The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Revelations of John seek to tell us what will happen in the course of time. The Apocalypse is written in pictures that express the appearance of the eternal spirit of the world. John, who beholds them, is to record these highest mysteries.

We are, to begin with, concerned with seven communities, represented symbolically by seven lamp stands and seven stars. The stars are the communities' geniuses watching over them.

In the second vision John sees the four apocalyptic living beings, the lion, the bull, the eagle, and Man, surrounding a throne where sits the spirit of God. Twenty-four elders are sitting around the throne of the spirit of God. “And I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals.” (Rev. 5:1) A lamb opens the book. The book contains, with the opening of the first four seals, what is expressed symbolically in the four apocalyptic riders; with the opening of the fifth seal the martyrs appear. These are those who have lifted themselves up to knowledge and life in the spirit. The opening of the sixth seal is followed by a horrible earthquake. With the seventh the revelation becomes audible: the seven trumpets sound forth. Mysterious pictures are then revealed; for example, a being whose legs are like two pillars, one foot stands in the sea, the other on the earth. “Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand.” (Rev. 10:1,2) John must eat the secret of this book. Then a woman appears dressed with the sun, and the moon at her feet.

We read further: “And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns and a blasphemous name upon its heads.” (Rev. 13:1) The sound of trumpets accompanies this vision. The victory of good over evil is shown us in a picture. A beast is shown which, in a certain sense, is supposed to represent to us the principle of evil. It is the beast with seven heads and ten horns.

Then a beast appeared with two horns like a lamb, a beast that will appear in the future. “Then I saw another beast which rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast ... And it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave to be marked on the right hand or the forehead so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast, or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom; let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six.” (Rev. 13: 11, 16–18)

It is further related how all enemies are eliminated: Michael conquers the dragon, the evil elements; then a new world arises. In the first Christian centuries this was prophesied and always understood as a reference to the future. Admittedly, the exegetes soon knew little more than that; but again and again, also in the Middle Ages, there were those who came forward to explain it. The year 1000 A.D. was often thought to be the time for the beast's appearance. The later the era the more senseless the explanations became, especially in the nineteenth century—when the ancient commentators were seen as children still able to believe in prophecy. The Apocalypse was seen as a historical document, as if everything described therein had already taken place when John wrote it. There were wars after the appearance of Christianity. John could have meant to express them with the red horse. The white horse would then symbolize the martyrs. Earthquakes such as John described with the opening of the sixth seal were also to be found at that time in Asia Minor. And neither was it difficult to prove the existence of locust plagues. But the passage concerning the two-horned beast was a real cross for the commentators. They had heard a rumor concerning the way numbers are to be read but it was dripping with occultism. How does one read in numbers? Every letter also signifies a number; the esotericists wrote in numbers when they wanted to hide something. One had to replace each number with the correct letter; one had to be able to read the letters and then also know what the resulting word meant. Who then, is the beast whose number is 666? The commentators thought it must be something in the past. One wrote the letters in Hebrew—wrongly—in the place of the numbers. That resulted in “Nero.” The horns were then related to the generals or the enemies of the Romans, for example, the Parthians. If one had written correctly with Hebrew letters (right to left) and then read correctly (also from right to left), the following would have resulted: 60, Samech, 6 Waw; 600 was written by esotericists as 200 + 400: 200 Resch + 400 Taw. Hence, we get 666, which in Hebrew letters spells “Sorat.” Sorat is also the corresponding word in Greek. Sorat has meant “Demon of the Sun” since ancient times. Every star has its good spirit—its intelligence—and its evil spirit—its demon. The adversary of the good powers of the sun is called Sorat. Christ was always the representative of the sun, namely, the intelligence of the Sun. Sorat is, then, the adversary of Christ Jesus. The sign for Sorat looks like this:

The sign of the intelligence of the Sun is the following:

This is, at the same time, the occult sign of the lamb. The lamb receives the book with the seven seals. “And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” (Rev. 5:6) The seven corners of the sign are called “horns.” But what do the “eyes” mean?

In occult schools the signs of the seven planets are written next to the seven eyes. The seven eyes signify nothing other than the seven planets, while the names of the planets designate the spirits incarnated in them as their intelligence. “Saturn” is the name of the soul of Saturn. The names of the planets come from the spirits of the seven planets found around the earth. These have an influence on human life. The lamb, Christ, contains all seven. Christ is the alpha and the omega; the seven planets are related to him like members to an entire body. The entwining of the lines of the sign portray in a wonderful way the interaction between the seven planets. From Saturn one rises to the Sun, from there down to the Moon, then on to Mars, Mercury, and so forth. The same thing is expressed in the names of the seven days of the week: Saturday, Saturn; Sunday, the Sun; Monday, the Moon; Tuesday, Mardi, Mars; Wednesday, Mercredi, Mercury; Thursday, Jeudi, Jupiter; Friday, Vendredi, Venus. Christ is the regent of all these world spheres; their actions constitute only part of his being; he unites them all. In Rosicrucian schools a lamb is often drawn as a sign for the intelligence of the Sun.

We determine time according to the movement of the heavenly bodies. Was the method for calculating time always the same as today's? Important things have changed. If we look into the past a little we see the Atlantean culture before the great flood on earth. The Lemurian age preceded it. If we go even further back into the past the earth, sun, and moon are still united in a single body. Back then time had to he determined differently than today. Day and night were entirely different. In Lemuria, conditions for the whole earth were the same as it is today at the north pole, half a year day and half a year night. When sun, moon, and earth were still one this unified mass moved through space. Already back then this movement was calculated by occult wisdom, just as today one calculates time according to the sun which moves across the sky through the signs of the zodiac. Eight hundred years before Christ the sun stood in the sign of Aries. Christ was originally worshiped under the sign of the cross, with a lamb lying at the foot of the cross. The cross with Christ upon it appeared only in the sixth century. Before that the Bull, Taurus, was worshiped when the sun stood in its sign. Earlier, it was the Twin, Gemini, that was worshiped in Persia. The team of goats that pulled Thor's chariot had the same significance. Before that the Crab, Cancer, was worshiped, and so forth.

Before the Lemurian age the sun, moon, and earth, united in one body, moved forward in terms of the zodiac. Time was measured following this movement. For this reason, the twelve signs of the zodiac are characterized as the heavenly clock and drawn as such.

A planet alternates between pralaya, a cosmic night, and manvantara, a cosmic day, just as we alternately pass through day and night. The planet passes through the signs of the zodiac during both pralaya and manvantara; for that reason the twelve signs of the zodiac are counted twice, just as we also count two times twelve to equal twenty-four hours. The hours symbolize the signs of the zodiac. The united sun, moon, and earth also moved through the cosmic days and nights according to the heavenly clock. Then their separation occurred. But at that time human beings were not the same as we are now. The soul only gradually descended, and only gradually did the human being develop from the generic into a specific individual being. If one had taken together the generic souls of human beings during the Lemurian and Atlantean times, then one would have perceived something very strange. The aura of the human being is constantly changing; like all astral beings it is in constant motion. The generic souls were reflected in the forms of animals, for example, in sphinxes and so forth. The ancient Atlantean and Lemurian generic souls were constantly changing but they expressed themselves again and again in a fourfold way. The fourfold nature of human generic souls is characterized by the four living creatures of the Apocalypse: lion, bull, eagle, and Man. The lower human being is portrayed through these four living creatures, and the lamb symbolized the perfected human being—that is, the fifth living creature.

Twice twelve heavenly constellations and four living creatures were once the regents of the world. Mighty cosmic powers ensouled the signs of the zodiac and the four living creatures. The twenty-four elders in the Apocalypse are the two times twelve stars on the world clock who were once rulers. The evolution of the human being can be portrayed in this drawing:

The lowest point designates clear day-consciousness. In pre-Lemurian times the human being had a dull clairvoyance. At that time human beings were closer to God than today. Then they acquired day consciousness. Human beings will take that consciousness with them in the course of their further evolution when they again approach God and become clairvoyant. Every point on the descending line corresponds to a point on the ascending line. If we could live backward we would see all the things that we will see in the future in a different, clairvoyant way. In the future we will again see the twelve spirits of the planets, and the sun, moon, and earth will once again be united, “... and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood ...” and so forth. (Rev. 6:12)

When the soul first descended from the womb of God it found a human animal on earth. These human animals looked grotesque; they needed to be transformed, overcome. In the future, there will also be such an animal to overcome. That is what the beast with the two horns would say to us.

Only someone who explains the Apocalypse within its entire context can understand it properly. The Apocalypse is a cosmic explanation of the world. The author was an initiate. He spoke of universal laws that apply to the world from the beginning to the decline, from the alpha to the omega.

We should allow the holy symbols given in the Apocalypse to work upon us. The sign of the Sun intelligence, for example, should not remain a mere sign for us; we should immerse ourselves in this sign until we feel it is no longer dead but flowing with life. The signs should be for us doors connecting the physical to the spiritual world. Then we have fulfilled our duty: to connect the physical and the spiritual worlds.

In these first lectures, we shall bring together, from the field of knowledge of conditions which go to promote a healthy Agriculture, those which are necessary in order to enable us to reach certain practical conclusions which are to be realised in immediate application and which can only have significance when being so applied. To do so we have to enquire at the very outset how the products of Agriculture come into being and what is their connection with the Universe as a whole. Now a farm or agricultural estate comes to full expression as a ‘farm’ in the best sense of the word if it can be regarded as being a kind of separate individuality, a self-contained individuality. This is the condition to which every agricultural estate or farm should approach as near as possible, although it cannot be completely attained. In other words, everything that is needed to bring forth agricultural products should be supplied by the farm itself, which includes, of course, the necessary cattle and live-stock.

Anything brought in from outside, such as manure and the like, ought under ideal conditions of Agriculture, to be regarded rather as medicine for use in the case of sickness. A sound farm should be able to bring forth from itself everything that it needs. We shall see later why this is quite the natural thing. As long as we neglect the inner nature and essence of things and regard them only from their outer material aspect, so long will it be legitimate to ask: Does it really matter whether cow-manure is taken from the neighbouring farm or from one's own steading? Although it may be impossible to carry it out strictly it is important to hold before one the ideal of a self-contained farm. You will find some justification for this statement if you consider first the earth from which our farm arises and secondly the factors which work in upon the earth from the Universe. It is usual to speak of these factors in very abstract terms. People are aware, it is true, that the light and warmth of the sun, and all the meteorological phenomena connected with these, have a particular bearing upon the type of vegetation produced in a given area. But modern views can give no further details, nor throw any further light on the matter because they do not penetrate into the underlying facts. Let us therefore start from the standpoint which embraces the fact that the basis of all Agriculture is the soil of the earth.

This soil—I will indicate it schematically by this straight line (see Drawing No. 2) is generally looked upon as being something purely mineral into which at the best organic substance has entered either because humus has been formed or manure has been introduced. The idea that the soil not only contains added organic substance but also has itself a plant—like nature—and even contains an astral activity: such an idea has never been considered, still less conceded. And if we go a step further and consider how this inner life of the soil in the delicate balancing of its distribution is quite different in Summer from what it is in Winter, we come to subjects which are of enormous importance in practical life but to which no attention is paid to-day. If you start by considering the soil, then you must bear in mind the fact that it is a kind of organ within that organism which manifests itself wherever the growth of Nature appears. The earth surface is really an organ, an organ which, if you care to. you may compare with the human diaphragm. “We may put the matter broadly in this way (it is not quite exact but will give the right idea): Above the diaphragm there are in man certain organs, the head in particular, and the processes of breathing and circulation which work up into the head. Under the diaphragm are other organs. Now if we compare the earth surface with the human diaphragm we must say: The individuality represented by our farm, having the earth surface for its diaphragm has its head under the earth, while we and all the animals live in its belly. Above the surface of the earth, is really what may be regarded as the bowels of what I will now call the “agricultural-individuality.” On a farm, we are walking about inside the belly of the farm, and the plants grow upwards within this belly. Thus, we are dealing with an individuality which is standing on its head, and which is only rightly looked at if so understood, especially as regards its relation to Man. In relation to animals, the situation, as we shall see later on, is slightly different.

Now why do I say that the “agricultural-individuality” stands on its head?

I do so because the air, vapours and warmth, which are in the immediate neighbourhood of the soil and from which both man and the plants derive air, moisture and warmth—all this corresponds to the abdominal organs in the human body. On the other hand, everything that takes place within the earth, under the soil, affects the general growth of plants in the same way as our head affects our organism—especially in childhood, but also throughout the whole of our life. Thus, there is a constant and very living interplay of supra-terrestrial and sub-terrestrial activities.—The forces at work above the earth are immediately dependent upon what we will regard for the time being as localised on the planets. Moon, Mercury and Venus. These planets in strengthening and modifying the effects of the Sun exercise their influence on all that is above the earth surface, while the more distant planets lying outside the earth's path round the Sun strengthen and modify the effects of the solar influences which penetrate upwards through the earth. Thus, the growth of plants is affected by the distant heavens in so far as it takes place underground, and by the nearer heavens in so far as it takes place above ground; and the influences upon vegetable growth coming from the expanses of the Cosmos do not shine directly down upon the earth, but are first absorbed by the earth which then causes them to radiate upwards. What come from beneath as good or bad vegetable growth are really the cosmic influences which are reflected from below; whereas in the air and water above the earth the Cosmos exercises its power directly. The direct cosmic in-streaming is stored up beneath the earth's surface, and from there it works back. The inherent qualities of the soil affecting the growth of plants are dependent upon these stored up influences. (Later we shall consider the case of the animals). The soil still retains in it the effects of influences dependent upon the most remote parts of the Cosmos, which need to be considered in connection with the Earth. These effects are found in what we know generally as sand and rock; the substances which do not absorb water, which are ordinarily supposed to contain no nutritive elements whatsoever and which nevertheless play a very important part in the promotion of growth. These minerals are entirely dependent upon the activities of forces coming from the remotest parts of the Cosmos, and, improbable as it may appear, it is primarily through the medium of siliceous sand that it comes about that soil contains and radiates upwards what may be called its elements of life-ether and chemical activity (chemical ether). The inner life of the soil and the formation of its particular chemical properties depend entirely upon the constitution of its sandy parts, and what the plant roots experience within the soil is determined by the amount of Cosmic life and Cosmic Chemistry which the Earth has absorbed through the mediation of its stony substance (which of course, may lie at some depth below the earth surface). Anyone, therefore, who has to concern himself with the growth of plants should be quite clear as to the geological structure of the ground from which the plants are to grow, and further should bear in mind in all cases that those plants whose roots are for us of primary importance cannot do without silicon in the soil, even though thi3 may lie well below. We should be thankful that silicon makes up 47% to 48% of the Earth, either in the form of silicon (silicic acid) or in other' compounds. Such supplies as we need are therefore always present.

Now the effects which have been brought about in the root through silicon must be borne upwards through the plant. It must stream upwards and there must be a constant interaction between the cosmic forces that have entered into the plant through silicon and those that are active above—forgive me—m the “belly” and that supply the “head” below with what it requires. True the “head” must be provided for out of the Cosmos, but this process must interact with that which takes place above ground in the “belly.” The forces coming in from the Cosmos and being caught up underground must be able to flow upwards again, and the substance which brings this about is clay. Clay is the mediator through which the cosmic activity in the soil is enabled to work from below upwards. In actual practice this will give us the key to the handling of both clay soil and sandy soil according to the particular which we may wish to cultivate. But we must first know what is actually happening. How clay is to be described and how treated in order to make it fertile are important but secondary considerations. The first and foremost thing to know about clay is that it promotes the cosmic upward flow.

However, this cosmic upward flow is not enough by itself. There must also be present the opposite, which I would call the earthly or terrestrial element streaming downwards. All that undergoes a kind of external digestion in the “belly” (the processes above the surface throughout Summer and Winter are indeed a kind of digestion in relation in the growth of plants I) has to be drawn down into the earth. All forces produced by the action of water and air above the Earth and also the substances in delicate homeopathic distribution called from there are drawn down into the earth by lime presented in it in greater or smaller proportions. The lime content of the soil and the distribution of lime in homeopathic dilution above the surface—these are the factors which have the task of leading the terrestrial (“belly” Ed.) forces down into the soil.

These things will take on a very different aspect in future when we shall have a real science concerning them, and not only the scientific guesswork of to-day: it will be possible then to give exact information. We shall then know that there is a great, an immense difference between the warmth that exists above the surface of the Earth and which stands within the sphere of the influence of the Sun, Venus. Mercury and Moon, and the. warmth which makes itself felt within the earth and which stands under the influence of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These two kinds of warmth which we may call the “blossom and leaf warmth” and the “root-warmth” respectively, are completely different from one another—so much so, indeed, that we can describe the warmth above the Earth as a “dead” warmth, the warmth below the Earth's surface a “living” warmth. The warmth below the surface, especially during Winter, contains an inner vital principle. If we human beings had to experience in ourselves this living warmth which works within the soil, we should all become immensely stupid, because in order that we may be intelligent beings, dead warmth has to be supplied to our bodies. But at the moment when the limestone and other substances enable warmth to be drawn into the soil and to change from outer into inner warmth, it passes over into a condition of gentle aliveness. It is recognised to-day that there is a difference between the air which is above the Earth and that which is below the surface, but the difference between warmth above the Earth and that below the surface has been overlooked. It is generally known that the air under the Earth contains more carbonic acid, while that above the Earth contains more oxygen; but the reason for this is not known. It is that the air, as it is drawn into the earth, is penetrated by a gentle aliveness. This is true both of warmth and of air. They both receive a tiny spark of life as they pass into the earth. It is different in the case of water and of the solid earth element itself. Both of these have less life inside the Earth than they have when above its surface. They become “more dead,” they lose something of their life they had outside. But it is precisely this circumstance which exposes them to the influences of the most distant cosmic forces. The mineral substances have to free themselves from the forces which are working immediately above the surface of the Earth if they wish to be accessible to these far away cosmic forces. In our epoch, this emancipation from the processes in the immediate neighbourhood takes place in the period of the time between the 15th January and 15th February, i.e. in Winter. The time will come when these indications will be acknowledged as exact data. It is at this period of the Winter that within the Earth the formative forces of crystallisation reach their full development in the mineral substances. In these days of mid-winter, it is a peculiar feature of the interior or the Earth that it becomes less dependent upon its mineral masses and falls under the influence of the crystallising forces of the cosmic expanses.

Now consider what happens. Towards the end of January, the mineral substances of the Earth have a greater “longing” than at any other time to reach crystal purity in the economy of Nature; and the deeper one goes, the greater one finds this “longing” to be. The plants, absorbed in their own life in the Earth, are less open at this time than at any other to the influence of the mineral substances. But for a time before and for a time after this period, (but especially before when the minerals are preparing to perfect their crystal shape and purity) they are of utmost importance to the growth of plants. It is then that they throw out forces which are of extreme importance to plant growth. Thus, some time in November and December there .is a point of time when the mineral forces at work under the Earth are particularly propitious to the growth of plants. The question therefore arises: How can this best be utilised for the growth of plants? Someday it will become evident that by utilising this knowledge we are able to guide the growth of plants. I will say this now: That m the case of a soil which does not of itself promote the required upward movement of forces which ought to work upwards in the Winter period, it is well to add clay in a proper proportion. (I shall indicate this proportion later on). In this way, we enable the soil to carry those forces, upwards to make it effective in the realm of plant growth above the Earth; before the forces of the minerals have reached their maximum effects for themselves, which will not be until January or February period. (These forces show themselves outwardly—for those who can read their story—in snow crystals.) It may be noted that the power of these forces becomes stronger and stronger the deeper we go into the interior of the Earth.

In this way, what seems to most people recondite can give us insight of the greatest positive value and practical help, where we should otherwise be working at random. Indeed, we must realise clearly that the cultivated ground together with what lies under the surface of the Earth forms an individuality living also within the element of time, (i.e. living through the four seasons,) and that the life of the Earth still is particularly strong during Winter, whereas in Summer it undergoes a kind of death.

Now with regard to the cultivation of the soil there is a point of great importance which must be thoroughly understood. It is a point I have often dealt with among Anthroposophists. It is that we know the conditions under which the forces of the cosmic spaces can work upon the earthly realm. Let us begin with seed formation. The seed which gives rise to the embryo of the plant is generally regarded as a molecular structure of exceptional complexity, and science lays great stress upon this interpretation. The molecules, it is said, have a certain structure, in simple molecules it is simple, in complicated molecules it becomes more and more complex, until we come to the extreme complexity of the albuminous or protein molecule. People stand in wonder and astonishment at the enormous complexity of the structure supposed to exist in the seed.

They do so because they reason as follows. The albumen (or protein) molecule, they say, must be of enormous complexity, for the organism in succeeding plants arises from it. This organism is enormously complex, and since its structure was determined by the embryonic conditions of the seed, the latter's microscopic or ultra-microscopic content must also have a structure of enormous complexity. Well, it is complex indeed in the beginning. As the earthly albumen is formed, its molecular structure is driven to the utmost complexity; but this alone would never give rise to a new organism. For the organism arising from the seed does not proceed by a mere continuation in the offspring of what was present in the parent plant or animal. What happens is that when the embryonic structure has reached its highest stage of complexity in the earth domain it falls to pieces and becomes a “little chaos,” it breaks up and dissolves, one might say, into “world-dust.” And when this little chaos of world-dust is there, the whole surrounding Cosmos begins to work upon it. to stamp it with its own image and to build up in it a structure conditioned by the forces of the Universe working in upon it from every side (see Drawing No. 3). Thus, the seed becomes an image of the Cosmos. Every time this happens, and seed formation is carried through to the point or chaos, the new organism is^: built up from the seed-chaos by the activity of the cosmos. The parent organism has only the tendency to bring the seed into such cosmic position that through its affinity with this cosmic position the cosmic forces will act in the proper directions so that, e.g., a dandelion will give rise to another dandelion and not a berberis.

But the new thing that is built up is always the image of some cosmic constellation. It is built up out of the cosmos. And if in the Earth we would make effective the forces of the cosmos, we must drive the earthly elements into the state of greatest possible chaos. This has to be the case whenever we want the cosmos to act upon our Earth. In the case of plant-growth this is in a certain sense provided for by Nature herself. But just because every new organism is built up by the Cosmos it is necessary that the cosmic principles must be allowed freedom to work in the organisms until the seed-formation is completed.

If, for example, we plant the seed of a given plant in the earth, the seed contains the impress of the whole Cosmos from a particular cosmic direction, which means that it came under the influence of a particular constellation and received its particular form. At the moment when the seed is placed in the soil it is strongly worked upon by the terrestrial (“belly” Ed.) forces, and it is filled with the longing to deny the cosmic forces, in order that it may spread and grow in all directions. For the forces above the surface of the Earth do not want the plant to retain this cosmic form. The seed had to be driven to the point of chaos; but now that the plant is sprouting it is necessary to oppose the terrestrial to the cosmic forces which live as the form of the plant inside the seed. For the cosmic forces must be opposed and balanced, as it were, by the terrestrial forces. We must help the plant to become more akin to the Earth in its growth. This can only be done by introducing into the plant some form of living earthly matter which has not yet reached the state of chaos and seed formation, life which has been held up in a plant before the seeds have been formed. For this purpose, a rich humus formation comes to man's assistance m those districts that are fortunate enough to possess it. Man can hardly find any artificial substitute for the fertility given to the soil by Nature through humus. What causes the formation of humus? It arises from the absorption of remnants of living plants into the whole process of Nature. These remnants have not yet reached the state of chaos, and respect the cosmic forces, as it were. If humus is used for the growth of plants the terrestrial forces are held fast within them. The cosmic forces then work only in the upward stream that terminates in seed-formation. While the terrestrial forces work in the development of flowers, leaf and so on, the cosmos only radiates its influence into all this.

