Archangels and the Living Source of Speech Lecture 2 of 13 from the lecture series: The Human Soul in its Connection with Godly-Spiritual Individualities.

If you will remind yourselves of some of the things I have said in recent lectures, you will, I think, be able to call up a picture of the relationship of man's faculty of speech to those Beings in the spiritual world whom we are accustomed to assign to the Hierarchy of the Archangels. You will remember I explained to you the difference it makes to man whether the words he speaks are formed in such a way as to refer only to material things, in which case speech assumes a materialistic character, or whether in his speaking he unfolds a certain idealism, so that every time he utters a word, the feeling is present in him that he belongs to a spiritual world and that the words that ring in his speaking, coming as they do from the soul, must have some relation to Spirits. According as the one or the other is true, so does man come, between falling asleep and awakening, into a wrong or right relation with the Archangels. If he allows idealism to disappear altogether from his speaking, then he gradually loses the connection, which is so essential to him, with the Archangels. I am reminding you of this, because I want to speak to-day more particularly of one aspect of this relationship of human speech with the hierarchy of the Archangels. Speech, like everything else in evolution that has to do with man, as we have had full opportunity of realising in our study of his being, has had its history. What I want to bring forward does not refer to any one language in particular. The periods of time we have to take into view when we are studying some deep-seated change in speech are so long that even primitive languages show the same character as civilised ones in respect of such matters as we shall be considering. To-day therefore we shall not concern ourselves with the differences that exist between the several languages, but rather with those metamorphoses which human language in general has undergone in the course of the evolution of mankind on Earth.

If we consider the relationship man has to-day to language, we find that the words he speaks are nearly all of them signs for things that are round about him. As you will know, we have in the course of our studies alluded to a more intimate relationship between word and object. In our day however there is hardly any feeling left for this; words are very little more than mere outward signs for the objects indicated. Who is there who still feels, when the word Blitz (lightning) is uttered, something of the same experience he has when lightning actually flashes through space? To-day we are inclined to look on the word merely as a combination of sounds that is a sign for the phenomenon of the flash of lightning. It was not always so. If we go no farther back than to the earlier part of the Greek civilisation, we find that man's relation to language was not then one of thought, where the word is for him a sign and a symbol. The man of olden time entered with heart and soul into the sounds of his words and into the whole way the sounds were formed and arranged. And in the case of the languages of Northern Europe we do not even need to go back so far before we come to a time when the word Pflug (plough) gave man the same inner experience as did the activity of ploughing. This has been lost, and the word has become no more than a sign. But it is scarcely more than 1500 years or so since words were still felt in this way in the Northern parts of Europe. The feeling a man had when he was ploughing was similar to the feeling he had when he heard the word which in those days designated the plough. When anyone was listening to or speaking a word, it was not so much his thinking that partook in the experience as his feeling.

If now we go back into more remote ages, we find something different again; the will takes an intense and active part in the forming of words. But in order to study the times when man's relationship to external Nature was pre-eminently one of will, we must take our thoughts right back to Atlantis. For we have to reckon with long epochs of time when we are considering the evolution of language.

Within language lives the Genius of language. Language is not dependent for its evolution on the decision of man. In language lives the Genius of language. And the Genius of Language belongs to the hierarchy of the Archangels. When man speaks—when, that is, an atmosphere is prepared around the Earth within which can live man's utterances articulated into speech, then that atmosphere of speech and language is the element of the Archangels. Hence are the Archangels the Spirits of the different peoples—the Folk Spirits as we call them. You will know of this from the lectures I gave on the Mission of the Folk-Souls.

The evolution of language on Earth has thus a deep and intimate connection with the evolution of the Archangels. We can go so far as to say that in the evolution of speech and language we are beholding the evolution of the Archangels themselves. For even when we are studying something that has to do with the Earth, it is by no means impossible in the course of that very study to come to a knowledge of the evolution of higher spiritual Beings. We need only learn how to relate particular facts and phenomena to particular higher spiritual Beings, and we can arrive at a clear perception of how the continuous evolution of the Archangels is expressed and revealed in the changes that are to be observed in man's faculty of speech.

Now in those far-off times when an element of will came to expression in man's speech—that is, in the later part of the Atlantean evolution—it was not the same Beings of the Hierarchy who lived in his language as in more recent times. The whole relationship moreover was different. In those remote times man was not yet so interested in the feelings aroused in him at the sight, for example, of the blossoming of flowers or by changes in weather. These feelings interested him, it is true, in another connection, but not in respect of the faculty whereby the word welled up from the depths of his soul. Whether danger threatened him from this or that fact in Nature, summoning him to defend himself, or whether something else had a kindly and favourable influence and he would fain bring it into the orbit of his life, or again whether another object of perception were good or bad for his health,—in effect, how his will was aroused to activity, what he was induced to do under the influence of some fact or other,—this was the aspect of experience that interested him, and he formed his words accordingly. So that in those older times we find words that express how man reacts, what he finds himself impelled to do under the influence of the world around him. The most ancient language of all consisted almost entirely of expressions of will. How do we account for this? It was due to the fact that the Archangels came to language by way of Intuition. Read the descriptions I have given in my books of the nature of Intuition, and you will have a picture of the activity exercised by the Archangels in the later part of the Atlantean evolution, when they bestowed upon man the language of will.

