The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Proclamation by Theodor Reuss on the separation of the united three rites (Scottish, Memphis, Misraim) into three independent bodiesin “Oriflammes, 5th year, no. 2, July-December 1906.

EDICT

of the Sovereign Grand Master General of the United Rites of Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Freemasonry, 33rd = 95th, in and for Germany.

Z.R.D. A.B. A. W.! ¹

Supreme General Grand Council of the Ancient Rites. Deus meumque jus. - Exitus acta probat. - Spes mea in Deo est.

Fraternal greetings to all points of the triangle!

We, Albert Karl Theodor Reuß, 33rd, 90th, 96th, Sovereign Grand Master ad Vitam of the Order of the United Rites of the Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Freemasons in and for the German Empire, Sovereign General Grand Commander, Absolute Grand Sovereign, Sovereign Pontiff, Sovereign Master of the Order of Oriental Templar Freemasons, Magus Supremus Soc. Frat. R. C., S.-. L.-. 33.°, Termaximus Regens I. O. u. s. w. etc., do hereby announce and make known that, by virtue of the powers and authorities entrusted and conferred upon us, we have found it necessary to separate the administration and management of the three Masonic rites subject to our jurisdiction in Germany and the German-speaking countries and to elevate the three rites to three independent Masonic bodies.

From June 24, 1907 E.V. onwards, the following will therefore exist under our supreme jurisdiction in Germany:

The Supreme Council of the Scottish, Ancient and Accepted 33rd° Rite for the German Reich.

The General Grand Council (90th°) of the Egyptian Rite of Mizraim.

The Sovereign Sanctuary (95th) of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis.

For each individual rite, we appoint a General Grand Master with jurisdiction over the bodies under him. The individual grand authorities enact their own administrative laws, which must not run counter to the general basic laws of the rites. The Sovereign General Grand Master ad Vitam remains the final decision-maker in all ritual and personnel matters. The Grand Officers of the individual grand authorities are elected annually in a secret session by the assembled officers of the chapters and grand councils by a three-quarters majority. The rights and duties of the incumbent Grand Grand Masters and all other provisions are set forth in the Constitution of September 8, 1906 E.V.

Given in our sanctuary on the 10th day of the month of September

A.D. 1906, A.O. 788.

(L.S.)

Theodor Reuß, N.P.U. 33rd, 90th, 96th.
S.G.G.M. ad Vitam for the German Reich

• 1. To the glory of the Almighty Master Builder of the Universe!

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

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

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

On the History of the Esoteric Section

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

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

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

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

Why Egyptian Freemasonry was Chosen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regarding the External Prehistory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regarding the inner prehistory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regarding the establishment of the new Misraim service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Report on Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry

Hamburg, December 12, 1904 ¹

Egyptian Freemasonry

Cagliostro is considered the founder of so-called Egyptian Freemasonry.² According to his own claim, he had been admitted to the Freemasons' Union in London, but this has not been proven.

A certain George Coston is said to have given him the initial idea and the papers to justify the aforementioned doctrine.

Cagliostro tried to establish lodges in The Hague and Russia, but without success. However, he succeeded in establishing his first lodge of the Rite of Egypt in Strasbourg on October 8, 1779. This existed until 1783.

In October 1784, Cagliostro established a mother lodge of his Egyptian Freemasonry in Lyon with 12 members of the local Masonic lodge under the name “La sagesse triomphante” and on July 5, 1785, a similar lodge in Paris.

At that time, Cagliostro's reputation had risen so much that the Masonic convention meeting in Paris did everything they could to get him to teach them, although he only wanted to do so on the condition that the Philalethes would be obliged to sacrifice their entire masonic archive to the flames. After this condition had been fulfilled, he would show the Freemasons how they could be enabled, through actions and facts, as well as through sensory perception, to recognize the science to which true masonry offers the symbols and indicates the way.

On November 21, 1786, Cagliostro was exposed at the Antiquity Lodge in London by the optician Mach, and with that, the collapse of the system, at the top of which he stood as Grand Cophta.

The system was open to both men and women, consisted of a 90-degree ladder of steps, and promised perfection through the physical and moral rebirth of all who believed in it. (See Goethe, Neue Schriften 1792, pp. 243-284)

The Count of Saint Germain was related to Cagliostro and brought his system, probably in a remodeled form, to German courts (Ferdinand of Brunswick, Frederick Augustus of Brunswick, Charles of Hesse, among others). In particular, Carl of Hesse, who took care of Count Saint Germain until his death, was very keen on occult studies, which the count had encouraged. In 1824, a “Declaration of the Zodiacal Stone of the Temple of Dendera” by him was published in Copenhagen.

The Rite of Memphis, or as it called itself, the “Oriental Masonic Order of Memphis”, is said to go back to Ormus or Ormuzd, who was converted to Christianity by St. Mark in 46 AD, and a school of magicians united under him. It is said that it was transplanted to Edinburgh as early as 1150 by Scottish knights and was the forerunner of today's Freemasonry.

