The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Continuation of the Second Contemplation: Hindrances and helps to the Michael Forces in the dawning age of the Spiritual Soul.

[ 1 ] The incorporation of the Spiritual Soul also brought about a disturbance throughout the whole of Europe in men's inner relation towards the articles of religious faith and the ritual of worship. This disturbance announces itself unmistakably, at the turn of the eleventh to the twelfth centuries, by the sudden appearance on the scene of Proofs of the Existence of god (in particular with Anselm of Canterbury). The existence of god was to be proved by arguments of reason. Such a desire could only arise when the old method of knowing God—by direct realization through the soul's inherent forces—was already passing away. What one knows by direct living experience, one does not prove by logic.

[ 2 ] The earlier method had been a direct perception by the soul of the life-forms of the individual Intelligences, up to the highest Godhead. The new method now became, to work out intellectually a system of thoughts about the ‘First Causes’ of the universe. For the first method, there had been the powers of Michael in the spiritual region immediately adjoining the earthly one—powers which, behind the thinking-forces directed to the externals of sense, equipped the soul with other faculties, that could behold within the universe the life-forms of Intelligent Being. The second method required that the soul's link with the Michael Powers should be first fully developed.

[ 3 ] What happens in the field of religious worship is that, far and wide, from Wycliffe in England (15^th century) to Huss in Bohemia, over broad ranges of religious life amongst men, a doctrine so central as that of the Sacrament of the Communion begins to waver. In the Sacrament of the Communion, Man could find individual human union with the spirit-world which Christ had opened to him; for therein he could so unite himself with the being of the Christ, that the fact of sensible union was at the same time a spiritual one.

[ 4 ] The consciousness of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was able to picture such a communion for this Soul still possessed ideas, both of Spirit and of Matter, which were closely akin to each other, so that the one could be conceived passing over into the other—Matter into Spirit. But such ideas must not be intellectual ones, of the kind that demand proofs for the existence of god. They must be such as still have something of Imagination in them; for here can be felt in Matter the active Spirit at work within it, and in the Spirit, the striving after Matter. Ideas of such a kind have the cosmic force of Michael behind them.

[ 5 ] If we only consider how much it was, of which the foundations were shaken in men's minds at that time, how much of all that was involved in their most sacred, innermost life! There were persons, in whom the very essence of the spiritual Soul shot forth its brightest rays, who, by the constitution of their souls, were united to the Michael Forces with a strength which for others would only come centuries later. Individualities such as Huss, Wycliffe and others came on the scenes. Following Michael's voice in their hearts, they used the ripeness of their Spiritual Soul to soar to a comprehension of the profoundest mysteries of religion. The intellectual power, now coming in with the Spiritual soul, must—they felt—be able to bring within the range of their ideas what in ancient times had been sought and reached through Imagination.

[ 6 ] In contrast to all this was the old historic position of the human soul, as traditionally handed down, which throughout large circles of mankind had lost all inner staying power. What is historically known as the Disorder of the Faith, which occupied the great reforming councils in the age when the Spiritual soul first began to be active, is all involved with the life of those human souls who neither as yet felt the Spiritual Soul within them, nor could any longer draw from the traditional life of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul anything to give them inner strength and security.

[ 7 ] Such historic currents of inner human life and feeling as come to light in the Councils of Constance and Bâle, may really be said to shew: above, in the spirit-world, the down-pouring of the cosmic Intellectuality, trying to find its way into Man, and below, in the earthly region, an Intellectual of Mind-Soul which is no longer suited to the times. Between the two hover the Michael Forces, looking back to their past union with the divine spirit-world, and looking down upon the world of Man, once united by the same bond, but which now has passed unavoidably into a sphere where Michael must send his aid from the spirit, but with which he himself must enter into no inner union. In this struggle of Michael's—necessary in the cosmic evolution, yet signifying in the first instance a disturbance of the cosmic balance—are to be found the grounds of all that mankind had to go through at this period, even in respect of their most cherished and sacred truths.

[ 8 ] We look deep into the peculiar characteristics of this age, if we fix our eyes on Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus. (See what is said about him in my ‘Mysticism and Modern Thought.’) The personality of Cusanus is like a monument of his age. Everywhere he seeks to give effect to such views as would rectify the abuses of the physical world, not be combating them in a high-flown spirit of fanaticism, but rather by endeavouring, through sound human sense, to guide what has gone wrong, into the right track again. This is directly observable, if one watches the way in which his influence was exerted at the Council of Bâle, and in general amongst his ecclesiastical community.

[ 9 ] If in this respect Cusanus shows himself all inclined towards the change coming into evolution with the development of the Spiritual Soul, one sees him, on the other hand, displaying views which bear shining witness to the forces of Michael. He translates into his own times the good old Ideas, which once had guided the soul and mind of Man to the evolution of faculties by which he could perceive the living forms of the Intelligences in the Cosmos—in that age, when Michael still was regent of cosmic Intellectuality. The ‘Learned Ignorance’ of which Cusanus speaks, is an active comprehension, which lies above the passive perceptions directed to the world of Sense—a comprehension which carries Thought above and beyond Intellectuality, the common form of ‘Knowing,’ into a region where in Unknowingness or ‘Ignorance,’ but with the vision of living realization, the Spiritual is actually grasped.

[ 10 ] So in this Cardinal of Cusa we have a person who in his own soul-life experiences the disturbance brought by Michael into the cosmic balance, and intuitively tries to do his utmost towards directing this disturbance to the welfare of mankind.

[ 11 ] In between all which thus came, spiritually, to the open surface, there was something else which led a hidden life. There were, here and there, persons who had a sense and understanding for the position held by the Michael Powers in the universe, and who devoted themselves to so training the powers of their own souls, that they could find conscious access to that spiritual region bordering on the earthly one, in which Michael carries on his labours on Man's behalf.

[ 12 ] They sought to quality themselves for this spiritual enterprise by behaving externally, in their daily calling and the general affairs of life, in such a way that their ordinary existence was not distinguishable from that of other people. In this manner-by fulfilling their duties in the normal way, in all love towards the things of earth—they were enabled to apply their inner man freely to the spiritual task above mentioned. What they did in this direction was their own concern and that of those with whom they associated ‘in secret.’ In respect of what occurred on the physical plane, the world was not, to immediate appearance, in any way affected by these spiritual pursuits. And yet it all was necessary, in order to bring human souls into the needful connection with Michael's world. There was no question here of ‘secret societies’ in any bad sense—nothing that haunts the dark because it shuns the light of day. It was a case of people coming together, who in the actual coming together would convince themselves that every one of them had a fitting consciousness of the Michael Mission. Those who are working together in this way, do not then talk of their work before persons who from lack of understanding might only spoil the tasks on which they are engaged. These tasks, as we have seen, belonged to spiritual streams which do not run within the borders of earthly life, but in the neighbouring spirit-world—although they send their impulses across into this earthly life.

[ 13 ] The spiritual work to which allusion is here made is that of men who stand within the physical world, but work in union with beings of the spirit-world—with beings who themselves do not enter the physical world, do not incarnate in it. We here allude to what is referred to in the world at large—in very little accordance with the facts—as the ‘Rosicrucians.’ True Rosicrucianism lies along the same line of actions as that pursued by the Michael Mission. It assisted on earth to prepare the spirit-work of Michael, which it was his will to prepare for a later age.

[ 14 ] What this made possible, we can best estimate from the following considerations.

[ 15 ] The difficulties—impossibilities indeed—which Michael meets with, as already described, in conveying his impulses to the souls of men, are connected with the fact that he himself will not bring his own being into any sort of contact with the physical Present of earth-life. His will is to abide by the same interconnection of forces which existed for spirits of his kind—and also for men—in the Past. Any contact with that element with which Man, being situated in present physical earth-life, of necessity comes in contact could only be felt by Michael as a defilement of his being. Now in ordinary human life, as we know, what the soul realizes in her spiritual life, works on from thence into her physical earth-life; conversely, the physical earth-life reacts upon the other: a reaction which, in particular, finds its expression in a man's tone of mind, and in his inclination towards some particular feature of earthly life. Some such interaction of the two things is more especially the case—as a rule, though not always—with persons in public life. That is why, with many of the reformers, the obstacles to Michael's work were really very great.

[ 16 ] The Rosicrucians overcame this side of the difficulty by carrying on their external life with its earthly duties quite apart from whatever they did in Michael's work. When Michael came with his impulses to the soul of a Rosicrucian and met with what was there prepared for him, he in no way found himself exposed to the danger of coming upon earthly matter. For this was kept at a distance by the very thing which brought the Rosicrucian into union with Michael—the specially prepared constitution of his soul.

[ 17 ] In this manner, Rosicrucian will and purpose made for Michael a road upon earth, by which he could find the way to his own approaching earthly mission.

Leading Thoughts

[ 18 ] At the beginning of the Age of the Spiritual Soul, the emancipated intellectual power in Man begins to busy itself in examining the truths of religious faith and worship. Man's soul-life is thereby inevitably thrown into uncertainty. Essential realities which men had formerly realized in the inner life of the soul, they now seek to prove logically. Contents of religious ritual, which should be grasped in Imaginations, they now try to grasp by logical deduction—and even to determine the forms accordingly.

[ 19 ] This is all connected with the fact, that Michael under all circumstances is resolved to avoid every contact with the present earth-world, on which Man is obliged to set foot; but that nevertheless Michael has to remain with the stream of Cosmic Intellectuality, of which he was regent in the past, and to conduct it further within Man. Hereby there arises through the Michael Forces—necessarily for the progress of human evolution—a disturbance of the cosmic equilibrium.

[ 20 ] The difficulty of Michael's mission is lightened by certain persons—the genuine Rosicrucians—who so arrange their external way of life on earth that it exerts no sort of influence upon the inner life of their souls. By this means they are able, in their inner-life, to develop forces by which they can work with Michael in the spiritual field, without Michael's incurring the danger of becoming involved with the present doings of earth-life—which, for him, would be impossible.

As we are meeting together here for the first time today, let us speak of some intimate concerns of our spiritual science. We will discuss what concerns the evolution of the human individuality at first in somewhat general terms and next time in detail. We can understand the life of a single individual only when we also know the epoch in which he lives. The human soul evolves through the ages, progressing from one incarnation to another. The soul's faculties today are not the same as in earlier times. Human faculties have reached the point today at which human beings can perceive the world of the senses and can think it through inwardly. Before this epoch it was completely different, because human souls still possessed a certain dreamlike clairvoyance, one could say.

At that time, a person would not have been able to develop his consciousness of self, of his I. The ancient, dreamlike clairvoyance had first to disappear; he had to be limited to the world of the senses to be able, by means of a growing capacity for discernment of physical appearances, to arrive at the consciousness of his own self. In the future, he will win back the clairvoyance he once had and will at the same time be able to hold onto his self-consciousness.

This evolution has proceeded slowly and continuously; nevertheless, we can indicate the exact moment when the conscious condition of physical, sensible perception began. It was the year 3101 before Christ's appearance on earth. Until that time, there existed a natural clairvoyance. Then it gradually began to disappear, and the dark epoch called the lesser Kali Yuga began, in which the human soul could no longer perceive the spiritual world.

Let us imagine now the state of human souls at the onset of that dark epoch. In remembering past epochs, the human soul might say, “I once could behold spiritual beings; I could see into at least a part of the world where the ancient Rishis and Zoroaster were teachers, and I could listen to those great leaders and masters of old; I could hear the great leaders who spoke to me from the wisdom that arises from the spiritual world.” This feeling, however, became ever weaker in those souls.

Three thousand years after the beginning of that dark epoch, a new possibility arose for a human being to unite himself with the spiritual world. This possibility lay in the fact that a person could achieve union with the spiritual world through his I; that is, it was possible for him to perceive the spiritual world even though human perception was limited to the senses. It was through the incarnation of Christ that this possibility arose. All other great world leaders incarnated in such a way that their spiritual being united with an astral body. When we attempt to understand the essence of the Bodhisattvas, we find that their spiritual portion, which worked on earth, raised itself into higher worlds and was linked only to the astral body. In Christ alone do we find a divine-spiritual being in direct connection with a physical body. This means that the I of Jesus abandoned his physical, etheric, and astral sheaths, and the Christ incarnated Himself as the I within those sheaths so that the I of every human being can have a connection with the Christ. Consequently, we see that in earlier ages the great leaders of humanity could be so perceived that one could reach an understanding of their bond with the spiritual world only through pictures. Now, however, in contrast, the whole biography of Christ consists of facts that could come to expression in the physical world. In other words, the Christ event can be grasped with our intellect, with our physical mind. God had to descend to the physical world because the human faculty for perception could no longer raise itself above the world of the physical senses. For this reason came the mighty prophecy of John the Baptist that the disposition of the human soul must change so that the kingdom of heaven can draw near.

In earlier times one could approach the kingdom of heaven to some degree through human clairvoyance. Now one had to find it in Christ Himself through the medium of the senses. In order that humanity should not lose its link with the spiritual world during the dark age of Kali Yuga, Christ had to descend to the physical plane. The Dark Age lasted more than 5,000 years. We are living in the important time of the end of Kali Yuga. Since 1899, the Dark Age, which began in 3101 BC, has already run its course, and since then certain faculties of soul have slowly begun to develop that have not yet been recognized by human science. In this twentieth century of ours, new faculties of the human soul will gradually evolve in a portion of humanity. Before the end of the century, for instance, it will be possible to perceive the human etheric body. Another faculty will be to look inward and behold, as if in a dream, the picture, the counterpart, of a deed one is about to perform. Certain persons endowed in a particular way will have still another experience. What Paul experienced at Damascus, which was a personal experience for him, will become common experience for a certain number of people.