Let us suppose that we have before us a plant growing up out of its own root. At the top end of the stem comes the grain of seed, while the leaves and blossoms spread out sideways. Now, in the leaf and the blossom the terrestrial element is working in giving shape and filling it with matter; the reason why a leaf grows or a grain swells, and takes up the substance inside it is to “be found in the terrestrial forces which we lead to the plant and which have not yet reached the point of chaos. The seed, however, whose forces work upwards through the stem—vertically—not rotating around it (as in the formation of leaves Ed.) radiates the cosmic forces into leaves and blossoms. One can actually see this. We have only to look at the green leaves of a plant. In their shape, in the substances filling them and in their green colour, the leaves bear the terrestrial element. But they would not be green if they had not within them the cosmic force of the Sun. And now look at the coloured blossoms. In these the cosmic force of the Sun is not working alone but is supported by the distant planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. If we regard the growth and development of plants from this point of view, we shall see the redness of the rose as the force of Mars, the yellow of the sunflower- (so-called only because of its shape) as the force of Jupiter. It should be called the Jupiter flower, for it is the force of Jupiter that reinforces the solar force and brings forth the white and yellow colours in the flowers. The blue of the chickweed or chicory flower is the effect of Saturn reinforcing the effect of the Sun. Thus, we can see Mars in the red-coloured flower. Jupiter in the yellow, Saturn in the blue, while in the green colour of the leaf we see the Sun itself. But the same powers which appear as colour in the flower are also at work especially strongly in the root. Here once more the forces living in the distant planets are active within the soil. If we pull a plant out of the ground we may see that in the roots there is cosmic force, in the blossom mostly the terrestrial element. and only in the finest shading by the colour the cosmic element can be seen. The terrestrial forces on the other hand if living actively in the root cause the root to push out into form. For the form of the plant is determined by factors arising in the realm of earth. It is the terrestrial forces that causes the form to spread. When the root develops and divides, it is due to the terrestrial forces working downwards just as the cosmic forces (in the case of the colour) work upwards. Single roots are therefore cosmic roots, whereas forked roots are due to the terrestrial forces working down into the soil, just as in colour the cosmic forces work upwards into the flowers. And the cosmic force of the Sun stands between the two. The Sun force works principally in the green leaves, in the interaction between blossom and root, and in all that is between the two. Thus, the Sun element really belongs to what we have called the diaphragm provided by the surface of the earth: whereas the cosmic element belongs to the interior of the earth and works its way up into the upper part of the plant. The terrestrial element above the earth works downwards and is drawn into the plant with the help of the limestone. Plants which draw down the terrestrial element into their roots through the lime are those whose roots divide in all directions such as all herbs used for fodder, (but not turnips) and such as the sainfoin. Thus, it should be possible, looking at the form of a plant and the colour of the flowers, to tell how much cosmic forces and how much terrestrial forces are at work in it. Now let us assume that we find some means of holding back the cosmic forces within the plant. These forces will then be prevented from manifesting it by pushing up into flowers but will live out their life in the region of the stem of the plant. Now wherein do these cosmic forces reside in the plant? They reside in the silicon. Take the Equisetum. It has this very property of attracting silicon and permeating itself with it. It is 90% silicon. Thus, in this plant the cosmic element is present to a tremendous extent. It does not manifest itself in flowers, but in the growth of the lower part of the plant.

Now, let us take the opposite case. Let us suppose that we want to hold back these forces which work upwards from the root through the stem into the leaves and store them up in the region of the root. This possibility is no longer fully open to. us in the present epoch of our earth, since the genera and species of plants have been so firmly established. Formerly, in ancient epochs when men could easily transform one plant into another, this possibility had to come greatly into consideration. Today we consider it only from the point of view of finding out the condition favourable to a given plant. How can we then set about preventing these forces from pushing upwards into blossom and fruit? How can we in addition hold back the development of stem and leaf within the formation of the root? We must place such a plant on sandy soil. For silicon or flint holds back the cosmic forces and even gathers them. Now the potato plant is one in which the growth of leaf and stem is held back. The potato is a root-stock. The forces that form leaf and stem are held fast in the potato itself. The potato is not a root but a stem which has been held back. Potatoes must therefore be planted on sandy soil; this is the only way of holding back the cosmic forces in them.

The A B C of everything concerning the growth of the plant consists, therefore, m knowing what in any particular plant is of cosmic origin, and what is due to terrestrial forces. How can we make a soil more inclined to condense, as it were, the cosmic forces to retain them in root and leaf? How can we thin them out so that they can be sucked upwards into the blossoms and colour them and even into the fruit, and permeate them with a delicate taste? For the delicate taste in an apricot or plum is, like the colour of a flower, both being due to the cosmic forces which have worked their way upward through the plant. In the apple, you are literally eating Jupiter, in the plum you are eating Saturn. If modern man were faced with the necessity of producing the innumerable species and varieties of fruit-bearing plants from the much smaller number of original plants existing in primordial times, he would not get very far. And we may be thankful that the great majority of our existing fruit trees were brought into existence when mankind still possessed an ancient instinctive wisdom of how to produce new varieties out of the primitive species which then existed. Nowadays these things are done “by trial and error. People do not enter into the process with knowledge. And yet a rational method is the fundamental condition for any possible advance in Agriculture. What our friend Stegemann said in this connection was particularly apposite. He drew attention to the fact that agricultural products are deteriorating in quality. Now you may or may not agree with what I am going to say, but this deterioration is, I claim, connected as is the transformation of the human soul, with the declining of the Cosmic Kali-Yuga during the last few decades and the decades that are to come. For we are also in the presence of a complete inner transformation of Nature. All that we have inherited and been handed down in the way of natural talents, inherited knowledge, nature and of traditional medical remedies is beginning to lose its significance. We shall have to acquire new knowledge if we want to penetrate the natural connection of these things. Humanity has no other alternative before it today than either to learn again about the whole web of natural and cosmic connections, or to let both Nature and humanity degenerate and die out. As in the past, it is imperative that our knowledge should penetrate into the actual structure of Nature.

For example, man knows more or less what happens to air inside the Earth_? but he hardly knows anything of what happens to light inside the Earth. He does not know that silicon, the cosmic mineral» takes up light into the Earth and there makes it active, whereas humus, the substance closely allied to terrestrial life does not take up light and make it active in the earth but produces a lightless activity there. But these are things which will have to become understood and known.

Now, to go further: In any given region of the Earth there is not only a particular vegetation but also certain animals live there. For reasons which will appear later on, we need not consider human beings for the moment. It is one peculiar fact, and I should be glad to see this put to experimental test as I am quite sure that such a test would confirm it. This fact is that the right quantity of cows, horses and other live-stock on a farm will supply just the necessary amount of manure for the farm to restore to it what has been discharged into “chaos.” Moreover, the right proportion of horses, cows and pigs will yield the right proportions in the mixture of manures. This is because the animals eat the right proportion of the plant substances yielded by the soil, and because in the course of their organic processes they produce as much manure as is needed to be given back to the soil. And. though it cannot be strictly carried out. I would say that manure of any kind introduced from outside can only be regarded as a curative substance for a farm that has become diseased. A farm is only healthy if it can supply itself from the manure yielded by its own animals. This of course entails the development of a real knowledge of how many animals of a given sort are necessary for a given farm. But this will be found out as soon as some knowledge returns to us of the inner forces in Nature. To what I said about the “belly” being above the Earth and the “head” being under the Earth, belongs an understanding of the animal organism. For the animal organism is connected with the whole economy of Nature. With respect to form and colour structure and consistency of its substance it is under the influence of the planets. Working backwards from the snout the influences are as follows. Saturn, Jupiter and Mars affect the region extending from the snout to the heart, the heart is worked upon by the Sun, while the region extending from behind the heart to the tail comes under the influences of Venus, Mercury and Moon. (See Drawing No. 5).

Those who are interested in these things should try to examine the forms of animals from this point of view. For a development of knowledge along these lines would be of enormous importance. Go to a museum, for example, and examine the skeleton of any mammal. In doing so, bear in mind the principle that the structure and build of the head is primarily the result of the direct radiation of the Sun streaming into the mouth. Then you will 3ee that the structure of the head and of the adjoining parts depends upon the way in which the animal exposes itself to the Sun. A lion exposes itself quite differently from a horse: the reason for these differences will be examined later on. Thus, the front part of an animal and the structure of its head are directly connected with the Sun's radiation. Now the light of the Sun also reaches the Earth indirectly, by being reflected from the Moon. This too has to be taken into account. The sunlight that is reflected from the Moon is quite ineffectual when it falls on the head of an animal. (These things apply especially to embryonic life). The light* reflected from the Moon produces its greatest effect when falling upon the hind parts of the animal. Look at the formation of the skeleton of an animal's hind parts and the peculiar polarity in which it stands to the formation of the head. You should develop a feeling for this contrast in form between the animal's hind quarters and its head, and especially for the insertion of the hind limbs and the rear and the intestinal tract. This contrast between the front and the hindmost parts of the animal is the contrast between Sun and Moon. If you go further you will find that the influence of. the Sun stops just short of the heart; that Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are acting in the formation of the blood and the head;' and that, from the heart backwards the activity of the Moon is reinforced by that of Mercury and Venus. Thus, if we imagine ourselves to have picked up the animal, turned it round and set it upside down with its head in the earth we shall have the position invisibly taken by the “Agricultural-individuality.” The consideration of this formation of the animal enables us to see a relation between the manure produced by the animal and the needs of the earth in which the plants grow which serve as food for the animal. For you will remember that the cosmic forces which act in a plant are guided upwards through it from inside the earth. If, therefore, a plant is particularly rich in these cosmic forces, and an animal eats it, then the manure which this animal excretes will be particularly well-suited to the soil on which the plant grows. Thus, if we learn to grasp the forms of things we shall see in what sense an agricultural unit, or farm, is a “self-contained individuality” (or as we have called it an “agricultural-individuality”) only we have to include within it the necessary live-stock.

In the lectures that are to follow, I shall base myself to a great extent on what you have heard me say concerning plant growth and also animal structures. We shall have to attempt to put into aphoristic form some of the Spiritual Scientific conceptions concerning the enemies of agriculture, animal and vegetable, and which are called the diseases of plants. Now these matters can only be studied in concrete cases; they must be dealt with specifically; there is little that can be said in a general way.

I shall begin with examples, which, if they are taken as the starting-point of experiments, may lead on to something further. I shall begin with the subject of weeds or noxious plants. What we have to do is not so much to find a definition for what we mean by weeds, as to discover how to remove from a field such plants as we do not wish to have there. Some of us, perhaps, as a habit from our college days, may be inclined to seek for definitions. I have given way—although without much enthusiasm—to such an inclination and have looked up in various books the definitions given of a weed. I found that most authors say: “A weed is that which grows where it is not wanted;” which does not go very deeply into the essence of the matter. Nor can we very successfully apply such a definition to the essential nature of the weed, for the simple reason that before the tribunal of Nature the weed has just as much right to grow as plants that are useful to us. Clearly, we must approach the matter from a somewhat different angle. We must ask ourselves how in a particular stretch of ground we can get rid of what was not meant by us to grow there, but which nevertheless does so because of the general connections of Nature ruling there.

The answer to this question can only be found by taking account of those things which we have been discussing during the last few days. It was pointed out that we must learn to distinguish those forces which arise in the cosmos but are absorbed by the earth and work upon plant-growth from within the earth. These forces come from Mercury, Venus and Moon and act not directly, but through the mediation of the earth. They must be taken into account if we wish to follow up how

the mother-plant gives rise to a daughter-plant, and so on. On the other hand, we have to consider the forces taken by the plant from the outer-earthly, and brought to it by way of the atmosphere from the outer planets. Broadly speaking, we may say that the forces coming from the nearer planets (see Lectures 2 and 3) are very much influenced by the workings of lime in the soil, while those coming from the distant planets fall under the influence of silicon. And, in fact, workings of silicon, even though they proceed from the earth, act as mediators of the forces coming from Jupiter, Mars and Saturn, but not for those of Moon, Mercury and Venus. People are quite unaccustomed to take these things into account. Ignorance of the cosmic influences, whether they come through the atmosphere around the earth, or whether they come from below through the medium of the earth, has caused great harm. Let-us take a special case to illustrate this. The old instinctive knowledge had disappeared from large areas of the civilised world; the soil was exhausted, and such parts of the old traditions as the peasants had preserved was also worn out. And so the vineyards far and wide were decimated by Phylloxera (or grape-louse). Men were powerless to cope with the Phylloxera that was destroying the vineyards. I could tell you of an agricultural paper that used to be published in Vienna in the eighties. Appeals from all sides were made to the editor to supply some remedy for Phylloxera, but to his despair he knew of none and that at a time when the pestilence was most acute. For the science of today is not able to deal effectively with such evils as these; what is needed is an insight into the connections I have been expounding to you here.

Now I want you to imagine that Diagram No. 9 represents the earth level, where the influences of Venus, Mercury and Moon! I enter into the earth and stream again from below upwards. These are the forces which cause the plant to grow during the season, later produce the seed, and by means of this seed a new plant', a second plant, then yet a third and so on. (I indicate this schematically). All this goes into the power of reproduction and streams on into the succeeding generations. The forces, however, which take the other path, remaining above the earth level, come from the distant planets. I can draw this schematically in this way. These forces cause the plant either to spread into its surroundings or to become fat and juicy, to build matter into itself such as we can use for food because it is produced again and again in a continuous stream.

Take for example the flesh of fruit—an apple or a plum—which we can break off and eat; all this is due to the workings from the distant planets.

From this we are able to see how we must proceed if we are to influence plant-growth in one way or another. We have to take account of these two sets of forces. A large number of plants (and more especially those which we call weeds and which often have powerful healing properties) are particularly subject to the influence of the Moon. All that we know of the Moon in the ordinary way is that the rays of the sun fall upon it and are reflected back to the earth. The moon-rays which we see by taking them up with our eyes and which the Earth receives too are thus reflected sun-rays. And these reflected sun-rays come to the Earth charged with lunar forces; this is so ever since the Moon separated from the Earth. In the cosmos, these very lunar forces have a strengthening effect upon all that is earthly. When the Moon was still united to the Earth, the Earth was much more alive, much more fertile. Its substances were not yet so mineralised within it. But since the Moon has separated from the Earth, it strengthens those forces of the Earth which by themselves are just sufficient to produce growth on earth in such a way that growth is enhanced to reproduction. (When a being grows, it increases in size. Hence the same force is at work which leads to reproduction. But growth does not go so far as to produce another being of the same kind, it is merely that cell grows upon cell, a weaker kind of reproduction: whereas reproduction is an enhanced growth). The Earth can of its own strength be the mediator of this growth only—this weak kind of reproduction; without the Moon, it cannot control the enhanced growth. To achieve reproduction proper, it needs the cosmic forces of the Moon which shine into the Earth sphere and in the case of some plants, also those which come from Mercury and Venus.

As I said before, people look upon the Moon as simply reflecting the rays of the Sun, as transmitting solar light. But that is not the only thing which reaches the Earth. Together with the Moon's rays, the entire cosmos is reflected upon the Earth. (Everything that affects the Moon is reflected. And though this cannot be proved by the usual methods of physics, the whole of the starry heavens is in a sense reflected on to the Earth from the Moon). It is a powerful and strongly organising cosmic force which is poured down from the Moon into the plant and enables it to produce seed, thus enhancing its power to grow to the power to reproduce. But all this can only come about at any particular spot when the Moon is full. When the Moon is new, the area will not enjoy the benefits of lunar influence. During the new Moon, plants can do no more than retain what they took in at the time when the Moon was full. We should reach important enough results if we pursued the custom (known in ancient India and still maintained up to the nineteenth century) of observing the phases of the moon at seed-time and of making use of its effects upon the very earliest stages of germination. But Nature is not so cruel as to punish man for his inattention and discourtesy to the Moon at times of sowing and harvesting. We have a full Moon twelve times a year. This ensures that the influences of the full Moon, i.e., those which promote the formation of fruit, are there in sufficient strength. If something to be grown is placed in the soil at new Moon instead of at full Moon, it will wait until the Moon is again at the full, and, regardless of human error, work in accord with Nature. Thus, men make use of the moon without having the least idea that they are doing so.

But this alone does not help us any further. For, as things are, weeds claim the same rights as useful plants, and we get them all mixed up together because we do not understand the forces that regulate growth. We must try and enter into these forces. We shall then see that the fully developed strength of the Moon promotes the reproductive forces of all living plants, that it creates the force which pushes upwards through the plant from the root right on into the seed as it is being formed in the fruit. Now we shall get the best possible weeds if we allow the Moon to shed its full beneficence upon them, and do nothing to stop its influence. Furthermore, in wet years when the lunar forces are more active than in dry weather, the weeds will increase and multiply. If, however, we take these cosmic forces into our calculations we shall reason as follows:

If we can cut off (apply a tourniquet, as it were) the full influence of the Moon from the weeds, allowing only those influences to reach them which work directly from outside (i.e., non-lunar influences) we shall be able to set a limit to their propagation. For they will then not be able to reproduce themselves. Since, however, we cannot screen off the Moon, we shall have to treat the soil in such a way that it will be disinclined to absorb lunar influences. Moreover, the plants, these weeds, will then develop a certain reluctance to grow in soil that has been treated in this way. This will give us what we want.

We must boldly take the matter in hand. We must not be afraid, and this is how we must proceed. We collect a number of seeds of the particular weed in question, i.e., those parts which contain within themselves the final workings of the force of which I have been speaking. We light a flame—that of a simple wood fire is best—and burn the seeds, carefully collecting the ash, of which we accumulate a relatively small quantity in this way. But in the ashes of these seeds we have literally in concentrated form, the force that is the opposite of the force which was developed under the influence of the Moon. We then sprinkle the pepper-like preparations on our fields—we need not go very carefully to work for the influence spreads over a large area—and we shall see in the second year that there are far fewer of the weeds in question. After four years of this treatment, the weed will have completely disappeared from our field. In this way, the “Effects of smallest Entities,” which has been proved scientifically by the Biological Institute (at Stuttgart), is literally put to fruitful use.

A great many results are to be obtained in this way, as you will find out if you really take account of these influences, which are totally disregarded nowadays. For instance, in order to use the dandelion in the manner I outlined to you yesterday, you can plant a number of them anywhere. But you can at the same time make use of the dandelion seed for the production of this burnt pepper to be scattered on your fields. In this way, you will be able to plant dandelions wherever you like, but you will also ensure that the field that has been treated in this way with dandelion ash will be free of dandelions. All these things were contained in the old instinctive husbandry. In those days, one could put what plants one chose to grow together, because one went about it with a sort of instinctive wisdom. From what I have said, you can see that these things are the starting point of a really practical method. And since to-day the view—I will not call it the prejudice—obtains that everything must be verified, I urge you to put these things to the test. If you carry through the experiments properly, they will verify what I have said. If, however, I myself were working on a farm, I should not wait for proofs but go straight ahead, for I am sure that these things are practicable. I look at it in this way: the truths of Spiritual Science are true in themselves and require no verification from outside or by external methods. (The mistake of all our anthroposophical scientists has been that they adopted external methods of verification. They have done so even within the Anthroposophical Society, where they certainly ought to have known that things can be true in and through themselves. But if one wants to establish any results in public nowadays, one needs external verification: there the compromise is necessary. In actual fact, it is not necessary). For we know things inwardly, i.e., that they are true through their inner nature. For example: Suppose I put fifty persons to work in manufacturing a certain material. Now, if I want three times as much of the material made, I know quite well that I should need a hundred and fifty persons to get the job done. But a subtle person may come along and say: “I do not agree. You will have to put it to the test. You will have to try it out on a given piece of work, putting first one, then two, then three persons on it and establish how much they do.” Now if all three spend all their time chattering, they will do less work than one person. The assumption can turn out to be false, for scientific experiment has shown results that are opposed to the assumption. But the idea is not refuted, although the experiment has “proved” the contrary. To be really exact, the falsifying factors would have to be examined. Then what is inwardly true will also become outwardly established.

We, are able to proceed in a fairly general way as regards the noxious plants in our fields. But we cannot speak so generally when it comes to methods of controlling the noxious animals. I shall take an example which will be particularly characteristic and will enable you to make experiments and see how these things work out. Let us take an old friend of the farmer—the field-mouse. What efforts have not been made to combat this little creature? You can read in agricultural works of the use of preparations made of phosphorus or strychnine and saccharine'. Even the drastic remedy of infecting the field-mouse with typhus has been suggested, to be applied by mixing with mashed potatoes certain bacilli harmful only to rodents, the mixture being distributed as required. These things have been done, or at any rate they have been recommended. In any case, all sorts of rather inhuman methods have been tried in order to get rid of these quite pretty-looking little animals. Even the government has taken a hand in the struggle, because it is not of much use to fight the field-mouse on your own land if your neighbour is not going to follow suit. Otherwise the mice simply come across from the adjacent fields. The government had therefore to be called in, in order to compel everyone to get rid of their field mice by the same method. Governments do not like exceptions. When a government selects a method which it thinks the right one (regardless of whether it is or not) it issues its instructions, and these have to be followed by every farmer. All this is simply proceeding by trial and error and laying down the law from outside. And one always experiences that those who proceed in such a manner are never quite happy about the results, for the mice invariably reappear. It is quite true that no method can be entirely effective on one estate only; it can however be shown to be partially effective on a single estate and then one must rely on human intelligence in inducing one's neighbours to follow the same method. For in the future, men will need to rely to a far greater extent upon reason and common sense than on police or government regulations. That will be a first real step forward in our social life.

Not let us imagine the following. We catch a fairly young field-mouse and skin it. The main thing is to get this skin when Venus is in the sign Scorpio. Those old fellows of the Middle Ages with their instinctive wisdom were not fools after all. They pretended that in passing from the plant to the animal kingdom, we come upon what they called the zodiac, which means “animal circle.” Indeed, if one wants to exercise an influence in the plant kingdom, one can content oneself with the use of planetary forces. But with animals this is not enough. Here the fixed stars have to be taken into account, especially those fixed stars which belong to the signs of the Zodiac. In the plant kingdom, the influence of the Moon is practically sufficient to call forth the powers of reproduction. In the animal kingdom, the Moon's influence must be strengthened by that of Venus. Indeed, in this case the influence of the Moon need not be specially taken into account because the animal kingdom has retained within itself Moon forces (from past epochs, Ed.) and has thus emancipated itself from the actual Moon. In the animal kingdom, lunar forces are at work even when the Moon is not at the full. The animal bears the full Moon within itself and is therefore emancipated from time conditions. There is, however, a dependence as regards the other planetary influences. We have to undertake something quite definite with the skins of the mice in connection with these. The skin must be secured at the time when Venus stands in the sign of Scorpio, then burned and the ash and any residue carefully collected (several skins must be burnt to procure a sufficient quantity of ash). Now because the skins have been burnt when Venus stood in Scorpio, that which is contained in these ashes is the negative power to the power of reproduction in the field-mouse. If, in certain districts, difficulties present themselves, a more homoeopathic method can be adopted to procure this pepper-like substance. If, however, it has been obtained during the high conjunction of Venus and Scorpio it will, when sprinkled on your fields, prove to be a means of keeping field-mice away. No doubt they are cheeky little creatures and are apt to come back again if “pepperless” areas still remain in the neighbourhood. In such areas, the mice will again settle down. But if the method is applied throughout the neighbourhood, it certainly brings about a radical result.

I believe a certain pleasure could be derived from putting such methods into practice. I believe that agriculture would acquire a sort of savour as of a well-seasoned dish. Moreover, we take into account here the workings of the stars without the least concession to superstition. Superstition arises only when an earlier knowledge is no longer understood. We do not revive superstitious beliefs. We must start from insight, but an insight which has been won in a spiritual way and not by physical methods.