Later, these Archangels moved forward in their own evolution. In my little book, “The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind,” I spoke about the evolution of the Leaders and Guides of humanity who live in the spiritual world. To-day we will extend this into a realm to which on that occasion we gave little attention,—the realm of speech and language. The advance made by the Archangels in their relation to language may be described in the following way. In the older faculty of Intuition they were standing within the world of still higher Hierarchies, giving themselves up in devotion to these worlds, so that together with speech they received something of the very being of higher Hierarchies than themselves. So long as it all depended upon Intuition, the Archangels surrendered themselves to the next higher Hierarchy,—Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai. They were within the worlds of this higher Hierarchy, and it was the experience of standing intuitively within this higher Hierarchy that enabled them to put the speech-forming power into human life on Earth.

In the next epoch the Archangels make, as it were, a step forward and then their speech-forming power flows no longer out of Intuition but out of Inspiration. They are not now completely surrendered to the next higher Hierarchy. (What they did still receive through their devotion to this Hierarchy underwent a change; it ceased to be something they could then communicate to man as speech or language). Now they hearken to the Inspirations of the First Hierarchy,—Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim,—and from out of this Inspiration they pour down to Earth the speech-forming power.

If we go back to the earliest times of Post-Atlantean evolution, or even only as far as ancient Egypt and Chaldea, we find in every land that the source from which the Archangels drew, in order to communicate speech to man, is Inspiration. Language itself is metamorphosed. Words become an expression before all else of sympathy and antipathy, of every shade of human feeling. Instead of a language of will, as in former times, we have now a language of feeling. We have come to a stage where this feeling, which is called forth in man by an external process or being is the very same as is experienced when the sounds issuing forth from the depths of his being are uttered by the speech organs and articulated into the word.

We have reached a significant phase in the evolution of mankind. The Hierarchy of the Archangels is at first the receiver of Intuitions; and the language of will, brought down as it were out of these Intuitions, is created by these Beings. The Archangels move on further and become the receivers of Inspiration. And what they receive through the inspiration of Beings of the First Hierarchy, gives rise to the language of feeling.

It was out of an extraordinarily deep perception that the well-known scholar and writer on the history of Art, Hermann Grimm, drew a clear line of division between the Greeks and the Romans. When we learn history at school or at the university, we are, he said, exhorted to take pains to understand what we learn; but as we go back over the evolution of mankind, we can only understand history as far back as Roman times. Cicero and Caesar we can still understand, for up to a point they are similar to the man of the present day,—although it must be said that the understanding generally brought to a study of Caesar is far from being free and natural. If we were not so thoroughly drilled and trained to it, we would never take much interest in Caesar! We would leave it to the pupils in military schools. Generally speaking, however, it is possible to trace a continuous stream back from our own day to Rome. A certain element of pedantry, which has gradually been creeping into man's life and has to-day reached a kind of culmination, first began to show itself in Rome. But, thinks Hermann Grimm, if we are honest with ourselves, we cannot claim to understand Pericles or Alcibiades. We understand them in the same way as we understand characters in fairy tales. As a matter of fact, it is only through a deeper study of Anthroposophy that one can come again to an understanding of the soul life of such figures; as you know, we have sought here again and again to enter into the whole way in which a Greek thinks and forms his ideas. Hermann Grimm is aware of the distance that lies between the inner life of a Greek and the inner life of a man of the present day. To the Roman we can still feel ourselves near; then comes a great gulf. The way the Greeks are described in the schools to-day is really deplorable! They are made out to be just like ourselves. They were not so at all, their whole life of soul was of a different character altogether. We need to look round for quite other methods to describe the Greeks. You could not have more striking evidence of this than when the learned Wilamowitz undertakes to translate the Greek tragedians. The whole affair is simply a disgrace. I need hardly say, there is nothing of the Greek tragedies left in his translations, not a trace! And yet people are immensely pleased, quite enchanted with them. Their dramatis personae simply do not exist in the tragedies themselves.

Hermann Grimm showed a true and sure instinct, when he said that we come into an entirely different world when we come to Greece—to say nothing of the Orient. It is really no more than a ridiculous mockery for modern man to imagine he can understand anything of the true Orient out of Deussen's translations. The first thing necessary is to be able to comprehend the change that has come about since then in the very being of man's soul.

And now when we come to consider our particular sphere, the sphere of speech or language, then we find that the language of feeling still prevailed in Greece among the philosophers up to the time of Plato. The first philosophical pedant is Aristotle, the great and universal spirit.¹ It will surprise you that I give him these two appellations, one after the other, but we do not understand Aristotle unless we see in him the first philosophical pedant and at the same time the universal spirit. He is great in a certain aspect but he is in another aspect the first pedant philosopher, for he made out of words categories of thought. It would never have occurred to the Greek of an older time to take words and force them, as it were, to yield categories of thought; he still felt the words as something that is inspired into man, still felt the presence of higher Spirits in speech and language.

Well on into the Greek epoch and—for the man in the street, as we say—as late as the Mystery of Golgotha, we can still detect in the speech-forming power of man the element of Inspiration, as it lives in the soul of the Archangel. True, the ordinary person lags behind the philosopher in certain respects; but in spiritual matters he is often less behind, and in the matter of the speech-forming faculty, he retains the Inspirations longer. Dates can of course be no more than approximate. In one region of the earth Inspiration lasts a longer, in another a shorter, time. In one region, men still feel how the word pulsates in them as the blood pulsates in the body; they feel it in the power of the breath. In the power of the breath as it enfills and surges through the body, they feel the presence of the Archangel, who is himself subject to Inspiration.