One can perceive the significance of this event in the twentieth century from the following. Paul could learn about everything that had happened in Palestine without its changing him from Saul to Paul. His condition of soul was such that he could not be convinced that the Christ lived in the man from Nazareth. At the event of Damascus, he could say for the first time with his clairvoyant consciousness: Christ exists! The people who will experience the event of Damascus in the twentieth century will receive direct knowledge of Christ. They will not require documentary evidence in order to recognize Christ, but they will have direct knowledge, as is today possessed only by the initiates. All the faculties that today can be acquired by means of initiation will in the future be universal faculties of humanity. This condition of soul, this experiencing of soul, is called in esotericism the “second coming of Christ.” Christ will not be incarnated again in a physical body, but He will appear in an etheric body as in the street near Damascus.

Christ incarnated on the physical plane when humanity had become limited to the physical body. We can repeat today the words of John the Baptist, “Repent! for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (“Change the disposition of your soul so that your own faculties open the spiritual world to you.”) Human beings with etheric clairvoyance will thus behold the Christ appearing before them in an etheric body. The faculties I have just described are lying like seeds in the soul. In the future they will be developed, and one will be able to say that the destiny of a person lies to a certain extent in his own hands. When this etheric vision appears, however, it will be necessary for people to know the significance of these faculties. It will be impossible then to fall back into materialism as people do today. One will not be immediately aware of the faculties when they appear, and those who possess them will even be regarded as sick or deluded by fantasy. It is therefore the mission of spiritual science to prepare human beings for the understanding of such faculties. Communicating the fundamental wisdom (Ideale) of spiritual science thus is not optional but is a necessary measure for the evolution of humanity.

What we have said will often be repeated in the years to come, but it is vital that it be understood correctly. It is possible that materialistic tendencies will penetrate the Theosophical Society, (see Note 6) even to the point that one will believe that Christ will take on a material body when He comes again. If this were to be the case, one could assert that humanity has made no progress at all in the last 2,000 years. Christ appeared 2,000 years ago in a physical body to be perceived by the physical senses. For future clairvoyance He will appear in an etheric body. By means of spiritual science we are preparing ourselves to understand the significant era ahead of us. To be anthroposophists, it is not enough to understand anthroposophy in a theoretical way; we must bring it to life within ourselves. It will be necessary to observe this great event with complete exactness. There will be ambitious persons who try, out of the materialistic direction of theosophy today, to profit for themselves by making believe that they are the Christ, and they will find people who believe them. For the true anthroposophist, it will be a test to arm himself against such attempts and, instead of debasing human feeling in such a way, to raise it up to the spiritual worlds. Those who understand anthroposophy in the right way will say to these false messiahs of the twentieth century: you have announced the appearance of Christ on the physical plane, but we know that Christ will manifest Himself only in an etheric form. True anthroposophists will await Christ's appearance to the higher senses. A person must, before his death, have understood the true significance of this second coming of Christ; then, in the life between death and a new birth, this understanding will open his spiritual senses. Those who will not have these faculties, who have not been able on earth to understand the significance of Christ's second coming, however, must await a new incarnation to be able to acquire this understanding on the physical plane.

We are living in an extremely important epoch. We must characterize the event of Christ's second coming, which will be perceived by clairvoyant human beings. We can characterize this event by directing our attention to the cosmos and by alluding to an event that is approaching in our own day. This event is the appearance of Halley's Comet (see Note 4) which is also an important subject of study in Rosicrucian theosophy. The appearance of this comet is connected with events in the spiritual world. Just as the movements of the planets circling the sun correspond to the regular events in the evolution of humanity, so the appearance of a comet corresponds to an influence that runs counter to the regular events. Rosicrucian research has demonstrated that every comet exerts a particular influence on human evolutions. (see Note 7) The present comet has as its particular influence an intense impulse toward materialism. Every time Halley's Comet has appeared, a new impulse toward materialism has taken place. Its appearance in 1759 corresponded with the epoch in which Voltaireanism was at its high point. The appearance in 1835 corresponded with the materialism of Moleschott, Büchner, and others. (see Note 5) In the same way, in our time there will be a new impulse toward materialism, and the outer sign of this is the appearance of the comet. Those who let themselves be swayed by its influence will fall into the deepest materialism.

Today, not only this impulse exists, but there is also another influence, which is to raise humanity to spiritual heights. This will be observed by those who understand the signs of the times. In the macrocosm, the sign for this influence is the fact that the sun at the vernal equinox has entered the sign of Pisces, the Fish. At the time when Christ appeared, the sun was in the sign of Aries, the Ram. The sun began to enter this sign in about 800 BC and was well into Aries at the time of the event of Golgotha. Now the sun has been in the sign of Pisces for several centuries. In the near future it will have advanced so far in this sign that it will be the outer symbol for the appearance of Christ in the etheric body. You will see, therefore, that anthroposophy does not expound to the world theoretical teaching but rather that the signs of the times have given us the task of teaching anthroposophy. In the West this message has been foreseen for many centuries by those who call themselves Rosicrucians. (see Note 7) Among the Rosicrucians, a Fifth Gospel is taught beside the four that are well known. It is through this spiritual gospel that the other four can be understood, and it will be given to a portion of humanity of the twentieth century, just as the others were given on the occasion of the physical appearance of Christ. Those adherents to the Rosicrucian movement who will have a clear consciousness will understand the significance of this Fifth Gospel for humanity. (see Note 8)

If you will become attentive to Rosicrucian theosophy, your striving will be able to enter into the spirit of the progress of humanity, so that it will become possible to understand the Christ Who is to appear in a new form. The time is at hand when we will be able to recognize the Christ directly, even if, though this is unlikely, all the Gospels as printed documents should be lost.

One can speak about these things only in a circle where a preparation exists that has been acquired not only through theoretical learning but through continuous breathing of the air of our group life. In public lectures one must observe certain boundaries, but in this group we breathe such an air that these great truths could be spoken of tonight. Our souls, however, should not be satisfied merely with the expression of such truths in words but should gain from them the strength for daily work, a light that will stream daily into ordinary life, and a strength for the future. One must become wiser through truth, but one must also speak ever more courageously of the truth, as of a spiritual blood that we wish to allow to flow into our feeling and will.

From a teaching session in Munich, December 12, 1906

With our prayer “Brothers of the Past...” we show that we are connecting with the work of the Brothers of the Past, the Brothers of the Present and the Brothers of the Future, the Mahatmas.

From an instructional lesson in Hanover, Christmas 1911

We should know and feel within the walls of our temple that with these symbols surrounding us, the forces of the wise masters of the East are flowing in upon us. When we look up to those who have guided the whole evolution of humanity from the very beginning of the world, through the evolution of Saturn, Sun, Moon, to the evolution of the earth, to our present time, we turn in prayer, seeking help for our present evolution, to those we call “Brothers of the Past”. And so we pray: “Brothers of the past...”. When we look up to those who are currently guiding us spiritually, we pray: “Brothers of the present...”. And those who will be the guides of humanity in the future, we address as “Brothers of the future...”.

From the instruction session in Hanover, December 31, 1911

The wise masters of the East are beings who belong to the three higher worlds and who work in the past, present and future, as it were, and whom we imagine to be above us when we say our prayers. From the instruction session in Munich, September 5, 1912

The first prayer distinguishes us from all other such endeavors that rely on documents or on a traditional wisdom. We do not refer to anything of the sort; we only tie in with the work that has been done, with what has actually been achieved.

In the near future, among other things that will be undertaken against us, our occult movement will also be tried to be discredited and vilified, so we should know this, to which we are joining. In the spiritual realm, there is a community like ours, but it has only as much justification as there are souls who profess it as the truth. And anyone who does not like something about it does not need to be part of it. We do not claim to be an order, a Rosicrucian movement or anything of the kind, but our aim is to represent the truth in such a way that we do not claim wisdom as our own, but we do want to appropriate the work that has flowed from it as wisdom.

Wisdom is there. There was an ancient store of wisdom belonging to humanity, as shown in the “Dwellers in the Threshold” by the Grand Master [1st picture]. And how one has to relate to it, that is, how one advances in the occult life, is shown to us by Maria in the second scene with Thomasius. It would be more convenient to give a prescription for all, but it had to be shown in our Western movement how persons of the special kind of a Thomasius, Strader, Capesius and a Maria go the initiation way.

“Compasses and Rule” means: We adopt your customs.

Such prayers contain in their words everything we need, as do the “Mysteries Dramas”. Every word is there in its place and full of occult meaning. Nothing, nothing is set and said for a reason other than its spiritual meaning and power, as it is.

The opponents of the spiritual, such as Haeckel, carry the spiritual deeply hidden within themselves and their rage and anger is actually directed against themselves. Because they cannot access their subconscious soul life in life, they show themselves quite differently towards the spiritual after death and are most easily quoted, for example, in spiritualistic séances.

Nietzsche is very interesting in this respect. He had a hard time letting go of his material part. That is why he presented such a strange sight to the seer, even in his illness: the man Nietzsche, this strange personality, lying on the sofa and the aura around him.¹ The split of the ego is expressed in such personalities: while the consciousness is materialistic, the subconscious is spiritual.

“Brothers of the Future”: We don't have a name either, because Lucifer is the inspiration for every external foundation of an association or society.

From a lecture in Bremen, April 9, 1906

To be an apprentice means to make up for what our brothers have achieved in the distant past; to be a journeyman means to be allowed to live with the older brothers of humanity; to be a master means to be allowed to work on the building of the temple.

From a lecture in Berlin, January 29, 1906.

As I have often said, it was not by chance that the Theosophical Society was founded in the last third of the 19th century. The way in which it seeks the spiritual differs significantly from other endeavors that also strive to obtain proof of the immortality of man. There is a great diversity in the search for the eternal as it is found in the Theosophical Society and the search for the eternal in other spiritual currents. In truth, the theosophical movement is nothing more than the popular expression of the secret fraternities of the past millennia that have secretly embraced the world. I have already mentioned that the most outstanding and greatest of these brotherhoods in Europe was founded in the 14th century as the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. This Rosicrucian Brotherhood is actually the source and the starting point for all the other brotherhoods that have preserved European culture. In these brotherhoods, occult wisdom was cultivated in strict secrecy. If I were to characterize for you what the people united in these various brotherhoods wanted to achieve, I would have to tell you that the high and exalted teachings and work of wisdom cultivated in these occult brotherhoods, of which the Rosicrucian Brotherhood was the most outstanding, brought people to the point where they became aware of their own eternal essence. They brought man to the point where he found the connection with the higher world, with the worlds that lie above us, and looked to the guidance of our older brothers, to the guidance of those who live among us and have attained a level that you will all attain at a later time. We call them the older brothers because, ahead of the general development, they have reached this high point earlier: thus the certainty of the eternal essence of the being, the awakening of it, so that man can see the eternal as the ordinary man sees the world of the senses. To achieve this, one must emulate the older brothers who live among us everywhere. These elder brothers or masters, the great guides of humanity, have always been the supreme directors and supreme directors of the occult sublime wisdom through which man becomes aware of his eternal essence.

• 1. Refers to Rudolf Steiner's impression when he was able to visit the sick Nietzsche. See “My Life”, GA 28.

I spoke to you yesterday of the special form in which the results of research in the realm of spiritual knowledge were communicated in the Middle Ages. This form was, so to speak, the last Act before a door was shut for the evolution of the spirit of man, a door that had been open for many centuries and given entrance by way of natural gift and faculty into the spiritual world. The door was shut when the time came for man, so far as his instinctive faculties were concerned, to be placed out-side the kingdom of the divine-spiritual Will that ruled over him. From that time forward he had to find in his own inmost being, in his own will, the possibility to evolve conscious freedom in the soul.

All the great moves of evolution, however, take place slowly, gradually, step by step. And the experience that had been attained by the pupil when the teacher led him up into the Ether-heights and down into the deep clefts of the Earth—even in those times it was no longer possible in the form it had taken in the ancient Mysteries—this experience was now, in later times, directly connected with an experience of Nature (though not with Nature on the Earth's surface itself) which came to man in a more unconscious form.

Think for a moment how it was with those persons who strove after knowledge about the year 1200 and on through the following century. They heard tell how, only a short time before, pupils were still able to find teachers, like the one of whom I told you yesterday; but they themselves were directed to human thinking as the means of attaining knowledge.

In the succeeding time of the Middle Ages we can see this human thinking developing and spreading, asserting itself in an impressive manner. It sets out on new paths with inner zeal, with sincere and whole-hearted devotion, and these paths are followed by large circles of knowledge-seekers. What we may truly call the knowledge of the Spiritual, that too continued its way. And after a few centuries we come to the time when Rosicrucianism proper was founded. Rosicrucianism is connected with a change that took place in the whole spiritual world in respect of man. I shall best describe the change by giving you once again a picture.