This, then, is the way to deal with field-mice and any other pests from among the higher animals. Mice, being rodents, belong to the higher animals. But this method will be of no use in attacking insects, for these come under completely different cosmic influences, as do all the lower animals as compared with the higher. Now I am going .to tread on very thin ice and take an example very near home. I am going to talk about the nematode of the beetroot. The outer signs of this disease are a swelling of root fibres and limpness of the leaves in the morning. Now we must clearly realise the following facts: The leaves, the middle part of the plant which undergo these changes, absorb cosmic influences that come from the surrounding air, whereas the roots absorb the forces which have entered into the earth and are reflected upwards into the plant. What, then, takes place when the nematode occurs? It is this: The process of absorption which should actually reside in the region of the leaves has been pressed downwards and embraces the roots.

Thus, if this (Diagram No. 10) represents the earth level, and this the plant, then in the plant infested with the nematode the forces which should be active above the horizontal line are actually at work below it. What happens is that certain cosmic forces slide down to a deeper level; hence the change in the external appearance of the plant. But this also makes it possible for the parasite to obtain under the soil (which is its proper habitat) those cosmic forces which it must have to sustain it (the nematode is a wire-like worm). Otherwise it would be forced to seek for these forces in the region of the leaves; this, however, it cannot do as the soil is its proper environment. Some, indeed all, living beings can only live within certain limits of existence. Just try to live in an atmosphere 70 degrees above or 70 degrees below zero and you will see what will happen. You are constituted to live in a certain temperature, neither above nor below it. The nematode is in the same position. It cannot live without earth and without the presence of certain cosmic forces brought down into it. Without these two conditions, it would die Out.

Every living being is subject to quite definite conditions. And for the particular beings with which we are dealing, it is important that cosmic forces should enter the earth, forces which would ordinarily display themselves only in the atmosphere around the earth. Actually, the workings of these forces have a four-year rhythm. Now in the case of the nematode, we have something very abnormal. If one enquires into these forces, one finds that they are the same as those at work on the cockchafer grubs; and as those, too, which bestow on the earth the faculty of bringing the seed potato to development. Cockchafer grubs as well as seed potatoes are bred by the same forces, and these forces recur every four years. This four-yearly cycle is what must be taken into account not with regard to the nematode but with regard to the steps we take to combat it.

In this case, the procedure is not to take any particular part of the animal as we did with the field-mouse, but the whole animal must be taken. This insect which attacks the roots of the plant is as a whole a product of cosmic influences, needing the soil only as a medium. Thus, the whole insect must be burnt. That is the best and quickest method. A more thorough way might be to allow it to decay, but then it would be difficult to collect the remains, and practically the same result can be obtained by burning the whole insect. The insect can be collected and kept alive and then burnt at the proper time. The incineration must take place when the Sun is in the constellation of the Bull (i.e., the constellation exactly opposite to that which was mentioned in connection with Venus and the burning of the mice skins). For this insect world is closely related to the forces that are developed as the Sun, on its path through the Zodiac, passes from the sign of the Water-carrier through the Fishes to the Ram and the Twins and on to the Crab. In the sign of the Crab the influence becomes quite weak; it is weak, too, in the sign of the Water-carrier. As the Sun goes through these signs [The signs referred to are: Water-carrier, Goat, Fishes, Scorpion, Scales, Virgin, Leo and Crab, the first and last being the weakest.] it radiates those forces which are connected with the insect world.

We do not realise what a very highly specialised being the Sun is. It is by no means the same when, in the course of the, year or the day, it shines on to the earth from, say, the Bull as it is when it shines from e.g. the Crab. In each case, it is different: so that it is nonsense strictly speaking (though pardonable nonsense) to speak of the Sun in general. One should really speak of the Ram-sun, the Bull-sun, the Crab-sun, the Lion-sun, etc. The Sun is always a different being according to the combined effect of its daily and yearly course, as determined by its position in relation to the vernal point.

If, then, you prepare insect-pepper in the way I have described and scatter it over a field of turnips, the nematodes will gradually, become “faint.” After the fourth year, they will have completely faded away. They cannot live—they shun life if they are to inhabit a soil that has been “peppered” in this way.

Thus, there re-emerges in a remarkable way what used to be called the “Wisdom of the Stars.” Modern astronomy only serves as a means of mathematical orientation, and cannot really be put to any other use. But astronomy was not always like this; the stars once served as a guide for the labours and activities of life on earth. This, science has now been completely lost. But to the extent to which we can develop a new science, we have the possibility of controlling those animals and insects which become a nuisance. It all depends on our capacity to be, as it were, on such intimate terms with the earth that we come to know her capacity for bringing forth plants, especially through the power or lunar and water influences. But the forces in every plant and in every other being carry in themselves the germ of their own destruction. Thus, just as on the one hand water is a promoter of fruitfulness, so on the other hand fire is the destroyer of fruitfulness. It consumes it. And if instead of treating plants with water, which is the usual way of making' them fruitful, you treat them with fire applied in an appropriate manner, then you are performing within the economy of Nature an act of annihilation. This is the point to be borne in mind: a seed develops fruitfulness and spreads it abroad through the Moon-saturated water. It also develops destructive forces through the Moon saturated fire, or, strictly speaking, as we saw in our last example, through cosmically-saturated fire. There is nothing very strange about this: we are reckoning here with enormous forces of expansion and have given exact indications of how time co-operates; for the seminal power is notably active in expanding, and so if it is destroyed, it also works very far afield. The force of expansion is peculiar to the seed. And the burnt substance which because of its appearance we called pepper, also possesses the tendency to spread its power abroad.

There remains for us one more subject to consider: the so-called plant diseases. Actually, this is not the right word to use. The abnormal processes in plants to which it refers are not “diseases” in the same sense as are those illnesses which afflict animals. When we come later on to discuss the animal kingdom, we shall see this difference more clearly. Above all, they are not processes such as take place in a sick human being. For actual disease is not possible without the presence of an astral body. In man and animals, the astral body is connected with the physical body through the etheric body and a certain connection is the normal state. Sometimes, however, the connection between the astral body and the physical body (or one of the physical organs) is closer than would normally be the case; so if the etheric body does not form a proper “cushion” between them, the astral intrudes itself too strongly into the physical body. It is from this that most diseases arise.

Now the plant does not actually possess an astral body of its own. It does not therefore suffer from the specific forms of disease that occur in men and animals. This is the first point. The next point is to ascertain what actually causes the plant to be diseased. Now, from everything I have said on this subject, you will have gathered that the soil immediately surrounding a plant has a definite life of its own. These life forces are there and with them all kinds of forces of growth and tender forces of propagation not strong enough to produce the plant form itself, but still waiting with a certain intensity; and in addition, all the forces working in the soil under the influence of the Moon and mediated through water. Thus, certain important connections emerge.

In the first place, you have the earth, the earth saturated with water. Then you have the moon. The moonbeams, as they stream into the earth, awaken it to a certain degree of life, they arouse “waves” and weavings in the earth's etheric element. The moon can do this more easily when the earth is permeated with water, less easily when the earth is dry. Thus, the water acts only as a mediator. What has to be quickened is the earth itself, the solid mineral element. Water, too, is something mineral. There is no sharp boundary, of course. In any case, we must have lunar influences at work in the earth. Now these lunar influences can become too strong. Indeed, this may happen in a very simple manner. Consider what happens when a very wet spring follows upon a very wet winter. The lunar force enters too strongly into the earth, which thus becomes too much alive.” I will indicate this by red dots. (See Diagram No. 11). Thus, if the red dots were not here, i.e. if the earth were not too. strongly vitalised by the moon, the plants growing upon it would follow the normal development from seed to fruit; there would be just the right amount of lunar force distributed in the earth to work upwards and produce the requisite fruit-seed. But let us suppose that the lunar influence, is too strong—that the earth is too powerfully vitalised—then the forces working upwards become too strong, and what should happen in the seed formation occurs earlier. Through their very intensity, the forces do not proceed far enough to reach the higher parts of the plant, but become active earlier and at a lower level. The lunar influence has the result that there is not sufficient strength for seed formation. The seed receives a certain portion of the decaying life, and this decaying life forms another level above the soil level. This new level is not soil, but the same influences are at work there. The result is that the seed of the plant, the upper part of the plant becomes a kind of soil for other organisms; parasites and fungoid formations appear in it. It is in this way that blights and similar ills make their appearance in the plant. It is through a too strong working of the moon that forces working upward from the earth are prevented from reaching their proper height. The powers of fertilisation and fructification depend entirely upon a normal amount of lunar influence. It is a curious fact that abnormal developments should be caused not by a weakening but by an increase of lunar forces. Speculation might well lead to the opposite conclusion. Looking at it in the right way shows that the matter is as I have presented it. What, then, have we to do? We have to relieve the earth of the excess of lunar forces in it. It is possible to relieve the earth in this way. We shall have to discover something which will rob the water of its power as a mediator and restore to the earth more of its earthiness, so that it does not take up an excess of lunar forces from the water. This is done by making fairly concentrated brew (or tea) of equisetum arvense (horse-tail), diluting it and using it as a liquid manure on the fields for the purpose of fighting blight and similar plant diseases. Here again only small quantities are required; a homeopathic dose is generally sufficient. As you will have realised, this is precisely where one sees how one department of life affects another. If, without indulging in undue speculation, we realise the noteworthy effects produced by equisetum arvense upon the human organism by affecting the function of the kidneys we shall have, as it were, a standard by which to estimate what this plant can achieve when it has been transformed into liquid manure, and we shall realise how extensive its effects may be when even quite a small quantity is sprinkled about without the help of any special instrument. We shall realise that equisetum is a first-rate remedy. Not literally a remedy, since plants cannot really be ill. It is not so much a healing process as a process exactly opposite to that described above.

Thus, if one gains an inside knowledge of the workings of Nature in her different fields, we can actually gain control over the processes of growth; and we shall see later that this also applies to the forces of growth in animals both in normal and abnormal conditions. Thus, we arrive at an actual science. For to experiment and to proceed by trial and error as people do nowadays is not true science; it is merely collecting data and isolated facts. True science does not begin until one has gained control of the forces at work. Now plants and animals and even the parasites in plants cannot be understood by them-, selves. Remember what I said in the first lecture about the magnetic needle and the folly of regarding the fact of its always pointing to the North as being caused by something in the needle itself. No one believes this. We take the earth as a whole and assign to it a magnetic North pole and a magnetic South pole. In the same way, when we want to explain the plant we must bring into question not only plant, animal and human life, but the whole universe. For life comes from the whole of the universe, not only from the earth. Nature is a unity and her forces are at work from all sides. He who can keep his mind open to the manifest working of these forces will understand her. But what does the scientist do today? He takes a little plate, lays a preparation upon it, isolates it very carefully and then watches. Everything that could work upon the substance is shut off. This is called “Microscopic Investigation.” It is really the opposite procedure to that which should be adopted in order to gain understanding of the expanses of the world. Not content with shutting himself up in a room, the scientist actually shuts himself up inside these brass tubes and leaves the whole of Nature outside. Nothing, he maintains, must be kept under observation except the one object in question. In this way, we have yielded more and more ground to the microscope. When, however, we find a way back to the macrocosm, then we shall begin to understand Nature and many other things as well.

Yesterday we tried to acquire a certain insight into what is called the path out into the Macrocosm, into the Great World, in contrast to what has been said in the previous lectures about the mystical path, the path into the Microcosm.

The ascent into the Macrocosm leads the candidate for Initiation first of all into what has been called in Spiritual Science the Elementary World; then he rises into the World of Spirit, then into the World of Reason and finally into a still higher world which we will call the World of Archetypal Images (or Archetypes).¹ It was said that there are no longer any really adequate expressions for these worlds, for modern language has none and the earlier German word Vernunft (reason) is now used in a more trivial sense for something that has significance in the world of the senses only. Hence the old expression “Reason” used for the world above the so-called “World of Spirit” might easily be misunderstood.

Whatever was said in the last lecture could be no more than a sketch; it would of course be possible to speak of these worlds not merely for hours but for many months, whereas all that is possible here is to clarify our ideas of them as best we may. One other point shall now be mentioned, namely, that when a man rises in the way indicated yesterday into the Elementary World where he has a true perception of what are usually called the “Elements”—earth, water, air and fire—he also becomes aware that his own corporeality—including the higher members—is built out of this Elementary World. He also acquires knowledge of something else, namely, that the outer and inner aspects of the Elementary World differ somewhat from each other. Studying our own being with ordinary, normal human consciousness and not with clairvoyance, we find certain qualities which belong partly to our soul and partly to our outer constitution; these are the qualities of our temperament. We classify them as the melancholic, the phlegmatic, the sanguine and the choleric.

It was said yesterday that when a man passes into the Macrocosm he does not feel as if he were confronting objects as in physical existence but as if he were within every object in the Elementary World; he feels united with it. When we look at a physical object, we say: “The object is there; we are here.” And we remain sane and reasonable beings in the physical world as long as we can distinguish ourselves with our Egohood quite clearly from objects and other beings. But as soon as we penetrate into the Elementary World this distinction becomes essentially more difficult because, to begin with, we merge into the facts and objects and beings of that world. This was referred to yesterday in connection especially with the element of fire. We said that the fire of the Elementary World is not physical fire but something that can be compared with inner warmth of soul, inner fire of soul, although it is not quite the same. When we become aware of fire in the Elementary World it blends with us, we feel at one with it, within it. This feeling of oneness may also arise in the case of the other elements; the element “earth” is in a certain respect an exception. In the Elementary World what is called “earth” is something we cannot approach, something that repels us.

Now strangely enough, there exists in the Elementary World a mysterious relationship between the aforesaid four elements and the four temperaments, between the melancholic temperament and the element of “earth”, between the phlegmatic temperament and the element of “water”, between the sanguine temperament and the element of “air”, and between the choleric temperament and the element of “fire”. This relationship is expressed in the fact that the choleric man has a stronger inclination to merge with beings living in the “fire” of the Elementary World than with the others; the sanguine man is more inclined to merge with the beings living in the element of “air”; the phlegmatic man with the beings living in the element of “water”; and the melancholic man with the beings living in the element of “earth”. Thus different factors play a part in the experiences of the Elementary World. This helps us to realise that different people may give entirely different accounts of the Elementary World, and none of them need be quite wrong if he is relating his own experiences.

Anyone versed in these matters will know that when a man with a melancholic temperament describes the Elementary World in his own particular way, saying that there is so much that repels him, this is quite natural; for his temperament has a hidden kinship with everything earthy in the Elementary World and he overlooks all the rest. The choleric man will speak of how fiery everything appears, for to him it all glows in the elemental fire. You need not therefore feel any surprise if there is considerable variation in accounts of the Elementary World given by people possessed of a lower form of clairvoyance, for very exact self-knowledge is necessary before it is possible to describe that world as it really is. If a man knows to what degree his temperament is choleric or melancholic, he knows why the Elementary World reveals itself in the form it does, and then this self-knowledge impels him to divert his attention from the things with which, because of his natural make-up, he has the greatest kinship.

It is now possible for him to acquire concepts of what is called in Spiritual Science, true self-knowledge. This self-knowledge presupposes that we are able as it were to slip out of ourselves and look at our own being as though it were a complete Stranger, and that is by no means easy. It is relatively easy to acquire knowledge of soul-qualities which we have made our own, but to gain clear insight into the temperaments which work right down into the bodily nature, is difficult. Most people in life always consider themselves in the right. It is a very general egoistic attitude and need not be criticised too severely, for it is a perfectly natural tendency in human beings. How far would a man get in ordinary life if he had not this quality of firm self-confidence? But all the qualities that belong to his temperament go to form it.

To be detached from a particular temperament is extremely difficult, and we need much self-training if we are to learn to confront ourselves objectively. Every genuine spiritual investigator will say that no particular degree of maturity is any help in penetrating into the spiritual world if a man is incapable of accepting the fundamental principle that he can reach the truth only by ignoring his own opinion. He must be able to regard his own opinion as something of which he may possibly say: ‘I will ask myself at what period of life I formed this or that definite opinion’—let us suppose, for example, that it had a particular political trend. Before such a man can penetrate into the higher world he must be able to put this question to himself quite objectively: ‘What is it in life that has given my thought this particular trend? Would my thinking have been different if karma had assigned me to some other situation in life?’

If we can put this question to ourselves over and over again while trying to picture how our present personality has been produced, it becomes possible for us to take the first step towards emerging from the self. Otherwise we remain permanently enclosed within ourselves. But in the Macrocosm it is not as easy to be outside things as it is in the physical world. In the physical world we stand outside a rose-bush, for example, because of its natural make-up; but in the Elementary World we grow right into the things there, identify ourselves with them. If we are incapable of distinguishing ourselves from the things while we are actually within them, we can never understand conditions in that world. Our choleric temperament, for example, becomes merged in the element of fire. And we can no longer distinguish between what is flowing from us into a being of the Elementary World or from that being into us unless we have learned how to do so. We must therefore first learn how to be within a being and yet to distinguish our own identity from it.

There is only one being who can help us here, namely, our own. If we gradually succeed in judging ourselves as in ordinary life we judge another person, then we are on the right path. Now what is it that distinguishes a judgment about oneself from a judgment about another? We usually think that we ourselves are in the right and that the other person, if he holds a contrary opinion, is wrong. This is what happens in the ordinary way. But there is nothing more useful than to begin to train ourselves by saying: ‘I have this opinion, the other person has a different one. I will adopt the standpoint that his opinion is just as sound and valuable as my own.’—This is the kind of self-training that makes it possible for us to carry into the Elementary World the habit that enables us to distinguish ourselves from the things there, although we are within them.

Certain subtleties in our experiences are necessary if we are to ascend consciously into the higher worlds. This example too shows what justification there was for saying in the lecture yesterday that when a man ascends into the Macrocosm he always faces the danger of losing his Ego. In ordinary life the Ego is nothing but the aggregate of opinions and feelings connected with our personality and most people will find that it is exceedingly difficult to think, to feel or to will anything, once they have taken leave of what life has made of them. It is accordingly very important before attempting an ascent into the higher worlds to be acquainted with what spiritual investigation has already brought to light. It is therefore emphasised over and over again that nobody who has had experience in this domain will ever help to lead another into the higher worlds until the latter has grasped through his reason, through his ordinary, healthy faculty of judgment, that what Spiritual Science states is not nonsense. It is quite possible to form a sound judgment about the findings of spiritual investigation. Although it is not possible to investigate personally in the spiritual worlds without the vision of the seer, a healthy judgment can be formed as to the correctness or incorrectness of what is communicated by those who are able to see. On this basis we can study life and observe whether the statements made by the spiritual investigator make it more intelligible. If they do, then they can be assumed to be correct.

Such judgments will always have one peculiarity, namely, that we shall always, by holding them, transcend ordinary human ways of thinking in a certain respect. If we speak with unprejudiced minds our ordinary sympathies and antipathies are discarded and we shall find ourselves able to be in harmony even with people who hold the most contrary opinions. In this way we transcend the ordinary way of forming human opinions. Thus in Spiritual Science we gain something which we retain even when we have relinquished our ordinary opinions and which ensures that our Ego is not immediately lost when we enter the higher world for the first time. For the Ego is not lost when it is able to be active, when it can think and feel; it is only when thinking, feeling and perception cease that we have lost our bearings altogether. Thus a certain store of spiritual-scientific knowledge protects us from losing our Ego.

The loss of the Ego on entering the spiritual world would, however, have other consequences in many cases. We come here to something that must be briefly mentioned. These consequences often show themselves in ordinary life. It is important to know about them when describing the paths that can lead into the spiritual worlds.

The spiritual investigator must not be in any sense a dreamer, a visionary. He must move with inner assurance and vigour in the spiritual world as an intelligent man does in the physical world. Any nebulosity or lack of clarity would be dangerous on entering the higher worlds. It is therefore so very essential to acquire a sound judgment about the things of normal, everyday life. At the present time especially there are factors in everyday life which could be highly obstructive on entering the spiritual world if no heed were paid to them. If we reflect about our life and about influences that have affected us from birth onwards, we shall recall many things even by a superficial retrospect, but we shall also have to admit that very much has sunk into oblivion. We shall have to admit too that we have no clear or definite consciousness of influences that had a share in forming our character and educating us.

Would anyone refuse to admit that many influences have been forgotten? We shall not deny having had some experience just because it is not now present in our consciousness. Why do we forget such influences upon our lives? It is because with each new day, life brings something new into our path, and if we were obliged to retain every experience we should finally be quite unable to cope with life and its demands. I have shown you how even in the normal course of life our experiences finally coalesce into faculties. Whatever would it be like if every time we took up a pen we were obliged to relive the experiences we had when learning to write! These past experiences have rightly fallen into oblivion and it is well for us that this has been so.

‘Forgetting’ is therefore something that plays an important part in human life. There are experiences which it is desirable for us to have undergone but which then fade away from our consciousness. Innumerable impressions-particularly those of early childhood-sink into oblivion, are no longer in our consciousness because life has caused us to forget them. Life has obliterated them because otherwise we should be unable to cope with its demands. It is good that we are not obliged to drag everything along with us. But in spite of being forgotten, these impressions may still be working in us. There may be impressions which, although they have vanished from our memory and we know nothing of them, are nevertheless driving forces in our life of soul. They may influence our soul-life so unfavourably that it is shattered and has a detrimental effect even on the body. Many pathological states, nervous conditions, hysteria and so forth, can be understood when it is known that the range of the conscious life does not represent the full extent of the soul's life. Anyone with a knowledge of human nature may often be able to call the attention of a person who tells him of innumerable things that make life difficult, to something that he has entirely forgotten but is nevertheless affecting his life of soul. There are ‘islands’ in the life of soul, unlike those we come across in the sea, where we have solid ground beneath us. But when in his life of soul a man comes across such an island which originates from unconsciousness influences, he may be exposed to all sorts of dangers. In ordinary life these islands can most easily be avoided when a man endeavours from a later point in his life to realise what has been affecting him, so that he is able to form a judgment of the experiences in question. It has a very strong healing effect if he can be given a world-outlook enabling him to understand these islands in the soul and to cope with them. If a human soul were led unprepared to these islands it would be thrown into utter confusion; but if a person is helped to understand his own being, it is easier for him to deal with them. The more understanding we can introduce into our conscious life, the better it is for our everyday existence.

Not only these unconscious islands in the soul, but many things of the kind confront one who enters into the Macrocosm. As we have heard, man enters into the Macrocosm every night when he goes to sleep but complete oblivion envelops whatever he might experience there. Among the many experiences he might have if he were to enter the Macrocosm consciously, would be the experience of himself. He himself would be there within the Macrocosm. He has around him spiritual beings and spiritual facts and he also has an objective view of himself. He can compare himself with the macrocosmic world and become aware of his own shortcomings, his own immaturity. This experience affords abundant opportunity for him to lose his self-assurance, his self-confidence. His best safeguard against such loss of self-assurance is for entry into the higher world to have been preceded by inner preparation, leading towards a mature realisation that imperfect as he now is, there is always the possibility of acquiring faculties that will enable him to grow into the higher world. He must train himself to realise his imperfections and he must also be able to sustain the vision of what he may become after overcoming these imperfections and acquiring the qualities he now lacks. This is a feeling which must come to the human soul when the threshold leading into the Macrocosm is crossed consciously. A man must learn to see himself as an imperfect being, to endure the realisation: When I look back over my present life and into my previous incarnations, I see that it is these which have made me what I am.—But he must also be able to perceive not only this figure of himself but also another figure which says to him: If you now work at yourself, if you do your utmost to develop the germinal qualities lying in your deeper nature, then you can become a being such as the one standing beside you as an ideal at which you can look without being overcome by awe or discouragement.

This realisation is possible only if we have trained ourselves to overcome life's difficulties. But if, before entering into the Macrocosm, we have taken care to acquire in the physical world the strength to overcome obstacles, to welcome pain for the sake of gaining strength, then we have steeled ourselves to get the better of hindrances and from that moment we can say to ourselves: Whatever may happen to you, whatever may confront you in this spiritual world you will come through, for you will develop ever more strongly the qualities you have already acquired for the conquest of obstacles.