Then we come into a time when it is no longer so that the Archangel is yielding to Inspiration when he communicates to man the power of speech, but to Imagination. And language becomes the language of thought. Man begins to speak more out of thoughts; language approaches the abstract. And behind this lies a fact of great significance.

The Archangels, who belong to the Third Hierarchy, received Intuitions from the Second Hierarchy, and Inspirations from Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones—the First Hierarchy. Whence do they receive Imagination? There is no Hierarchy beyond the First! The Imaginations cannot at any rate come to them from any one of the Hierarchies named in the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite. For he tells of no Hierarchy beyond the first. Certain Archangel Beings were therefore obliged to turn to the past for Imaginations, to find in the past the pictures of the speech-forming power,—for that is what the Imaginations are. What came from an earlier time had to be carried on into the future. There was no longer any immediate and present flow of the speech-forming power. And inasmuch as speech now took its source from an earlier stage, into it crept an Ahrimanic element. This is a fact of incalculable significance. And what the Archangels felt above them came to expression in the world of man in a deadening of speech and language. Language became polished and at the same time paralysed, it no longer retained the livingness it had in earlier days.

Try to understand the significance of this change. Something enters into the life of man that in reality requires a higher hierarchy than the First. If we have a right understanding for this event in human development in all its tremendous significance, we shall come to see that a time had arrived when the Gods had to grow out beyond what is contained in the First Hierarchy. There is one thing that up to that time had not yet been achieved by the Gods, and was already present here on Earth in picture. What the Gods had not yet achieved is the passage through Death. You have often heard me speak of this. The Gods who stand above man in the various Hierarchies knew only of changes from one form of life into another. The actual event of death in life had not, up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, been an experience of the Gods. Death came as a result of Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences; it came, that is, through the agency of Divine Beings who had either remained behind in evolution or pressed forward too quickly. Death had no place in the life-experience of the higher Hierarchies. It enters into their experience in the moment when the Christ passes through the Mystery of Golgotha—passes, that is, through Death, uniting Himself so deeply with the destiny of Earth Man as to have this also in common with him,—that He passes through Death. The event of Golgotha is accordingly more than an event of the life of Earth, it is an event of the life of the Gods. The actual event that took place in that moment on Earth, and the knowledge of the Event that finds its way into the hearts and minds of men—all this is an image of the infinitely more lofty and sublime and far-reaching Event that took place in the worlds of the Gods themselves. Christ's passing through death on Golgotha is an event whereby the First Hierarchy reached up into a still higher realm. Therefore have I always had to speak to you of the Trinity as standing above the First Hierarchy. In reality It only came there in the course of evolution. Everywhere there is evolution.

And so, if we are speaking of the Hierarchies as described in Dionysius the Areopagite, we have to say that the Archangels lose the possibility of forming Imaginations from above. Consequently Man loses the possibility of continuing to build and fashion his language in a living manner. In the world of the Gods an event takes place of which the Mystery of Golgotha is an earthly reflection. Therefore the Event of Golgotha contains among its many implications also this,—that as men gradually receive into themselves more and more of the Christ Impulse, they receive again through the Christ Impulse the living spring and fountain of language.

We have to-day the various languages that run their course like diverging streams. And if we look at these various languages in a free and unbiassed way, we cannot fail to observe how they carry in them—and more especially, the farther we go Westward—an element of death, how they tend to become mere empty husks. In Asia things have not yet gone so far, but as we go West we find increasingly how the languages show signs of dying.

There is only one way whereby the speech-creating power can be quickened into life,—and that is through men coming to realise the Christ Impulse as a living Impulse. Then the Christ Impulse can become a power in man that can create speech. And among all the facts to be noted if we want to form a true picture of the significance of the Christ Impulse in the whole evolution of mankind, this must also have place, that at the time when man went forward into freedom, he came right out of the Divine and spiritual stream in which he had been steeped hitherto. Had speech remained as it was in the time of ancient Greece, man would not have been able to evolve to freedom. That speech serves the purpose merely of a sign,—this absurdity (for so I must call it) had to come about when the Archangels lost the possibility of forming Imaginations from the present and had to resort to the past. During the time since the Christ first made Himself known to men, during all this time while He has let the Mystery of His Being and His activity be there on record in the Gospels, the knowledge of Christ has not come in its fullness, the knowledge men have had of Him has not been sufficiently spiritual, it has often been merely traditional. But when the word of the Gospel is quickened to life by an understanding of the Christ, an understanding that derives from the Christ Himself as He still works on in the world, continuing to have influence always upon man, then—and only then—will proceed from the Christ Impulse, from the living Christ Impulse, the speech-forming power.

Let us now set down on the blackboard what I have been indicating. Here up above, the Gods grow more and more exalted. Down below an evolution goes on among men. On the one hand they receive more and more of the Christ Impulse, on the other hand they move further and further forward in the direction of freedom.

And when man rises to a higher stage, the higher Hierarchies also reach a higher stage. The Archangels gradually receive more and more of the Christ Impulse, on the other hand they move further and further forward in the direction of freedom. And when man rises to a higher stage, the higher Hierarchies also reach a higher stage. The Archangels gradually receive more and more of the Christ, Who has found His home in the hearts of men on Earth; He enters with His Impulse right into the Imaginations of the Archangels, and these become alive, become quick with immediate present life.