Mysteries in the old sense of the word were no longer possible in the time of which I have been speaking. There were however men who yearned for knowledge in the sense of the ancient Mysteries, and who experienced hard and heavy conflicts of soul when they heard how in the past men had been led up to the mountain and down to the clefts of the Earth, and had thus found knowledge. They developed all possible inner methods, they made all possible inner efforts in order to rouse the soul within them, that it might after all yet find the way. And he who is able to see such things can find in those times, as we said just now, not places of the Mysteries, but gatherings of knowledge-seekers who met together in an atmosphere warmed through and through with the glow of piety. What appears later as Rosicrucianism, sound and genuine Rosicrucianism, as well as the debased and charlatan kinds, comes in reality from men who gathered together in this simple way and sought so to temper their souls that genuine spiritual knowledge might yet be able to arise for them. In such a gathering, that took place in most unpretentious surroundings, the simple living-room of a kind of manor house, a few persons were once met, who, through certain exercises half thoughtful and meditative in character, half of the nature of prayer, done in common by them all, had developed a mystical mood in which all shared. It was the same mystical mood of soul that was cultivated in later times by the so-called “Brothers of the Common Life,” and later still by the followers of Comenius and by many other Brotherhoods. In this small circle, however, it showed itself with a peculiar intensity, and whilst these few men were there gathered together, making devotion, so to say, of their ordinary consciousness, of their whole intellect, in this intense mystical atmosphere of soul, it happened that a being came to them, not a being of flesh and blood like the teacher whom the pupil met and who led him to the mountains and to the clefts of the Earth, but a being who was only able to appear in an etheric body in this little company of men. This being revealed himself as the same who had guided the pupil about the year 1200. He was now in the after-death state. He had descended to these men from the spiritual world; they had drawn him thither by the mood of soul that prevailed in them—mystical, meditative, pious.

My dear friends, in order that no misunderstanding may arise, let me expressly emphasise that there is there no question of any mediumistic power. The little company who were gathered there would have looked upon any use—or any sanctioning—of mediumistic powers, as deeply sinful; they would have been led to do so by certain ideas belonging to old and honoured tradition. Just in those very communities of which I am telling you, mediumship and all that is related to it was regarded not merely as harmful but as sinful—and for the following reason. These persons knew that mediumship goes together with a peculiar constitution of the physical body; they knew that it is the physical body that gives the medium his spiritual powers. But the physical body they looked upon as “fallen,” and information that came by the help of mediumship they could not but regard under all circumstances as acquired by the help of Ahrimanic or Luciferic powers.

In those times, things like this were still clearly and exactly known. And so we have not to think of anything mediumistic in this connection. There was the mood of mysticism and meditation, and that alone. And it was the enhancing and strengthening of this mood through fellowship of soul, that, so to speak, enchanted into the circle, but of his own free-will, that disembodied human being, purely spiritual, and yet at the same time human.

The being spoke to them thus, in a deeply solemn manner:—“You are not altogether prepared for my appearance but I am among you discarnate, without physical body, forasmuch as a time has come when for a short period of Earth existence the Initiate of olden times is unable to appear in a physical body. The time will come again when he can do so, when the Michael period begins. But I am come to reveal to you that the inner being of man nevertheless remains unchanged, that the inner being of man, if it holds itself aright, can yet find the way to the divine-spiritual existence. For a period of time, however, the human intellect and understanding will be so constituted that it will have to be suppressed in order for that which is of the Spirit to be able to speak to the human soul. Therefore remain in your mystic and pious mood of soul ... You have received from me, all of you together, the picture, the imagination. I have, however, been able to give you no more than a mere indication of that which will come to fulfilment within you; you will go on further and find a continuation of what you have here experienced!”

And now, three from the number gathered there together, were chosen, to the end that they might establish a special union with the spiritual world, once more not at all through any kind of mediumistic powers but through a development of that mystic, meditative, pious mood of soul. These three, who were guarded and protected by the rest of the circle, closely and intimately cared for by the others, experienced from time to time a kind of absence of mind. They were at these times, in their external bodily nature, wonderfully lovely and beautiful, they acquired a sort of shining countenance, shining like the sun, and they wrote down, in symbols, revelations which they received from the spiritual world. These symbolic revelations were the first pictures by which the Rosicrucians were shown when it behoved them to know of the spiritual world. The revelations contained a kind of philosophy, a kind of theology and also a kind of medicine.

And the remarkable thing was that the others (it seems to me as though the others were four in number, so that the whole was a company of seven), after the experience they had with their brothers, beholding how their eyes shone like the sun and how their countenances were bright and radiant—these other four were able to give again in ordinary language what was conveyed in the symbols. The brothers whose destiny it was to bring the symbols from the spiritual world, could only write down the symbols, they could only say, when they returned again into their ordinary consciousness: “We have been among the stars, and have found the old teachers of the secret knowledge.” They could not themselves turn the symbolic pictures that they drew, into ordinary human speech. The others could and did. And this is the source of a great deal of knowledge that passed over into the literature of theology, more particularly such as was philosophical in character (not the theology of the Church but rather of the laity) and into the literature of medicine. And what was thus received from the spiritual world in symbols was afterwards communicated to small groups that were organised by the first Rosicrucians.

Again and again, in the time from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, there was still the possibility in certain very small groups for experiences of this nature. Revelations came frequently to men from the spiritual world in this or some similar way. But those who had to translate what was thus revealed in pictures were not always capable of doing it quite faithfully. Hence the want of clarity in the philosophy of this period. One has to discover for oneself what it really means, by seeking for it again in the world of the Spirit. For those however who have had knowledge of this kind of revelation received from the spiritual world, it has always been possible to link on to such revelations.

But picture to yourselves, my dear friends, what strange feelings must gradually have come over these men, who had to receive the very highest knowledge—for what was given to them was so accounted—from a direction that was growing more and more foreign, almost uncanny, to them; for they could no longer see into the world out of which the secrets came to them; ordinary consciousness could not reach so far. It can readily be understood that such things easily led to charlatanism and even to fraud. Indeed at no time of human evolution have charlatanism and the highest and purest of revelation stood so close to one another as in this period. It is difficult to distinguish the true from the false—so much so that many regard the whole of Rosicrucianism as charlatan. One can understand this, for the true Rosicrucians are extra-ordinarily hard to find among the charlatans, and the whole matter is all the more difficult and problematic for the reason that one has always to bear in mind that the spiritual revelation comes from sources which in their real quality and nature remain hidden.

The small circles gathered by the first Rosicrucians grew to a larger brotherhood, who always went about unrecognised, appearing here and there in the world, generally with the calling of a physician, healing the sick, and at the same time spreading knowledge as they went. And it was so that in regard to very much of this knowledge, the spreading of it was not without a certain embarrassment, inasmuch as the men who carried it on were not able to speak of the connection in which they stood to the spiritual world.

But now something else was developed in this pursuit of spiritual knowledge and spiritual research, something that is of very great beauty. There were the three brethren and the four. The three are only able to attain their goal when the four work together with them. The two groups are absolutely interdependent. The three receive the revelations from the spiritual world, the four are able to translate them into ordinary human language. What the three give would be nothing but quite unintelligible pictures, if the four were not able to translate them. And again, the four would have nothing to translate, if the three did not receive their revelations, in picture form, from the spiritual world. This gave rise to the development within such communities of an inner brotherhood of soul, a brotherhood in knowledge and in spiritual life, which in some circles of those times was held to be among the very highest of human attributes. Such small groups of men did indeed learn to know through their striving the true worth of brotherhood. And gradually they came more and more to feel how the evolution of humanity towards freedom is such that the bond between men and Gods would be completely severed were it not kept whole by such brotherhood, where the one looks to the other, where the one is in very truth dependent on the other.

We have here a picture of something in the soul which is wonderfully beautiful. And much that was written in those days possesses a certain charm which we only understand when we know how this atmosphere of brotherhood which permeated the spiritual life of many circles in Europe in those times, shed its radiant light into the writings.

There is however another mood that we find in those who are striving for knowledge, and this mood began gradually to pervade their whole endeavours and made people anxious. If in those times one did not approach the sources of spiritual revelation, ultimately it was so that one could no longer know whether these revelations were good or evil. And a certain anxiety began to be felt in regard to some of the influences. The anxiety spread later over large circles of people, who came to have fear, intense fear of all knowledge.

The development of the mood of which I speak may be particularly well studied in the examples of two men. One is Raimund of Sabunda, who lived in the fifteenth century, being born about 1430. Raimund of Sabunda is a remarkable man. If you study carefully what remains to us of his thought, then you will have the feeling: This is surely almost the very same revelation that was communicated in full consciousness about the year 1200 by the teacher who took his pupil to the mountain tops and to the chasms of the Earth! Only in Raimund of Sabunda of the fifteenth century, it is all given in a vague, impersonal style, philosophical in character, theological too and medical. The truth is that Raimund of Sabunda had also received his revelations by way of the genuine Rosicrucians, that is to say, by the path that had been opened by the great Initiate of the twelfth century, whose work and influence I described to you yesterday, and who continued to inspire men from out of the spiritual world, as I have been relating to you today. For the revelation that afterwards came through Rosicrucianism, as I have often described to you, came originally from this great Initiate and those who were with him in the spiritual world; the mood and feeling of the whole teaching was set by him. Anxiety, however, was at this time beginning to take hold of men. Now Raimund of Sabunda was a bold, brave spirit, he was one of those men who can value ideas, who understand how to live in ideas. And so, although we notice in him a certain vagueness due to the fact that the revelations have their source after all in the spiritual world, yet in him we find no trace of anxiety or fear in regard to knowledge.

All the more striking is another and very characteristic example of that spiritual stream: Pico della Mirandola, who also belongs to the fifteenth century.

The short-lived Pico della Mirandola is a very remarkable figure. If you study deeply the fruits of his thought and contemplation, you will see how the same initiative I have just described is everywhere active in them, due to the continuation of the wisdom of that old Initiate by way of the Rosicrucian stream. But in Pico della Mirandola you will observe a kind of shrinking back before this knowledge. Let me give you an instance. He established how everything that happens on Earth—stones and rock coming into being, plants living and growing and bearing fruit, animals living their life—how all this cannot be attributed to the forces of the Earth. If anyone were to think: There is the Earth, and the forces of the Earth produce that which is on the Earth, he would have quite a wrong notion of the matter. The true view, according to Pico della Mirandola, is that up there are the Stars and what happens in the Earth is dependent on the Stars. One must look up to the Heavens, if one wants to understand what happens on Earth. Speaking in the sense of Pico della Mirandola we should have to say: You give me your hand, my brother man, but it is not your feeling alone that is the cause why you give me your hand, it is the star standing over you that gives you the impulse to hold out your hand to me. Ultimately everything that is brought about has its source in the Heavens, in the Cosmos; what happens on Earth is but the reflection of what happens in the Heavens.

Pico della Mirandola gives expression to this as his firm conviction, and yet at the same time he says: But it is not for man to look up to these causes in the stars, he has only to take account of the immediate cause on Earth.

From this point of view Pico della Mirandola combats—and it is most characteristic that he does so—the Astrology that he finds prevalent. He knows well that the old, real, and genuine Astrology expresses itself in the destinies of men. He knows that; it is for him a truth. And yet he says: one should not pursue Astrology, one should look only for the immediate causes.

Note well what it is we have before us here. For the first time we are confronted with the idea of “boundaries” to knowledge. The idea shows itself in a significant manner, it is still, shall we say, human in character. Later, in Kant, in du Bois-Reymond, you will find expressed in them: “Man cannot cross the boundaries of knowledge.” The idea is said to rest on an inner necessity. That is not the case with Pico della Mirandola in the fifteenth century. He says: “What is on Earth has undoubtedly come about through cosmic causes. But man is called upon to forgo the attainment of a knowledge of these cosmic causes; he has to limit himself to the Earth.” Thus we have in the fifteenth century, in such a markedly characteristic person as Pico della Mirandola, voluntary renunciation of the highest knowledge.

My dear friends, we have here a spiritual event in the history of culture of the greatest imaginable importance. Men made the resolve: We will renounce knowledge! And that which comes to pass externally in such a person as Pico della Mirandola has once more, in very deed and fact, its counterpart in the Spiritual.

It was again in one of those simple gatherings of Rosicrucians that in the second half of the fifteenth century, on the occasion of a ritual arranged for this very purpose, man's Star-knowledge was in deeply solemn manner offered up in sacrifice. What took place in that ritual, which was enacted in all the solemnity proper to such a festival, may be expressed as follows.—Men stood before a kind of altar and said: “We resolve now to feel ourselves responsible not for ourselves alone nor our community, nor our nation, nor even only for the men of our time; we resolve to feel ourselves responsible for all men who have ever lived on Earth, to feel that we belong to the whole of mankind. And we feel that mankind has deserted the rank of the Fourth Hierarchy and has descended too deeply into matter” (for the Fall into Sin was understood in this sense) “and in order that man may be able to return to the rank of the Fourth Hierarchy, may be able to find for himself in freedom of will what in earlier times Gods have tried to find for him and with him, let now the higher knowledge be offered up for a season!”

And certain Beings of the spiritual world, who are not of human kind, who do not come to Earth in human incarnation, accepted the sacrifice in order to fulfil therewith certain purposes in the spiritual world. It would take us too far to speak of these here; we will do so another time. But the impulse to freedom was thereby made possible for man from out of the spiritual world.