Anyone who has prepared himself in such a way has a very definite experience when he enters the Elementary World. We shall understand this experience if we remind ourselves again that the choleric temperament is akin to the element of fire, the sanguine to the element of air, the phlegmatic to the element of water and the melancholic to the element of earth. When a man passes into the Elementary World, the beings of that world confront him in the form that corresponds with his own temperament. Thus choleric qualities confront him as if aglow in the element of fire, and so on. Because of his training it will then become evident that the strength of soul he has already developed triumphs over all obstacles and is also akin to a power in the World of Spirit. This power is related to that figure which, gathered together from all the four elements, confronts him in the World of Spirit in such a way that he beholds himself calmly and quietly as an objective being. The outcome of the resolve in his soul to overcome all imperfections is that this imperfect “double” stands before him but that the sight does not have the disturbing or shattering effect it would otherwise have upon him. In everyday life we are protected from this, for every night on going to sleep we should be confronted by this imperfect being and be overwhelmed by the sight if consciousness did not cease. But there would also be before us that other great figure who shows us what we can become and what we ought to be. For this reason consciousness is extinguished when we go to sleep. But if we acquire the maturity to say to ourselves: You will overcome all obstacles—then the veil that falls over the soul on going to sleep, is lifted. The veil becomes thinner and thinner and finally there stands before us—in such a way that we can now endure it—the form that is a likeness of ourselves as we are, and by its side we become aware of the other figure who shows us what we can become by working at our development. This figure reveals itself in all its strength, splendour and glory. At this moment we know that the reason why this figure has such a shattering effect is that we are not, but ought to be, like it, and that we can acquire the right attitude only when we can endure this spectacle. To have this experience means to pass the “Greater Guardian of the Threshold.” It is this Greater Guardian of the Threshold who effaces consciousness when we go to sleep in the ordinary way. He shows us what is lacking in us when we try to enter into the Macrocosm, and what we must make of ourselves in order to be able, little by little, to grow into that world.

It is so necessary for the men of our time to form a clear idea of these things, yet they resist it. In this respect our present age is involved in a process of transition. In theory, many people will acknowledge that they are imperfect beings, but usually they do not get beyond the theory.

In the spiritual life of today, if you examine for yourselves, you will everywhere find evidence of an attitude that is entirely opposed to the one of which we have spoken. Everywhere you will hear this or that opinion expressed about things in the world. Again and again you will be able to read and hear it said: “One” can know this, “one” cannot know that.—How often we encounter this little word “one” in modern writings! In this word man has set a limit to his knowledge which he believes he is unable to overstep. Whenever a person uses this little word “one” in such a way, it shows that he is incapable of grasping the concept of true human knowledge. At no moment of life should it be said that “one” can or cannot know such-and-such a thing, but rather that “we” can know only as much as is consonant with our faculties and present state of development; and that when we have reached a higher level we shall know more. Anyone who speaks about limits of knowledge shows himself to be a person who is incapable of grasping even the conception of self-knowledge, for otherwise he would understand that all of us are beings capable of development and so are able to acquire knowledge corresponding to the measure of our faculties at that particular time.

The spiritual investigator will accustom himself, in reading modern literature, to substitute “he” for “one”. For it is the writer in question who is saying this or that. Thereby the writer betrays how much he knows; but it begins to become doubtful when the writer goes further and actually puts into practice what he writes. Theories are dangerous only when put into practice. For example, if such a writer says: I know what it is possible for a man to apprehend and grasp so I need do nothing in order to make progress ... then he is simply putting obstacles along the path, is blocking his own development. There are, in fact, very many such people today. It belongs to the whole mode of feeling of human beings today that they actually like to make the veil constantly darker over the world which cannot be entered in the right way without passing that mighty figure, the Greater Guardian of the Threshold. This mighty Guardian denies us entrance unless we take this sacred vow: Knowing well how imperfect we are, we will never cease striving to become more and more perfect.—Only with this impulse is it permissible for anyone to pass into the Macrocosm. Whoever has not sufficient strength of will to continue working at himself must set about acquiring it.

That is the necessary counterpart to self-knowledge. We must acquire self-knowledge, but it would remain a sterile achievement unless it were linked with the will for self-perfecting. Through the ages there resounds the ancient Apollonian saying: “Know thyself!” That is true and right, but something more must be added to it. As was said yesterday, really erroneous ideas are not absolutely catastrophic because life itself corrects them; but one-sided truths, half-truths, present much greater hindrances. The call for self-knowledge must also be a call for constant self-perfecting. If we take this vow to our higher self we can confidently and without danger venture into the Macrocosm, for then we shall gradually learn to find our bearings in the labyrinth that inevitably confronts us.

We have now heard how our own nature is related to the Elementary World—we have also found that our temperaments are related to what confronts us in that world. But there is still something else in the Elementary World to which qualities of soul other than the temperaments are related. Within us there is that which is also outside us, for we have been formed out of the world that surrounds us.

From what can be perceived in the physical world (temperament) we must move forward to the Elementary or Elemental World, and then ascend to the World of Spirit. Again we can pass from there into a still higher world and of this we will speak briefly. As human beings we pass from incarnation to incarnation. If in this present incarnation we are melancholic, we can say to ourselves that in another incarnation—either in the past or in the future—we may have had or shall have a sanguine temperament. The one-sidedness of each temperament will be balanced in the different incarnations. Here we have arrived at the idea that we, as beings, are after all something more than appears, that even though now we may be melancholic, we are something else as well. As the same being we may have been choleric in an earlier life and may become sanguine in a following one. Our whole being is not contained in particular temperamental traits. There is something else as well. When a clairvoyant, observing someone in the Elementary World, sees him as a melancholic, he must say to himself: that is a transitory manifestation, it is merely the manifestation of one incarnation. The person who now, as a melancholic type, represents the element of earth, will in another incarnation represent, as a sanguine type, the element of air, or, as a choleric, the element of fire. Melancholics, with their tendency to introspective brooding, repel us when viewed from the vantage-point of the Elementary World; cholerics appear as if they were spreading flames of fire—as an elemental force, of course, not physical fire.

To avoid misunderstanding I must here mention that in manuals on Theosophy, the Elementary World is usually called the Astral World; what we call the World of Spirit in there called the lower sphere of Devachan-Lower Devachan. What is there called the higher sphere of Devachan—Arupa-Devachan—is here called the World of Reason.

When we pass from the World of Spirit into the World of Reason we meet with something similar to what has already been experienced if we are revealed to ourselves as beings who are mastering our temperaments and developing balance from one life to another. Thus do we approach the boundary of the World of Spirit. When we reach it we find spiritual facts and Beings expressed as if in a cosmic clock through the movements of the planets. The Beings are expressed in the constellations of the Zodiac, the facts in the planets. But these analogies do not take us very far; we must pass on to the Beings themselves—the Hierarchies.

Now we should be unable to form any conception of the still higher worlds unless with clairvoyant consciousness we were to pass on to the Beings themselves-the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, and so on.-In one incarnation a man may have a melancholic temperament, in another a sanguine temperament. His real being is more than either. His real being breaks through such classifications. If we are now clear in our minds that the Beings we designate as Seraphim, Cherubim, Spirits of Will, Thrones, and so forth, and who express themselves in physical space in the constellations of the Zodiac—if we are clear that these Beings are more than their names designate, then we are beginning to form a true concept of this upper boundary of the Macrocosm. A Being who confronts us in some particular clairvoyant experience, let us say as a Spirit of Wisdom, does not always remain at the same stage and therefore cannot always be denoted by the same name. For just as man develops, so do these Beings develop through different stages; hence they must be called now by one name, now by another. The Beings develop from stage to stage. The names may roughly be thought of as designations of offices. If we speak of Spirits of Will or of Spirits of Wisdom, it is rather as if here on Earth we were speaking of a councilor, privy councilor, or the like; the man may have been that to begin with and then something else. In the spiritual Hierarchies the same Being might at one time have been a Spirit of Wisdom, at another time a Spirit of Will, and so on, because the Beings develop through stages, through various ranks. As long as we remain in the World of Spirit they reveal themselves as Seraphim or Cherubim or of whatever rank it may be. But from the moment we become acquainted with the developing Being, from the moment we proceed beyond the title of office to a conception of the actual Being himself, we have ascended into a still higher realm, into the World of Reason (Vernunftreich). The forces of this world are the builders of man's organ of intelligence.

To reach a certain stage of knowledge it is always necessary to distinguish between the developing Beings themselves and their nature at a particular stage of their evolution. This must be done both in the case of Beings at an advanced stage of development who appear on Earth and of those who are only to be seen by clairvoyance in the World of Spirit.

We will take the example of Buddha, who lived, as you know, in the sixth century BC. Anyone who is versed in this subject must learn to distinguish between the Being who was called “Buddha” at that time and the designation of the office of Buddha. Previously, in his earlier incarnations, this Being was a Bodhisattva and only then, in his incarnation in the sixth century BC., did he rise to the rank of Buddhahood. Yet in the earlier periods of time he was the same Being who later became Gautama Buddha. But this Being evolved to further stages in such a way that for certain reasons it was no longer necessary for him to incarnate as a man of flesh. He lived on in another form. As a Bodhisattva he was associated for many millennia with Earth-evolution, then he became Buddha, and in that incarnation reached a stage from which he no longer needed to descend into incarnation in a body of flesh.² He is now a sublime Being visible only in the spiritual world to the eyes of a seer. This shows the distinction that must be made between the designation, “Buddha” and the Being who held the office of Buddha. Similarly, distinction must be made between the names we given to the Hierarchies and the Beings themselves, for they too ascend in rank—let us say from the rank of Thrones to the ranks of Cherubim and Seraphim.

Thus at the boundary of the World of Spirit, certain Beings touch this boundary from above and assume certain qualities; certain functions must be attributed to them. But when we ascend to a still higher world these Beings are revealed to us now in process of living development. It is similar to what happens to man in the physical world in the course of his incarnations. Just as we only really come to know a man by following him from one incarnation to another instead of taking account merely of his present incarnation, so do we only come to know the lofty spiritual Beings if we are able to look beyond what their deeds express, to the Beings themselves. To associate with spiritual Beings and to witness their evolution means to live in the World of Reason.

As was indicated yesterday, above the World of Reason there is a yet higher world, whence come the forces which enable us actually to pass from normal consciousness into clairvoyant consciousness that is equipped with eyes and ears of spirit. Why, then, should it be surprising to say that these qualities and faculties originate in worlds higher than the World of Spirit or even than the World of Reason? When clairvoyant consciousness awakens in a man, he becomes in actual fact a participator in the higher worlds. No wonder, then, that the forces for awakening this clairvoyant consciousness come from a world whence certain higher spiritual Beings themselves derive their forces. We derive our forces from the Elementary World, the World of Spirit, the World of Reason. If these worlds are to be transcended the forces for the ascent must be derived from even higher spheres.

It will now be our task to speak of the first world revealed to man when clairvoyant consciousness awakens in him. It is the world of Imagination. We shall show that the forces which form the organs in man for Imaginative consciousness come from the World of Archetypal Images, just as the forces from the World of Reason are those which enable man on the physical plane to be capable of intelligent judgment. Our next task will be to explain the connection between the first stage of higher knowledge and the spiritual World of Archetypal Images. Then we shall proceed to describe the worlds of Inspiration and Intuition and to show how in line with our modern culture, man can grow into the higher worlds, how he can become a citizen of those worlds in which he is the lowest being just as he is the highest being in the kingdoms surrounding him here on the physical plane. Here he looks downwards to plants, animals, minerals; in yonder worlds he can look upwards to Beings above him. As he pursues his path into the Macrocosm with newly awakened faculties, new Beings and realities enter perpetually into his ken.

• 1. See Notes on terminology at the end of the lectures.
• 2. See Dr. Steiner's Lecture-Course on the Gospel of St. Luke, notably lectures 3 to 7; also, Man in the Light of Occultism, Philosophy and Theosophy, notably lecture 9 lecture 10.

We have been considering the human being in relation to the cosmos. To people who do not know anything beyond the present-day way of looking at things it must seem rather absurd to hear of a link being made between the essential nature of the human being and the essential nature of the cosmos, and I am certain that the majority of people will consider this to be quite unscientific. Yet when we think of the spiritual streams of today there is an urgent need to draw attention to exactly the kind of thing we have been considering and to do so quite energetically. For these things may fairly be said to be entirely in line with modern thinking. The problem is, modern thinkers are rejecting them with great vehemence, which is doing untold harm to the life of mind and spirit.

To begin with, we’ll sum up what I have been presenting in recent lectures. We have been considering the human form as the outcome of something the causes of which must be looked for among the fixed stars, and particularly the constellations of the zodiac as their representatives. We found that to understand the human form we must first of all look to the zodiac; its twelve constellations make it possible for us to understand the human form in every detail.

To understand the levels of human life we must look to the planetary system for the elements which will enable us to do so.

We then moved on from understanding the levels of life to understanding the soul principle. There we had to go to the human being himself, to the form he has been given and to that which lives in him. We also looked at the thinking, feeling and will aspects of the inner life in relation to the human form and the levels of life. Yesterday we attempted to look for the element of mind and spirit in the inner life. With the soul principle we move from the cosmic periphery to life on earth as such—that is, if we consider the soul principle during life between birth and death. We are able to approach it by considering its true relationship to the human form and to human life.

Yesterday we found that the spirit, which human beings only experience in images, has to be looked for in the sphere of the soul. If I may put it like this, we are coming down to earth from heaven. To consider the human form we have to go as far as the fixed stars; to consider human life, we need to go to the sphere of the planets; to consider the human soul in its relationships between birth and death, we must first of all descend to earth. Thus the human being becomes a whole for us in his relationship to the cosmos.

Now if we really appreciate all this, we shall be able on the basis of it to draw the borderline between animal and human nature. The way it may be done is as follows. If we consider the principle which can be understood in relation to the zodiac and how it is in humans and in animals, a difference emerges. But to see the whole of it we need to consider how the zodiac, the planetary sphere and the earth, with everything presented in yesterday’s lecture, act on human beings and on animals. Outside the human being the physical world does not take the form it does in the human body. We find it in the forms of the mineral world, a world very different from the human physical body. This is because in the human being the physical principle is clothed in an etheric and an astral principle and in I nature, all of which change the physical principle, adapting it to suit their needs. In the physical world outside the human being we see the physical principle as it presents itself when not imbued with etheric, astral and I nature.

The inherent form principle of the mineral is the crystal, a polyhedral form.

To grasp this form we must first of all consider the physical matter which has developed out of the forces which are active in the mineral sphere. We have to visualize that in an elongated mineral specific forces act in this direction to elongate the mineral (see crystal on the right). The forces acting in this direction (horizontal line in the centre) are perhaps less powerful, or we may say they act to make the mineral more slender in this direction, and so on. In short, in order to talk about minerals at all, we have to visualize these forces being at specific angles to each other, acting in specific directions, irrespective of whether they come from inside or outside. And above all we have to visualize these forces as existing in the universe, at least to the point where they take effect in the sphere of the earth.

Being effective, they must also have an effect on the human physical body, which means it, too, must have the inherent tendency to become polyhedral. It does not actually become polyhedral because it still has its ether body and astral body which do not allow the human being to turn into a cube, octahedron, tetrahedron, icosahedron, and so on. The tendency is there, however, and it would be fair to say: In so far as human beings are physical beings, they tend towards becoming polyhedral. So if you are glad that you do not have to walk around as a cube, a tetrahedron or octahedron, the reason is that the powers of the astral and ether bodies act against the forces—octahedral, cubic, or whatever—inside you.

Now we are not only a physical body but also have an ether body. Through it we are in essence at one with the plant world. Through the physical body we represent the mineral, or physical, world around us, through the ether body the plant world around us.

Plants are also part of the physical world and therefore have the tendency to be polyhedral, but they add to it a tendency to be spherical. Circumstances may occasionally cause minerals to occur in spherical form, but this is not their true form. There has to be scree, or something of that kind, if a mineral is to be spherical.

In plants, every single cell seeks to achieve spherical form; in humans only the head goes a little in that direction. We owe this spherical form essentially to plant nature. The fact that not all plants are spherical is in the first place due to their having to fight against polyhedral form, which has its own outcome, and secondly to the plant form having also to fight against a cosmic, astral principle. You will remember from earlier lectures that a cosmic, astral principle presses down on the plant from above. All this modifies the spherical form. You also get spheres imposed on spheres. But the essential plant form is a sphere.

Seeking to achieve spherical form the plant assumes the form of the earth itself. As you know, the earth is a sphere in the cosmos, and so is every drop of water. Only the mineral parts of the earth are polyhedral. As a whole, the earth is spherical. The plant, or the life principle, therefore seeks to attain to the spherical form and in doing so is really trying to recreate the form of the earth.

Let us now go higher and consider what the human being is because of the astral body. Here the human being is something representing the animal nature found in the animal world. In the physical, mineral nature of man we look for the polyhedral form, in human plant nature for the spherical form which reflects the planet earth (Fig. 28). Animal nature can be understood if we do not stop at the spherical form but add something to this form. We have to add pockets, or sacs, to the spherical form, like this:

It is in the nature of the animal form that a pocket element breaks up the sphere, with pocket-like inroads made everywhere. Consider your eye sockets—two pockets coming in from the outside. Consider your nostrils—two pockets. And finally consider the whole of your digestive tract from mouth to stomach. It is possible to arrive at this if you let a pocket develop, starting at the mouth, which goes all the way down.

You always get the pocket form added to the spherical form when the transition has to be made from plant to animal form.

We can come to understand the pocket form if we lift our eyes from the earth to the planetary system. You will find it easy to see that the earth seeks to give its own form to everything that lives on it. But a planet acting from outside counteracts the earth forces and makes pockets in the spherical form given by the earth. The different creatures of the animal kingdom are provided with such sacs, or pockets, in a wide variety of ways. Consider the planets and the different ways in which they act. Saturn makes a different kind of inroad than Jupiter or Mars. The lion is equipped with a different kind of inner sac-nature for the simple reason that the planetary influences on it are different from those on the camel, for instance. So in this case we have sacs being formed.

But in animals—and this means above all in higher animals, for the situation is different with the lower animals—and also in human beings something arises which does not merely come from the planetary realm, so that we are able to say: The essence of both animal and human nature is to have more than just the pocket form. This would be the case if there were only the planets and if the firmament of fixed stars had no influence. Something is added to the pocket form. In many situations people are satisfied when they have not just a pocket but something in it. And it is indeed the case that it is the essence of the animal aspect of human nature to have a pocket with something to fill it. So we have a spherical form with a pocket and the pocket is filled.

You only need to look at the sense organs, the eye. You have first of all a pocket, which is the eye socket, and then something to fill it. And this fulfilment,²⁵ which occurs particularly in the sense organs, relates to the zodiac just as the pocket form relates to the planetary sphere. Human beings have the most complete animal organization in this respect, which is also why they have twelve pockets with their fillings, though this is disguised in all kinds of ways. This is why I had to list twelve sense organs in my Anthroposophy.²⁶

We can now go back and ask: Which cosmic principle relates to the polyhedral quality? You see, if we consider the earth, it has the life form if seen as a whole, and if it consisted entirely of water it would only show this form. But all kinds of disruptions enter into the water. You can observe these disruptions in the tides, for instance. There the water is given configuration. Next, let us look back to earlier stages of configuration for the liquid earth, when it first began to develop solid elements. It is still possible to see today that the tides are connected with the moon, and everything polyhedral which becomes part of the configuration of the earth relates to the moon.

Thus we are able to say: The polyhedral or physical nature of human beings is connected with the moon, their vegetable or etheric nature with the earth, their astral nature, which would produce the pocket form, with the planetary sphere, and the filling of the pocket with the zodiac.

What I have written on the board applies in a different way to humans than it does to animals. You see, with animals it is truly the case that the heavens only have significance as far as the sphere of the zodiac, meaning everything which lies within it. Anything which lies outside it holds no significance for the animal. Ancient wisdom was therefore quite right in calling it the “zodiac”,²⁷ for it was also able to say: Everything outside the zodiac in the universe might just as well not exist, for the animals on earth would still be exactly as they are. Only what lies below the zodiac, together with the earth and the moon, has significance for animals. What lies beyond the zodiac has, however, significance for human beings, for it influences the filling of the pockets.

For the animal we have to say: Everything which lies inside the zodiac influences the filling of the pockets. We therefore have to go into the zodiac itself and then we are able to explain how the filling of the pockets presents itself. With humans, we have to go beyond the zodiac (Fig. 34, brown) if we want to explain what goes on in the sphere of the senses, for example. In this respect, human beings go beyond the zodiac, animals do not.

It is also the case that in animals, the planetary sphere as such has a direct influence on the pockets. As the pockets continue inwards, to form the organs, animal organs are perfect reflections of the principles relating to the planetary sphere. Human beings again go a little further and we are able to say that in human beings, the region closer to the zodiac influences the pockets.

In animals, the earth has a direct effect on everything tending to assume spherical form. This is not possible in human beings, who otherwise would be animals, with a tendency to be spherical. In a sense, animals tend towards the spherical form. Here (Fig. 35) we have the backbone, then the legs. Animals are however prevented from becoming a complete sphere.

The back bone forms part of the sphere. Human beings tend to move away from the earth principle, just as they have moved away from the zodiac, and from the planetary sphere, towards the zodiac. We are able to say that the human spherical form is created by moving towards the planetary sphere. Human beings walk upright, however, and seek to go beyond mere adaptation to earthly principles.

With reference to the polyhedral element we have to say that the moon gives it directly to the animal. Human beings also seek to move out of the influences of the moon, “away from the moon”, as we might say, to receive their polyhedral element from a region between earth and moon. This means, however, that the moon still has an influence. In the fifth place, therefore, we must look to see what the moon, which in animals brings about the polyhedral element, is doing in human beings. It brings about a polyhedral element in humans, but as an image. Animals have the polyhedral element in their configuration; humans lift it out of the organism. Mathematical and geometrical ideas become image, taken out of the living physical body. Today, people primarily visualize and want to understand things in mathematical terms because they are able, under the moon’s influence, to lift their own polyhedral element out of the body, so that it enters into the conscious mind. We are thus able to say that thanks to the moon, we are able to understand the polyhedral element in images.

So you see how by considering the human being’s relationship to the cosmos we not only arrive at the outer form we have been considering in recent years but also understand how human beings gain inner form and structure. We see how they create their nasal cavities, or the stomach, as sacs or pockets. If we were to take this further we would understand the organs altogether and how they take internal form out of the whole cosmos. If we want to understand the human being we must always draw on the cosmos. We have to do so when we ask why we have an organ such as the lung, for instance. Essentially the lung can only be understood if we grasp that initially, in the embryo, a kind of sac forms, going inwards, with physical matter forming a lining. The sac-like form then tears itself free on the outside, and the organ closes itself off as an internal organ. We come to see why there is a lung, or any other organ, inside the human being if we perceive this organ to have originated from a sac, with the inner end of the sac thickening and due to other circumstances taking on a particular configuration. An organ such as the stomach can be seen as a sac extending inwards. An organ such as the lung, the heart or the kidney also starts as a sac, but it thickens here (Fig. 36), tears off here, and you have a closed-off internal organ.

Yet even with these closed-off organs—if we ask ourselves why they are in a particular place in the human organism, or why they have a particular shape or internal structure, we always have to consider the human being in relationship to the whole universe.

If a modern scientist were to hear of anthroposophists wanting to explain the lung, heart, liver, and so on out of the cosmos, he'd say we were quite mad. Members of the medical profession in particular would call this madness. They should not do so, however. It is up to them to realize that anthroposophy is actually trying to meet them half-way as they pursue their course clinging firmly to their accustomed blinkers. Let me give you a small example to prove this.