We shall in the future have an altogether different kind of language-forming power. A quite new kind will begin to work. I have spoken of this from other points of view in earlier lectures.

We can describe the evolution that goes on above in the Heavens at the same time as mankind evolves on the Earth below. And we can also describe its copy or reflection on Earth,—the progress from the language of will to the language of feeling and thence to the language of thought or symbol. And we can know that amidst it all Archangels are ascending—or shall we rather say descending—from Intuition to Inspiration and to Imagination. We behold first the evolution of the Archangels and all that takes place in connection therewith among the higher Hierarchies, and when we turn from that to man in his evolution, it is on the evolution of language and of the word that we have to fix our attention. We will consider one particular stream in the whole history of mankind, into which a divine stream was interwoven. It goes back to the origin of all things, the far beginning of all things. “In the Beginning was the Word” where was the word in those distant ages, when mankind had a language of the will? The Word was with God, it had to be sought there by means of Intuition. “The Word was with God ”.

The Archangels had to transpose themselves by means of Intuition into the Being of the Second Hierarchy. The Being that flowed over into Them was the Word. “And a God was the Word”.

In the Beginning was the Word
And the Word was with God
And a God was the Word.

We see how intimate is the connection of that stream in evolution which finds its culmination in the Mystery of Golgotha with the Logos, the Word. And it is all bound up with the great cosmic event of man's “becoming” and the passage of Christ through death. When those great sentences were uttered: “In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and a God was the Word ”—in those days the Word was felt as moving and weaving in the soul of man. With the Advent of the Mystery of Golgotha came a time when Christ was present in a human body—men beheld Him through the Word. The Word had entered into physical man. “ And the Word became flesh ”.

Deep truths, deep facts of evolution, lie hidden in the ancient writings, but earnest and persistent work is needed to find them again. We must first be able to observe in the spiritual world. Above all, we must approach these ancient writings with reverence, knowing that we shall only be able to deepen our understanding of their content by learning to investigate these sublime matters for ourselves. And as we are able to enter into their deeper meaning we enter also into spiritual life itself.

Well indeed would it be for us in this age, had we a Michael civilisation, a culture and a civilisation fired by what I recently called the Michael thought! This Michael thought should be alive, above all, in the autumn time. The festival of autumn should be filled with it. The leaves have withered and are falling from the branches of the trees, the plants are fading away, life is being mineralised. All the fresh young sprouting life that we saw in the earlier part of the year is receiving death into itself, death and decay, and is fast undergoing mineralisation. Now must the Michael power well up from man's inner being; now must man recognise how, just where the physical and material grows weak and faint and tends to die away,—just there the spiritual enters in! The Autumn Festival of Michaelmas at the end of September should become a festival filled with life and impulse. It has to express how man, while he stands right within the decaying processes of Nature, grows correspondingly active in his soul. When the Michael Festival shall have this character, then all human activity will be fructified from it. And how sore is the need to-day for such fructification! Let me give you an instance.

A short while ago, we heard a great deal about a resolve some people had made to study language. Nothing came of it, nothing at all. All manner of facts about language were collected, but the whole effort was completely lacking in spirituality. It was really so. There you had a group of young people, straight from school. At school of course, they had not yet woken up, but now—they are going to “study language”! They begin to plan it all and think how it will be when they have gone on studying for some time; a dazzling picture floats before their eyes of the fruit of all their labours. Actually all the preliminary steps are there; they could quite well have gone on to a recognition of the great miracle that unfolds before us when we look away from the present-day language of thought, through the language of feeling, to the language of will, and behold there the wonderful working and weaving of the Divine Archangels, behold too how their working and weaving stirs even yet in the language corpses of to-day. Were the life of the First Beginnings to flow again in language, what a sublime greatness were there revealed!

You must understand that the Michael thought is not a thing to be taken easily. You cannot simply say: Let us inaugurate a Michael Festival; it will be wonderful, and we shall then be in the very forefront of progress. The Michael thought has relation to the strongest and deepest impulses of the human will. It must reckon with these innermost impulses, and a Michael Festival cannot be other than a festival which gives a tremendous urge to human life, much as in those olden times, when man had the power to create festivals, the institution of the Christmas Festival or of the Easter Festival gave a new urge and impetus to the whole life of man on Earth.

• 1. Pedant’ seems to be, in this connection, the nearest rendering for ‘Philinter.’ (Note by Translator).

Before I set out on my journey to southern and western Germany, I would like to speak to you once again about the nature of the Theosophical movement and its relationship to the Theosophical Society, for the Theosophical movement is of such comprehensive significance that at the beginning of a new year - which may be a very fruitful one for our work - we may recall the task, goals and working methods of this Theosophical movement.

The theosophical movement is not one that can be compared to any other movement in the present day, not even remotely. The most diverse people face this movement – which has spread across all developed countries of our earth in its not yet thirty-year existence – they face it in different ways and have faced it from the very beginning.

Ever since the emissary of our great and exalted masters, Mrs. Blavatsky, founded this movement, it has undergone many changes. She has seen people in her midst who have left her and others who have remained loyal and zealous since they entered it, and have also persevered with her. There have been members who have come to the Theosophical Society out of curiosity, who have come to learn about the insights that humans can gain into higher, spiritual worlds, among many other interesting things that one can learn about in the present.