I tell you of this ritual in order to show you how everything that takes place in the external life of the physical senses has its spiritual counterpart; we have only to look for it in the right place. For it can happen that such a celebration, enacted—I will not say in this instance, with full knowledge, but enacted by persons who stand in connection with the spiritual world—may have very deep meaning; from it can radiate impulses for a whole culture or a whole stream of civilisation. Whoever wants to know the fundamental colouring and tone of a particular epoch of time must look for that source in the Spiritual whence spring the forces that stream through this epoch of time.

In the years that followed, whatever came into being of a truly spiritual nature, was an echo of this creative working from out of the unknown spiritual worlds. And side by side with the external materialism that developed in the succeeding centuries, we can always find individual spirits who lived under the influence of that renunciation of the higher knowledge.

I should like to give you a brief description of a type of man who might be met with from the fifteenth century onwards through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. You might find him in some country village as a herb-gatherer for an apothecary, or in some other simple calling. If one takes an interest in special forms and manifestations of the being of man as they show themselves in this or that individuality, then one may meet and recognise such a person. At first he is extraordinarily reserved, speaks but little, perhaps even turns away your attention from what you are trying to find in him by talking in a trivial manner, on purpose to make you think it is not worth while to converse with him. If, however, you know better than to look merely at the content of the words a man says, if you know how to hear the ring of the words, how to listen to the way the words come out of a man, then you will go on listening to such a one, despite all discouragement. And if out of some karmic connection he receives the impression that he really should speak to you, then he will begin to speak, carefully and guardedly. And you will make the discovery that he is a kind of wise man. But what he says is not earthly wisdom. Neither is there contained in it much of what we now call spiritual science. But they are warm words of the heart, far-reaching moral teachings; nor is there anything sentimental about his way of uttering them, he speaks them rather as proverbs.

He might say something like this. “Let us go over to yonder fir-tree. My soul can creep into the needles and cones, for my soul is everywhere. From the cones and needles of the fir-tree, my soul sees through them, looks out into the deeps and distances of the worlds beyond; and then I become one with the whole world. That is the true piety, to become one with the whole world. Where is God? God is in every fir-cone. And he who does not recognise God in every fir-cone, he who sees God somewhere else than in every fir-cone—he does not know the true God.”

I want only to describe to you how these men spoke, men that you might find in the way I have described. Such was their manner of speaking. And they might go on to say more. “Yes, and when one creeps into the fir-cones and into the needles of the fir-tree, then one finds how the God rejoices over the human beings in the world. And when one descends deep down into one's own heart, into the abysses of the innermost of man's nature, there also one finds the God; but then one learns to know how He is made sad through the sinfulness of men.”

In such wise spake these simple sages. A great number of them possessed—to speak in modern language—“editions” of the geometrical figures of the old Rosicrucians. These they would show to those who approached them in the right way. When however they spoke about these figures—which were no more than quite simple, even poor, impressions—then the conversation would unfold in a strange manner. There were many people who, although they took interest in the unpretentious wise man before them, were at the same time overcome with curiosity as to what these strange Rosicrucian pictures really meant, and asked about them. But they received from these wise men, who were often regarded as eccentric, no clear and exact answer; they received only the advice: If one attains the right deepening of soul, then one can see through these figures, as through a window, into the spiritual world. The wise men would give as it were a description of what they themselves had been able to feel and experience from the figures rather than any explanation or interpretation of them. And often it was so, that when one had heard these expressions of feeling in connection with the figures, one could not put them into thought at all; for these simple sages did not give thoughts. What they gave, however, had an after-working that was of immense significance. One left these men, not only with warmth in one's soul, but with the feeling: I have received a knowledge that lives in me, a knowledge I can by no means enclose in thoughts and concepts.

That was one of the ways in which, during this period from the fourteenth, fifteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, the nature of the Divine and the nature of the Human, what God is and what Man is, was taught and made known to man through feeling. We cannot quite say, without words, but we can say, without ideas, although not on that account without content.

In this period much intercourse went on among men by means of a silencing of thought. No one can arrive at a true conception of the character of this period who does not know how much was brought to pass in those days through this silencing of thought, when men interchanged not mere words but their very souls.

I have given you, my dear friends, a picture of one of the features of that time of transition when freedom was first beginning to flourish among men. I shall have more to say on this from many aspects. For the moment, taking my start from all that took place at the Christmas Foundation Meeting, I wanted here to add something further to what was given then.

Kristiania (Oslo), May 16, 1909

Today we shall stress more the occult side of yesterday's observation. The four post-Atlantean cultures somehow had to reflect the great cosmic events in the souls of human beings as they had happened in historical sequence. However, beginning with the thirteenth or fourteenth century of our cultural epoch, such a reflection no longer took place because the external events in human evolution must be traced to more profound reasons.

We know that the etheric bodies of the great Atlantean initiates had been preserved for the Seven Holy Rishis, and we also know how the etheric and astral body of Zarathustra had been woven into those of Moses and Hermes. At any time the possibility existed that such etheric bodies, which had been cultivated and prepared by the initiates, could be further used in the spiritual economy of the world. But other things took place as well. For especially important personalities, such etheric bodies are formed in the higher worlds. When somebody was especially important for the mission of humanity, an etheric body or an astral body was woven in the higher worlds and was then imprinted on this personality.

This is what happened in the case of Shem who indeed has something to do with the whole tribe of the Semites. A special etheric body was coined for such a tribal ancestor, and Shem became a sort of dual personality by this process. It may sound fantastic to the modern mind, but a clairvoyant would see a personality like Shem as he would see an ordinary human being with his or her aura; but then also in such a way as if a higher being that extends down from higher worlds completely filled his etheric body and as if the aura became a mediator between this personality and the higher world. Residing in a human being, such a divine being, however, has a very special power: it can multiply such an etheric body, and the multiplied etheric bodies then form a web that is continually woven into the descendants. Thus the descendants of Shem received an imprint of the copy of his etheric body. However, the Mystery Centers kept not only the multiplied copies but also the etheric body of Shem himself. Any personality that was meant to receive a special mission had to use this etheric body if it wanted to be able to communicate with the Semitic people, similar to the way in which a very educated European would have to learn the language of the Hottentots if he wanted to communicate with them. Therefore, the personality with a special mission had to bear within himself the real etheric body of Shem in order to be able to communicate with the Semitic people. Such a personality, for example, was Melchizedek: he could show himself to Abraham only in the etheric body of Shem.

We now have to ask ourselves something. If it is only now, in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, possible for us to develop an understanding for Christianity, what was the situation in the remainder of the Graeco-Latin era, which lasted into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries? A mysterious, occult process took place. Christ lived only three years in the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth, who was such a sublime individuality that He was able to leave the physical world at the age of thirty when the dove appeared over His head so that He could enter the spiritual world. Since the Christ-Individuality lived in the physical body, it filled out the three highly developed bodies of Jesus. Invisible to the physical eye, they were now multiplied as had formerly been the case with the etheric body of Shem so that the copies of the etheric and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth were available from the time he died on the cross. This has nothing to do with His ego; it passed into the spiritual world and has repeatedly reincarnated itself afterward.

We see how Christian writers in the first few centuries after the Christ-Event still worked on the basis of an oral tradition that was transmitted by the disciples of the Apostles, who set great value on a direct, physical transmission of the Christ-Event. However, this would not have been a sufficient building block for later centuries, and that is why a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into especially eminent heralds of the Christian message beginning with the sixth and seventh centuries. One such herald was Augustine, who in his youth had to go through tremendous struggles. However, only when the impulse of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth came to work in him in a significant way did he begin to become engaged in Christian mysticism of his own initiative. His writings can be understood only in this light. Many other personalities in the world, such as Columban,⁴⁰ Gallus,⁴¹ and Patrick,⁴² carried within themselves such a copy of Jesus's etheric body and were therefore in a position to spread Christianity and built a bridge from the Christ-Event to the succeeding times.

By contrast, we see human beings whose astral body received the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Such a personality was Francis of Assisi. When we look at his life from this point of view, we will understand it in quite a few ways. His qualities of humility and Christian devotion will become especially clear to us when we tell ourselves that such a mystery lived in him. In the time from about the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries such human beings became the heralds of Christianity by the very fact that the astral body of Jesus was woven into their own astral body. Hence, they received Christianity by virtue of Grace.

Although the ego of Jesus of Nazareth left its three sheaths at the baptism of John, a copy of this ego remained in each of them similar to the imprint a seal leaves behind. The Christ-Being took possession of these three bodies and of that which remained as the imprint of the Jesus-Ego. Beginning with the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, something like an ego copy of Jesus was woven into human beings who began to speak of an “inner Christ.” Meister Eckhart and Tauler were individuals who spoke from their own experience like an ego copy of Jesus of Nazareth.

There are still many people present who carry within themselves something like the various bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, but these are now no longer the leading personalities. Increasingly we can see how there are human beings in the fifth epoch who must rely on themselves and on their own ego and how such inspired people have become a rarity. It was therefore necessary that a spiritual tendency develop in our fifth epoch to ensure that humanity would continue to be imbued with spiritual knowledge. Those individualities who were capable of looking into the future had to take care that human beings in the times to come would not be left simply to rely on their human ego only. The legend of the Holy Grail relates that the chalice from which the Christ Jesus took the Last Supper with his disciples was kept in a certain place. We see in the story of Parsifal the course of a young person's education typical for our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Parsifal had been instructed not to ask too many questions, and his dilemma arose from his following those instructions. That is the important transition from the traditional to more modern times: in ancient India and later with Augustine and Francis of Assisi the student had to live in a state of the highest degree of passive devotion. All these humble people allowed themselves to be inspired by what was already alive in them and by what had been woven into them. But now things changed in that the ego became a questioning ego. Today, any soul that accepts passively what is given to it cannot transcend itself because it merely oberves the happenings in the physical world around it. In our times the soul has to ask questions; it has to rise above itself; it has to grow beyond its given form. It must raise questions, just as Parsifal ultimately learned to inquire after the mysteries of the Grail's Castle.⁴³

Spiritual investigation today begins only where there is questioning, and the souls today that are stimulated by external science to ask questions and to search are the Parsifal souls. And this has led to the introduction of Rosicrucian education—that much maligned mystery school of thought—that accepts tradition gratefully but does not accept traditional wisdom blindly. Yet that which today constitutes Rosicrucian spiritual orientation has been investigated in the higher worlds directly with the spiritual eye and with the means the student himself has been instructed to utilize This has not come about simply because this or that is written in old books or because certain people believed one thing or another. Rather, the Rosicrucian spiritual method proclaims wisdom that has been investigated today. It was gradually prepared in the Rosicrucian schools that were founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as a result of the work of an individuality by the name of Christian Rosenkreutz.

This accumulated wisdom can today be proclaimed as Spiritual Science. This is so because today it is no longer possible to instill in human beings what is to inspire them from the inside without their having a hand in the process. Today people who feel that Spiritual Science speaks to their hearts must approach it through their own free will, through their own free impulse, and through the fact that they feel enlivened by spiritual knowledge. Hence we need not attempt to stir up an interest in Spiritual Science.

Through this theosophical-Rosicrucian orientation of the spirit, we again bring close to ourselves what is still present in the copies of Jesus of Nazareth's ego. Those who prepare themselves in this manner will pull into their souls the copy of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth so that they become like imprints of a seal, and it is in this way that the Christ- Principle finds its way into the human soul. Rosicrucianism prepared something positive, and since anthroposophy is meant to become life, the souls that absorb and truly accept it will gradually undergo a metamorphosis. To accept anthroposophy within yourself means to change the soul in such a way that it is able to come to a true understanding of the Christ.

The anthroposophist makes himself or herself a living recipient of what was given to Moses and Paul in the JavehChrist-Revelation. It is written in the fifth letter of the Apocalypse that the people in the fifth cultural epoch are those who can really absorb the things that will be quite obvious for the cultural period of the Philadelphia community. The wisdom of the fifth cultural period will open as a flower of love in the sixth period.

Today mankind is called upon to accept into itself something new, something divine, and thereby to undertake again the ascent into the spiritual world. The Spiritual Scientific teaching of evolution is being imparted not because people are supposed to put their blind faith into it, but because mankind is supposed to reach an understanding of it through its own powers of judgment. This teaching is being directed to those who bear the core of the Parsifal nature within themselves. And it is not being proclaimed just in special places or to a special group of people, but human beings from all of humanity will come together to listen to the call of spiritual wisdom.

• 40. Columban (545–615) was an Irish missionary.
• 41. Gallus was a sixth-century Irish-Scotch missionary.
• 42. Patrick (c. 384–c. 460) was an English missionary.
• 43. Steiner is referring to the German courtly epic Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach (about 1200/10). The Frenchman Chretien de Troyes was the author of the first great artistic treatment of the theme; in his unfinished poem “Percivale” finds the Grail and heals the king. Wolfram's story is drawn from Chretien's model but is much more spiritualized in its triadic structure: innocence, fall, salvation. The Simpleton Parsifal is educated as a knight who knows proper courtly behavioral codes, one of them being not to ask too many questions. This attitude causes him to be expelled from the Grail's Castle, and only after he has undergone a second, Christian phase of education does he know how to express his charity by asking the appropriate question of the ailing king.