In Edinburgh itself, nothing is known of this history, but it is known that a certain Samuel Honisaus Cairo founded the first grand lodge of this doctrine in Paris in 1815, but it only lasted until 1816.

In 1838, a second attempt was made there to introduce this doctrine by founding the Osiris Lodge, but this also failed, because as early as 1843 the order was dissolved by the police.

In 1848 the third attempt was made, and the order was then divided into ninety “degrees of knowledge.” The highest degree (the Sanctuaire) was not to have any influence on the administration and was to be entirely esoteric.

In 1851 the order was forbidden in France, and its administrative headquarters were transferred to London. There it made better progress and established daughter lodges in Geneva, Brussels, New York and Australia. Its 90 degrees were reduced to 30, and in this form it was also introduced to Germany in 1861, but this failed due to the opposition of the masonic authorities of the old Prussian grand lodges.

In other countries, such as England, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Romania, Egypt, the East Indies, Canada, the United States of North America and Australia, its spread succeeded, especially since it had merged with the Rite of Misraim.

The Rite of Misraim or Rite of Egypt was brought from Italy to France by the Jewish merchant Michel Bedarride at the beginning of the 19th century and developed there. The order's legend claims that Misraim, a son of Ham, moved to Egypt, took possession of it and named it after his name (Misraim, i.e. Egypt).

From him, an ancient secret doctrine is said to have spread across all countries and times and to have been used by all schools of philosophy and mystical secret societies, by the most diverse religions and masonic associations, albeit with many changes, namely the doctrine of Isis and Osiris, of nature and the creator.

The system is divided into four series, the first of which is called the symbolic, the second the philosophical, the third the mystical, and the fourth the hermetic-cabbalistic.

There are 17 classes and 90 degrees, but they are unevenly distributed. The holders of the 87th-89th degrees are entrusted with the administration of the first three series, which extends to the 77th degree. The Sovereign Prince of the 78th degree is the head of the fourth series, and the 90th degree is held by the unknown Sovereign Grand Master, the powerful supreme of the order.

The bankruptcy of the founder of the order in France, Bedarride, did not prevent the latter from becoming more widespread, which is attributed to the exemplary organization of the practice of charity in the Masonic literature, in which otherwise only ridicule and scorn is left for the internal arrangements, especially for the acts of homage to be paid to the superiors.

The spread of the now merged “Order of Memphis and Misraim” has already been mentioned elsewhere.

In Hamburg, it has been represented for a few years and is listed in the address book as follows: A. & A. Scottish (33°) and A. & P. Rite of Memphis and Misraim (95°). Chapter “Phoenix to the Truth” No. 3 in the Valley of Hamburg.³ Working lodge every second Thursday of the month. Symb. (St. Joh.) Lodge “Phoenix” in O. Hamburg. Working lodge every first, third and fourth Thursday of the month.

Work and jurisdiction of the Grand Orient and the Sovereign Sanctuary for Germany in Berlin. Friendship Representative for America: Franz Held, Borgfelde, Henriettenallee 18. Inquiries should be addressed to the first secretary M. Lupschewitz, Dillstraße 4 or treasurer A. Paasch, St.G.Steindamm 68/11.

The order is not recognized by the German Grand Lodge, but it is trying to attract individual brothers from local teaching styles, in particular by distributing a journal that is said to contain almost exclusively works by Dr. F. Hartmann. I will try to get hold of this journal. A.W. Sellin

• 1. There is no accompanying letter for this report.
• 2. See lecture Berlin, December 16, 1904.
• 3. “Valley” = term for Masonic authorities.

From participant's memory notes from the instruction session in Berlin, December 16, 1911.

One might think that one is dealing here with an institution of what is generally called “freemasonry”, but it is not so. However secret Freemasonry may have been practiced in earlier times, it has always been something external. In fact, Freemasonry originally came into the world through a betrayal of the mystery schools, and that is why many of the symbols found in Freemasonry can also be found here. From the mystery schools, these symbols passed through students who were not sufficiently imbued with their value and significance, ended up in secret societies that were secret to the outside world. However, none of the secret societies known to man have been able to understand and explain the true depth of the symbols under the general name of Freemasonry, because the sacredness of the symbols themselves means that they cannot be properly understood outside the occult temple. ¹

Until now, our occult current for the world has still borne the name of Freemasonry, because from an occult point of view, one should always tie in with what already exists as much as possible. From now on, however, this name should be dropped for our temple and our activities should be called “Misraim Service”. If one wants to hint at our occult service, one may abbreviate this with the letters “M.D.” The designation “F.M.” [Freemasonry] should now disappear for good, and thus, for the outside world and for all institutions based on Freemasonry, there is no Freemasonry in our movement. If someone were to ask us whether our movement includes Freemasonry, we can say no without telling an untruth. What is done here is an occult service called the Misraim service, which means something like: the effecting of the union of the earthly with the heavenly, of the visible with the invisible.