But because the path that the theosophical movement can offer people is a safe one, it is not the easiest, not the most comfortable, not the one that can be taken from one day to the next, so that the highest spiritual phenomena immediately present themselves as an absolute truth. Rather, a zealous endeavor, a truly intense devotion, is necessary. That is why those who enter the theosophical movement out of curiosity become apostates over time, because they believe that they cannot achieve what they want to achieve in a short period of time; or because they believe that the theosophical movement has nothing to offer them.

Of course, the Theosophical Society did not expect many such curious people from the outset, although curiosity is often a detour to the truth and to theosophical knowledge. For many, curiosity later developed into a real theosophical pursuit. Others come to the Theosophical Society to truly undergo an inner psychological development. They really want to arrive at the certainty of a soul and spiritual life and achieve mystical deepening in order to become an important link in human development. These are better members. To begin with, they strive to recognize and experience as much as possible within themselves. In the higher sense, this is still a selfish pursuit; but even the highest pursuit of knowledge is a selfish and not a selfless pursuit. They also know that this is not the highest goal. But there is a beautiful saying that characterizes this state of affairs: “When the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden.” The detour via this egoism is thus a serious and good one, and those who take it can be worthy and genuine members of the Theosophical movement. Perhaps they are right to strive for their own perfection, because a person will only become a useful and valuable member of society when he has perfected himself. What use is an imperfect person to his fellow human beings? What use is someone who has only a superficial understanding of life? Only when one is able to look into human hearts and souls, when one is able to solve the great riddles of the world to some extent for oneself, can one intervene in the human hustle and bustle; only then can one do something for one's fellow human beings and for the world in the right way. Therefore, self-perfection, the absorption of spiritual knowledge, is a right and good path. No one can be reproached for being selfish if he seeks the path of self-perfection. And he who remains [true] will find that he has not searched in vain in the theosophical movement, that the path leads quietly but surely to what he seeks. Some may say that there are other paths. These other paths are not to be fought or opposed in the slightest. I know how the other spiritual movements serve the world. Not a word of contradiction will come from a true Theosophist. There can be no question of that.

But the one who seeks the spirit in the highest sense must seek this spirit through self-knowledge. Everyone has the spirit within them, and it is basically not useful to seek spiritual knowledge in the world around us if we do not want to recognize the most accessible spirit, the spirit within ourselves, in the true sense of the word. There are many who seek to recognize the spirit through all kinds of artificial means, and in doing so completely forget what spirit is in such close proximity: it is our own soul, our own spirit. We can find it if we want to search in the right way. But it lies deep within the human heart. We must search for it deeper and deeper in the layers of our own inner being. For what dwells within us is the same that dwells in the world as spirit and soul. The God who creates in the world, who has been creating in the world for millions of years, can be found in the human heart. And just as the natural scientist studies the world outside, seeking to understand the physical forces of stones, plants, animals and human beings, so too can no one truly recognize the soul and spirit in the world without really studying the soul and spirit. And the spirit, which has always created in the world and will always create in the world, dwells in a reflection, in a mirror image in ourselves. We develop further and further towards this spirit, our soul becomes ever more extensive.

Thus, theosophical striving is nothing other than the striving to become aware of the creative soul and spiritual beings in the world. What we carry within us today, what we find when we descend into the layers of our soul life, we once created and developed. If we could go back – and the theosophist gradually learns to go back into the distant past – then we would find the same soul forces building the world structure before there was any physical substance out there. And we would find the spirit that lives as a spark within us, creating out there in the world before there were chemical and physical forces. Spiritual and divine forces were at work. And higher than all physical existence, than all corporeal existence, is this spiritual existence; and not only higher, but older is this spiritual existence than the corporeal.

So we descend within ourselves and bring up from our own heart and soul layers the primal riddle-question with its solution, through which the world itself came into being. Those who immerse themselves in theosophy and descend into the layers of their own soul and spiritual life will find the forces that were at work before an eye saw or an ear heard. Before fire, air and water were on our earth, soul and spirit were in the sky and brought all this into being. We find something lasting and superior to the physical when we descend into these layers of our heart and mind. And then we do not draw from ourselves, but from the formative forces of the world. The great teachers and all those you have met among the great souls and spirits have gone down into the human interior. They have not only recognized themselves, but have opened their view beyond the stars and infinities.

Through self-knowledge, we are also able to recognize how the worlds were created and where man had his origin; and also the goals of man, the distant and the near, and our world task we are able to get out of the layers of the spirit through self-knowledge. What we know about the origin of planets, rounds and races, what we know about solar bodies and solar systems, and what we know about the emergence of living beings from the solar system and the world bodies, has been gained through self-knowledge, through that self-knowledge which has struggled to recognize in one's own spirit what it is today, what has been drawn into it through eons. What is present in him today leads us to the realization of what has always been present in him – present in him and at the same time outside in the world.

When you look at a tree, it has annual rings. But you first have to cut through the trunk to be able to see the annual rings. In the same way, the soul has received its rings for the one who can observe it. Each year such rings are added. The soul has passed through the cycles, the rounds and the races, and everywhere it has formed such an annual ring. This view is not seen by man today. But when he has become seeing, he sees what has remained as a result of the development. That is the way of self-knowledge, of self-perfection. Thus, through self-knowledge, the world unlocks. Thus man gets to know his task through this self-knowledge. And then he comes to an understanding of [the task of] the theosophical movement.