Today we will consider a more occult side of yesterday's observations. The first four post-Atlantean cultures had the task of reflecting in human souls the great cosmic processes that had taken place in the course of time. In our cultural period, on the other hand, from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries onward, we no longer incorporate such a reflection. For what takes place externally in the evolution of humankind can be traced back to deeper causes.

We know that the etheric bodies of the great Atlantean initiates were preserved for the seven holy Rishis; we also know that the etheric body and astral body of Zarathustra were woven into Moses and Hermes. The possibility has always existed for etheric bodies, which have been transformed and prepared by initiates, to be used further in the spiritual economy of the world.¹ Other things have also happened. Special etheric bodies are formed in higher worlds for especially important individuals. When someone was essential for a special mission to humanity, such a special etheric body or astral body was woven in higher worlds and then imprinted into him or her.

This is what happened to Sem, who actually had something to do with the entire tribe of the Semites. A special etheric body was formed for such a progenitor of a tribe. Because of this Sem was a kind of double personality. As incredible as it may sound to modern thinking, to a clairvoyant a personality such as Sem appeared, with his aura, like an ordinary man whose etheric body was filled by a higher being reaching down from higher worlds. In this way the man's aura became a mediator between his personality and higher worlds. When dwelling in a human being such a divine being has a very special power. He can reproduce a particular etheric body, and these reproduced etheric bodies then form a fabric that is again and again woven into the descendants. In this way the descendants of Sem were endowed with copies of his etheric body. But the etheric body of Sem himself, not only the reproduced copies, was also preserved in the mysteries. Then, any special individual who had been assigned a special mission had to use this etheric body in order to make himself understood to the Semitic people, just as highly educated Europeans would have to learn the language of the Hottentots in order to make themselves understood to them. The individuals given a special mission therefore had to carry within them the real etheric body of Sem in order to make themselves understood to the Semitic people. An example of such a personality would be Melchizedek,² who could only show himself to Abraham in the etheric body of Sem.

We must now ask ourselves the question: If only now, in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, an understanding for Christianity can be developed, then what was the understanding in the rest of the Greek and Latin age that lasted until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries?

There is a mysterious occult process taking place here. Christ lived, of course, for only three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was such a highly developed individuality that he could leave the physical world in the thirtieth year of his life in order to enter the spiritual world just as the dove appeared over his head. The three highly developed bodies, physical, etheric, and astral, left behind by Jesus were then filled by the individuality of Christ through the fact that he lived in the physical human body. These bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, invisible to the physical eye, were then replicated in a way similar to what happened to the etheric body of Sem. As a result, since the death on the cross, there exist copies of the etheric and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. This has nothing to do with his I, which went on into the spiritual world and later continued incarnating.

In the first centuries after the Christ event we see how Christian writers were still working on the basis of a tradition passed on orally from the disciples of the Apostles. They placed value on tradition passed on through physical means. But later centuries could not have built upon these alone. Especially from the sixth and seventh centuries onward, great proclaimers of Christianity had a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into them. Augustine was such a man. In his youth he had to go through mighty battles. Then the impulse of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth became active in him in a very significant way; only then did he begin to generate Christian mysticism out of himself. His writings can only be understood in this light.

Many personalities have walked on the earth bearing such a copy within themselves. Columba, Gallus, Patrick³—they all carried such a copy of the etheric body within them and for just this reason were in a position to spread Christianity. In this way a bridge was built from the Christ event to succeeding times.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries we then see people who received into their own astral bodies the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Francis of Assisi was one such special person. When we follow his life we will find much that is not understandable. But we can understand especially his humility, his Christian devotion if we realize that such a mystery lived in him. Around the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries such people became proclaimers of Christianity through this interweaving of astral bodies. They received Christianity through grace.

The I of Jesus of Nazareth left the three sheaths at the baptism in the Jordan. Nevertheless, an image of this I, like the imprint of a seal, remained in the three sheaths. The Christ being took possession of these three bodies but he also took possession of something else, something that remained behind like an imprint of the I of Jesus. From the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries on, something like a copy of Jesus' I⁴ was woven into those men who then began to speak of an “inner Christ.” Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler were speaking out of their inner experience of something like an imprint of the I of Jesus of Nazareth.

Although there are still many people present today carrying something like a copy of the various bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, they no longer become leading personalities. More and more we see how in our fifth age there are people who must rely on themselves, on their own I. Such inspired people will become increasingly rare. Therefore, steps were taken to provide for the future so that a particular spiritual stream could arise in our time, a spiritual stream with the task of insuring that spiritual knowledge will still reach humanity. Those individuals who could see into the future had to provide for human beings who are wholly dependent on their merely human I. We are told in a legend that the vessel used by Christ Jesus with his disciples at the Last Supper was preserved. This is the legend of the Holy Grail. We see in the story of Parzival an expression of a pupil's typical path of development in our fifth post-Atlantean age. Parzival neglected to do one thing. He had been told that he should not ask questions. That is the important transition from the old age to the new. In ancient India, a devotion as passive as possible was necessary for the pupil; this was also true in Augustine's time and in the time of Francis of Assisi. All of these humble people let themselves be inspired by what lived in them, what had been woven into them. But now the I must carry the question in itself. Every soul today that passively receives what is given to it cannot go beyond itself. It can only observe what is going on in the physical world around it. Today the soul must ask questions, must lift itself above itself; it must grow out of itself. The soul today must ask questions as Parzival had to ask about the secrets of the Grail castle.⁵

Therefore, today spiritual research only begins when there are questions. The souls that are stimulated today by external science to question, to ask, and to seek—those are the Parzival souls. Therefore, a mystery stream was introduced that has been much persecuted, the Rosicrucian training that does not rely on any handed-down wisdom even if it gratefully accepts the old traditions. What constitutes the Rosicrucian approach to the spirit today has been researched directly in higher worlds with spiritual eyes—and with the means that the student himself has received as instructions. Today wisdom is proclaimed through the Rosicrucian approach to the spirit not because this or that is found in old books, not because these or those have believed this or that, but because it was researched. This was gradually prepared in the Rosicrucian schools founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the individuality named Christian Rosenkreuz.

Today this wisdom can be proclaimed as Theosophy. Those people simply no longer exist who, without their own involvement, are implanted with wisdom that inwardly inspires them. Today only those people who feel that Theosophy speaks to their hearts should come to it. We should not use propaganda and agitate for Theosophy. Only through their own free initiative should anyone come to Theosophy. This can occur when individuals are deeply affected in a living way by spiritual knowledge.

Then, through this Theosophical-Rosicrucian spiritual stream, we draw toward us what is available from the copies of the I of Jesus of Nazareth. In this way, those who prepare themselves for it draw into their souls the image of the I of Jesus of Nazareth. Then, through the fact that their inner soul life is like the imprint of a seal of the I of Christ, through this, such human beings take into their souls the principle of Christ. In this way Rosicrucianism prepares something positive. Theosophy should become life, so that any soul that truly absorbs Theosophy is gradually transformed. Absorbing Theosophy means that a soul is transformed such that it can arrive at an understanding of Christ.

Theosophists make themselves into living recipients of what Moses and Paul were given in the revelation of Yahweh-Christ. Therefore, we read in the fifth letter in the Apocalypse how the people of the fifth cultural epoch are those who truly take into themselves what will later be self-evident for the cultural epoch of the community of Philadelphia. The wisdom of the fifth cultural age will blossom forth as a flower of love in the sixth cultural age.

Humankind is called today to take in something new, something divine, and thereby to undertake again an ascent into the spiritual world. The theosophical teaching concerning evolution is imparted; it should not be believed but rather humankind should come to the point of understanding it through its own power of judgment. It is proclaimed to those who bear within themselves a seed of the essence of Parzival. And it is not proclaimed only to a particular people or place. Those who hear the call of spiritual wisdom will come together from all parts of humanity.

• 1. Compare the lectures found in The Principle of Spiritual Economy (GA 109) (Fludson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1986).
• 2. Melchizedek: Compare, among others, the lecture of September 4, 1910 in The Gospel of St. Matthew (GA 123) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1965).
• 3. The great Irish missionaries.
• 4. Compare the descriptions found in the lecture “More Intimate Aspects of Reincarnation” in The Principle of Spiritual Economy (GA 109).
• 5. Compare lecture cycle Christ and the Spiritual World and the Search for the Holy Grail (GA 149) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963) and Chretien de Troyes, Perceval, or the History of the Grail.

Handwritten note by Rudolf Steiner
Note sheet archive number 6974

Where do you come from?

From the lodge of St. John.

What happens in the lodge of St. John?

A temple of virtue is built there and prisons for vices are dug there.

What do you bring from there?

Welfare, progress, and goodwill for all mankind.

What do you intend to do here?

To conquer my passions, subjugate my will and make new progress.

Take your place, my B., and be welcome in this place, where the rays of your light are consciously received.

Individual texts by Rudolf Steiner in the handwriting of Marie Steiner-von Sivers

Wisdom should have guided you while you were building this temple, which is an earthly image of the spiritual life stream. This wisdom is now a water of light to guide you, as your soul unfolds the seeds of wisdom.

Beauty should adorn your work while you were building this temple, which is an image of self-limiting form-creating: this beauty is now a releasing salt for you, as your soul dissolves the covers of your spirit seed.

Strength should have carried out your work as long as you were building this temple, which is an image of the creative powers of existence: the fire of creation, to which the ashes of your body will return, is this strength in the future, as your spirit unites with the world spirits to create the great temple of being.

Brothers of the past, your wisdom penetrated the waters of the elemental kingdom and gave our sister an earthly shell so that she could reveal in the world what her soul had accepted under your wise guidance in prehistoric times.

Brothers of the present, our sister sought to come into your wise guidance so that your thoughts of God might be revealed in her part.

Brothers of the future, you will incorporate our sister's soul into your plan of construction, so that she may continue to flow in your strength, in the body of your great soul.

And you, sister, who have joined us in our striving for the vision of the heights of eternal light, your powers that flow into another form of being, let them flow into our work, work with us in the sanctuary of spiritual life: but we are inseparable in our souls from yours.

One, united, unity.

Prepared by silence, it is spoken with the mantle of that which has been received from above.

To make himself the bearer of wisdom, the$* [Rosicrucian] Mason vows to his God in the soul of his spirit. He beholds a temple of this God in the human form of his being. He vows to make himself the builder of this temple. He will think nothing that might be shameful to wisdom. The watchword floats before his eyes:

My thoughts shall seek thee everywhere, divine spirit.

The Mason [Rosicrucian] will make himself the servant of Beauty; he pledges himself to Beauty, because only in her bosom can the life of God flourish in his soul. The Mason [Rosicrucian] avoids an appearance that contradicts reality; he seeks true embodiment in the appearance of reality. His breathing in his breathing the watchword:

My speech shall reveal you, divine soul.

The + [Rosicrucian] Mason wants to make fortitude his covering; he praises fortitude because only through its fire can the God in his heart mature. The Mason seeks to flee from languor, which only hinders all progress; he seeks fortitude, which, with a sharp, two-edged sword of fire, prepares the way for all advancement. The watchword beats in his heart:

My heartbeat shall confirm you, divine will.

I

The earth's soil bears me;
The earth's air envelops me;
Around me I see the rocks of the mountains;
Around me the plant cover of the earth blossoms;
In the animal kingdom there is feeling,
Which, as in a thousand individual forms,
my own being's abundance.
I feel the power to shape myself ever higher,
only this noble striving makes a human being.

II

He is born of the earth's soil.
He is animated by the earth's air.
He is related to the rocks of the mountains,
His existence is interwoven with the plant cover,
The realm of the animals carries his spirit power;
But as if in a harmonious miracle
Earth, rocks, life are joined in him.
The earth's soil will sink beneath him.
The circle of the air will be the bearer of death.
The mountains' rocks will fall,
The plants will wither,
The animals' life will be stunned.
But he will bear the fruit of being earth
To create new worlds in a distant time.
To feel this goal's eternal value
Creates wisdom in every thought,
Receive beauty in every breath of life,
Strengthen fortitude in every beat of the blood.

We, wise M.d.O. [Masters of the East], present ourselves before you in spirit with purified desire, that the center of the heart may be silent in the expression of the outer self and burn with the fire of a new inner self. Let the fundamental fires germinate in us, melting and uniting the elements of the temple, which shall be a worthy dwelling for your divine being. ¹

The old temple will give birth to the new.

The three may create a new chariot from our signs.

The three may make Audhumla fertile.²

The following spoke, sitting amidst the stars of wisdom:

The time will come when man's intelligence and sensuality will become desolate and formless. And the power of the flesh will be barren and the daughter of the brain will be lame. And what has been founded among men by thinking and feeling will dry up like the sea dries up in scorching heat. But the revelation of the stars of wisdom will flourish. Mine is what you have kept as silver, what you have kept as gold – so says He who sits in the midst of the stars of wisdom.

The revelation of the new temple will shine forth more brightly than the first, and the I will have found itself in the I.

The initiate at the gates: M.M. Remember that you must find your way in fields where you have never been:

West = Ahriman: He wants to be you.
South = Lucifer: He wants to be you.
East = gold. A

Hand over your sources

1. 3. 7. 12.

Water

In nomine Elohim et per spiritum aquarum viventium, sis mihi in signum lucis et sacramentum voluntaris.

Smoke

Per serpentum aneum sub quo cadunt serpentes ignei, sis mihi.