The Misraim service was already known in ancient Egypt and was one of the most frequently practiced occult services in the mystery schools. This same service is also performed in our temple, with the additions and reforms that Markus has made. The Mark referred to here is the disciple of Peter, one of the twelve apostles, who wrote the Gospel of Mark while he was Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. Together with an Egyptian initiate, he reorganized the Occult Service, which we now know as the Misraim Service.

From participant memory notes from the instruction session in Munich, August 30, 1911.

Markus and Ormus, both disciples (followers) of the Christ after his resurrection, transformed the mysteries and rituals.

From participant's notes from the instruction session

Basel, September 25, 1912

What should be understood here is that this occult movement cannot be compared to any other in the world. Our present age is characterized by the existence of numerous occult or semi-occult trends, but it should be understood that our movement must not be placed in the same line as other movements, and that those who allow themselves to be included in it must feel responsible for the task that is thus imposed on them. ²

• 1. In addition to this, the following statement from the lecture Cologne, December 27, 1907: “You would be quite wrong if you were to misjudge the past with its deep wisdom in the occult schools, or if you were to consider it in any way overcome by our modern wisdom. Where occult wisdom presents itself to you in signs and symbols, it always shows itself in such a way that it can be confirmed by direct occult observation by the enlightened."
• 2. The following notes from discussions in connection with the difficulties at that time with the Theosophical Society are printed in the volume “On the History and Content of the First Section of the Esoteric School 1904 to 1914, CW 264.

Wording of the original manuscript of Theodor Reuss, dated June 15, 1907

Memphis and Mizraim Rite of Masonry
Order of Oriental Templars and Esoteric Rosicrucians
Z.R.D.A.B.A.W.! ¹

Fraternal greetings on all points of the triangle! To all who are concerned!

In execution of the provisions of the fraternal agreement of January 3, 1906 E.V. and the edict of September 10, A.D. 1906, A.O.788, published in the “Oriflamme”, issue 2, volume 5, 1906, E.V. I hereby appoint, by virtue of the rights and powers conferred upon me by the patent of September 24, 1902, E.V.,

S.E.Br.-. Dr. Rudolf Steiner, 33rd 90th 96th in Berlin

to the independent

Acting General Grand Master of the Supreme General Council of the Egyptian Rite (90°) of Mizraim in Germany

as well as the adoption lodges of Egyptian Freemasonry in Germany, with the right and the obligation to lead the order in accordance with the provisions of the agreement of January 3, 1906 E.V.

Given in our sanctuary on the fifteenth of June A.D. 1907, A.O.

789 London and Berlin,

Theodor Reuß, 33rd 90th 96th
Sovereign General Grand Master ad Vitam
Henry Klein 33rd 95th
General Grand Registrar

Rudolf Steiner on the difference between the cult of knowledge and freemasonry

From the participants' notes on the instruction session in Berlin, December 16, 1911.

One might think that we are dealing here with an institution of what is generally called “freemasonry”, but it is not so. However secret Freemasonry may have been practiced in earlier times, it has always been something external. In fact, Freemasonry originally came into the world through a betrayal of the mystery schools, and that is why many of the symbols found in Freemasonry can also be found here. From the mystery schools, these symbols passed through students who were not sufficiently imbued with their value and significance, ended up in secret societies that were secret to the outside world. However, none of the secret societies known to man have been able to understand and explain the true depth of the symbols under the general name of Freemasonry, because the sacredness of the symbols themselves means that they cannot be properly understood outside the occult temple. ¹

Until now, our occult current for the world has still borne the name of Freemasonry, because from an occult point of view, one should always tie in with what already exists as much as possible. From now on, however, this name should be dropped for our temple and our activities should be called “Misraim Service”. If one wants to hint at our occult service, one may abbreviate this with the letters “M.D.” The designation “F.M.” [Freemasonry] should now disappear for good, and thus, for the outside world and for all institutions based on Freemasonry, there is no Freemasonry in our movement. If someone were to ask us whether our movement includes Freemasonry, we can say no without telling an untruth. What is done here is an occult service called the Misraim service, which means something like: the effecting of the union of the earthly with the heavenly, of the visible with the invisible.

The Misraim service was already known in ancient Egypt and was one of the most frequently practiced occult services in the mystery schools. This same service is also performed in our temple, with the additions and reforms that Markus has made. The Mark referred to here is the disciple of Peter, one of the twelve apostles, who wrote the Gospel of Mark while he was Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. Together with an Egyptian initiate, he reorganized the occult service (cult) that we now know as the Misraim service.

• 1. To the glory of the Almighty Master Builder of all worlds!
• 1. In addition to this, the following statement from the lecture Cologne, December 27, 1907: “You would be quite wrong if you were to misjudge the past with its deep wisdom in the occult schools, or if you were to consider it in any way overcome by our modern wisdom. Where occult wisdom presents itself to you in signs and symbols, it always shows itself in such a way that it can be confirmed by direct occult observation by the enlightened."