And that is the realization that presents itself to us, that the theosophical movement is a necessity for present and future humanity. I can only hint at what I have often said. Other races preceded our race; other races that still had spiritual knowledge. The Lemurian race, although not so advanced in mind and imagination and then perished by fire, still had a direct connection with the spiritual beings of the world, a direct knowledge of people was present. Man has lost his spiritual knowledge because he was called to develop his mind, because he was called to develop his mind through the senses.

The Atlanteans were still able to connect spiritually with other superior beings. We know that the Lemurians were brought over to the Atlanteans in small colonies to form the new root race. And we also know that when the floods began to break in, through which the Atlantic continent perished, the Manu sent a small group to the center of Asia. And when the old Atlantis was drawing to a close, the Manu led his little band, which was to form the basis for our race, into the Gobi or Shamo desert. There they were protected from the decadent inhabitants who had remained from the Atlanteans and Lemurians. And so the first sub-race of our race formed. They moved to the west. The other races remained behind. We ourselves descend from this small group. Our fifth root race will not meet its downfall through fire or water, but in a different way our present race will experience its twilight, in order to be led to a new stage, to a new existence. The theosophist learns about this stage, and he does preparatory work for the future of humanity, for the coming race. The struggle for existence will be the form of our

It will be saved in a small group. This will be recruited from those who have recognized that they must lead, and who have sought soul and spirit again.

Unlike in the past, work must be done in the present time. In the past, people were separated into small cultural areas, and each culture could only work in a small area. Even during the ancient Indian culture, and also during the Persian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures, people were limited to smaller territories. Now the whole earth has become our dwelling place. Our technology, which is the greatness of our race, spans the whole earth. There is no longer any separation. Goods produced far from us are distributed all over the earth. The earth has become a common dwelling place. People can no longer be distinguished by individual colors, races, climates; they now exchange not only goods but also opinions.

Nothing can exist anymore for a small group only. Today we have a new task through which we can all grow into a new future. It is the task of the Theosophical movement to grasp this.

The leaders of humanity at the beginning and during the [first sub-race] of the fifth root race were the Rishis in India, of whom the modern researcher knows almost nothing. Only those who have come to the vision of the higher worlds through mystical knowledge can tell of them. They created that wonderful culture of which the Vedic culture is only a faint reflection. All that we know of Vedic culture originated in much later times. For those who are able to observe the world spiritually, there is a time of which no document reports, a time when in ancient India, God-gifted spirits, the Rishis, taught directly. That was a land culture.

Then comes a culture that is again limited to one country: the ancient Persian, the Zarathustrian culture. There have been seven Zarathustras. The Zarathustra who is usually mentioned is the seventh. He is the incarnation of all previous Zarathustras. What is preserved in the books of the Persian religion was only recorded in much later times. Here we look back on a second inspired creed in our racial development.

We now move west. We encounter the wonderful Egyptian culture, a culture of which books give us knowledge. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a result of the culture of Hermes. Then we come to Greece and Italy to the Orphic primeval culture, which arose on European soil and from which we still draw. Then we come up to the sublime religion of the founder of Christianity and finally into our time.

We have thus glimpsed a series of human religious beliefs that originated with individual great founders of religions. For us, these great, exalted founders are nothing more than members of a spiritual community of beings and individualities that stand highly exalted above our humanity, so highly exalted that today man can only look up with admiration and humility to the great ones who have brought the spiritual [impulses] of our development. But at the same time, as we look up to them, we know that we too are called to ascend to such clarity and spirituality. The holy men have emerged from what we call the lodge of exalted human leaders.

Those who brought Egyptian culture then moved west and, when they came as emissaries to the west, to Europe, they brought the peoples the knowledge that they used according to their circumstances. The White Lodge has worked so that every people could understand it. Every people needed something special over time. Each nation was confined to a narrower space. What did the ancient Indians know, for example, of what was happening in Europe? They lived in very special social conditions. The great initiates spoke to them as they needed to. And so they spoke to all nations.

Today, humanity is called upon to become one family, today people are called upon to engage in exchange, not only of goods, but also of what people recognize as truth. What the ancient Rishis taught is no longer closed to people. So it had become necessary for the Exalted Ones of the Great White Lodge to speak to humanity again. The same Beings who were once active in the founding of ancient Hinduism, the same Beings who were active in the founding of ancient Zoroastrianism and in the founding of the religion of the Egyptians, had to speak to humanity in a new form, in a new sense; the same Being who once offered the body of the Christ to the Deity in order to be able to work here on earth, Jesus of Nazareth. That is why these entities speak in such a way that in their language no distinction is made between race and language, no distinction between gender and class. There can no longer be any special alliances, but humanity must have something in common. And such a commonality is our theosophical teaching, through which we develop into the new race. That is the meaning, the spirit of the modern theosophical movement.

Those who understand the theosophical movement as the spoken word of those who have given [wisdom and] the harmony of feeling from the beginning of humanity, know that Theosophy is nothing other than the pioneering movement that can prepare the way for a new humanity that is to bring happiness to humanity. Those who believe that all the big questions that are knocking at the door must be solved by the theosophical central movement understand the theosophical movement correctly.