Hauch

Per firmamentum et spiritum vocis, sis mihi.

Erde

In sale terrae et per virtutem vitae aeternae, sis mihi.

Sylphs

Spirit of light, spirit of wisdom, whose breath determines the form of all things – reach through to us.

Undines

King of the sea, who holds the keys of heaven, we call upon you – –

Salamander

Immortal, eternal, uncreated father of the world

Invisible king, lead us to clarity.

Handwritten note by Rudolf Steiner
from notebook Archive number 611

Green the Earth Mother rises
With the bright colors of flowers
The spirit of the sun will cover up
What springs from the soil in a living way.

Dress is what springs from the earth
Coat is what the spirit of the sun creates
It holds the soul within it alive
The soul is permeated by the spirit with power.

Spirit you become sisters, you brothers
Look only when you hear,
What to tell your being innermost
Has the word of the wise of the East.

Take the word of the spirit.
Those who have served him from the beginning
will send you their strength
through the wisdom, the beauty and strength.

• 1. “Chariot” may refer to Ezekiel's vision of the divine throne chariot, “Merkabah”, with which a special secret doctrine was associated in Jewish mysticism.
• 2. Audhumla = in Norse mythology, the cow that arose from the primeval ocean; see lecture Berlin, October 7, 1907.

We have spoken of two spiritual streams, flowing through different peoples, and passing from old Atlantis towards the East. We saw the difference in their development and how they were enabled to prepare future events; and we observed how the southern stream more particularly tended to deepen the power of penetration to the spiritual world which lies behind the soul world of man, while the other more northerly spiritual stream directed man's attention to his earthly environment in order to make him aware of the spiritual world behind the world of the senses. Mention has been made of the development in the southern stream of qualities which led to spiritual beings connected with the Luciferic principle, and of the gradual approach to earth, on the other side, of the kingly spiritual being behind the sun in order finally to incarnate in a physical body, which, through many incarnations of a certain individuality, had been so purified that the Godhead found in it not merely an image of itself, but was able actually to incarnate within it. The incarnation of the Christ, the sun spirit, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was the great event which took place in the northern stream of peoples. Now these two streams of peoples may, be said to have moved towards each other in order to be mutually enriched, and during their progress there arose, in the first epoch after the great Atlantean catastrophe, the ancient Indian race in the south of Asia, a race in which the human soul was in a certain sense able to look out towards the external world of the senses as well as into itself to find the spirit, because it instinctively recognised the unity between the spirit in the external world and the spirit within man. Let us picture to ourselves the feelings of the ancient Indian when he looked out at the sense world, at the earth with its mountains and forests, its tapestry of plant life, its animal and human kingdoms.

Possessed in high degree of spiritual sight, this ancient Indian soul perceived, underlying everything, a spiritual world consisting of beings of etheric substance, who did not descend to the density of a physical body. In the mountains, trees and stars the soul of the ancient Indian saw not only the dense elements but also the finer, etheric nature, in the shape of the external world of the gods. It should not of course be imagined that these spirits were composed merely of ether but just as the etheric, the astral and the ‘I’ principles are within the physical body of a man, so these spirits had an etheric body for their lowest principle and their other, higher principles in higher worlds. The Indian, looking into this world, felt that he stood upon the Earth; that as man he had through long periods of time developed from the first germ of human existence on ancient Saturn down to the Earth evolution; that it was necessary for him to descend to dense physical matter in order to acquire self-consciousness within it. He said: ‘I, speaking to myself, am an Ego being; formerly I was a companion of all those spiritual beings visible around me to spiritual sight from the etheric world upwards. I have descended from these worlds to denser matter, yet in them all human perfection's are to be found, not only those now possessed by man, but those which he will have to attain through his own efforts. But there is one thing which no being who does not descend to the physical plane can attain. There are in the universe other lofty perfections as well as the recollection peculiar to human consciousness. There are other kinds of consciousness, but in order to develop that of a man on earth, it is necessary for a being to descend to this earth and for a number of incarnations to be embodied in dense matter.’ The soul of the ancient Indian further realised that whatever infinitely higher perfections than man on the Earth these spiritual beings possessed, there was one thing they had not in their world, namely, the human ego consciousness that to say ‘I’ as a man does, was not natural in those higher worlds. The Indian felt himself to originate from these realms and everything existing in the spiritual worlds to be summed up for him in his human ‘I’ consciousness. He knew that to speak of a human ego consciousness in the spiritual world had neither meaning nor content. Hence only a word which excludes this ‘I’ can be applied to everything that in a spiritual sense is spread out in the surrounding world, a word which is not in contact with the ‘I’ ... And the Indian consciousness named that which spread itself out externally, the ‘Tat,’ the ‘That’ in contradistinction to the ‘I.’ In order to express the fact that man is of the same nature and essence as the ‘That,’ the ‘Tat,’ or the ‘It’—that the ‘I’ or ego had only developed because of the descent to the Earth—the Indian said: ‘I am Tat, Thou art That.’ Thus man's relationship to the surrounding spiritual world (to this clairvoyant penetration of the ultimate nature of our world) was combined in the words: ‘It exists; but thou thyself art that.’

But the ancient Indian realised at the same time that the reality without designated as ‘Tat’ is also to be found by a man looking into his own inner being, that this reality manifests at one time from without, at another time from within. Therefore men of those ancient times knew that by sinking down into the soul they came to the same primordial spiritual reality as the external ‘Tat,’ but that the right relationship between them and what was living within them as their original ‘cause,’ so to speak, veiled by the life of the soul, was expressed by saying instead of ‘Thou art That,’ ‘I am Brahman,’ and ‘I am the All.’ And they took the two together to mean the following: ‘When I look out into the world of “Tat” I find a spiritual world, and if I dip down into my own soul life I find a spiritual world, and the two are one.’

As we have seen, in ancient India, a perception of the unity of the outer and of the inner was the typical outlook of the soul; and it is to be expected that the other extreme will consist in turning the gaze outwards, and in penetrating through the tapestry of the sense world to the spiritual world lying hidden behind it. And this is what actually happened to a different people. They saw the outer spiritual world, but could not realise immediately that it was the same as the inner spiritual world. Hence it is not surprising that religious conceptions and philosophical thoughts spring up, all fervently directed to the gods and spirits behind the sense world; that mythical and other descriptions for these divine spiritual beings behind the tapestry of the sense world were given to the people; and that in the mysteries of that age men were led into the spiritual world which is behind the sense world. Nor will it be a matter for wonder that side by side with such mysteries and such racial gods something else is to be found; that at the same time there were mysteries leading man along the path through the inner soul life to its deepest foundations. And in very fact we find a region of post Atlantean civilisation where those two kinds of mysteries existed contemporaneously—a region where on the one side the so-called Apollonian culture and mysteries were developed, and on the other the culture and mysteries of Dionysos. Such a division is to be found in ancient Greece. There we have on the one hand the path which was shown to the people as well as to the Initiates, the path leading out into the spiritual world, to what is behind the senses, to the spiritual world behind the sun. So far as the Greek knew this world, he gave it the name of the realm of the Apollonian beings. Apollo, the Sun god, was the representative of the divine spiritual beings which exist behind the tapestry of the sense world. But there was also a class of mysteries pointing the way through the soul life into its spiritual foundations, mysteries concerning which we already know that man may enter them only, after careful preparation, and after having attained a certain degree of maturity. For this reason the second kind of mysteries was more carefully guarded against immaturity than were the Apollonian. The Apollonian gods were indicated to the masses of the people, whereas the spiritual beings to be found along the path through the inner nature were reserved for those who, through spiritual, intellectual and moral training of their inner life had reached a certain state of maturity. This second kind of mystery cult was known as the Dionysian mystery and its central spiritual being was Dionysos. So it is natural that in Dionysos, this central figure of the inner circle of gods, men perceived a being standing in near and intimate relationship to the human soul; a being not unlike man, but one who did not descend so far as the physical plane; a being to be found by sinking from the physical plane into the depths of the soul life. Here we have in point of fact the deeper causes of the Apollonian and the Dionysian division in the spiritual culture of the Greeks. In more modern times a dim consciousness that something of the kind had existed in Greece made its appearance in several places. The group gathering round Richard Wagner realised the existence of something of the kind although without definite knowledge of its spiritual foundations. And Friedrich Nietzsche, a member of this group, founded his first remarkable and inspired work: ‘The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music’ on this very division of Greek spiritual life into the Apollonian and Dionysian mystery cults. These occurrences were a dim realisation of what may be known to an ever-increasing degree through spiritual meditation. In the minds of many men today there is a kind of yearning for such a deepening of the spiritual life. There is a widespread feeling that this deepening alone can give an answer to man's yearning. Thus in ancient Greece these two divine spiritual worlds are side by side. In ancient India they appeared as a unity, in a state of reciprocal permeation.

Now let us turn again to evolution. We have already seen that only the most advanced group of the northern stream of nations, namely the ancient Persian civilisation of Zoroaster, could originate the ideal of creating a body in which the spiritual being approaching humanity and the earth from outside could incarnate. And Zarathustra took upon himself the task of passing through his incarnations in such a way as to take later re-birth in a body spiritualised to such a degree that it was able to receive into itself the sublime sun-spirit in its most perfect form, in its Christ form. Zarathustra was reborn as Jesus, having made himself ripe through his various incarnations to be the vehicle of the Sun spirit for the space of three years.¹

We may now ask: What is the relation of Apollo to the Christ? When a Greek uttered the name of Apollo, he referred to the spiritual realm behind the sun. But men's conception of a being or of a fact differs according to their capacities. The man who has cultivated a rich inner life within his soul is capable of seeing in a truer form things which a less developed person also sees, so when the Greek uttered the name of Apollo he was indeed referring to the being which later was revealed as the Christ, but he could only conceive of it in a kind of veiled form, as Apollo. Apollo is in a certain sense a garment of the Christ, resembling in its form the being within it. Veil after veil had to fall from that figure conceived of by the soul as Apollo before the Christ could become visible and intelligible to the intuition of men. Apollo is an intimation of the Christ, but not the Christ Himself.

Now what is the most essentially characteristic quality of the Christ so far as our cycle of evolution is concerned? To consider all those divine spiritual beings to which men of ancient times looked up to as the upper gods behind the tapestry of the sense world, as the rulers and lords of the spheres and functions of the universe, is to realise that their characteristic quality is that they do not descend so far as the physical plane; they only become visible to the consciousness of the seer, which transcends the physical plane and is able to see on the etheric plane. There Zeus, Apollo, Mars, Wotan, Odin, Thor, who are all real beings, became visible. It was characteristic of these spiritual beings not to descend so far as the physical plane, but at the most to manifest temporarily in some kind of physical embodiment, a fact which is cleverly indicated in the myths when mention is made of momentary appearances of Zeus or other gods in human or some other form, when they descended to the world of men in order to carry out some purpose. It is not permissible to speak of a permanent physical incarnation of these spiritual beings behind the sense world. We may say that Apollo is a figure incapable of descending into physical incarnation. For this descent requires a higher power than Apollo possessed, namely, the Christ power. And in the Christ all the qualities of the other beings out in the universe were united, all the qualities which are revealed to the consciousness of the seer; but above and beyond all these He possessed the ability to break through the barrier separating the world of the gods from the world of man, and was able to descend into a physical body and become man in a human physical body that had been prepared for Him upon the earth. In the divine spiritual world this ability was possessed by the Christ alone. Thus one being, and one being only of the divine spiritual world descended so far as the stage of taking up its abode in a human body in the sense world, and living as man among other men. This is the great and mighty Christ event, and this is how we have to conceive it. Whereas therefore all gods and spirits can be found only by the consciousness of the seer and beyond the physical world, the Christ is to be found within the physical world, although He is a being of the same nature and essence as the other divine spiritual beings. The other gods can only be found in the external universe: the Christ is He who was born within the human soul, Who, as it were, leaves the outer world of the gods and enters into the inner nature of man. This has been an event of great significance in the evolution of the world and humanity. Before the Christ event it—had been necessary to descend to the sub-terrestrial gods hidden behind the veil of soul experiences if an inner god was sought; the Christ is a God Who may be found without as well as within. This is the essence of what happened in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, after the Indian, the Persian and the Egyptian periods. The contemplative vision and abstract perception in ancient India of the fact that the divine spiritual world was a unity, and that Tat and Brahman, streaming to the soul from two sides, were an unity, became a living life through the Christ event. Formerly men could say that the divinity to be found on the outward path and the divinity to be found on the inward path were one. After the Christ event it was possible to say that if the soul participates in the Christ, a descent to the inner life will reveal a being which is Apollo and Dionysos united in one.