I have here before me a booklet written by the physician, medical scientist and biologist Moriz Benedikt in 1894.²⁸ I tend to quote this gentleman quite often, though I actually do not much like doing so, for apart from anything else, he shows himself to be terribly conceited, practically on every page he writes. He is also quite inflexible as a Kantian. There is, of course, the mitigating circumstance that he has made up his own Kantian ideas to suit himself, presenting them with some inflexibility. The man is extraordinarily gifted, however. He is not interested in anthroposophical ideas or anything of the kind, but it is fair to say that simply by being involved in medicine and science he has arrived at a reasonably unbiased view as to the value of his scientific outlook. He cannot get out of it; yet in a strange way he peers out. The others are also caught up in their science as if in a prison, but they do not even look at anything outside. He keeps looking at the outside world, and this allows him to arrive at extraordinarily interesting conclusions. His vanity has made him a great many enemies, and he will therefore sometimes say things about enemies who show themselves with their masks off—generally these people are “friends”, maintaining closed ranks. His colleagues have tended to put him down, and he therefore says things about them that are highly typical. He knows nothing about anthroposophy, of course, but still, if we consider anthroposophy in terms of its qualities it would be fair to say that, qualitatively speaking, he is an anti-anthroposophist. However, in the booklet I have before me he says:

The self-righteous ignore or deny anything that does not fit in with their point of view, persecuting not only the teaching, but even more bitterly the teachers. Self-righteousness is a peculiar kettle of fish. It smells sweet to the self-righteous but gives off a sharp, biting odour for others. Self-righteousness is by its very nature closely bound up with the scholars’ trade, so much so that although I hate the self-righteous I often ask myself: How often and in how many instances have you yourself been self-righteous? I’d be most grateful to anyone who would give me an exact answer to the question.

For my part, I am convinced that far from being grateful he would complain like anything if we were to make him aware of his own self-righteousness. Yet in his own peculiar way he has a particularly good eye for self-righteousness in others.

He goes on to speak of his own history, wanting to show that he has become a different kind of medical man from his colleagues. He writes:

Two severe strokes of destiny spelled disaster for my own development and also for the scientific position relative to the subject under discussion.

You’ll immediately be aware of a nice touch of vanity in what follows:

In the first place, I studied mathematics and mechanics before joining the medical profession. In those days we had an eminent mathematician at Vienna University, Professor von Ettingshausen,²⁹ who presented the most difficult problems in the mathematics of physics and caught our interest. I heard him develop the theories of Cauchy³⁰ and Poisson.³¹ Petzval³² taught us to express the problems of mechanics in mathematical formulas. It will be easy to show, however, how disastrous mathematical thinking is for a member of the medical profession, and above all a clinician.

Well, we shall see why it is disastrous, especially if such a person knows something about medicine. Professor Benedikt goes on with his story. You would have thought it to be a good stroke of destiny to be a mathematician, but he calls it a bad one, because it taught him to think. Other clinicians were apparently unable to think, and they hated him for having studied mathematics, for it meant he knew more than they did.

The second stroke of destiny to come in the days of my youth was that I became a student of Skoda.³³ I am still attached to his teachings today. He was the Kant of medical philosophy, and his mind rose to sublime heights not in books but in the discussion of diagnoses, indications for treatment, and particularly in postmortem reviews. Skoda had been a mathematician when young

—clearly another stroke of destiny!—

and had brought the most important and fundamental scientific thinking to medicine, though unfortunately only in isolated instances; the important insight I received from Skoda, having already been firmly convinced of it through my mathematical studies, is that in establishing scientific proof, we must be aware not only of what we know but also of what we do not know.

Benedikt had thus also studied under Skoda. The idea was that when using modern scientific methods—for this was the subject under discussion—we should be aware not only of what we know but also of what we do not yet know. Benedikt really did represent this principle with some degree of fanaticism in numerous treatises. He goes on to say:

This basic rule of medicine is not known to the majority of biologists, and indeed is incomprehensible to them. Some years ago, for example, I sent a manuscript in a foreign language to an anatomist, asking him to correct the language. When it came to the above statement, he wrote in the margin that he did not understand the meaning of it.

Benedikt says here that we should also consider what we do not know, and he wanted the other individual to translate the statement into proper French. The anatomist had written, however, to say he did not understand it.

When I showed the comment written in the margin to a professor at the technical university he smiled. The statement is perfectly clear to anyone involved in the exact sciences.

The man smiled because he understood mathematical thinking; it amused him that members of the medical profession thought they could ignore the things they did not know. An engineer must know what he does not know, for he has studied mathematics.

When I told a famous medical expert in Vienna of the odd reaction from my medical colleague, he said rather naively: Well, how are we to know the unknown?—This historical anecdote casts a sharp light on the method of thinking still prevalent in modern medicine and on the colossal errors made day by day and hour by hour in the medical literature.

These are the words of a medical man! But we now come to a most important point. Moriz Benedikt tells us what happens in medical science, where no account is taken of the unknown:

The problems generally arise with reference to the biology of an organ, its function, for instance. The conditions on which the function is based are partly unknown and still have to be found.

He goes on to give an example:

The liver, for instance, secretes bile. The reason for this secretory process lies mainly in the specific biochemical properties of the cells.

Let us ignore the fact that he is referring to the biochemical properties of cells, which does not really make sense. We are taking the point of view he takes in speaking of the liver.

The reason must be found as to how these differentiated properties evolve;...

He wants to find the reason why the liver is different from other organs; he intends to consider the unknown. It is known that the liver secretes bile. But now we come to the unknown, and mark you well, he produces a considerable list:

The reason must be found as to how these differential properties evolve; how the organ develops from its elements; how it comes to be in its particular place; why it relates to surrounding organs in a specific way; how with the aid of specific haemodynamic forces and haemostatic conditions it maintains the specificity of its cells; how with the aid of the central and centrifugal nervous system it is stimulated to function at the right time and with the necessary intensity; what the conditions are for nutrition in general, to maintain function and timing; which conditions impair function, causing short-term or permanent disorders, etc.

All this is not known and has to be considered. Moriz Benedikt then continues:

In science, these questions come up one after the other over long periods of time.

Just the questions come up, therefore!

The literature, on the other hand, considers only what is known at any time, without enquiring into the unknown, and behaves as if the basic problem had already been fully solved.

That is, makes no mention of the unknown. People like Moriz Benedikt are at least able to list all these unknown elements.

This is why only a small part of the theories which prevail at any given time is true, and they contain a colossal percentage of new and inherited errors which will continue on through generations as original sin.

What is this medical man really saying? He says: We have a medical literature but it only deals with the known. Yet the unknown keeps coming up after long intervals of time. What does Benedikt want? He wants people to be aware of what they do not know. What would happen in the case of the liver, for instance? A member of the medical profession taking the opposite view of Benedikt who gave a description of the liver would try to discover the biochemical properties of liver cells and present the fact that the liver secretes bile. He would be satisfied with this, for he does not talk about anything that is not known. Benedikt would say: Alright, the liver secretes bile; this is due to the biochemical constitution of the liver cells. But as a conscientious scientist I must also say everything I do not know about the liver and the bile. He would therefore write in his book:

This we know, but we do not know how the liver comes to be in that particular place; how the statics and dynamics of the blood, or rather the circulation, affect the liver; how the nervous system relates to the liver, both the system as a whole and the individual nerves; and how the liver contributes to nutrition. Benedikt’s books would therefore be different from those of other authors. As a scientist he would in this respect be extremely modest.

But he says this question as to the unknown comes up in the course of centuries; yet because of the way the questions are put, if we go down to fundamentals, then even taking Benedikt’s point of view, we could go on till Judgement Day, always putting down what is known and then what is unknown and the many questions that arise. Benedikt’s books would only differ from those of other authors in that they also list what is not known. Yet he would never accept that something we do not know has to be taken out into the cosmos, that it will continue to be unknown until we explain it out of the cosmos.

You see, a rational medical practitioner here says, speaking in the terms of his discipline, that we cannot explain the human being with the means at our disposal; all we can do is to list the things we do not know. Unfortunately he persists in his refusal to consider something which does provide answers to these questions, questions he says concern the unknown, and of course the answers can only be provided slowly and gradually.

Thus the questions are there in ordinary science. Anthroposophy offers the answers to these questions. This is the truth. It is something we should stress over and over again, quite emphatically.

Moriz Benedikt believes that the bad habits to be found in his particular science are due to the fact that people know nothing of the unknown, offering to humanity what they know on the basis of facts established in the sense-perceptible world only. He gets quite sarcastic as he goes on to say: This scientific ineptitude flourishes today ... not his ineptitude, but that of his colleagues! as much as it did a thousand years ago; indeed it is worse than ever, since production has become so much faster.

He means to say that in earlier times it was not possible to publish one’s misdemeanours so quickly.

Every short-lived notion or undertaking is published so quickly nowadays that medical journalism only needs a “Hot Wire column”, and perhaps we may see the day when telephone booths are set up just to make sure that scientific “ideas" do not lie fallow even for nine minutes.

Publication took more years in the past than it takes hours today.

Oh, and Moriz Benedikt also knows what he thinks of the public, who listen to the medical profession and swear by them! He puts it simply in the following rhyme:

Miller, Brown, Smith and Read join in every heinous deed.

He then starts to reproach his colleagues again—the heinous deeds are theirs, of course—saying:

These unsatisfactory conditions in biology will not improve until a major reform in education starts with the teachers. Anyone unable to show that he has made a serious study of mathematics and mechanics is not fit to be a thinker or a scientist, let alone a teacher. Individual genius has always achieved much; it limps, however, and will go on limping until it has learned to walk first in the school of mathematics.

Not everyone who wants to listen to something sensible will need mathematics, of course. But to work with genuine science one does need to be trained in mathematical thinking. This is why Plato—Moriz Benedikt is very rude about him, by the way—wrote on the doors to his academy: Admittance only for those trained in mathematics. This does not prevent present-day philosophers, who have not been trained in mathematics, to write about Plato, of course. And we may truly say: Most of the people who write about Plato today would not have gained admittance to his academy if it still existed. You will see, from what I have read to you from Moriz Benedikt’s booklet, how modern scientific minds view something they themselves really ought to desire, and how someone who, whilst not an anthroposophist but a rather vain individual who has got into some conflict with his colleagues, has nevertheless had some faint notion of the harm that is done—how such a person judges the situation. Let us be very clear about this: The situation we have today is exactly as an unbiased observer with insight gained in anthroposophy is compelled to describe it. The proofs are to be found everywhere in the world of modern exoteric science, you must merely want to look for them.

What we must do, however, is to learn how to consider the human being in a way which physicists would consider perfectly sensible. I have already given you the analogy: If you study a compass needle and insist on saying it assumes a particular direction out of its own inherent powers, you will never understand why there are north-and south-pointing forces in the compass needle. We must understand that the whole earth has two forces, that the poles of the two forces are determined from outside. In the same way it is utterly wrong to put a human being on the dissecting table and decide to explain the whole of the human being’s nature on the basis of what lies inside the skin. We need the whole world to understand the outer and inner aspects of the human being.

• 25. Steiner is using a slightly unusual term here, which usually translated as “fulfilment”. For the translation I have largely used terms like “filling”, “that which fills them” or “which are filled”, but I felt the note should be sounded just once in this passage.
• 26. Steiner R. Anthroposophy (A Fragment) (GA 45). Tr. C. E. Creeger. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1996.
• 27. From the Greek “ho ton [long “o”] zodion [long “o”s] kyklos” = the circle of the sculptured figures of animals.
• 28. Benedikt, Moriz (1835–1920), Hypnotismus und Suggestion, Leipzig & Wien 1894.
• 29. Ettingshausen, Andreas, Freiherr von (1796–1857), mathematician and physicist.
• 30. Cauchy, August Louis (1789–1857), French mathematician.
• 31. Poisson, Siméon Denis (1781–1840), French mathematician and physicist.
• 32. Petzval, Joseph (1807–1891), Austrian mathematician and physicist.
• 33. Skoda, Joseph (1805–1881), physician; together with Rokitansky established the high reputation of the Viennese School in its heyday.

Thirteen years ago, almost to the day, in a course of lectures¹ that I gave in Stuttgart between Christmas and New Year, I spoke of the same events that we shall treat of in the present course of lectures. Only we shall have to alter the standpoint somewhat. In the first two introductory lectures we have been at pains to acquire an understanding for the radical change in man's life of thought and feeling that has come about in the course of human evolution, prehistoric as well as historic. In to-day's lecture, at any rate to begin with, we shall not need to go back more than a few thousand years.

You know that from the standpoint of Spiritual Science we have to regard as of paramount importance in its consequences for human evolution the so-called Atlantean catastrophe which befell the Earth in the time commonly known as the later Ice Age. It was the last Act in the downfall of the Atlantean continent, which continent forms to-day the floor of the Atlantic Ocean; and following it we have as we have often described, five great successive epochs of civilisation, leading up to our own time. Of the two earliest of these we have no trace in historical tradition, for the literature remaining in the East, even all that is contained in the magnificent Vedas, in the profound Vedantic philosophy, is but an echo of what we should have to describe, if we wanted to recall these ancient epochs. In my Outline of Occult Science I have always spoken of them as the Ancient Indian and the Ancient Persian.

To-day we shall not have to go so far back as this; we will direct our thoughts to the period which I have often designated as the Egypto-Chaldean, the period preceding the Graeco-Latin. We have already had to draw attention to the fact that during the time between the Atlantean catastrophe and the Greek period, great changes took place in regard to man's power of memory and also in regard to the social life of humanity. A memory such as we have to-day—the temporal memory, by means of which we can take ourselves back in time—was not in existence in this third Post-Atlantean period; man had then, as we have described in an earlier lecture, a memory that was linked to rhythmic experience. And we have seen how this rhythmic memory proceeded from a still earlier memory that was particularly strong in the Atlantean period, namely, the localised memory, where man only bore within him a consciousness of the present, but used all manner of things which he found in the external world or which he himself set there, as memorials by means of which he put himself into relationship with the past; and not alone with his own personal past, but with the past of humanity in general.

In this connection we have not only to think of memorials that were on the Earth; in those ancient times the constellations in the heavens served man as memorials, especially in their recurrences and in the variations of these recurrences. From the constellations man perceived how things were in earlier times. Thus did heaven and earth work together to build for an ancient humanity the localised memory.

Now the man of long past times was different in the whole constitution of his being from the man of a later time, and still more so from the man of our own time. Man to-day, in his waking condition, bears the Ego and astral body within him unnoticed, as it were; most people do not notice how the physical bears within it, along with the etheric body, a much more important organisation than itself, namely, the astral body and the Ego-organisation. You, of course, are familiar with these connections. But an ancient humanity felt this fact of their own being quite differently.

And it is to such a humanity that we must return, when we go back to the third epoch of Post-Atlantean civilisation,—the Egypto-Chaldean. At that time man experienced himself as spirit and soul still to a great extent outside his physical and etheric body, even when awake. He knew how to distinguish: This I have as my spirit and soul,—we, of course, call it the Ego and the astral body—and it is linked with my physical body and my etheric body. He went through the world in this experience of twofold-ness. He did not call his physical and his etheric body ‘I.’ He called ‘I’ only his soul and spirit, that which was spiritual and was in a manner connected downward with his physical and etheric bodies, had a connection with them that he could observe and feel. And in this spirit and soul, in this Ego and astral body, man was made aware of the entry of the Divine-spiritual Hierarchies, even as to-day he feels the entry of natural substances into his physical body.

To-day man's experience in the physical body is of the following nature. He knows that with the process of nourishment, with the process of breathing, he receives the substances of the external kingdoms of Nature. Before, they are outside; then they are within him. They enter him, penetrate him and become part of him. In that earlier age, when man experienced a certain separation of his soul-and-spirit nature from his physical and etheric nature, he knew that Angels, Archangels and other Beings up to the highest Hierarchies are themselves spiritual substance that penetrates his soul and spirit and becomes—if I may put it so—part of him. So that at every moment of life he was able to say: In me live the Gods. And he looked upon his Ego, not as built up from below by means of physical and etheric substances, but as bestowed on him through grace from above, as coming from the Hierarchies. And as a burden, or rather as a vehicle, in which he feels himself borne forward in the physical world as in a vehicle of life—so did he conceive of his physical-etheric nature. Until this is clearly grasped, we shall not understand the course of events in the evolution of mankind.

We could trace this course of events by reference to many different examples. To-day we will follow one thread, the same that I touched upon thirteen years ago, when I spoke of that historic document² which represents the most ancient phase of the evolution we have now to consider,—I mean, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The Epic of Gilgamesh has in part the character of a Saga, and so to-day I will set before you the events that I described thirteen years ago, as they manifest themselves directly to spiritual vision.

In a certain town in Asia Minor—it is called Erech³ in the Epic—there lived a man who belonged to the conquering type of which we spoke in the last lecture, the type that sprang so truly and naturally out of the whole mental and social conditions of the time. The Epic calls him Gilgamesh. We have then to do with a personality who has preserved many characteristics of the humanity of earlier times. Clear though it is, however, to this personality that he has, as it were, a dual nature,—that he has on the one hand the spirit-and-soul nature into which the Gods descend, and on the other hand, the physical-and-etheric into which substances of the Earth and the Cosmos, physical and etheric substances, enter,—it is none the less a fact that the representative people of his time are already passing through a transition into a later stage of human evolution. The transition consisted in this. The Ego-consciousness, which a comparatively short time previously was above in the sphere of spirit and soul, had now, if I may so express it, sunk down into the physical and etheric, so that Gilgamesh was one of those who began no longer to say ‘I’ to the spirit-and-soul part of their being, in which they felt the presence of the Gods, but to say ‘I’ to that which was earthly and etheric in them. Such was the stage of development in the human soul life of that time.

But along with this condition of soul, where the Ego has drawn down from the spirit and soul and entered as conscious Ego into the bodily and etheric, this personality had still left in him habits belonging to the past; and especially the habit of experiencing memory solely in connection with rhythm. He still retained also that inward feeling that one must learn to know the forces of death, because the death-forces can alone give to man that which brings him to powers of reflection.

Now owing to the fact that in the personality of Gilgamesh we have to do with a soul who had already gone through many incarnations on Earth and had now entered into the new form of human existence which I have just described, we find him at this point in a physical existence that bore in it a strain of uncertainty. The justification, as it were, of the habits of conquest, the justification, too, of the rhythmic memory, were beginning to lose their validity for the Earth. And so the experiences of Gilgamesh were throughout the experiences of an age of transition.

Hence it came about that when this personality, in accordance with the old custom, conquered and seized the city that in the Epic is called Erech, dissensions arose in the city. At first he was not liked. He was regarded as a foreigner and indeed would never have been able alone to meet all the difficulties that presented themselves in consequence of his capture of the city. Then there appeared, because destiny had led him thither, another personality—the Epic of Gilgamesh calls him Eabani⁴—a personality who had descended relatively late to the Earth from that planetary existence which Earth-humanity led for a period, as you will find described in my Outline of Occult Science.

You know how during the Atlantean epoch souls descended, some earlier, some later, from the different planets, having withdrawn thither from the Earth at a very early stage of Earth evolution.

In Gilgamesh we have to do with an individuality, who returned comparatively early to the Earth; thus at the time of which we are speaking he had already experienced many Earth incarnations.

In the other individuality who had now also come to that city we have to do with one who had remained comparatively long in planetary existence and only later found his way back to Earth. You may read of this from a somewhat different point of view in my Stuttgart lectures of thirteen years ago.

Now this second individuality formed an intimate friendship with Gilgamesh; and together they were able to establish the social life of the city on a really permanent footing. This was possible because there remained to this second personality a great deal of the knowledge that came from that sojourn in the Cosmos beyond the Earth, and that was preserved for a few incarnations after the return to Earth. He had, as I said in Stuttgart, a kind of enlightened cognition; clairvoyance, clairaudience and what we may call clair-cognition. Thus we have in the one personality what remained of the old habits of conquest and of the rhythmically-directed memory, and in the other what remained to him from vision and penetration into the secret mysteries of the Cosmos. And from the flowing together of these two things, there grew up, as was indeed generally the case in those olden times, the whole social structure of that city in Asia Minor. Peace and happiness descended upon the city and its inhabitants, and everything would have been in order, had not a certain event taken place that set the whole course of affairs in another direction.

There was in that city a Mystery, the Mystery of a Goddess, and this Mystery preserved very many secrets relating to the Cosmos. It was, however, in the meaning of those times, what I may call a kind of synthetic Mystery. That is to say, in this Mystery revelations were collected together from various Mysteries of Asia. And the contents of these Mysteries were cultivated and taught there in diverse ways at different times. Now this was not easily understood by the personality who bears the name of Gilgamesh in the Epic, and he made complaint against the Mystery that its teachings were contradictory. And seeing that the two personalities of whom we are speaking were those who really held the whole ordering of the city in their hands and that complaints against the Mystery came from so important a quarter, trouble ensued; and at length things became so difficult that the priests of the Mysteries appealed to those Powers Who in former times were accessible to man in the Mysteries. It will not surprise you to hear that in the ancient Mysteries man could actually address himself to the Spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies; for, as I told you yesterday, to the ancient Oriental, Asia was none else than the lowest heaven and in this lowest heaven man was aware of the presence of Divine-spiritual Beings and had intercourse with them. Such intercourse was especially cultivated in the Mysteries. And so the priests of the Istar Mysteries turned to those Spiritual Powers to whom they always turned when they sought enlightenment; and it came about that these Spiritual Powers inflicted a certain punishment upon the city.

What happened was expressed at the time in the following way: Something that is really a higher spiritual force, is working in Erech as an animal power, as a terrible spectral animal power. Trouble of all kinds befell the inhabitants, physical illnesses and more especially diseases and disturbances of the soul. The consequence was that the personality who had attached himself to Gilgamesh and who is called Eabani in the Epic, died; but in order that the mission of the other personality might be continued on Earth, he remained with this personality spiritually, even after death. Thus when we consider the later life and development of the personality who in the Epic bears the name of Gilgamesh, we have still to see in it the working together in the two personalities; but now in such a way that in the subsequent years of Gilgamesh's life he receives intuitions and enlightenment from Eabani, and so continues to act, although alone, not simply out of his own will, but out of the will of both, from the flowing together of the will of both.

What I have here placed before you is something that was fully possible in those olden times. Man's life of thought and feeling was not then so single and united as it is to-day. Hence it could not have the experience of freedom, in the sense in which we know it to-day. It was quite possible, either for a spiritual Being who had never incarnated on Earth to work through the will of an earthly personality, or, as was the case here, for a human personality who had passed through death and was living an after-death existence, to speak and act through the will of a personality on Earth. So it was with Gilgamesh. And from what resulted in this way through the flowing together of the two wills, Gilgamesh was able to recognise with considerable clearness at what point he himself stood in the history of mankind. Through the influence of the spirit that inspired him, he began to know that the Ego had sunk down into the physical body and etheric body,—which are mortal; and from that moment the problem of immortality began to play an intensely strong part in his life. His whole longing was set on finding his way by some means or other into the very heart of this problem. The Mysteries, wherein was preserved what there was to say on Earth in those days concerning immortality, did not readily reveal their secrets to Gilgamesh. The Mysteries had still their tradition, and in their tradition was preserved also in great measure the living knowledge that was present on Earth in Atlantean times, when the ancient original wisdom ruled among men.

The bearers of this original wisdom, however, who once went about on Earth as Spiritual Beings, had long ago withdrawn and founded the cosmic colony of the Moon. For it is pure childishness to suppose that the Moon is the dead frozen body that modern physics describes. The Moon is, before all, the cosmic world of those Spiritual Beings Who were the first great teachers of earthly humanity, the Beings Who once brought to earthly humanity the primeval wisdom and Who, when the Moon had left the Earth and sought a place for itself in the planetary system, withdrew also and took up their abode on this Moon.