Wording according to the original handwritten by Reuß, dated Berlin, January 3, 1906.

GREAT ORIENT OF THE SCOTTISH A. & A. 33° RITE

SOVEREIGN SANCTUARY
OF THE ORDER OF ANCIENT FREEMASONS
OF THE MEMPHIS-MISRAIM RITE

Bureau of the Grand Master General

Berlin, S.W. 47, den .......190...

Contract and fraternal agreement

Between Theodor Reuß, Sovereign General Grand Master ad vitam, 33° 90° 96° and sole head of the Order of the Ancient Templar Freemasons of the Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Rite for the German Reich, and Br.Dr.Rudolf Steiner, General Secretary of the Theosophical Society and President of the Mystical Temple and Chapter “Mystica aeterna” 30° 67° 89° in Berlin, the following treaty and fraternal agreement has been concluded and signed.

Dr. Steiner hereby receives from Theodor Reuß, subject to the conditions set out in this contract, the authorization, at his discretion and without having to obtain the prior approval of Dr. Steiner, to initiate an unlimited number of members of the Theosophical Society or of persons who do not belong to the Theosophical Society into his chapter and mystical temple “Mystica aeterna” in Berlin, in the Order of the Ancient Templar Freemasons of the Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Rites for the German Reich, and to perfect it to the 30th degree A. & A.

In return, Dr. Steiner undertakes to pay Dr. Steiner a fee of forty marks (40 marks) for each candidate he admits to or perfects in the degrees of the aforementioned order, Theodor Reuß a fee of forty marks (40 marks) for each candidate whom he admits to the order or perfects in the degrees,¹ For this, the candidate in question, if he has been elevated to the 18th degree, will receive a diploma of this degree issued by Theodor Reuß.² This fee is due and payable to Theodor Reuß on the day of a candidate's admission. This fee can be deferred by Theodor Reuß in special cases. However, a candidate only becomes a full member of the order and is only entitled to a degree or membership diploma if the above fee has actually been paid to Br. Theodor Reuß. If a member wishes to receive other diplomas for other degrees in addition to the diploma for the 18th degree, the cost for each additional diploma is 10 marks (ten marks), which are to be paid to Br. Theodor Reuß before the diploma is issued. Neither Dr. Steiner nor the members accepted by him or belonging to his organization have any control over the use of the fees or funds paid to Theodor Reuss by Dr. Steiner for himself or for his candidates and members, i.e. they have no right to demand an accounting of how the money is used. Brother Dr. Steiner has no right to independently issue diplomas for the order or for Theodor Reuss. For the period of his absence from Berlin, Brother Theodor Reuss appoints Brother Dr. Steiner as Deputy General Grand Master and General Grand Secretary in the Sovereign Sanctuary. This appointment comes into force on the day on which Dr. Steiner has presented four candidates to the said order and has founded his chapter. However, as Deputy General Grand Master, Dr. Steiner has provisionally only jurisdiction over the members he himself has presented to the said order. But he exercises exclusive jurisdiction over them until the 30th degree A&A, and only when they rise above the 30th degree A&A do they come under the jurisdiction of Br. Th. Reuß. When Br.Dr. Steiner has paid Br. Theodor Reuß the fee of forty marks (40 M) stipulated in this contract for the hundredth (100th) candidate, Theodor Reuß appoints Dr. Rudolf Steiner as the incumbent General Grand Master 33rd, 90th, 96th for the German Reich, with jurisdiction over all existing organizations of the rite and order in the German Reich. When adding up the stated number of hundred candidates, the women introduced to the order by Sister v. Sivers and Brother Dr. Steiner are also to be counted. All printed rituals, catechisms, books, and lodge objects must be paid for separately by Brother Dr. Steiner.

Br.Dr. Steiner undertakes to obtain all masonic clothing for his members exclusively from Fräulein Marta Gierloff, at a fixed price. Br.Dr.Steiner undertakes not to accept or admit any persons who have been excluded, resigned or suspended by the symbolic grand lodge in Leipzig or by Br. Theodor Reuß (S.S.). Furthermore, Dr. Steiner is obliged not to recognize or contact any lodge or other Masonic organization or authority in Germany that has been dissolved or suspended by the SS Sanctuary or by Br. Theodor Reuß, or that has broken away from the SS or Br. Theodor Reuß.

Dr. Steiner immediately loses all rights and degrees in the S. Sanctuary and in the aforementioned order if he acts contrary to these last two provisions. Of course, Dr. Steiner is entitled to use an official seal and letterhead with the name of the order, as used by Br. As official seal, Dr. Steiner carries the seal attached to this contract.