Another question arises here. We have seen that divine spiritual beings of the external world are, for man, represented by the mightiest of them, by the Christ, Who, as an outer being, at the same time becomes an inner being. But what of those other beings designated in the last lecture as ‘Luciferic?’ Knowledge gained as the result of spiritual development teaches us that it would not be correct to say that the beings under the leadership of Dionysos work themselves through into the human soul life, and that, as it were from the other side, a Dionysos—a Luciferic being—incarnated as a man. Here we arrive at something vitally and essentially connected with the evolution of humanity and of the universe. If we go back to very ancient times, we find that the soul looking outwards sees the external spiritual world, and looking inwards, sees the inner divine spiritual world; the Apollonian world objectively, and the Dionysian world subjectively, to use the Greek expressions. Later on in evolution matters change somewhat. In the most ancient times, when a vast majority of men were possessed of spiritual vision, facts were as I have just described them. Objectively the upper gods were seen; subjectively, the lower gods; and there were these two paths into the spiritual world. In later times man's capacity for spiritual vision decreased; he gradually lost his original dim clairvoyance. But let us take a period in which a few men still possessed a natural spiritual vision. We need not go so very far back, for in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch such natural sight still existed. At that time men, on penetrating through the tapestry of the sense world, saw the upper gods, and on descending into the depths of their own souls, the lower gods. Those who had passed through a certain degree of initiation felt these impressions more clearly and powerfully. I should mention of course that at all times there have existed initiates with full knowledge of the unity of these two worlds; but they are men who have reached the apex of humanity. Centuries therefore before the appearance of Christ on earth, there were men who still had the old spiritual sight, and initiates who by following one path were able to find the upper gods, or following the other were led to the lower gods. But there came an age where the region which we call the world of the lower gods gradually withdrew from human life and was difficult of attainment even for those who had passed through the early degrees of initiation; but in this period it was comparatively easy at an early stage of initiation to attain to what we call the upper gods behind the outer world of the senses. Take, for instance, an initiate of the ancient Hebrew people. Such an initiate could, even if he had not attained a very high degree of initiation, look into a region where Jehovah was not merely an idea, a concept, but an etheric reality, a being which spoke to them as a man in their spiritual consciousness.

While therefore the existence of Jehovah was proclaimed to the people, to the initiates he was a reality. On the other hand it had become more difficult for an initiate of the ancient Hebraic world to find anything by dipping down into his own soul life, and searching there for the domain of the lower gods. In that region he would have felt no solid ground, but everywhere would have encountered the thick crust of his soul life through which he could not penetrate to the lower gods. The lower gods had withdrawn into a certain unknown obscurity. This was the time of the Christ's descent to the earth, when the Luciferic spirits had to a certain extent withdrawn into the darkness. And at that time men in the outer world only knew that the mysteries existed, and that those initiated into them acquired the faculty of penetrating through the forces of the soul life into the Dionysian world. There was just a vague inkling of the deep secrets which could be investigated by man in the mysteries. But the subject was merely alluded to and very few people had a clear idea of it at the time when the Christ was expected. Their ideas of the outer gods were much more definite. There were many men who still had living experience of these gods. But the evolution of humanity progresses. And with what result? There is a history of outer humanity, and in the future there will also be a history of the mysteries. Outer humanity will transform its spiritual culture and the Christ will enter into it more and more. In the mysteries, too, the nature of the Christ being, which today is hardly appreciated at all, will come to be understood. The god who could be perceived at the time of Zarathustra when spiritual sight was directed to the sun, and who descended to the earth, will be understood with ever growing intimacy by the human soul. The god who was the ruler of the outer world will become more and more an inner god. The Christ traverses the world in such a way that from a cosmic god who descended upon earth, He becomes an inner mystical god, Whom man will gradually be able to experience in the depths of his soul life. Therefore it was, that at the time of the descent of the Christ there could be accomplished what His disciples, the Apostles, described in the words: ‘We have laid our hands in His wounds, and have heard His words on the mountain.’ The essential point is that the Christ was on earth in a physical body. At that time He could not have been experienced physically within, or understood in His Dionysian nature; He had first to be experienced as the outer, historical Christ. But the progress of man's consciousness of the Christ consists in His ever deeper descent into the soul, and it will become possible for man to live through his own soul experiences subjectively, finding the mystical Christ within his own soul, in addition to the knowledge he has of the outer Christ. It will be observed how in the so-called mysticism which arose in the early days of Christianity, through Dionysius the Areopagite, a friend and pupil of St. Paul, the Christ is first understood by external occult faculties. And all the descriptions of this first occult Christian school are of a kind that depict the Christ essentially as having those qualities which he unfolds in the external worlds, and which may be experienced by instinctive spiritual sight when it is turned outwards. Then let us proceed a few centuries further in human evolution and see what has come about; let us enquire into mediaeval mystical development, into the deep inner experiences of Meister Eckhart, of Johannes Tauler, etc., and to our more modern mystics. Here are men who look down into their own souls. Just as in ancient times men looked within themselves in order to penetrate through this inner life to Dionysos, so the more modern mystics, piercing inwards, could say like Meister Eckhart: ‘The historical Christ is in very truth a fact; His development takes place in outer history but there is a possibility of descending into one's own inward life, and of there finding the inner mystical Christ.’ Thus the human soul developed the capacity of finding the Christ not only in the outer world, but also within, of finding the mystical Christ in His Dionysian nature. First the historical Christ came into being, and then through the work of the historical Christ, influences were brought to bear on the human soul of such a nature that a mystical Christ within human evolution has become possible. Therefore we may, with regard to modern times, speak of an inner mystical experience of the Christ; but we must also understand that the Christ was a cosmic god before His descent upon earth. If, in those former times, man plunged into his inner soul life, he found not Christ, but Dionysos. Today if development has come about in the right way, we find an inner Christ Being there. The Christ, at first a divinity external to the soul, has become a divinity within the soul, who will take fuller possession of it, the more the soul experiences draw near to the Christ. Here we have an example of a transformation of principles during the development of the world. When modern men speak of the mystical Christ within the soul, they should not forget that everything in the world has developed, and that mystical consciousness has not been the same through all time, but has also evolved to its present state. When the holy Rishis of antiquity looked up into the spiritual worlds they spoke of Vishvakarman, who was the same cosmic being to whom Zoroaster referred when he spoke of Ahura Mazdao. It was the Christ Being. Today this being may also be found in the inner life as the mystical Christ. This is the result of the Christ's own deed on the earth. This is the true relation of the cosmic, astronomical Christ to the mystical Christ. The outer god has gradually become an inner god.

But since every event in the external physical world is an effect of a spiritual occurrence, this penetration of the soul by the Christ has also its effect upon the other life. This effect will manifest first of all in the mysteries, and has already partly done so since the foundation of the Western mystery schools of the Rosicrucians. When by means of the discipline of the old mystery schools a man had sunk more deeply into his soul and descended to the lower gods, he found Dionysos, which is only another name for the world of the Luciferic gods. But at the time when the Christ in His glory was approaching the earth, the Luciferic reality sank into darkness even for spiritual consciousness, if the latter had not attained the very highest stages. Only the highest initiates were still able to descend to the Luciferic gods. Other men had to be told that if they descended while yet unpurified and immature, these Luciferic beings would only appear in distorted images, as wild demons who would tempt them to all sorts of evil. This is the original of all the terrible descriptions of this subterranean realm, and of the fear of the mere name of Lucifer at a certain time. And as everything is transmitted hereditarily to men who do not progress with evolution, there are still some who have inherited the fear of the name of Lucifer. But for spiritual consciousness the Luciferic world emerges again after the Christ principle has for some time been working in the soul. As soon as the Christ has worked in the soul for a while, the soul, permeated by the Christ substance, becomes mature enough to penetrate again into the realm of the Luciferic beings. The Rosicrucian initiates were the first to be able to do this. They strove to understand and see the Christ in such a form that as the mystical Christ He permeated their souls, and lived within them, and that this Christ substance in their inner being became a bulwark of strength against all attacks. It became a new light within them, an inner, astral light. Historical experience of the Christ in His true being illuminates the soul to such an extent that men again become able to penetrate into the realm of Lucifer at first only the Rosicrucian initiates were capable of this, and they will gradually carry out into the world what they have been able to experience with regard to the Luciferic principle, and will pour out over the world that mighty spiritual union which consists in the fact that the Christ, Who has poured Himself as Substance into the human soul is understood henceforth by means of the spiritual faculties that mature in the spirit of individual men through a new influx of the Luciferic principle. Let us consider an initiate of the Rose Cross. He first prepares Himself by the continual direction of the feeling, conceptions and thoughts within his soul to the great central figure of the Christ, by allowing the mighty figure of the Christ, as depicted by the Gospel of St. John, to work upon him, and in this way he purifies and ennobles himself. For our souls change fundamentally when we gaze in reverence upon the figure depicted by the Gospel of St. John. If we receive within us what streams forth from this figure, as described by St. John, the mystical Christ comes to life within us. And if we further this process by the study of other Christian documents, the soul is gradually permeated by the spiritual substance of the Christ, is cleansed and purified and reaches higher worlds. Feelings more especially are purified in this way. We either, like Meister Eckhart and Tauler, learn to conceive of the Christ in a universal sense, or else to experience Him with the tenderness of Suso and others; we feel united with that which streamed to the earth from the wide expanse of the heavenly worlds through the Christ event. Thereby a man makes himself ready to be led as a Rosicrucian initiate consciously into those regions which in ancient times were called the Dionysian worlds and may now be called the Luciferic worlds.

What is the effect upon modern Rosicrucian initiates of this introduction into the Luciferic worlds? If their feelings glow with enthusiasm for the divine as soon as they are permeated with the Christ substance, the other faculties through which we understand the world are illuminated and strengthened by the Luciferic principle. In this way the Rosicrucian initiate ascends to the Luciferic principle. His spiritual faculties are intensified and elaborated through initiation, so that he not merely feels the Christ mystically within His soul, but can also describe Him, can speak of Him and picture Him in spiritual images or thought pictures; so the Christ is not merely dimly felt and experienced but stands before him in concrete outlines, as a figure of the outer sense world. It is possible for man to experience the Christ as soul substance when he directs his gaze to that figure of the Christ which meets him in the Gospels. But to describe and understand Him in the way that other phenomena and events in the world are understood, and thereby to gain an insight into His greatness, His significance and His causative connection with world evolution, is only possible when the Christian initiate advances to knowledge of the Luciferic realms.

Thus in Rosicrucian science it is Lucifer who gives us the faculty for describing and understanding the Christ.²

What the centuries have been able to do is to propagate the Gospels; so that the Word streaming forth from them enabled hearts and souls to be warmed by their message, to be permeated by the fire and enthusiasm which flow out from them. Today we stand at a stage of human evolution when it can no longer suffice to receive the Gospels as a tradition in the old way; today men need something else. Those who decline to accept this new teaching will have to bear the Karma of opposition to the introduction of the Luciferic principle into the interpretation of the Gospels. There may be many who say: ‘We are content to accept the Gospels as simple Christians; we feel that they satisfy us; the Christ speaks through them, and He does so even when we receive them as traditionally handed down for centuries in religion.’ Although these people may imagine themselves to be good Christians, they are in reality enemies of the Christ, who on account of their personal egoism, and because they still feel themselves satisfied by what is offered in the traditional interpretation of the Gospels, would sweep away that which in future will bring Christianity into glory. Those who today believe themselves to be the best Christians are often the most effective exterminators of real Christianity. Those who today understand the development of Christianity think quite differently. They say that they do not wish to be the egoists who think that the Gospels suffice and assert that they will not have anything to do with abstractions. What spiritual science has to offer is far removed from being an abstract teaching. Real Christians today know that humanity needs something more than the Christianity of the egoists; they realise that the world can no longer be satisfied with the old Gospel tradition, and that the light from Lucifer's kingdom must be thrown upon it. They listen to the teachings proceeding from Rosicrucian schools of initiation, wherein the spiritual faculties have been intensified by the Luciferic principle, in order to penetrate more and more profoundly into the Gospels, and these initiates have found the Gospels to be of such infinite depth that it is impossible to imagine that they can ever be exhaustively dealt with. But today the time has already arrived when the Rosicrucians must let their teachings flow out into the world; they are called upon to spread abroad what they have gained from the Luciferic world in the form of intensification of spiritual forces and faculties, and to pour this into the Gospels. The spiritual science of the West consists in letting the light which streams forth and may be gained from Lucifer's kingdom be cast upon the Gospels. Spiritual science should be an instrument for the interpretation of the Gospels. So it is part of our work to bring to man the joyful message about the substance of the Christ Being, which permeates the world, and to allow the light which may be gained in Lucifer's kingdom on the path of Rosicrucian initiation to fall upon the Gospels. Thus we see that the Christ, Who formerly was a god living in the outer world, became the mystical Christ, and that by His ennoblement of the human soul, He has brought it back again to the realm called in ancient times the Dionysian world, which for awhile had to be shut off and which will be re-attained in the future by man. The interpretation of the Christ by spiritual faculties illuminated by Lucifer, is the inner and essential kernel of the spiritual stream which must flow through the western channel. And what I have said represents the mission of Rosicrucianism in the future.