He who to-day through Imaginative cognition is able to attain to a true knowledge of the Moon, gains knowledge too of the Spiritual Beings in this cosmic colony, Who were once the teachers of the ancient wisdom to humanity on Earth. What they had taught was preserved in the Mysteries, and also the impulses whereby man himself is able to come into a certain relationship with this ancient wisdom.

The personality who is called Gilgamesh in the Epic had, however, no living connection with these Mysteries of Asia Minor. But through the super-sensible influence of the friend who, in the after-death existence, was still united with him, there arose in Gilgamesh an inner impulse to seek out paths in the world whereby he might be able to come to an experience concerning the immortality of the soul. Later on, in the Middle Ages, when man desired to learn something concerning the spiritual world, he would sink down into his own inner being. In more modern times one could say that a still more inward process is followed. In those olden times, however, of which we are speaking, it was a matter of clear and exact knowledge to man that the Earth is not the mere lump of rock which the geology books would lead one to imagine, but that the Earth is a living being,—a living being, moreover, endowed with soul and spirit. As a tiny insect that runs over a human being may learn something of that human being as it passes over his nose and forehead, or through his hair, as the insect acquires its knowledge in this way by making a journey over the human being, so in those times it was by setting forth upon journeys over the Earth and by learning to know the Earth with its different configurations in different places, that man gained insight into the spiritual world. And this he was able to do, whether access to the Mysteries were permitted to him or no. It is in truth no mere superficial account that relates how Pythagoras and others wandered far and wide in order to attain their knowledge. Men went about the Earth in order to receive what was revealed in its manifold configurations, in all that they could observe from the different forms and shapes of the Earth in different places; and not of the Earth in its physical aspect alone, but of the Earth too as soul and spirit.

To-day men may travel to Africa, to Italy,—and yet, with the exception of external details, at which they gape and stare, their experience in these places may be very little different from their experience at home. For man's sensitiveness to the deep differences that subsist between different places of the Earth has gone.

In the period with which we are now dealing, it had not died out. Thus the impulse to wander over the Earth and thereby receive something that should help to the solution of the problem of immortality, betokened something full of meaning for Gilgamesh.

So he set forth upon his wanderings. And they had for him a result that was of very great significance. He came to a region that is nearly the same as we now call Burgenland, a district much talked of in recent times and concerning which there has been a good deal of contention as to whether it should belong to Hungary or not. The whole social conditions of the country have of course greatly changed since those far off times. Gilgamesh came thither and found there an ancient Mystery—the High Priest of the Mystery is called Xisuthros⁵ in the Epic—an ancient Mystery that was a genuine successor, as it were, of the old Atlantean Mysteries; only, of course, in a changed form, as must of necessity be the case after so long a time had elapsed.

And it was so that in this ancient Mystery centre they knew how to judge and appraise the faculty of knowledge that Gilgamesh possessed. He was met with understanding. A test was imposed upon him, one that in those days was often imposed on pupils of the Mysteries. He had to go through certain exercises, wide-awake, for seven days and seven nights. It was too much for him, so he submitted himself only to the substitute or alternative for the test. Certain substances were made ready for him, of which he then partook, and by means of them received a certain enlightenment; although, as is always the case when certain exceptional conditions are not assured, the enlightenment might be doubtful in some respects. Nevertheless a degree of enlightenment was there, a certain insight into the great connections in the Universe, into the spiritual structure of the Universe. And so, when Gilgamesh had ended his wandering and was returning home again, he did in fact possess a high spiritual insight.

He travelled along the Danube, following the river on its northern bank, until he came again to his home, to the home of his choice. But before he reached home, because he did not receive the initiation into the Post-Atlantean Mystery in the other way that I described, but instead in a somewhat uncertain way, he succumbed to the first temptation that assailed him and fell into a terrible fit of anger over an event that came to his notice,—something, in effect, which he heard had taken place in the city. He heard of the event before he reached the city, and burst out into a storm of anger; and in consequence, the enlightenment he had received was almost entirely darkened, so that he arrived home without it.

Nevertheless,—and this is the peculiar characteristic of this personality—he still had the possibility, through the connection with the spirit of his dead friend, of looking into the spiritual world, or at least of receiving information thence.

It is, however, one thing by means of an initiation to acquire direct vision into the spiritual world, and another thing to receive information from a personality who is in the after-death condition. Still, we may say with truth that something of an insight into the nature of immortality did remain with Gilgamesh. I am setting aside just now the experiences that are undergone by man after death; these do not yet play very strongly into the consciousness of the next incarnation, nor did they in those days;—into the life, into the inner constitution they do work very strongly, but not into the consciousness.

You now have before you these two personalities whom I have described and who together bring to expression the mental and spiritual constitution of man in the third Post-Atlantean period of civilisation at about the middle point of its development,—two personalities who still lived in such a way that the whole manner of their life was in itself strong evidence of the duality in man's nature. The one—Gilgamesh—was conscious of this duality; he was one of the first to experience the descent of the Ego-consciousness, the descent of the Ego into the physical and etheric nature in man. The other, inasmuch as he had passed through but few incarnations on Earth, had a clairvoyant knowledge, by means of which he was able to know that there is no such thing as matter, but that everything is spiritual and the so-called material only another form of the spiritual.

Now you can imagine that, if a man's being were so constituted, he could certainly not think and feel what we think and feel to-day. His whole thinking and feeling was indeed totally different from ours. And what such personalities could receive in the way of instruction was of course quite unlike what is taught to-day at school or in the universities. Everything of a spiritual or cultural nature that men received in those days came to them from the Mysteries, whence it was spread abroad as widely as possible among men by all manner of channels. It was the wise men, the priests, in the Mysteries, who were the true teachers of humanity.

Now it was characteristic of these two personalities that in the incarnation that we have described they were unable just because of their special constitution of soul, to approach the Mysteries of their own land. The one who is named Eabani in the Epic stood near the Mysteries through his sojourn in the extra-earthly regions of the Cosmos; the one who is named Gilgamesh experienced a kind of initiation in a Post-Atlantean Mystery, which however only bore half fruit in him. The result of all this was that both felt in their own being, as it were, something that made them kin to the primeval times of earthly humanity. Both were able to put the question to themselves: How have we become what we are? What share have we had in the evolution of the Earth? We have become what we are through the evolution of the Earth; what part have we played in its evolution?

The question of immortality that was the occasion of such suffering and conflict to Gilgamesh, was connected in those days with a necessary vision into the evolution of the Earth in primeval times. One could not think or feel—using the words in the sense of those times—about the immortality of the soul unless one had at the same time some vision of how human souls who were already there in very early phases of the Earth's evolution, during the Ancient Sun and Ancient Moon embodiments, saw approaching them, that which later has become what we call earthly. Men felt they belonged to the Earth. They felt that to know himself, man must behold and recognise his connection with the Earth.

Now the secret knowledge that was cultivated in all Mysteries of Asia, was first and foremost cosmic knowledge; its wisdom and its teachings unfolded the origin of the evolution of the Earth in connection with the Cosmos. So that in these Mysteries there appeared before men in a living way, in such a way that it could become living Ideas in them, a far-spread vision, showing them how the Earth evolved, and how in the heave and surge of the substances and forces of the Earth, all through the Sun, Moon and Earth periods of evolution, man has been evolving together with all these substances. All this was set before men in a most vivid manner.

One of the Mysteries where such things were taught, was continued on into much later times. It was the Mystery centre of Ephesus.⁶ This Mystery had in the very middle of its sanctuary the image of the Goddess Artemis. When we look to-day at pictures of the goddess Artemis, we have perhaps only the grotesque impression of a female form with many breasts. This is because we have no idea how such things were experienced in olden times; and it was the inner experience evoked by these things that was all-important. The pupils of the Mysteries had to go through a certain preparation before they were conducted to the true centre of the Mysteries. In the Ephesian Mysteries the centre was this image of the Goddess Artemis. When the pupil was led up to the centre, he became one with such an image. As he stood before the image, he lost the consciousness that he was there in front of it, enclosed in his skin. He acquired the consciousness that he himself is what the image is. He identified himself with the image. This identification of himself in consciousness with the divine image at Ephesus had the following effect. The pupil no longer merely looked out upon the kingdoms of the Earth that were round about him—the stones, trees, rivers, clouds and so forth—but when he felt himself one with the image, when he entered as it were into the image of Artemis, he received an inner vision of his connection with the kingdoms of the Ether. He felt himself one with the world of the stars, one with the processes in the world of the stars. He did not feel himself as earthly substance within a human skin, he felt his cosmic existence. He felt himself in the etheric. And as he did so, there rose before him earlier conditions of Earth-experience and of man's experience on Earth. He began to see what these earlier conditions had been. To-day we look upon the Earth as a great piece of rock or stone, covered with water over a large part of its surface and surrounded by a sphere of air containing oxygen and nitrogen and other substances,—containing, in fact, what the human being requires for breathing. And so on and so on. And when men begin to explain and speculate on what passes to-day for scientific knowledge, then we get a fine result indeed! For only by means of spiritual vision can one penetrate to the conditions that prevailed in the earliest primeval times. Such a spiritual vision, however, concerning primeval conditions of the Earth⁷ and of mankind was attained by the pupils of Ephesus, when they identified themselves with the divine image; they beheld and understood how formerly what surrounds the Earth to-day as atmosphere was not as it now is; surrounding the Earth, in the place where the atmosphere is to-day, was an extraordinarily fine albumen, a volatile, fluid albumenous substance. And they saw how everything that lived on the Earth required for its own genesis the forces of this volatile, fluid albumenous substance, that was spread over the Earth, and how everything also lived in it. They saw too how that which was in a certain sense already within this substance—finely distributed but everywhere with a tendency to crystallisation—how that which was present in a finely distributed condition as silicic acid was in reality a kind of sense-organ for the Earth and could take up into itself from all sides the Imaginations and influences from the surrounding Cosmos. And thus in the silicic acid contained in the earthly albumenous atmosphere were everywhere Imaginations, concretely, externally present.

These Imaginations had the form of gigantic, plant-like organisms, and out of that which was, so to speak, ‘imagined’ into the Earth in this way, there developed later, through absorption of the atmospheric substance,—the plant; everything that is of a plant-like nature. At first it was in the environment of the Earth, in volatile, fluid form; only later did it sink down into the soil and become what is known to us as the plant.

Besides the silicic acid, there was imbedded also in this albumen-atmosphere another substance, lime, in a finely-divided condition. Again, out of the lime substance, under the influence of the congelation of the albumen there arose the animal kingdom. And the human being felt himself within all this. He felt one with the whole Earth. He lived in that which formed itself as plant in the Earth through Imagination, he lived too in that which was developing on Earth as animal, in the way I have described. Each single human being felt himself spread out over the whole Earth, felt himself one with the Earth. So that the human beings were all—as I have described it for the Platonic teaching in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, in reference to the human capacity for ideas—were all each within the other.

Now destiny brought it about that the two personalities, of whom I spoke in Stuttgart and of whom I am speaking to you again here, reincarnated as adherents of the Mystery of Ephesus, and there received with deep devotion into their souls the things that I have here pictured to you in brief outline. Thereby their souls were, in a manner, inwardly established. Through the Mystery they now received as Earth-wisdom what had formerly been accessible to them only in experience,—for the most part unconscious experience.

Thus was the human experience of these personalities divided between two separate incarnations. And thereby did they bear within them a strong consciousness of man's connection with the higher, the spiritual world, and at the same time a strong, an intense capacity for feeling and experiencing all that belongs to the Earth.

For if you have two things that perpetually flow together, so that you cannot keep them apart, then they merge and lose themselves in each other. If, on the other hand, they show themselves clearly distinct, then you can judge the one by the other. And so these two personalities were able on the one hand to judge the spiritual of the higher world that came to them as a result of life-experience and that lived in them as an echo from their earlier incarnations. And now, as the origin of the kingdoms of nature was communicated to them in the Mystery of Ephesus under the influence of the Goddess Artemis, they were able, on the other hand, to judge how the things external to man on the Earth came into being, how gradually everything external to man on the Earth was formed out of a primeval substance, which substance also included man. And the life of these two personalities—it fell partly in the latter end of the time when Heraclitus⁸ was still living in Ephesus, and partly in the time that followed—became particularly rich inwardly and was powerfully lit up from within with the light of great cosmic secrets. There was in them moreover a strong consciousness of how man in his life of soul may be connected, not merely with that which lies spread out around him on the Earth, but with that too which extends upward,—when he himself reaches upward with his being. Such was the inner configuration of soul of these two personalities, who had worked together in the earlier Egypto-Chaldean epoch and then lived together at the time of Heraclitus and after, in connection with the Mystery of Ephesus. And now this working together was able to continue still further. The configuration of soul that had been developed in both, passed through death, through the spiritual world, and began to prepare itself for an Earth life that must needs again bring problems which will now of course present themselves in quite a different way. And when we observe in what manner these two personalities had to find their part later in the history of Earth evolution, we may see how through the experiences of the soul in earlier times—these experiences having their karmic continuation in the next life on Earth—things are prepared which afterwards appear in totally different form in the later life, when the personalities are once more incorporated into the evolution of humanity on Earth.

I have brought forward this example, because these two personalities make their appearance later in a period that was of extraordinary importance in the history of mankind. I indicated this in my lectures at Stuttgart thirteen years ago; in fact, I dealt with all these matters from a certain point of view. These personalities who had first in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch gone through what I may call a widely-extended cosmic life, and had then deepened this cosmic experience within them, thereby in a sense establishing their souls, now lived again in a later incarnation as Aristotle⁹ and Alexander the Great.¹⁰ When one understands the underlying depths in the souls of Aristotle and Alexander the Great, then one can begin to understand, as I explained in Stuttgart, all that was working so problematically in these two personalities, whose lives took their course in the time when Greek culture was falling into decay and Roman rule beginning to have dominion.

• 1. See Occult History. Historical Personalities and Events in the Light of Spiritual Science by Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London, 1957.
• 2. The Epic of Gilgamesh was discovered in the ruins of a palace of Assurbanipal written in cuneiform characters on twelve tablets. This text is based on older Sumerian documents of which fragments remain.
• 3. Called Erech in the Bible (1 Moses 10, 10), the city is named Uruk in the cuneiform text.
• 4. The cuneiform text has Enkidu or Engidu.
• 5. This is the Sumerian name Ziusudra used by Berossus, priest of Bel in Babylon, who wrote a history of Babylon and Chaldea in Greek around 280 B.C. based on the archives of the Temple in Babylon. In cuneiform script it is Utnapishtim.
• 6. Rudolf Steiner spoke in detail about this place in the 6th lecture of Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centres, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1973.
• 7. See the 5th lecture in Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centres.
• 8. Heraclitus of Ephesus, Greek philosopher. He lived around 500 B.C. and deposited his chief work in the Temple of Artemis. See Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1972.
• 9. Greek philosopher from Stagira (384–322 B.C.). See Riddles of Philosophy by Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1973.
• 10. (356-323 B.C.). From 336 King of Macedonia. Died in Babylon.

Among the mysteries of ancient times Ephesus holds a unique position. You will remember that in considering the part played by Alexander in the evolution of the West, I had to mention also this Mystery of Ephesus. Let us try to see wherein lies the peculiar importance of this Mystery.

We can only grasp the significance of the events of earlier and of more recent times when we understand and appreciate the great change that took place in the character of the Mysteries (which were in reality the source whence all the older civilisations sprang) in passing from the East to the West, and, in the first place, to Greece. This change was of the following nature.

When we look back into the older Mysteries of the East, we have everywhere the impression: The priests of the Mysteries are able, from their own vision, to reveal great and important truths to their pupils. The farther back we go in time, the more are these Wise Men or Priests in a position to call forth in the Mysteries the immediate presence of the Gods themselves, the Spiritual Beings who guide the worlds of the planets, who guide the events and phenomena of Earth. The Gods were actually there present.

The connection of the human being with the macrocosm was revealed in many different Mysteries in an equally sublime manner to that I pictured for you yesterday, in connection with the Mysteries of Hibernia and also with the teachings that Aristotle had still to give to Alexander the Great. An outstanding characteristic of all ancient Oriental Mysteries was that moral impulses were not sharply distinguished from natural impulses. When Aristotle points Alexander to the North-West, where the Spirits of the element of Water held dominion, it was not only a physical impulse that came from that quarter—as we to-day feel how the wind blows from the North-West and so forth—but with the physical came also moral impulses. The physical and the moral were one. This was possible, because through the knowledge that was given in these Mysteries—the Spirit of Nature was actually perceived in the Mysteries—man felt himself one with the whole of Nature. Here we have something in the relation of man to Nature, that was still living and present in the time that intervened between the life of Gilgamesh and the life of the individuality Gilgamesh became, who was also in close contact with the Mysteries, namely, with the Mystery of Ephesus. There was still alive in men of that time a vision and perception of the connection of the human being with the Spirit of Nature. This connection they perceived in the following way. Through all that the human being learned concerning the working of the elementary spirits in Nature, and the working of the Beings of Intelligence in the planetary processes, he was led to this conclusion: All around me I see displayed on every side the plant-world—the green shoots, the buds and blossoms and then the fruit. I see the annual plants in the meadows and on the country-side, that grow up in Spring-time and fade away again in Autumn. I see, too, the trees that go on growing for hundreds of years, forming a bark on the outside, hardening to wood and reaching downwards far and wide into the Earth with their roots. But all that I see out there—the annual herbs and flowers, the trees that take firm hold into the Earth—once upon a time, I, as man, have borne it all within me.

You know how to-day, when there is carbonic acid in the air, that has come about through the breathing of human beings, we can feel that we ourselves have breathed out the carbonic acid, we have breathed it into space. We have therefore still to-day this slight connection with the Cosmos. Through the airy part of our nature, through the air that gives rise to the breathing and other air-processes that go on in the human organism, we have a living connection with the great Universe, with the Macrocosm. The human being to-day can look upon his out-breathed breath, upon the carbonic acid that was in him and is now outside him. But just as we are able to-day to look upon the carbonic acid we have breathed out—we do not generally do so, but we could—so did the initiates of olden times look upon the whole plant-world. Those who had been initiated in the Oriental Mysteries, or had received the wisdom that streamed forth from the Oriental Mysteries, were able to say: I look back in the evolution of the world to an ancient Sun epoch. In that time I bore still within me the plants. Then afterwards I let them stream forth from me into the far circles of Earth existence. But as long as I bore the plants within me, while I was still that Adam Cadmon who embraced the whole Earth and the plant-world with it, so long was this whole plant-world watery-airy in substance. Then the human being separated off from himself this plant-world. Imagine that you were to become as big as the whole Earth, and then to separate off, to secrete, as it were, inwardly something plant-like in nature, and this plant-like substance were to go through metamorphoses in the watery element—coming to life, fading away, growing up, being changed, taking on different shapes and forms—and you will by this imagination call up again in your soul feelings and experiences that once lived in it. Those who received their education and training in the East at about the time of Gilgamesh were able to say to themselves that these things had once been so.

And when they looked abroad upon the meadows and beheld all the growth of green and flowers, then they said: We have separated the plants from ourselves, we have put them forth from us in an earlier stage of our evolution; and the Earth has received them. The Earth it is that has lent them root, and has given them their woody nature; the tree-nature in the world of plants comes from the Earth. But the whole plant-nature as such has been cast off, as it were, by the human being, and received by the Earth. In this way man felt an intimate and near relationship with everything of a plant-nature.

With the higher animals the human being did not feel a relationship of this kind. For he knew that he could only work his way rightly and come to his true place on the Earth by overcoming the animal form, by leaving the animals behind him in his evolution. The plants he took with him as far as the Earth; then gave them over to her that she might receive them into her bosom. For the plants he was upon Earth the Mediator of the Gods, the Mediator between the Gods and the Earth.

Men who had this great experience acquired a feeling that may be put quite simply in a few words. The human being comes hither to the Earth from the World-All. The question of number does not come into consideration; for, as I said yesterday, they were all and each within the other. That which afterwards becomes the plant-world separates off from man, the Earth receives it and gives it root. The human being felt as though he had folded the Earth about with a garment of plant growth, and as though the Earth were thankful for this enfolding and took from him the watery-airy plant element that he was able, as it were, to breathe on to her.

In entering into this experience men felt themselves intimately associated with the God, with the chief God of Mercury. Through the feeling: We have ourselves brought the plants on to the Earth, men came into a special relation with the God Mercury.

Towards the animals, on the other hand, man had a different feeling. He knew that he could not bring them with him to Earth, he had to cast them off, he had to make himself free from them, otherwise he would not be able to evolve his human form in the right way. He thrust the animals from him; they were pushed out of the way and had then to go through an evolution on their own account on a lower level than the level of humanity. Thus did the man of olden times—of the Gilgamesh time and later—feel himself placed between the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom. In relation to the plant kingdom he was the bearer, who bore the seed to the Earth and fructified the Earth with it, doing this as Mediator for the Gods. In relation to the animal kingdom he felt as though he had pushed it away from him, in order that he might become man without the encumbrance of the animals, who have consequently been stunted and retarded in their development.

The whole animal-worship of Egypt has to do with this perception. The deep fellow-feeling, too, with animals that we find in Asia is connected with it. It was a sublime conception of Nature that man had, feeling his relationship on the one hand with the plant world and on the other hand with the world of animals. In relation to the animal he had a feeling of emancipation. In relation to the plant he felt a near and intimate kinship. The plant world was to him a bit of himself, and he felt a sincere love for the Earth inasmuch as the Earth had received into herself the bit of humanity that gave rise to the plants, had let these take root in her, had even given of her own substance to clothe the trees in bark. There was always a moral element present when man took cognisance of the physical world around him. When he beheld the plants in the meadow, it was not only the natural growth that he perceived. In this growth he perceived and felt a moral relation to man. With the animal man felt again another moral relation: he had fought his way up beyond them.

Thus we find in the Mysteries over in the East a sublime conception of Nature and of Spirit in Nature. Later there were Mysteries in Greece, too, but with a much less real perception of Nature and of Spirit in Nature. The Greek Mysteries are grand and sublime, but they are essentially different from the Oriental Mysteries. It is characteristic of these that they do not tend to make man feel himself on the Earth, but that through them man feels himself a part of the Cosmos, a part of the World-All. In Greece, on the other hand, the character of the Mysteries had changed and the time was come when man began to feel himself united with the Earth. In the East the spiritual world itself was either seen or felt in the Mysteries. It is absolutely true to say that in the ancient Oriental Mysteries the Gods themselves appeared among the priests, who did sacrifice there and made prayers. The Mystery Temples were at the same time the earthly Guest Houses of the Gods, where the Gods bestowed upon men through the priests what they had to give them from the treasures of Heaven. In the Greek Mysteries appeared rather the images of the Gods, the pictures, as it were, the phantoms,—true and genuine, but phantoms none the less; no longer the Divine Beings, no longer the Realities, but phantoms. And so the Greek had a wholly different experience from the man who belonged to the ancient Oriental culture. The Greek had the feeling: There are indeed Gods, but for man it is only possible to have pictures of these Gods, just as we have in our memory pictures of past experiences, no longer the experiences themselves.

That was the fundamental feeling that took rise in the Greek Mysteries. The Greek felt that he had, as it were, memories of the Cosmos, not the appearance of the Cosmos itself, but pictures; pictures of the Gods, and not the Gods themselves. Pictures, too, of the events and processes on Saturn, Sun and Moon; no longer a living connection with what actually took place on Saturn, Sun and Moon,—the kind of living connection the human being has with his own childhood. The men of the Oriental civilisation had this real connection with Sun, Moon and Saturn, they had it from their Mysteries. But the Mysteries of the Greeks had a pictorial or image-character. There appeared in them the shadow-spirits of Divine-Spiritual Reality. And something else went with this as well that was very significant. For there was yet another difference between the Oriental Mysteries and the Greek.