Done, read, approved and signed on January 3, 1906, E.V. d.i. on the third of January nineteen hundred and six E.V. in Berlin

Groß-Lichterfelde

Theodor Reuß
33.° 90.° 96.°

(stamp) (stamp)

Postscript by the Editor:

Of all the conditions of this contract, the only ones that mattered to Rudolf Steiner were that he was legally entitled to admit members of his choice, for whom the regular dues were to be paid, and that after the hundredth member was admitted, the Misraim Rite would be represented by him alone. Cf. his letter to A.W. Sellin dated August 15, 1906, page 67 in the present volume.

• 1. The usual admission rate; according to the Wiener Freimaurerzeitung (1929, No. 7/8), 1,500 marks had to be paid for the charter.
• 2. Such diplomas have never been awarded.

Text from Rudolf Steiner's original manuscript ¹
Notebook archive number 611,
supplemented with a few details about the ritual from the participants'

Master (to the right of the altar in the east): What is the mason's first duty in the lodge?

Administrator (to the left of the altar in the east):
To see if the lodge is covered.
(It is necessary to check whether the lodge is covered, i.e. whether there are any profane people at the lodge's door or brothers and sisters of other degrees, and whether the doors are carefully locked).
The lodge is covered.

Master: If the lodge is covered in the prescribed manner, our work can begin.

Master: Hammer blow (three times):
Wisdom guides our building (lighting the light)

2nd overseer (south): Hammer blow (three times):
Beauty adorns it (lighting the light)

1st overseer (west):
Hammer blow (three times):
Strength lead him forth (lighting the lamp).

Master: Brother (sister), 2nd overseer, your permanent place in the lodge?

Answer: In the south.

Master: Why are you placed there?

Answer: To be the sun in the meridian, and to call the sisters and brothers to labor, that the temple may be built.

Master: Brother (sister) 1st overseer, your permanent place in the lodge?

Answer: In the west.

Master: Why are you placed there?

Answer: To be the setting sun and to give the sisters and brothers back to profane life after work is done, after they have received strength and power in the lodge for their outer work.

Master: Where is the Master's place in the lodge?

Administrator: In the east.

Teacher: Why is the teacher there?

Administrator: Just as the sun rises in the east to illuminate and enliven the day, so the venerable teacher fills the work inside the lodge with light and life.

Speaking to the others:

The venerable master will say the prayer that puts the meaning of brotherhood into your hearts. Rise and listen to it in the sign... of the 3rd degree:

Master: Brothers of the past, let your work become our wisdom; we take the compass and the standard from your hands. May your work done be the strength of our soul, may it be the strength of our hands.

Brothers of the present, if you are wiser than we, let your wisdom shine in our souls, so that we may become revealers of your thoughts of God. Master:

Brothers of the future, if you carry the plan of construction in your will, let your strength flow into our limbs, so that we may become the body for the great souls.

Master: Hammer blow

The man on the left (administrant): It is my duty in the Order of the Misraim to draw your attention, my sisters and brothers, to the stroke of the holy T (Tau) sign. At a significant hour, you received its sacred meaning, with the bandage over your eyes. From this you know that it tells you how the exalted name of God sounds in the innermost part of your being. The sound of the T encompasses the great mystery of the world. What is to be given to you from the East as a teaching will establish the power of the T in your inner being. What is given to you as a spiritual word in the T is to become the essence of your own being.

The path of the holy T from the altar of the East will be laid upon your heart: write down the word that is spoken to you.

Master: T-stroke

2. Overseer (South): It is my task, in the order of the Misraim service, to call you my sisters and brothers to work. May that which the worker in the building of the Temple of Humanity calls “beauty” inspire my commission. You are to work on the building that beholds its stones in the heart, its connecting links in well-measured thoughts, and its cement in the power of the will. Look into the world that quickens your hearts; whose wisdom trains your thoughts; whose seed-forces nourish your will. All this is a beautiful expression of hidden spiritual beings. Take into your inner being the forces of these beings and what lives in you will flow out as “beauty”. Master:

The path to this beauty will be laid upon your heart by the altar of the East: write down the word that is then spoken to you.

Master: T-strike

1. Overseer (West): It is my duty in the service of the Order of Misraim to dismiss you, my sisters and brothers, from work. What the laborer in the building of the temple of humanity calls “strength” may inspire my commission. Let the work you have learned take effect when you leave the gates of this temple for your outer life; let what can shape hearts into building blocks of the great temple flow from your hearts into the other humanity; let what can create connecting links for this structure take effect in your thoughts; let what can be putty for the stones of this temple pour forth from your will. Do only what comes from the authenticity of your heart, to which the care of your thoughts leads you, to which the strength of your will has steeled you. You yourselves will become an image of your archetype through this; and the strength will come from you, which shapes the world. The path to this strength will be laid out for you from the altar of the east. Write down the word that will be spoken to you.

Administrator (East): Learn to be silent and you will have power.

2. Overseer (South): Give up power and you will have will.

1. Overseer (West): Give up will and you will have feeling. Give up feeling and you will have knowledge.

Master: Instruction (temple legend) ²

• 1. This wording applied equally to the first, second and third degrees, with slight deviations for each degree.
• 2. If necessary, the ritual for admission to the 1st or for promotion to the 2nd or for elevation to the 3rd followed instead of the instruction.