Some seek their salvation through a social movement, others through a spiritualist movement, others through a moral reform of food and drink, and still others through a reform of food and drink. All [such movements] are great, significant and useful. But they are only preliminary. They will only be able to bear fruit if they become branches of the great theosophical movement. Not through external improvements in food, industry, or work can anything be achieved, but only by helping souls to progress. Anyone who has carefully studied all these movements knows how they must merge into the theosophical movement.

Demand of your fellow human beings that they should not be so terrible to each other in the struggle for existence, but should behave as you would wish them to behave towards you, and it will be bearable. But if you write “struggle” on your banner, you will achieve nothing. Only through love, through union, through the harmony of all our souls can salvation be found. Only when we have realized once more that we are all spiritual beings, and that our soul and our spirit are sparks of the primal fire and our mission is to unite in this primal fire, will we work for the good of our future. Then we will live into the time in which we must live, but which we must also shape. And that will depend on the work we do on our own soul.

Many demand that people change: this class, that state should change, people are needed differently. They fight against them. But who can guarantee that such a fight will ever succeed? One thing must succeed, however: We can never go wrong if we improve our own inner being, if we each begin to reform our own inner being, that is, if each of us improves himself. In this endeavor, there can be no distinction of class, race, station, or sex. And that is the meaning of the Theosophical movement, which makes it a great movement of the future. The exalted beings who have spoken to us in tones that promise the future have taught us this. Many have come to the theosophical movement and ask: You tell us that so-called “masters” are at the head of the movement; but we do not see these masters. That is not surprising. Do not believe that it is in the will of the masters not to come and speak to you themselves. If they could, if they were allowed to, each of them would do so. But I would like to give you just a small idea of why the master must be separated from those he loves and why he must seek messengers who proclaim his word with their physical word.

The laws by which the world and humanity are governed are infinitely higher than what the average person of today can imagine. Only someone who works solely in the service of these exalted cosmic laws – after he has recognized them – can guide humanity in a spiritual and mental way. The master sees not only years, but centuries and millennia. He sees into the distant future. The teachings he gives are those that should serve as a goal for humanity to advance. The Master does not give idle teachings for curiosity, but teachings of great human love that will lead to the happiness of humanity in the future.

Look at people, how they live, how they depend on a thousand little things of the day. And I do not even want to point out the thousand little things of the day, but only how they depend on space and time, how they find it difficult to gain a free judgment, to admit to themselves what is necessary to help their fellow human beings. A thousand and a million considerations to which man is hourly bound make it impossible for him to gain a free, independent judgment. If one can only follow the innermost voice of the divine within, then one is called to lead, guide and direct people. That is the task of the Master.

Few can imagine the extent of the freedom of judgment that the Master has to express, unfettered by any consideration. Only in a weak ray, in a darkened reflection, can we express in the physical realm what the Masters express from their exalted seat.

Consideration must be given to country, culture and education. Only in a refracted ray can that which the divine leader can impart as the great law of the world come to humanity. Only the one who is able to listen to the master so that not the slightest contradiction stirs in the heart, who does not take time and space into consideration, but completely devotes his ear to the master in perfect devotion, only he is called to hear the master, who does not respond to everything with “yes and but,” but knows that the master speaks from the divine.

Everyone must fall silent in the face of divine truths. What is most prevalent today must cease: the insistence on one's own judgment. The Master does not impose his judgment on us, but he does want to inspire us. As long as we criticize, we are dependent on time and space, and until then, the voice of the Master cannot reach our ears. When we develop a ruthlessness towards everything that binds us to the personal, the temporary, the ephemeral, when we leave these considerations behind us, create moments of celebration for ourselves, tear ourselves away from what lives around us and only listen to the inner voice, then the moments are there in which the master can speak to us. Those who have gained that great freedom have also gained the opportunity to have a master themselves; they have managed to have the certainty that they exist in the glory of these high beings, surrounded by light.

They have given up the “test everything and keep the best”, because those who want to approach the master have to give that up. In doing so, they establish principles about things that one truly already knows. But if one wants to learn, then this principle ceases to exist. Who is to decide what is best? Those who have it, or those who have recognized it? We should not become judgmental or uncritical, but should be able to put ourselves in a truly independent frame of mind if we want to ascend to these lofty heights.

Above all, this is something that must flow through the theosophist as a feeling. And if he imbues himself more and more with this feeling, then he himself will be led up to the heights where the Master can speak to him.

Do not ask: Why are the masters in separate places? Because it is true that in St. Petersburg, Berlin and London and so on, the masters are staying and can be spoken to by those who want to speak to them and can do so; for those who have attained the necessary mood through inner self-conquest. When the theosophist imbues himself with this mood, he becomes a member of that part of humanity that is being led up to a new, elevated existence. And because that is the case, the Theosophical movement is also the most practical movement we can have in the present day. Many object that it is idealistic, fantastic, impractical.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, a little reflection can teach you that this movement does not have to be impractical just because many practical people – that is, people who call themselves such – consider it impractical. But just take a look at the people who consider themselves so practical. It is a strange thing about such people who have found themselves so practical. Some examples of what the practitioners did in the world of the 19th century may show this. For example, until the middle of the 19th century, the practitioners had a highly impractical postal system. With this postal system, the practitioners, just as today, insisted on their practice. But then a school teacher came along in England who invented the postage stamp. He was an “impractical” idealist named Hill. At the head of the English postal service was a “practitioner” named [Lord Lichfield]. He declared in Parliament that the introduction of the postage stamp could not be implemented. He said: The “practitioner” knows that it won't work. The traffic could increase, but then the post offices would no longer be sufficient, so the idea is bad. - That was roughly the response to an “unpractical” invention like the postage stamp.