In the Oriental Mysteries, if one wanted to know something of the sublime and tremendous experience that was possible in these Mysteries, one had always to wait until the right time. Some experience or other could perhaps only be found by making the appropriate sacrifice, the appropriate super-sensible ‘experiments’ as it were, in Autumn,—another only in Spring, another again at Midsummer, and another in the depth of Winter. Or again it might be that sacrifices were made to certain Gods at a time determined by a particular constellation of the Moon. At that special time the Gods would appear in the Mysteries, and men would come thither to be present at their manifestations. When the time had gone by one would have to wait, perhaps thirty years, until the opportunity should come again when those Divinities should once more reveal themselves in the Mysteries. All that related to Saturn, for example, could only enter the region of the Mysteries every thirty years; all that was concerned with the Moon about every eighteen years. And so on. The priests of the Oriental Mysteries were dependent on time, and also on place and on all manner of circumstances for receiving the sublime and tremendous knowledge and vision that came to them. Quite different manifestations were received deep in a mountain cave and high on the mountain top. Or again, the revelations were different, according as one was far inland in Asia or on the coast. Thus a certain dependence on place and time was characteristic of the Mysteries of the East.

In Greece the great and awful Realities had disappeared. Pictures there still were. And the pictures were dependent not on the time of year, on the course of the century, or on place; but men could have the pictures when they had performed this or that exercise, or had made this or that personal sacrifice. If a man had reached a certain stage of sacrifice and of personal ripeness, then for the very reason that he as a human being had attained thus far, he was able to have view of the shadows of the great world-events and of the great world-Beings.

That is the important change in the nature of the Mysteries that meets us when we pass from the ancient East to Greece. The ancient Oriental Mysteries were subject to the conditions of space and locality, whilst in the Greek Mysteries the human being himself came into consideration and what he brought to the Gods. The God, so to speak, came in his phantom or shadow-picture, when the human being, through the preparations he had undergone, had been made worthy to receive the God in phantom form. In this way the Mysteries of Greece prepared the road for modern humanity.

Now, the Mystery of Ephesus stood midway between the ancient Oriental Mysteries and the Greek Mysteries. It held a unique position. For in Ephesus those who attained to initiation were able still to experience something of the tremendous majestic truths of the ancient East. Their souls were still stirred with a deep inward experience of the connection of the human being with the Macrocosm and with the Divine-Spiritual Beings of the Macrocosm. In Ephesus men could still have sight of the super-earthly, and in no small measure. Self-identification with Artemis, with the Goddess of the Mystery of Ephesus, still brought to man a vivid sense of his relation to the kingdoms of nature. The plant world, so it taught him, is yours; the Earth has only received it from you. The animal world you have overcome. You have had to leave it behind. You must look back on the animals with the greatest possible compassion, they have had to remain behind on the road, in order that you might become Man. To feel oneself one with the Macrocosm: this was an experience that was still granted to the Initiate of Ephesus, he could still receive it straight from the Realities themselves.

At the same time, the Mysteries of Ephesus were, so to speak, the first to be turned westward. As such, they had already that independence of the seasons, or of the course of years and centuries; that independence too of place on Earth. In Ephesus the important things were the exercises that the human being went through, making himself ripe, by sacrifice and devotion, to approach the Gods. So that on the one hand, in the content of its Mystery truths, the Mystery of Ephesus harked back to the Ancient East, whilst on the other hand it was already directed to the development of man himself, and was thus adapted to the nature and character of the Greek. It was the very last of the Eastern Mysteries of the Greeks, where the great and ancient truths could still be brought near to men; for in the East generally the Mysteries had already become decadent.

It was in the Mysteries of the West that the ancient truths remained longest. The Mysteries of Hibernia still existed, centuries after the birth of Christianity. These Mysteries of Hibernia are nevertheless doubly secret and occult, for you must know that even in the so-called Akashic Records, it is by no means easy to search into the hidden mysteries of the statues of which I told you yesterday—the Sun Statue and the Moon Statue, the male and the female. To approach the pictures of the Oriental Mysteries and to call them forth out of the astral light is, comparatively speaking, easy for one who is trained in these things. But let anyone approach, or want to approach, the Mysteries of Hibernia in the astral light, and he will at first be dazed and stupefied. He will be beaten back. These Irish, these Hibernian Mysteries will not willingly let themselves be seen in the Akashic pictures, albeit they continued longest in their original purity.

Now you must remember, my dear friends, that the individuality who was in Alexander the Great had come into close contact with the Hibernian Mysteries during the Gilgamesh time, when he made his journey westward to the neighbourhood of the modern Burgenland. These Mysteries had lived in him, lived in him after a very ancient manner, for it was in the time when the West resounded still with powerful echoes of the Atlantean age. And now all this experience was carried over into the condition of human existence that runs its course between death and a new birth. Then later the two friends, Eabani and Gilgamesh, found themselves together again in life in Ephesus, and there they entered into a deeply conscious experience of what they had experienced formerly during the Gilgamesh time more or less unconsciously or sub-consciously, in connection with the Divine-Spiritual worlds.

Their life during this Ephesus time was comparatively peaceful, they were able to digest and ponder what they had received into their souls in more stormy days.

Let me remind you of what it was that passed over into Greece before these two appeared again in the decadence of the Greek epoch and the rise of the Macedonian. The Greece of olden time, the Greece that had spread abroad and embraced Ephesus also within its bounds, and had even penetrated right into Asia Minor, had still in her shadow-pictures the after-echo of the ancient time of the Gods. The connection of man with the spiritual world was still experienced, though in shadows. Greece was however gradually working herself free from the shadows; we may observe how step by step the Greek civilisation was wresting its way out of what we may call divine civilisation and taking on more and more the character of a purely earthly one.

My dear friends, it is only too true that the very most important things in the history of human evolution are simply passed over in the materialistic external history of to-day. Of extraordinary importance for the understanding of the whole Greek character and culture is this fact: that in the Greek civilisation we find no more than a shadow-picture, a phantom of the old Divine Presence wherein man had contact with the super-sensible worlds, for man was already gradually emerging out of this Divinity and learning to make use of his own individual and personal spiritual faculties. Step by step we can see this taking place. In the dramas of Æschylus we may see placed before us in an artistic picture the feeling that yet remained to man of the old time of the Gods. Scarcely however has Sophocles come forward when man begins to tear himself away from this conscious sense of union with Divine-Spiritual existence. And then something else appears that is coupled with a name which from one point of view we cannot over-estimate—but of course there are many points of view to be considered.

In the older Grecian time there was no need to make written history. Why was this? Because men had the living shadow of everything of importance that had happened in the past. History could be read in what came to view in the Mysteries. There one had the shadow-pictures, the living shadow-pictures. What was there then to write down as history?

But now came the time when the shadow pictures became submerged in the lower world, when human consciousness could no longer perceive them. Then came the impulse to make records. Herodotus,¹ the first prose historian, appeared. And from this time onward, many could be named who followed him, the same impulse working in them all,—to tear mankind away from the Divine-Spiritual and to set him down in the purely earthly. Nevertheless, as long as Greek culture and civilisation lasted, there is a splendour and a light shed abroad over this earth-directed tendency, a light of which we shall hear tomorrow that it did not pass over to Rome nor to the Middle Ages. In Greece, a light was there. Of the shadow-pictures, even the fading shadow-pictures of the evening twilight of Greek civilisation, man still felt that they were divine in their origin.

In the midst of all this, like a haven of refuge where men found clear enlightenment concerning what was present, as it were in fragments, in Greek culture,—in the midst stood Ephesus. Heraclitus received instruction from Ephesus, as did many another great philosopher; Plato, too, and Pythagoras. Ephesus was the place where the old Oriental wisdom was preserved up to a certain point. And the two souls who dwelt later in Aristotle and Alexander the Great were in Ephesus a little after the time of Heraclitus and were able to receive there of the heritage from the old knowledge of the Oriental Mysteries that the Mystery of Ephesus still retained. Notably the soul of Alexander entered into an intimate union with the very Being of the Mysteries as far as it was living in the Mystery of Ephesus.

And now we come to one of those historical events of which people may think that they are mere chance, but which have their foundations deep down in the inner connections of the evolution of humanity. In order to gain an insight into the significance of this event, let us call to mind the following. We must remember that in the two souls who afterwards became Aristotle and Alexander the Great, there was living in the first place all that they had received in a far-off time in the past and had subsequently elaborated and pondered. And then there was also living in their souls the treasure of untold value that had come to them in Ephesus. We might say that the whole of Asia—in the form that it had assumed in Greece, and in Ephesus in particular—was living in these two, and more especially in the soul of Alexander the Great, that is to say, of him who afterwards became Alexander the Great.

Picture to yourselves the part played by this personality. I described him for you as he was in the Gilgamesh time; and now you must imagine how the knowledge that belonged to the ancient East and to Ephesus, a knowledge which we may also call a “beholding,” a “perceiving,”—this knowledge was called up again in the intercourse between Alexander the Great and Aristotle, in a new form. Picture this to yourselves; and then think what would have happened if Alexander, in his incarnation as Alexander, had come again into contact with the Mystery of Ephesus, bearing with him in his soul the gigantic document of the Mystery of Ephesus, for this majestic document of knowledge lived with extraordinary intensity in the souls of these two. If we can form a idea of this, we can rightly estimate the fact that on the day on which Alexander was born, Herostratus threw the flaming torch into the Sanctuary of Ephesus; on the very day on which Alexander was born, the Temple of Diana of Ephesus was treacherously burnt to the ground. It was gone, never to return. Its monumental document, with all that belonged to it, was no longer there. It existed only as a historical mission in the soul of Alexander and in his teacher Aristotle.

And now you must bring all this that was alive in the soul of Alexander into connection with what I said yesterday, when I showed you how the mission of Alexander the Great was inspired by an impulse coming from the configuration of the Earth. You will readily understand how that which in the East had been real revelation of the Divine-Spiritual was as it were extinguished with Ephesus. The other Mysteries were at bottom only Mysteries of decadence, where traditions were preserved, though it is true these traditions did still awaken clairvoyant powers in specially gifted natures. The splendour and the glory, the tremendous majesty of the olden time were gone. With Ephesus was finally put out the light that had come over from the East.

You will now be in a position to appreciate the resolve that Alexander made in his soul: to restore to the East what she had lost; to restore it at least in the form in which it was preserved in Greece, in the phantom or shadow-picture. Hence his idea of making an expedition into Asia, going as far as it was possible to go, in order to bring to the East once more—albeit in the shadow form in which it still existed in the Grecian culture—what she had lost.

And now we see what Alexander the Great is really doing, and doing in a most wonderful way, when he makes this expedition. He is not bent on the conquest of existing cultures, he is not trying to bring Hellenism to the East in any external sense. Wherever he goes, Alexander the Great not only adopts the customs of the land, but is able too to enter right into the minds and hearts of the human beings who are living there, and to think their thoughts. When he comes to Egypt, to Memphis, he is hailed as a saviour and deliverer from the spiritual fetters that have hitherto bound the people. He permeates the kingdom of Persia with a culture and civilisation which the Persians themselves could never have produced. He penetrates as far as India.

He conceives the plan of effecting a balance, a harmony between Hellenic and Oriental civilisations. On every hand he founds academies. The academies founded in Alexandria, in Northern Egypt, are the best known and have had the greatest significance for later times. Of the first importance however is the fact that all over Asia larger and smaller academies were founded, in which the works of Aristotle were preserved and studied for a long time to come. What Alexander began in this way continued to work for centuries in Asia Minor, repeating itself again and again as it were in feebler echoes. With one mighty stroke Alexander planted the Aristotelian Knowledge of Nature in Asia, even as far as India. His early death prevented his reaching Arabia, though that had been one of his chief aims. He went however as far east as India, and also into Egypt. Everywhere he implanted the spiritual Knowledge of Nature that he had received from Aristotle, establishing it in such a way that it could become fruitful for men. For everywhere he let the people feel it was something that was their own,—not a foreign element, a piece of Hellenism, that was being imposed upon them. Only a nature such as Alexander's, able to fire others with his own enthusiasm, could ever have accomplished what he did. For everywhere others came forward to carry on the work he had begun. In the years that followed, many more scholars went over from Greece. Apart from Edessa it was one academy in particular, that of Gondishapur, which received constant reinforcements from Greece for many centuries to come.

A marvellous feat was thus performed! The light that had come over from the East,—extinguished in Ephesus by the flaming torch of Herostratus,—this light, or rather its phantom shadow, now shone back again from Greece, and continued so to shine until the dramatic moment when beneath the tyranny of Rome² the Schools of the Greek philosophers were ultimately closed. In the 6th century A.D. the last of the Greek philosophers fled away to the academy of Gondishapur.

In all this we see two elements interworking; one that had gone, so to speak, in advance, and one that had remained behind. The mission of Alexander was founded, more or less unconsciously, upon this fact: the waves of civilisation had advanced in Greece in a Luciferian manner, whilst in Asia they had remained behind in an Ahrimanic manner. In Ephesus was the balance. And Alexander, on the day of whose birth the physical Ephesus had fallen, resolved to found a spiritual Ephesus that should send its Sun-rays far out to East and West. It was in very truth this purpose that lay at the root of all he undertook: to found a spiritual Ephesus, reaching out across Asia Minor eastward to India, covering also Egyptian Africa and the East of Europe.

It is not really possible to understand the spiritual evolution of Western humanity unless we can see it on this background. For soon after the attempt had been made to spread abroad in the world the ancient and venerated Ephesus, so that what had once been present in Ephesus might now be preserved in Alexandria,—be it only in a faltering hand instead of in large shining letters—soon after this second blooming of the flower of Ephesus, an altogether new power began to assert itself, the power of Rome. Rome, and all the word implies, is a new world, a world that has nothing to do with the shadow-pictures of Greece, and suffers man to keep no more than memories of these olden times. We can study no graver or more important incision in history than this. After the burning of Ephesus, through the instrumentality of Alexander the plan is laid for the founding of a spiritual Ephesus; and this spiritual Ephesus is then pushed back by the new power that is asserting itself in the West, first as Rome, later under the name of Christianity, and so on. And we only understand the evolution of mankind aright when we say: We, with our way of comprehending things through the intellect, with our way of accomplishing things by means of our will, we with our feelings and moods can look back as far as ancient Rome. Thus far we can look back with full understanding. But we cannot look back to Greece, neither can we look back to the East. There we must look in Imaginations. Spiritual vision is needed there. Yes, we can look South, as we go back along the stream of evolution; we can look South with the ordinary prosaic understanding, but not East. When we look East, we have to look in Imaginations. We have to see standing in the background the mighty Mystery Temples of primeval post-Atlantean Asia, where the Wise Men, the Priests, made plain to each one of their pupils his connection with the Divine-Spiritual of the Cosmos, and where was to be found a civilisation that could be received from the Mysteries in the Gilgamesh time, as I have described to you. We have to see these wonderful Temples scattered over Asia; and in the foreground Ephesus, preserving still within its Mystery much that had faded away in the other Temples of the East, whilst at the same time it had already itself made the transition and become Greek in character. For in Ephesus, man no longer needed to wait for the constellations of the stars or for the right time of year, nor to wait until he himself had attained a certain age, before he could receive the revelations of the Gods. In Ephesus, if he were ripe for it, he might offer up sacrifices and perform certain exercises that enabled him so to approach the Gods that they drew graciously near to him.

It was in this world that stands before you in this picture that the two personalities of whom we have spoken were trained and prepared, in the time of Heraclitus. And now, in 356 A.D. on the birth-day of Alexander the Great, we behold the flames of fire burst forth from the Temple of Ephesus.

Alexander the Great is born, and finds his teacher Aristotle. And it is as though from out of the ascending flames of Ephesus a mighty voice went forth for those who were able to hear it: Found a spiritual Ephesus far and wide over the Earth, and let the old physical Ephesus stand in men's memory as its centre, as its midmost point.

Thus we have before us this picture of ancient Asia with her Mystery centres, and in the foreground Ephesus and her pupils in the Mysteries. We see Ephesus in flames, and a little later we see the expeditions of Alexander that carried over into the East what Greece had to give for the progress of mankind, so that there came into Asia in picture-form what she had lost in its reality.

Looking across to the East and letting our imagination be fired by the tremendous events that we see taking place, we are able to view in a true light that ancient chapter in man's history,—for it needs to be grasped with the imagination. And then we see gradually rise up in the foreground the Roman world, the world of the Middle Ages, the world that continues down to our own time.

All other divisions of history into periods—ancient, medieval and modern, or however else they may be designated—give rise to false conceptions. But if you will study deeply and intently the picture that I have here set before you, it will give you a true insight into the hidden workings that run through European history down to the present day.

• 1. Herodotus of Halicarnassos, the first Greek historian, lived in the fifth century B.C. Wrote history of the Persian Wars.
• 2. Justinian, Byzantine Emperor from 527–565, son of a peasant, sent an edict to Athens in 529 forbidding the teaching of philosophy and law. Thereupon the last seven Athenian philosophers left the Roman Empire and emigrated to Persia.

In the course of years, considerations have been brought forward in the various groups in different lecture-cycles, for a great number of the anthroposophical friends sitting here, on the John Gospel, the Luke Gospel, the Matthew Gospel, and we have attempted in these considerations, on the three gospels, to let appear before our spiritual eye the great event of Palestine, the Mystery of Golgotha, from three different sides, as it were, in three varying ways. And perhaps these considerations have proved adapted to lay in our souls the foundations for an ever-increasing valuation of this unique event. We have already pointed out how the reason why we have four gospels is to be sought essentially in the fact that the writers of the gospels, as inspired occultists, wanted to represent this great event each from his own side, just as one copies or photographs something external from one standpoint. And if one takes photographs of a thing from different sides, so through a combination of what results, through bringing them together before the soul, one can come to the true reality. Each of the evangelists really gives us opportunity to consider the great event of Palestine from one special side. From a side which we can call at the same time the opening of the highest human, occult and other aims, and beside this highest human principle, also taking into account the highest world principle—from this side it is the John Gospel which gives us an insight into the great event of Palestine.

The Luke Gospel opens for us an insight into the secrets, which hover round the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, of the Solomon and Nathan Jesus, up to the moment where the great inspiration of Jesus of Nazareth is replaced by the Christ.

The Matthew Gospel, for those who have heard the lecture-cycle on it, or have read it later, has to show how from the people of ancient Hebraism, from the folk-secrets of the Hebrew people, the physical principle of life (as it were) was prepared, in which the Christ-Principle should incarnate for three years.

In a certain connection it is again the Mark Gospel which can lead us into the highest summits of the anthroposophical, Christian method of observation, and through the Mark Gospel opportunity is given us to look into many things which should be imparted to us through the gospels, but are not brought near to us in such a way by the other evangelists. And I have laid on myself the task of saying a few words because opportunity offers itself today to speak of the Mark Gospel.

If we speak of this, we must be quite clear how necessary it is to look into many things for which the superficial world of the present has no real inclination. If one is to understand the Mark Gospel and all its depths, one must become acquainted with the quite different method of expression among men at the time when Christ Jesus walked on earth. Do not take it amiss, if I attempt to say to you what I really intend, through a distinct shading, a distinct twilight.

We express through speech what we want to say. And what lives in our soul should in a certain way be made obvious in the words of speech. In this method of expressing through speech what lives in our soul, the various epochs of human development are very different from each other. If we went back to the epoch of the old Hebrew evolution, to that wonderful method of expression which was still possible in the old Hebraic temple-speech, we should find quite another method of clothing the secrets of our soul in words, than people today have any idea of. When a word sounded in the old Hebraic speech—only the consonants were written, the vowels were then added—then there did not merely sound in this word what sounds in it today; a more or less abstract idea... but a whole world. Because of this, the vowels were not really written, because he who spoke gave out his most inner being just through his way of vocalising, whereas in the consonants, there lay more the description, the portraying of what is outside. One can say that when, e.g., an ancient Hebrew drew a “B”—what corresponds today with our “B”—he always felt something like a portraying of external relationships, of something which formed a warm, hut-like enclosure. The letter “B” always evoked the picture of something which, house-like, could surround a being. One could not utter the “B” without that living in the soul. And if one vocalised an “A,” one could not do it without something of strength, of force, even of radiating power, living within it. Thus the soul lived further. The soul-content worked outwards with the words, soared into space and into other souls. Thus speech was then a far more living affair. It entered far more into the secrets of existence than our speech.

That is the light which I wanted to place before you. And the shadows I must represent in contrast; that we in our time have become to a high degree in this connection pedants. Our languages only express abstractions, generalities. One does not even feel that any more. Speech only expresses now pedantry, fundamentally. How should this be different in an age when people even begin to manipulate it in literary fashion long before they have a spiritual content; in an age when such an infinite amount goes into the broad masses as print, when each one thinks he must write something, when everything becomes an object for writing. I have had to experience that even in the founding of our society, authors turned up from curiosity, who had the intention of being able to extract perhaps a novel out of the matter: why should not forms exist there which one can have on tap and retail in a public writing shop? Thus we must be quite clear that we have a speech which has become abstract, empty, pedantic—in contrast to the way in which one formerly conceived it as something holy, to which one felt the responsibility that GOD should speak from out of it. Hence it is so infinitely difficult to squeeze into modern words those great, tremendous facts, which are imparted to us and which sound to us, for instance, in the gospels. Why should the man of today not also believe that one can give everything in our speech? He cannot understand that our speech says something empty with what even the Greek speech still meant with a word. And if we read the Bible today, we read something which, compared with its original content, has been sifted once, twice, three times, but so sifted, that there remains not the best but always the worst. Therefore it is naturally cheap in a certain way to appeal to the modern words of the Bible. But we go astray most of all if we appeal to the Bible in the case of the Mark Gospel, as it lies before us today. In any case we must not do that.

Now you know that the Mark Gospel had in its first lines as its basis the words which the translation by Weizsacker, regarded as exceptionally good (but it is conceivable that what is regarded today as so excellent, need not be so really), renders as follows: “As stands written in the prophet Isaiah; Behold, I send my messenger before thee, who shall prepare the way for thee; listen how it calls in the wilderness; prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his paths.”

Honest people must really say to themselves, if the Mark Gospel begins thus in this Weizsacker: I do not understand a single word of it all. Whoever will understand it must really resolve to do something. Whoever goes sincerely to work, cannot understand anything when it is said: “Behold, I send my messenger before thee, who shall prepare the way for thee; listen how it calls in the wilderness; prepare the way of the lord; make straight his paths.” For either a triviality is uttered, or something is said which one cannot understand. One must first bring together those ideas which make it possible to understand such an utterance as that of Isaiah's here. For Isaiah points to that great, mighty event, which should be the most significant event in human evolution. What is he really pointing to? Now from what we have already described, we can well indicate what Isaiah predicted. We can indicate it by saying: In ancient times, man had a kind of clairvoyance; he had the possibility of growing with his soul-forces into the divine spiritual world. What really happened with man when he grew thus into the divine spiritual world? Then it was the case that when he grew into the divine spiritual world he ceased to employ his Ego, so far as it was developed at that time. He used his astral body, in which were those forces which were the forces of vision, of seership, whereas all the forces rooted in the Ego were gradually awakened through the perception of the physical world. It is the Ego which employs the instruments of the senses. The ancient human being, however, when he sought illumination about the world, employed his astral body. The ancient human being saw, perceived in the astral body. Further evolution consisted in this, that the transition was found from the astral body to the use of the Ego. With reference to this Ego, the Christ-Impulse had to be the most intense impulse. If, now, the Christ is taken up into the Ego so that the phrase of Paul is true, “Not I, but the Christ in me,” then the Ego has the power of growing into the spiritual world through itself. Formerly, only the astral body could do this.

Thus we have an evolution of humanity before us of which we can say: Man employed his astral body as organ of knowledge, but he lost more and more the possibility of developing an organ of knowledge in his astral body. And the more one approached the Christ Event, that stage of evolution arose of which man must say: My astral body has less and less the possibility of looking into the spiritual world. Nothing arose through its union with the spiritual world, and the Ego was not yet forceful enough to get, from its side, any illumination from the world. That was the age when the Christ drew near.