Notes (with additions from the lectures) from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede

When we are together in an occult temple, we should be aware that we are in a special place that completely isolates us from the outside world. It is a sacred place where every object in it has a special and occult significance.

One might think that what we are dealing with here is a feature of what is generally called “Freemasonry”, but this is not the case. However secret Freemasonry may have been in the past, it has always been something external. In fact, Freemasonry originally came into the world through a betrayal of the mystery schools, and that is why many of the symbols found in Freemasonry can also be found here. From the mystery schools, these symbols passed through students not sufficiently imbued with their value and meaning, ended up in secret societies, although they were secret to the outside world. However, none of the secret societies known under the general name of Freemasonry have been able to grasp and explain the true depth of the symbols, because the sacredness of the symbols themselves means that they cannot be properly understood outside the occult temple.

Until now, our occult current for the world has still borne the name of Freemasonry, because from an occult point of view, one should always tie in with what already exists, but from now on this name should be dropped for our temple and our activities should be called “Misraim Service”. When our occult service is to be referred to, this may be abbreviated with the letters M.D. The designation F.M. should now disappear for good, and thus, for the outside world and for all institutions on a Masonic basis, Freemasonry in our movement does not exist. If someone were to ask us whether our movement includes Freemasonry, we can say no without telling an untruth. What is done here is an occult service called the Misraim service, which means something like: bringing about the union of the earthly with the heavenly, the visible with the invisible.

The Misraim service was already known in ancient Egypt and was one of the most occult services in the mystery schools. This same service is still performed in our temples today, with the additions and reforms that Mark introduced. The Mark referred to here is the disciple of Peter, one of the twelve apostles, who wrote the Gospel of Mark while he was Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. Together with an Egyptian initiate, he reorganized the occult service (cult) that we now know as the Misraim service.

Every object in a complete temple not only has its own special significance, but it must also be there for the purpose of stimulating and effecting that which makes it possible to draw the stream of those entities to our temple, whom we call the wise masters of the East. They then pour this stream out on us, and so we are enabled to receive those spiritual teachings that are necessary for human development. Without such reception, nothing could be done for the spiritual development of humanity; from here, what has been received should flow on to the other people.

The three lights that are now burning symbolize the three higher principles that shine in the darkness in our higher being. They also represent the wisdom, beauty and strength whose words (names) were pronounced when the lights were just lit on the altars of the east, south and west.

We will find the light of wisdom if we always strive for truth in our thinking, if we learn to recognize that a new kind of thinking should arise in us, that world thoughts live in our thoughts. We should become aware that it “thinks in us” and that what is thought in us are revelations of spiritual beings that want to bring us wisdom. From the astral world, living, weaving, moving wisdom flows to us, and by permeating our thinking with truth, we can absorb the wisdom of those spiritual beings, and our soul will attain wisdom.

Beauty flows into us when we acquire true piety. When our soul is open to admiration and devotion to the beauty that is around us, this beauty becomes

for us the expression of spiritual beings who reveal their language with it and want to make themselves understood to us. Only heartfelt, true devotion can reveal true beauty to us. Because you all know that in the spiritual (astral) world, devils can show themselves in the form of angels under the mask of beauty. But you know that this is only possible if our soul is not permeated by that purity which is coupled with heartfelt piety. In the lower Devachan, those entities can be found that send their beauty down to us in truly beautiful images and forms.

Strength flows down upon us from the higher Devachan, and it will strengthen our inner being if we transform our power into virtue, into active virtue. True, active virtue arises when we transform all the qualities that emerge in our lower nature through the power of our will, so that they become forces that can work as spiritual forces in the world.

The sign, grip and word are not just mere identifying marks, but have a deep occult value. The sign, in which one forms the right angle between the thumb and the flat hand, has to do with the hand as an organ of knowledge. It was already mentioned in the last cycle that hands and feet are organs of knowledge, and better than the brain. The physical brain is, as it were, crystallized out of the etheric body, like ice out of water. One can feel an intimate connection between these two “brains” and how the physical brain is actually a kind of mirror apparatus for what is going on in the etheric brain. This is particularly the case when you are making a great effort with things that relate to the physical plane, or when you want to evoke memories in yourself: whether you are aware of it or not, the etheric body is always affected. But especially the physical brain, which lies like a block in the etheric brain and prevents one from following the mobility of the etheric brain. One then feels very clearly that it is not the etheric brain that tires; it could evoke thoughts and memories for all eternity, but the physical brain cannot keep up, it acts like a foreign body in the etheric body. As a result, you feel the fatigue of the physical brain all the more, because: even if you could continue to think with the ether brain, you would make yourself ill; the normal connection would be broken, the physical part would become like dead. It is impossible to break the parallelism between the physical and ether brain to a greater extent.