Likewise, Gauss had invented an electromagnetic telegraph as early as the first third of the 19th century. It was not introduced. It was the idealists who made the inventions, and the practical people refused the funds.

The same applied to the railroad. What did the practitioners do when the railroad was to be set up? Postmaster Nagler said at the time: Why a railroad? I already have sixteen buses going to Potsdam every day and nobody is sitting in them. So what about the railroad? In addition, the Bavarian Medical Council issued a statement on the construction of the railways. The document can still be seen today. They said that no railways should be built because people would get concussions if they were to drive on them; at the very least, the railway line would have to be surrounded by wooden fences on both sides so that the people it passes by would not suffer from concussions or other damage.

All great achievements of mankind have never arisen from the minds of those who think they are practitioners. The practitioners have no judgment about true human progress. Only when man rises to the great culture-moving factors that come from the spirit and the soul, only when he is under spiritual guidance, can he give great impulses to humanity. Unconsciously, these inventors were influenced by the masters. Without the chemist knowing it in the laboratory or in the factory, he is influenced by the spiritual hierarchy of the masters, whom we shall get to know better through the theosophical movement. The theosophical movement will intervene in the immediate movement of the day, will not only live in the hearts and minds. Yes, it will live in the hearts, but it will inspire people to the tips of their fingers and transform their whole lives. Then it will be the most practical movement, directly influencing what surrounds us every hour, every minute.

This is not said by someone who wants to preach the movement fanatically, but by someone who is called to do so. We have gone through many errors; we have sought the factors that bring social progress in the world, but we have realized that progress must be sought in the soul, that progress must spring from the soul, and that it must also be implemented. Wherever this is in the background, we unite in the right way in the Theosophical Society.

The Theosophical Society is only the outer tool for those who believe that they must take part in the cultural movement prescribed by the theosophical movement. When the Masters are asked what must be done to come into contact with them, they answer: A person can make contact through the Theosophical Society; this gives the person a claim. What comes to life in us is what the Theosophical movement is about. The teachings we spread are the means to ignite the [inner] life in man. For the one who speaks to his fellow human beings, it is not the word that works, but rather what flows mysteriously through the word. It is not only the sound waves, but rather the spiritual power that is to flow through the word to us. Through this spiritual power, the word, the power of the masters, the great leaders, works on us so that we are united in spirit and our hearts beat together. That is what matters: that we feel in harmony with each other, that we feel within ourselves; when the current weaves from heart to heart, from soul to soul, the power that stands behind us goes through them.

It depends on the attitude. That is why we work in our branches in such an attitude, that is why the masters teach us that we should not acquire knowledge out of curiosity, just to constantly know more, but so that we can unite in the harmony of feelings. That is why we will never leave theosophical meetings as one would leave other meetings. Annie Besant once said that it is out of place to complain, “How little I got out of this meeting today!” That is not the point. The theosophist should not ask, “How boring was it?” but rather, “How boring was I?” We do not come together to learn, but we do work with our soul and spirit when we create thought forms that resonate with each other. Every theosophical gathering and every branch should be an accumulator of power. Each such branch has an effect on the surrounding area. The spiritual power does not need anyone to spread the word. The power of such a branch goes out into the world through mysterious waves. Anyone who believes that there is a spiritual reality will understand this, will know that a powerful movement emanates from such theosophical lodges. Every theosophical lodge is an invisible, sometimes incomprehensible force. A preacher teaches differently. No teacher teaches us, no connection was with a theosophical lodge and yet the spiritual word finds its way to his community. Chemists and physicists in the laboratory receive new ideas: it is an effect of the theosophical association. Only those who have the stated attitude, who cherish and cultivate what they possess of love and kindness and who also appear when there is no interesting speaker to be heard, know that effects are also present where they are not materially visible, and are true Theosophists. Because some things in the Theosophical movement have faltered, [the Masters] have given us the impulse to speak as I have now spoken to you. This is how it was recently spoken in England, America and India. This has been done on behalf of the masters, that we draw attention to the true spiritual attitude of a theosophical lodge. Leadbeater speaks in America, Annie Besant in London and in India, and so we must speak. It is not a question of whether we like one more or less according to our personal ideas, but that we come together unselfishly. Then we not only take, but we also give. We also give above all when we give our soul. And that is the best gift. In this sense, we want to unite in our branch as well. More and more, the theosophical branches must take on this form, so that all criticism and all knowing-better must fall silent, so that we work as positively as possible, so that we work in our soul, as has been indicated.

If we can be convinced that the effects are not outwardly visible, but invisible, then our theosophical attitude will be such that we make the theosophical movement what it should be.

All great spiritual movements have worked in silence. No contemporary messages have been handed down from Jesus Christ. Philo of Alexandria has brought us no message from the Master. Only later documents tell us about the master. The master of the Christian religion was also known in his true form only by the great and the faithful. Herein lies his strength and his tremendous impact, which is far from exhausted and will continue to have an effect in the distant future.

Do you believe in the spirituality of the words, which does not have to be manifested in external success, then you understand the earnest meaning of the theosophical movement. Let us truly take this to heart at the beginning of the new year, let us come together in this spirit, and may this New Year's greeting flow from every single soul, that we will do our theosophical work in the spirit of our exalted beings who stand above us.