What is it therefore that comes to pass in human evolution? Christ and Lucifer, the one as a cosmic god and the other as a god within the human soul, dwelt side by side in ancient times, one to be found in the upper regions and the other in the nether regions; then the evolution of the world progressed and for some time it was known that Dionysos or Lucifer, was far away from the earth; on the other hand the cosmic Christ was felt to be penetrating the earth to a greater and greater degree; Lucifer again became visible, and was once more able to be known. The paths taken by these two divine spiritual beings may be pictured more or less in the following way: they approached the earth from two different sides; Lucifer became invisible at the time when his path cut across that of the Christ—his light was overpowered by the Christ light. The Christ entered the human soul, became the planetary spirit of the earth, growing more and more to be the mystical Christ within human souls, and can be felt and realised through inner experiences. In this way the soul becomes gradually more capable of again beholding the other being, who took the reverse way, from within to without. Lucifer, from a being within man's inner nature, a purely earthly being such as he was when he was sought in the mysteries leading to the underworld, becomes a cosmic god. He will appear in ever-greater radiance in the outer world which we behold when we look through the tapestry of the sense world. Man's vision will become reversed. In the past Lucifer was seen behind the veil of the inner soul world, and the Christ, as by Zarathustra, behind the veil of the sense-world, but in the future the Christ will to an ever greater degree be realised by inner spiritual meditation and Lucifer will be found when the gaze is directed outwards into cosmic regions. Thus we have to record a complete reversal of the conditions by which man can acquire knowledge in the course of human evolution. The Christ, an erstwhile cosmic god, has become an earthly god, who is henceforth the soul of the earth; Lucifer, an erstwhile earthly god, has become a cosmic god. And when in the future, man desires again to ascend to the external spiritual world hidden behind the veil of the sense-world, and is not willing to stop short at the external and material, he must penetrate through the sense-world into the spiritual world and must allow himself to be borne to the light by the ‘Light Bringer.’ No faculties for penetration into that region can arise in man if he does not create them out of the forces flowing to him from Lucifer's kingdom. Men would be drowned in the sea of materialism, would persist in the belief that there is nothing except the outer world of matter, if they did not ascend to inspiration through the Luciferic principle. Just as the Christ principle exists to strengthen our inner being, so the Luciferic principle intensifies and develops those faculties by means of which we have to penetrate into the spiritual worlds fully and completely.

Lucifer will intensify our understanding and comprehension of the world; the Christ will strengthen us perpetually within.

• 1. Dr. Steiner has in many lectures gone more fully into the difference between the Jesus of Bethlehem and the Jesus of Nazareth, and explained to some extent the deep mystery here referred to. The translation of a small work by Dr. Arenson on this subject, and called the “History of the Child-hood of Jesus,” is strongly recommended to those interested. It is published simultaneously with this volume by the Anthroposophical Publishing Company, price 2p.
• 2. It is easy to see how, conformably with the use of the ordinary word ‘Lucifer,’ ill will or ignorance may throw calumny on what has been here said; that however cannot prevent these things being stated. Anyone, who understands by Lucifer what is here meant, must necessarily have other conceptions.

The first step of the Rosicrucian training, which we have already considered, was study; the second is imagination. It is imperative that we clothe our thoughts in figurative representations. The purpose of the lectures was not to present the development in an abstract way, but to depict it by looking at images.

Plants occupy a certain place in the universe; with their roots they follow the force of attraction that emanates from the center of the earth. They open their flowers chastely to the sunlight. The animal, with its horizontal backbone, stands in the middle. Man is the transformed plant, he carries his head up, his reproductive organs bashfully turned towards the earth. Plato said: When evolution moves upwards, creatures turn back; the soul of the world is crucified on the cross of the world. In plants, the sacred love lance, the kiss of sunlight, brings forth the blossom; chastely it opens to the sun.

The animal body is permeated by desire, which is why it turns around. The human being has the task of purifying his flesh. The flesh is the plant body permeated by desire. The Cup of Amfortas represents man, which opens upwards again to receive the sunbeam. The larynx is the chalice that will open upwards through the lance of Saint Amfortas when the word itself becomes creative. The legend of the Holy Grail represents the development in a profound way.

In the time of the ancient Atlanteans, nature expressed itself in images. This wisdom in images has been drained away with the waters and vanished into the air. It was dissolved into the blanket of fog.

The dew pearls on the meadow flowers in the morning; it is the condensed, hidden wisdom that has been precipitated. It is the ancient sign of the cross. Crux in Latin. Rosae Crux is the emblem of the Rosicrucians.

Through thinking, we come from the world of the senses into the absolute world. Theosophy is truth and science; it unites in itself pure thinking, as far as it is occultally hidden in the world. We must learn to watch our thinking; by letting the thoughts sprout out of the other, we are led to self-developing thinking.

In the Apocalypse of John, thoughts are condensed into images. The seals signify images related to other worlds. They are formed from the deepest occultism.

The Alpha and the Omega. The seer John describes the beginning and the end of human development, guided by the twenty-four elders.

The earth was in the beginning a fiery matter, and in the end it will be so again. Man will be mighty through his larynx. He will call all things into existence through his word, as all things have come forth through the word. Thus the sun gods spoke the words: “In the beginning was the word!” Things came into being. Man will spiritualize and be creative.

When all was formless, God spoke the word into it. The sword is the symbol of the creative sun god.

In the volcanic state, man will hammer and forge his new world in the fire.

Man of the past can be compared to the animal of today. It still has a single group soul. The ego of the animals on the astral plan:

Man also used to have a group soul. Leo, Taurus, Aquila and Man are the individualized group souls of the Apocalypse. The “Lamb” is the sign for the individual soul. The seer sees the group souls on the astral plane. The trumpets of which John speaks come from the Devachan, which is still higher. The seer describes human development in powerful images. He marks each stage of this development with a seal. The four horses represent the four stages of human intelligence. These are all things that have been thoroughly examined in occult science.

When we go out of ourselves and strive for the sun, then the etheric body is related to the sun, wisdom does not penetrate it from the outside, it has absorbed it as a book. Man is then master of the world, he becomes a being of the sun.

We usually think of space as having three dimensions. In its original state, space was transparent, so we have to imagine a vapor-like state. Beings came into being through the condensation of matter present in space. In the astral world there are already four major and five to six counter-dimensions. By purifying his nature, man sheds the lower self. The symbol for this is the staff of Mercury. The coiling serpents become the World Spiral and the Cup of the Holy Grail.

The dove is the symbol of spiritual fertilization. This is expressed in the Rosicrucian motto: E.D.N. – From God we are born – 1.C.M. – in Christ we died, P.S.S.R. – in the Holy Ghost we rose.

The leaves of the plants are arranged in such a way that they face each other in a spiral. There we have the Mercury staff again.

The wavy line represents how the forces meander through the external world.

The return from the created world to the creating one is represented by the sacred triangle.

It is only of recent times that the truths of occultism have been the subject of public lectures. Formerly, these truths were only revealed in secret societies, to those who had passed through certain degrees of initiation and had sworn to obey the laws of the Order through the whole of their life. Today, man is entering upon a very critical period. Occult truths are beginning to be disclosed to the public. In a matter of twenty years or so, a certain number of them will already be common knowledge. Why is this? The reason is that humanity is entering upon a new phase which it is the object of this lecture to explain.

In the Middle Ages, occult truths were known in the Rosicrucian Movement. But whenever they leaked out, they were either misunderstood or distorted. In the eighteenth century they entered upon a phase of much dilletantism and charlatanry and at the beginning of the nineteenth century they were put entirely in the background by the physical sciences. It is only in our day that they are beginning to re-emerge and in the coming centuries they will play an important part in the development of mankind. In order to understand this, we must glance at the centuries preceding the advent of Christianity and follow the progress that has been made.

It does not require any very profound knowledge to realise the difference between a man of pre-Christian times and a man of today. Although his scientific knowledge was far less, man of olden times had deeper feelings and intuitions. He lived more in the world beyond—which he also perceived—than in the world of sense. There were some who entered into direct and actual communication with the astral and spiritual world. In the Middle Ages, when earthly existence was by no means comfortable, man still lived with his head in the heavens. True, the mediaeval cities were somewhat primitive, but they were a far truer representation of man's inner world than the cities of today. Not only the cathedrals but the houses and porches with their symbols reminded men of their faith, their inner feelings, their aspirations, and the home of their soul. Today, we have knowledge of many, many things and the relations among human beings have multiplied ad infinitum. But we live in cities that are like deafening factories in awful Babels, with nothing to remind us of our inner world. Our communion with this inner world is not through contemplation but through books. We have passed from intuition into intellectualism.

To find the origin of the stream of intellectualism we must go back further than the Middle Ages. The epoch of the birth of human intellect, the period when this transformation took place, lies about a thousand years before the Christian era. It is the epoch of Thales, Pythagoras, Buddha. Then for the first time arose philosophy and science, that is to say truth presented to the reason in the form of logic. Before this age, truth presented itself in the form of religion, of revelation received by the teachers and accepted by the masses. In our times, truth passes into the individual intelligence and would fain be proved by argument, would like to have its own wings clipped.

What has happened in the inner nature of man to justify this transition of his consciousness from one plane to another, from the plane of intuition to that of logic? Here we touch upon one of the fundamental laws of history—a law no longer recognised by contemporary thought. It is this: Humanity evolves in a way which enables the different elements and principles of man's being to unfold and develop in successive stages. What are these principles?

To begin with, man has a physical body in common with the mineral kingdom. The whole mineral world is found again in the chemistry of the body. He has an etheric body, which is, properly speaking, the vital principle within him. He has this etheric body in common with the plants. This principle engenders the process of nutrition and the forces of growth and re-production. Man has also an astral body in which feelings and sentiments, the power of enjoyment and of suffering are enkindled. He has the astral body in common with the animals.

Finally, there is a principle in man which cannot be spoken of as a body. It is his innermost essence, distinguishing him from all other entities, mineral, plant and animal. It is the self, the soul, the divine spark. The Hindus spoke of it as Manas; The Rosicrucians as the ‘Inexpressible.’ A body, in effect, is only part and parcel of another body, but the self, the ‘I’ of man exists in and by itself alone—“I am I.” This principle is addressed by others as ‘thou,’ or ‘you;’ it cannot be confused with anything else in the universe. By virtue of this inexpressible, incommunicable self, man rises above all created things of the Earth, above the animals, indeed above all creation. And only through this principle can he commune with the Infinite Self, with God. That is why, at certain definite times, the officiating hierophant in the ancient Hebrew sanctuaries said to the High Priest: Shem-Ham-Phores, which means: What is his name (the name of God)? He-Vo-He, or—in one word—Jev or Joph, meaning God, Nature, Man; or again, the inexpressible ‘I’ of man which is both human and divine.

These principles of man's being were laid down in remote ages of his vast evolutionary cycle—but they only unfold slowly, one by one.

The special mission of the period which began about a thousand years before the Christian era has been to develop the human Ego in the intellectual sense. But above the intellectual plane there is the plane of Spirit. It is the world of Spirit to which man will attain in the centuries to come, and to which he will be wending his way from now onwards. The germs of this future development have been cast into the world by the Christ and by true Christianity.

Before speaking of this world of Spirit, we must understand one of the forces by means of which humanity en masse passed from the astral to the intellectual plane. It was by virtue of a new kind of marriage. In olden times, marriages were made in the bosom of the same tribe or of the same clan—which was only an extension of the family. Sometimes, indeed, brothers and sisters married. Later on, men sought their wives outside the clan, the tribe, the civic community. The beloved became the stranger, the unknown. Love—which in days of yore had been merely a natural and social function—became personal desire, and marriage a matter of free choice. This is indicated in certain Greek myths like that of the rape of Helen and again in the Scandinavian and Germanic myths of Sigurd and Gudrun. Love becomes an adventure, woman a conquest from afar.

This change from patriarchial marriage to free marriage corresponds to the new development of man's intellectual faculties, of the Ego. There is a temporary eclipse of the astral faculties of vision and the power of reading directly in the astral and spiritual world—faculties which are included in ordinary speech under the name of inspiration.

Let us now turn to Christianity. The brotherhood of man and the cult of the One God are certainly features of it but they only represent the external, social aspect, not the inner, spiritual reality. The new, mysterious and transcendental element in Christianity is that it creates divine Love, the power which transforms man from within, the leaven by which the whole world is raised. Christ came to say: ”If you leave not mother, wife and your own body, you cannot be my disciple”

That does not imply the cessation of natural links. Love extends beyond the bounds of family to all human beings and is changed into vivifying, creative, transmuting power.

This Love was the fundamental principle of Rosicrucian thought but it was never understood by the outer world. It is destined to change the very essence of all religion, of all cults, of all science.

The progress of humanity is from unconscious spirituality (pre-Christian), through intellectualism (the present age), to conscious spirituality, where the astral and intellectual faculties unite once more and become dynamic through the power of the Spirit of Love, divine and human. In this sense, Theology will tend to become Theosophy.

What, in effect, is Theology? A knowledge of God imposed from without under the form of dogma, as a kind of supernatural logic. And what is Theosophy? A knowledge of God which blossoms like a flower in the depths of the individual soul. God, having vanished from the world, is reborn in the depths of the human heart.

In the Rosicrucian sense, Christianity is at once the highest development of individual freedom and universal religion. There is a community of free souls. The tyranny of dogma is replaced by the radiance of divine Wisdom, embracing intelligence, love and action.

The science which arises from this cannot be measured by its power of abstract reasoning but by its power to bring souls to flower and fruition. That is the difference between ‘Logia’ and ‘Sophia,’ between science and divine Wisdom, between Theology and Theosophy.

In this sense, Christ is the centre of the esoteric evolution of the West. Certain modern Theologians—above all in Germany—have tried to represent Christ as a simple, naive human being. This is a terrible error. The most sublime consciousness, the most profound Wisdom live in Him, as well as the most divine Love. Without such consciousness, how could He be a supreme manifestation in the life of our whole planetary evolution? What gave Him this power to rise so high above His own time? Whence came transcendental qualities?