In our brain, we have a very faithful expression of the etheric brain in its functions and processes. In the case of the hands of the human etheric body, the connection with the physical organs is different. Just as with the brain, certain etheric processes of the etheric body correspond to the hands, but there is a far greater difference between the physical hands and their function and what corresponds to them in the etheric body than between the physical head and the corresponding etheric body of the same. What the hands do is much more of a purely sensory activity, and what the etheric organs of the hands can do finds very little expression in what the physical hands do. These etheric hands are real spiritual organs in the elementary or etheric body. A much higher, more intuitive spiritual activity is performed by the organs that underlie the hands and find only a limited expression in them. The organs that find expression in the hands in the physical body already lead into the supersensible world and can make observations in it. Somewhat paradoxically, one could say that the human brain is the most unsuitable organ of perception for the world; the hands, taken ethereally, are much more significant and skillful organs of knowledge than the brain.

On the path to initiation, one does not learn very much by learning to move from the use of the physical brain to that of the etheric brain. What the hands have to do can be found in connection with the lotus leaves in the heart area, which radiate their forces in such a way that they go from the heart to the hands, thus making the etheric hand an organ of spiritual knowledge. Learning to understand these differences gives us an idea of how to immerse ourselves in the initiation. What is important is not that we feel how the physical brain fills the etheric brain, but that we feel how completely different organs can arise in the human being. What was initially present in the physical human being – like the hands – is transformed into the inner human being, so that he can experience different things with them.

If we place our hand on the larynx, with the thumb of the right hand by the ear and the flat of the hand under the chin at the level of the larynx, then we exclude the etheric currents of the head and shape the rest of the organism into an organ of knowledge. In this way, knowledge is spiritualized, and if one stands upright in this position, it is an aid to being able to absorb knowledge in a spiritual way. The larynx is connected with the thinking that man developed during the moon state. Brain thinking is an earth product and can only touch the world of the senses, not the world of the spirit.

With the grip, in which we form a right angle with the thumb, we also do something very significant. It eliminates something in the relationship between people that happens in the most brutal way in our materialistic time. We make the currents finer and thus transform our relationship to the outside world. When we touch a certain point on the upper hand with the bent thumb, the two currents merge, and in this way we can have a beneficial, far-reaching influence for good.

There are no causes in the sensual world, they only live in the supersensible world. Here there are only signs. We should get to know these in our temple so that we learn to apply and use them in a good sense. The foolish anatomy - as foolish as it may sound: it is nevertheless true, even if in our time the anatomy must be recognized for what it is - means that the heart pumps the blood, but in reality the blood is driven by currents in the etheric body. The heart is only the sign that the ether currents come together at that point. For example, our muscles are a sign of the movement that actually originates in the astral body as a tone. Without the muscles, we would not be able to know about the movement; they reflect the movement to us. Our whole body is an apparatus for reflection in each of its parts.

The sacred word [JACHIN] is not pronounced, but spelled, as discussed in the recording. It is a word from the original language, and anyone who exchanges it with another person in thought can use it to transfer healing powers from one person to another. If someone is overcome by suffering, or if we meet someone who is struggling with a severe indisposition or illness, we ask ourselves the question: Do you know the sacred word?, and we address it to the other person in our thoughts, while visualizing the other person giving the answer, of course, all in our thoughts, and thus we exchange the letters and the two syllables with them. In this way, the current passes from one larynx to the other, and [with this] one can influence people in the most favorable way, without their freedom being compromised.

The sign regulates the relationship of the person to the outside world; the grip regulates the relationship of person to person; and the word has a healing and salvific effect on our fellow human beings.

Those who do not connect with the spiritual world are like a sleepwalker who, without consciousness, performs all sorts of things in his sleep by means of higher (subconscious) powers. There are two friends, one of whom always feels fresh and strong, vigorous for work in the morning, while the other is usually tired and listless. One day the strong man says to the weak man: “It is no wonder that you feel miserable in the morning, because you always go out at night and work at your desk for several hours.” And sure enough, when they checked, they found the task that the weak man had to solve worked out on the desk.

In his subconscious, the person was guided by higher powers to do what he felt too weak to do in his waking life. The religious beliefs did something similar for humanity. Without being aware of it, she was led by leading powers into the spiritual worlds and to spiritual insights. Of course, the result was not achieved that was the case in much earlier times, that the most mundane was, as it were, spiritually consecrated. No stone was hewn without a certain rhythm, blow upon blow, and this rhythm was felt as an echo of the music of the spheres of the higher worlds.

Today there are only meagre remnants of this, for example when grain is threshed in rhythm in the countryside. It all depends on one's perception. Take children, for example, who look forward to Christmas. They have been told that at night the Christmas angel or Santa Claus secretly comes and places the presents on the floor. Then the child, driven by a materialistic sting, wakes up and sees the parents, who are people living on the physical plane, laying the things down. His faith in higher spiritual beings is destroyed. But one can also look at it from the parents' point of view. They can feel that they are mediators through whom higher powers can flow to the children through the gifts and benefits.

Nowadays, the world is simply de-divinized, and it is difficult to speak of divine guidance and government of the world. Think of those who built and sailed the Titanic. ¹

But the higher powers were always active on the physical plane as well, in order to let spiritual forces flow into human life, especially in the mysteries. One could go back to Atlantis in this regard, but let us talk about the post-Atlantean mysteries. Pupils were drawn to them so that they could be gradually introduced to the secrets of the universe and the development of humanity. The students were so worked on that fear and terror befell them. Some of them became free, courageous and strong as a result, and in this incarnation attained union with the supersensible world; but the others, who were overwhelmed and proved to be too weak, felt: You are still too weak to ascend into the supersensible worlds, but you will still benefit when you pass through the gate of death from this attempt to reach the higher worlds. Later, great initiates such as Ormus and Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark, conveyed the fruits of the Christ impulse in the Mysteries of Humanity; then the Culdean monks, who incorporated spiritual wisdom into the Gothic cathedrals. ² And time and again there were occult brotherhoods that, under various pseudonyms, guided people in the physical world to the higher worlds. One example is the Arthurian Brotherhood, to which Parzival belonged and which later operated under the name of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. The Round Table of King Arthur represented the youthful natural forces, which then, in the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail, were transformed into conscious spiritual forces. Here we have the union of the old occult wisdom with the new Christian wisdom. For the legend tells that a stone fell out of Lucifer's crown when he fell from heaven, and that this stone was worked into the Grail Cup, the sacred and noble chalice in which the blood of Christ was caught at Golgotha. ³

The mature human being, like Parzival, came to the decisive question through the guidance of higher powers, which opened the gate to initiation for him.

Today there is great resistance to such occult brotherhoods, especially from devout Christian circles, who seek to ascend to the higher worlds with the help of the Christ impulse. They resist them as if they were Satan incarnate, because they say one loses the Christ through them. Herein lies not merely ill will or a principled dislike of the occult, but the dimly sensed, thoroughly correct realization that only he finds the Christ in the higher worlds who brings him up there as a memory from the physical plane. For only here can the Christ be grasped, and it is quite right that those who enter the higher worlds without a knowledge and realization of the Christ, and are unstable, may lose their way.

In our occult brotherhood, as in all, there is a hierarchy instead of democracy, because not a referendum can decide what truth is, but only those who have been given the only correct knowledge by spiritual powers can decide on this. A deification of work and life, wisdom and the warmth of love is attained, and each person recognizes in the other, as a brother striving for the same goal, the divine essence.

In the three lower degrees, all the knowledge that can be gained from the world of higher beings and forces is symbolically experienced. In the six higher degrees, one then becomes more intimately acquainted with the occult forces themselves.

Promise Formula

Two handwritten templates by Rudolf Steiner from notebook archive number 611

I

I try to understand how I can find development in the service of my self in Misraim and approach the holy secret that demands reverent silence. I want to try to open up the cultivation of this development to my fellow human beings by caring for the symbolic sanctuary and to understand the inner nature of human wisdom by preserving the sense of the degrees of truth.

I will try to preserve my self from all influences that diminish its fully conscious freedom and rob it of its inner light and self-determination through hypnosis, suggestion, etc. at any stage of life.

A soul can only find a goal and destiny in the realm of duration, direction and growth in the realm of time: those who attempt such.

I perceive that such is proclaimed as a doctrine by those whom I hear called the knowing ones, who are said to have the key to hidden secrets.

II

I ---- born in ----- residing in ---- do hereby vow and promise to faithfully keep and follow the rules of the genuine and true Misraim service; to keep the holy secret strictly, to take care of and advocate for the preservation of the sanctuary to the best of my ability, and to unreservedly recognize the Grand Master as the highest decision-making authority in all Misraim matters. I also vow and promise that I will not allow myself to be put into a state of bondage through hypnosis, suggestion, etc., so that everything that will ever affect me in life will find me in a state of wakefulness, so that the secrets of the great service can never be betrayed to outsiders through me.

Should I ever break this solemn vow of mine, may my soul wander restlessly without purpose or destination in space, may it be without direction in immeasurable time.

This I vow by the wise masters of the East, who may turn their eye to my deeds.

• 1. The English express steamer “Titanic” was on its maiden voyage shortly before this address on April 15, 1912, after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic with about 1500 people. People were so convinced of the absolute safety of the ship that they ignored the iceberg warnings. Cf. Walter Lord, “The Sinking of the Titanic”, New York 1955.
• 2. Culdean = old Irish ascetics, in spiritual communities since the 8th century, who are said to have had great influence on Freemasonry, architecture and customs. See Joseph Schauberg, op. cit., vol. I, p. 503.
• 3. Regarding the connection between high-degree Freemasonry and the legend of the Holy Grail, see the lecture given in Berlin on January 2, 1906.