Now in the real evolution of mankind, it is a question of certain great strides being gradually prepared, which then occur. This was the case with the Christ-Impulse. But a transition had to exist. Things could not so run their course that man saw how his astral body gradually became dull towards the spiritual world, so that he would have felt utter barrenness and desolation in himself, until the Ego was kindled through the Christ-Impulse. Things could not take this course. But in the case of a few it happened through an especial influence from the spiritual world, they saw something already in the astral body similar to the way one should later see and know through the Ego: The egoity (Ego-hood) was, as it were, prepared in the astral body. That was an anticipation of the egoity in the astral body. Man indeed first became earthly man through the Ego and its development. The astral body really belonged to the ancient moon. At that time, the angel, the angel-man, was at the human stage. The angel was man on the old moon. Man is man on the earth. We know that. On the old moon, it was man's task to use his astral body. Everything else was only preparation for the Ego-evolution. The beginning of our earth evolution was a repetition of the moon evolution. For man could never become fully man in the astral body; but on the moon, only the angel could become man in the astral body. Therefore—just as in the earth-man the Christ lived in order to inspire the Ego—so for the preparation of this Ego-hood the possibility had to be given, that from the angels of the moon—from the moon-men, the angels—prophets were so inspired in their human astral body, that the Ego could be prepared. There had thus to occur what a prophet could have characterised in the following way: There will come in human evolution a time when man will be ripe for the ego-evolution. In the astral body only the angels of the moon have raised themselves to the highest. But in order that man can be prepared for this egoity, certain human beings must be so inspired on earth, through grace, in exceptional conditions, that they work as angels, in spite of their being human; that they are angels in human form.

Here we come to an important occult idea, without which you cannot understand at all the evolution of humanity in the sense of occultism. Externally uttered, it is naturally easy if one simply says that all is Maya. Well, all right. But that is an abstraction. One must really take it earnestly. Therefore one must be able to say: There stands a man before me... that, however, is Maya! Who knows... is that, anyhow, a man? Perhaps the human existence is but the external veil, employed by quite another being than man is, just to bring about something which cannot yet be effected by man. I have indicated something of this in my Portal of Initiation.

In ancient times, such an event was actualised for humanity, when that individuality who lived in Elias was reborn in John the Baptist, and when, in the soul of John the Baptist, an angel entered for that incarnation, and employed the corporality, and also the soul-nature of John the Baptist, in order to effect what no human being would have been able to bring about. In John lived an angel, an angel who had to go before, and announce before, that which should live in Jesus of Nazareth, in the widest sense, as true Ego-hood [Ichheit]. It is extremely important to know that John the Baptist is a Maya (illusion), and in him there lives an angel, a messenger. This stands also in the Greek: “Behold, I send my messenger = Angel.” The German alone thinks no more of this, that in the Greek “Angel” stands in this place. “Behold I send my angel before him.” And so there is indicated a deep world-mystery which, preceded with the Baptist, was prophesied by Isaiah. He characterises John the Baptist as a Maya, as an illusion, he who in truth comprises the angel, who, as angel, has to announce what man really should become through the reception of the Christ-Impulse—because the angel has to announce beforehand—what man only later has to become. And so, at this place, there should be said: “Behold, that which gives the egoity to the world, sends the angel before thee, to whom the egoity should be given.”

Now we pass to the third sentence. What does it signify? Here one must call to mind the whole historic world-situation. How had things become in the human breast, since the astral body had gradually lost the power of stretching out its forces like tentacles, to look clairvoyantly into the divine spiritual world? Formerly, when the astral body was put in activity, it could see in the divine spiritual world. This possibility disappeared more and more, and it became dark in man. Man could formerly spread out his astral body over all the beings of the divine spiritual world. Now he was alone in himself—alone is the same as eremos [Greek ernmos] That which the soul was now, lived in the solitude. That also stands there in the Greek text: Behold, how it appears, how it there speaks in the solitude of the soul (or you could say “in the wilderness of the soul “)—when the astral body could no more spread itself out to the divine spiritual world. Give heed how it calls in thy soul-wilderness, in thy soul-loneliness.

What is it that announces itself beforehand? Here we must be clear as to the meaning of one quite definite word, when one uses it of soul-phenomena, or of spiritual phenomena in general, above all in the Hebrew, but also in the Greek: the word Kyrios. If one translates it by “the lord,” as generally happens, then one is translating truly absolute nonsense. What is meant by it? Everybody in ancient times, who had such an utterance on his tongue, knew that something was meant thereby which was connected with the soul-progress of the human race. He knew, therefore, that the word “Kyrios” pointed, indeed, to secrets of soul. We have in the soul, when we look to the astral body, various forces. We usually call them thinking, feeling, and willing. The soul thinks, feels, and wills. Those are the three forces that work in the soul. But they are the serving forces of the soul. As man progressed in evolution, these forces which formerly were the lords, to whom man was given over—(man had to wait whether his thinking, feeling, willing was called)—these single soul forces became subject to the Kyrios, the Lord of the soul forces, the “I.” Nothing else was understood by this word, when it referred to the soul, than the “I,” though it no longer held in the old sense: the divine spiritual thinks, feels, wills in me, but I think, I feel, I will: The Lord makes itself valid in the soul forces. Prepare yourselves, ye human souls, to go such soul paths, that ye let the strong “I” awaken in your souls: Kyrios, the Lord in your souls. “Listen, how it calls in the solitude of soul. Prepare the force or the direction of the soul—Lord, of the I. Make open his forces!” Thus one must translate it, approximately. “Make its forces open, so that it can come in, so that it is not the slave of thinking, feeling, and willing.” And if you translate these words: “Behold, that which is the ego, sends its angel before thee, who should give thee the possibility to understand how it calls in the solitude of the astral soul: prepare the directions of the I, make the forces open for it, for the I,” then you have a meaning in these significant words of the prophet Isaiah; then you have an indication of the greatest event in human evolution; thus you understand from this how Isaiah speaks of John the Baptist, how he points out thereby that man's soul-solitude longs for the approach of the Lord in the soul, of the “I.” Then the words get force and weight. Thus, we must grasp such words.

Why could John the Baptist be the bearer of the angel? He could be this, because he had had a quite special initiation, The various initiations are specialised. These initiations are not something general; they are specialised. With those individualities who have a quite special task, an initiation had to occur according to a quite special kind of secret. Now for everything which happens at all in the spiritual world, it is so provided that there is revealed in the heavens, in the starry script what spiritual facts there are. One can receive the sun-initiation, that means, enter the secrets of the spiritual world, which is the world of Ahura Mazdao, for which the sun is the external expression. But one can be initiated into the sun secrets in a twelve-fold way, and each initiation is in a certain connection a Sun-Initiation, but yet is differently constituted with reference to the other eleven. According as man has this or the other task for the whole of mankind, he receives a sun-initiation of which one can say: This is a sun-initiation but such that one must express by saying: The forces flow in so that the sun stands in the sign of Cancer. That is different from the initiation one receives which one must express by saying: The forces flow in as if the sun stands in the sign of the Balance or Scales. They are the expressions for different specialised initiations. And those individualities who have such a high task, a high mission, as characterised here for John the Baptist, they must be initiated in a quite special manner in a special initiation, because only from this can they get the strong force necessary to bring about this mission in the world, also, under conditions in a quite one-sided way. And so, John the Baptist, in order that he could become the bearer of the Angelos, had that sun-initiation, which one can call the initiation from the sign of the Waterman. As the sun stands in the sign of the Waterman, that is a symbol for that kind of initiation which John the Baptist received, in order to become the bearer of the angel, while he received the force of the sun, as it flows down when it stands in the sign of the Waterman, when it stands in such a relation to the other stars, that one designates it with the expression: It stands in the sign of the Waterman. That was the symbol that John had the Waterman-initiation. The sign indeed received this name Waterman, because he who had the Waterman-initiation received especially the power as a spiritual initiate, of effecting in human beings what John effected as the Waterman, as the Baptist: namely, to bring human beings to this, that with the immersion in water, they got their etheric bodies so free, that they came to such a self-knowledge, which made possible what was the most important thing at the time. Human beings were immersed, and the etheric body became free for a moment. Through the baptism in the Jordan, man could feel the quite especial importance of the world-historic epoch. Therefore John was initiated just in the Baptism Initiation. And because one must express that symbolically, with the flowing-down of the sunrays out of the sign in which the sun stands, so one called this sign also—the Waterman. Thus the name of the human power is carried over.

Today a whole number of learned ignoramuses make the attempt to interpret spiritual events by bringing down the heaven, as it were, to the earth. They say: Now, that signifies the prominence of the sun. All these learned people, who really do not know much, interpret human events from out of the heavens. The reverse was the case. What lives in man spiritually was carried over to the heavens, while one made use of the heavens as a means of expression. So that John the Baptist could say: I am he who baptises you with water. And that was the same as if he had said: I am endowed with the initiation of the Waterman. I baptise you with water, I am endowed with the initiation of the Waterman. That was the word which John would have been able to say to his intimate disciples. And just as the sun progresses in opposition to its sense-path: if you proceed in opposition to Waterman, there arises—Virgin; then it passes to Balance. If we have initiation in mind, we must consider the opposite path, on the other side: from Waterman to Fishes. Thus John could say: Something will come that no longer has to work as corresponds to the sun from out of the Waterman, but as corresponds to the working of the sun from out of the Fishes. One will come who will bring a higher baptism. When the spiritual sun mounts higher, then there arises from the Waterman-baptism, the baptism from spiritual water. The sun ascends in spirit from Waterman to the Fishes: hence the well-known fish-symbol for the bearer of the Christ, which is an ancient symbol. For just as in John through quite special spiritual influences a Waterman initiation took place, so the initiation, of which I have spoken here and there to you, which arose through all mysteries in a secret way which transpired around Jesus, a Fish-initiation—a progression of the sun by one constellation. That was what placed Jesus of Nazareth in his age, that he was first subject to a Fish-initiation.

This is, one might say, sufficiently indicated to us in the gospel of Mark. Yet such things can only be indicated in image form. Christ Jesus draws together all those who are seeking fish. Therefore all his first apostles are fishermen. And we can find obvious what I have said—the progress to the Fishes, when we are told: I have baptised you with water. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. And as he drew to the sea of Galilee—that means, when the sun was so far advanced, that one could see its counterpart from the Fishes—those are inspired who were called Simon, and Simon's brother, James, and James' brother, fishers—they are inspired in the corresponding way. How can we understand all that? We cannot understand it, unless we enter a little more closely into the means of expression of that time.

Our modern means of expression is pedantic. If a man stands before us, we say: there is a man. If a second stands before us, we say again: there is a man. A third—another one, etc. But we have merely Maya before us. If a being has two legs, and a human countenance, then in our pedantic way of expression we have but the one word: there is a man. But what is a man for occultism? Nothing but Maya! Really, as he stands there before us, man is—nothing. He is about as much as the rainbow which stands in the sky. How long is this anything? Only so long as the necessary conditions are given between rain and sunshine. If the sun and rain alter their relationship, it is gone. It is just the same with man. He is only a streaming together of forces of the macrocosm. We must seek the forces in heaven, here or there in the macrocosm. There, where one assumes perhaps a man somewhere on the earth, there is nothing for the occultist. But forces are streaming from above down, from below up, and they intersect. And as the peculiar constellation of rain and sunshine results in the rainbow, so forces streaming out of the macrocosm from above and below result in a phenomenon, and this appears as man. That is the man. Man is nothing as he stands before us. In truth, he is a schema, a Maya, an illusion. It is the cosmic forces which are real, which intersect there where our eyes think they see a man. Just try and take this expression earnestly: Man is nothing as he stands before us. He is but the shadow of many forces. The being, however, who reveals itself in man, can quite well be elsewhere, than at that point where this man is walking on two legs. There are three men: The one is an ancient Persian, who works at the plough in the old Persian agriculture. He looks like a man—in truth he is one of the souls, who are nourishing their forces out of this or that world from below or above. The second is perhaps an old Persian official. He is built through forces from another world which intersect in him. If we will know him, we must mount to these forces. All of you, as you are sitting here, are in your reality quite somewhere else. Only the forces from your own real being ray here.... Then stood a third Persian there, of whom one had to say: He is really utter deception—he is utterly a schema, which stands there. What was there in reality? One must go up to the sun, there are the forces which nourished this model. There above, among the secrets of the sun, one finds that which one can call the Gold Star—Zarathustra; that sends the rays down, and here below stands a model, which one calls Zarathustra. In truth, his being is not there at all. That is the third.

Now it is important that in ancient times one was aware of what was meant by such designations. One did not give names as one does today, but one named people according to what lived in them, not according to their external illusory appearance. We must be quite clear of this. So that one should have been able to say: An ancient human being at the time of Christ should have well understood when one pointed to John the Baptist, and said: Here is the angel of God. One would only have heeded that which had taken up the place. One spoke of the chief matter, not of the subsidiary ones. Now let us assume the same mode of expression was applied to Christ Jesus Himself. How must one have spoken of Christ Jesus if one understood such things? No man at that time would even have dreamt of naming that which then wandered over the earth, this wandering body in flesh, the Christ Jesus; but that was the sign, that what streamed down spiritually from out of the sun, was caught up in this point in a quite special manner. If this body, which was the body of Jesus, went from one place to another, that was the rendering visible of the sun-force which went from one place to another. This sun-force could also go alone. At times the expression was so used, that Christ Jesus was in his home in the flesh, but what was in him moved further, even without his body. Especially in the John Gospel the expression is so used, that under conditions, when this being moved purely spiritually, the writer of the gospel speaks quite exactly as if this sun-force dwelt in a fleshly body. Hence it is so important that the deeds of Christ Jesus are always brought into connection with the physical sun, which is the external expression for the spiritual world, which has been collected, been caught up, at that point where the fleshly body wanders. If thus the Christ Jesus heals, for instance, then it is the sun-force which heals there. This must stand, however, at the right place in the heavens. “When evening was come, as the sun went down, they brought to him all who were sick, diseased, etc.” It is important that one indicates that this healing power can flow down when the external sun has set, when the sun only still works spiritually. And as He needs a definite force in order to work, he had to take this out of the spiritual sun, not out of the physical visible sun. “And early in the morning, while it was still dark, he arose and went out.” The path of the sun, and the sun-force is expressly indicated to us: that this sun-force works, and that fundamentally Jesus is only the external sign: that this path of the sun-force could also be visible to the weak external eyes. And everywhere in the Mark Gospel where we have mention of the Christ, the sun-force is meant, which for that epoch of our earthly evolution was quite especially active on that part of the earth called Palestine. And one could see the sun-force. “At this or that time, Christ went from this place to that place.” One could just as well say: “At this time, the spiritual force of the sun, as if gathered into a focus, went from this to that place,” And the body of Jesus was the external sign which made visible to the eyes how the sun-force moved. The paths of Jesus in Palestine were the paths of the sun-force come down to earth. And if you draw the steps of Jesus as on a special map, then you have a cosmic event; the working of the sun-force out of the macrocosm in the land of Palestine. It is a question of this macrocosmic event. It is especially the writer of the Mark Gospel who points this to us; the writer of the Mark Gospel, who well knew that a body, which was the vehicle of such a principle as the Christ-Principle, must be subdued in a quite special way by his principle. It was the pointing to that world which Zarathustra had so powerfully announced behind the world of sense, the pointing to that world as it works into the human world. And so now there was indicated through Christ Jesus how the forces work on into the earth. Therefore a kind of repetition of the Zarathustra-events must occur in that body which, as we have seen, even if it was the body of the Nathan Jesus, was in a certain way influenced by the Zarathustra Individuality.

Now let us hear the great, beautiful legends of Zarathustra. As his mother gave him birth, the first wonder of Zarathustra showed itself as the famous Zarathustra smile. The second wonder was when the king of the district where Zarathustra was born, Durasrav, resolved to murder Zarathustra, of whom the decadent magicians had said special things. As the king appeared to stab the child, his arm was paralysed. That was the second miracle after the birth of Zarathustra. And then, the king who could not use his dagger against Zarathustra, had the child taken among the wild beasts of the desert. That is the expression for the fact that in earliest childhood, Zarathustra had to see what man sees when he appears impure. Instead of the noble group-souls, and the noble, higher spiritual beings, he sees the outflow of his wild fantasy. That is the exposure in the desert to the wild animals, among which Zarathustra remains unharmed. That is the third miracle. The fourth was again a miracle among the wild animals, etc. Always it was the good spirit of Ahura Mazdao who served Zarathustra.

We find these wonders again in the Mark Gospel repeated: “And then the Spirit drove him into the wilderness—(really it means solitude)—for forty days... and the angels ministered unto him.” Here we are shown that the body was prepared to take up, as it were, in a focus, that which transpired in the macrocosm. What happened with Zarathustra must happen again; being led to the wild beasts.... This body took up what came in from out of the macrocosm.

The Mark Gospel already in its first lines places us within the greatest cosmic connections. And I wanted to show you how basically, if one but first understands the words in the right sense—not as in our modern pedantic speech, but as in the ancient speech, where each word had living worlds behind it—when one understands it in the sense of this ancient speech, how then the Mark Gospel gets new life, new force. But one must say: Our modern speech can only find what was already laid in the words in these ancient speeches, after much paraphrase. What we utter when we say: “Man lives on the earth and develops his ego. Man formerly lived on the moon, then it was the angels who went through their human stage.” All of that lies behind, when it runs: “Behold, I send my angel before man.” And the words are not to be understood, without the presupposition of what is offered in spiritual science. And people in the present should be sincere, and say of the words at the beginning of the Mark Gospel: That is incomprehensible. Instead of doing this, they stand there in petty pride and explain spiritual science as fantasy, which puts all kinds of things into what they know in a simple way. But these people of today do not know it at all. And today one no longer has the principle that one had, for instance, in ancient Persia, where from epoch to epoch, the ancient holy documents were rewritten, in order to be clothed anew for each epoch. Thus the divine spiritual word as Zend-Avesta was transformed, and again transformed, and what exists today is the last form. Seven times the Persian Bible was written anew. And anthroposophy should teach men how necessary it is that books in which the holy secrets are written must be transformed from age to age. For especially when one will preserve the mighty style of old, one may not as it were attempt to remain as much as possible with the old words. One cannot do it, one understands them no more, but one must attempt to transform the ancient words into a direct understanding of the present. We have tried this summer to do that with Genesis.¹ You saw, then, how many of the words must be transformed. You have perhaps today got a little idea of how the words must also be transformed in the Gospel of Mark.

• 1. Secrets of Creation. A series of lectures on the Book of Genesis delivered by the author at Munich, August, 1910, now out of print, but to be reprinted shortly in a second and revised edition.

Anyone walking down the street today among the Christmas trees that have been put up might easily be led to believe that the Christmas tree itself is something very old. But it is precisely the Christmas tree that allows you to see the change in people's customs and traditions, because the Christmas tree, which is now found in almost every home, is not even a hundred years old. A century ago, you would not have been able to walk down streets occupied by Christmas trees. You would also look in vain in the poetry of a hundred or a hundred and twenty years ago for a song, for a poem that sings of the Christmas tree. But that should be a striking phenomenon for you, because the Christmas tree is something that has been sung about by poets in the time when it was once there. It is a very new phenomenon, something that only became common in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Christmas tree as a symbol of Christmas only appeared around 1800, but Christmas itself is ancient, not just Christian. It was celebrated in the same way in all times of which we can have historical knowledge.

In Christianity itself, Christmas has only been taken as a symbol of the birth of the Christian Redeemer since the fourth century AD. In no way was December 25 celebrated as the birthday of the founder of Christianity in the first centuries of Christianity; it was only in the fourth century that it was understood as such. But a festival was celebrated in the Roman Empire during this time, a festival was also celebrated at the same time by the ancient Celtic and Germanic peoples and with a similar idea already in ancient Egypt and in many other areas. What was celebrated there was something else; it was only in the fourth century of our era that it was linked to the birthday of the founder of Christianity.

Now one could conclude from this that the Christian church would have done something that would historically go against all tradition, and would have wanted to correct something with it, so to speak. But that is not the case. Anyone who truly understands the meaning of Christmas recognizes the ancient wisdom that lies hidden in such a festival. Festivals such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are nothing more than dates, dates inscribed in time by our ancestors, with whom they showed us, their descendants, how they understood the relationship between the world and man and the great mysteries of existence. Whoever knows how to decipher the writing that has been laid down for us in the great festivals, whoever knows how to decipher the hieroglyphs that time itself presents to us, will glimpse into the deep and meaningful mysteries of all human becoming. I said – and we will see in a moment in which sense this applies – that Christmas has been celebrated since the time when we have history. The times about which we know historical documents go back to the third sub-race of the fifth root race. The times of our own sub-race, in which physical science and physical culture have developed, go back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. This was preceded by another race, and this goes back to the ninth or eighth century BC, to the times when Homer was singing his poems to the Greeks. This period tells us about the feelings and deeds of the fourth sub-race that preceded us.

Then we come back to the even older times, but these already lead us back to the gray antiquity, to the time of ancient Babylon and Assyria, to the ancient times of the Jewish people, to the times when the Egyptian priests preserved their wisdom and only brought it to the people in an exoteric way. Then the historical tradition ceases. What has been handed down to us from Persian history was only recorded much later. What is communicated to us as the sublime religion of ancient India, what is recorded in the Vedas and in the Vedanta philosophy, these are late records compared to the times in which the great thoughts of the ancient Indian Rishis, which they received directly from the divine spirits themselves, flowed through them to humanity. Thus we look back from the time in which we ourselves live, and which will last for a long time yet, to the Greco-Roman epoch, which is transformed into Christianity, and then to the epoch in which the Egyptian priests were active. But then the paths become lost. Only those who can follow history in other ways can know anything about ancient Persia. We are led even further back into the times that only the occultist can see.

Now, if you want to understand the Christian festival, you have to look back in time to the point where a new wisdom was taught to newly emerging humanity for the first time. We have come back to the time when the ancient Atlantean civilization disappeared due to the tremendous flooding of a large continent and a new human civilization - to which the epochs I have already enumerated belong - was established. A completely new way of thinking and feeling has emerged with this new humanity. Nothing of the actual culture of the Atlanteans, let alone of the even older culture of the Lemurian peoples, who once lived in ancient times and perished in a fire, has been preserved directly. However, what humanity has once gone through must be gone through again briefly when a new turning point in development has been reached. Thus the first sub-races of the fifth root race were destined to briefly repeat three important epochs in the development of humanity.

In ancient India, the wise Rishis looked back to those times when humanity was still at a very different stage, to those times when there was not yet a male and a female

sex, when man was still a unity. Then they looked back to that great unity in the human race, to that primeval man Adam, who is also called Adam Kadmon in various secret teachings, who was man and woman at the same time. They expressed that primal unity of humanity in a spiritual way by hinting at the supreme world being with the indefinite sacred name Brahman. Brahman is originally that out of which, as out of the All, out of the divine ground of unity, all manifoldness has emerged. On the earth itself, this unity was only present for man in a certain way in the times when there was not yet male and female, in the times when the diversity that we have now did not yet exist. What we are confronted with here is a reflection from the spirit of the great Indian Rishis: the divine Primordial Unity of man, the pre-human Adam Kadmon, in whom there was still peace, spirit, clarity and harmony; he speaks from the Vedic word as it flowed from the lips of the Indian Rishis. This was the first epoch of our human race after the great flood. It was not yet the case that there was talk on our earth of a trinity, of a threefold divine person. People only spoke of a primal unity, of Brahman, in which everything is contained, from which everything originates.

Then there came a time when the Persian Zarathustra priests, the wise men of the Parsees, looked back to that epoch when man, of both sexes, was born out of fire, when that man was born who represents a dual, a twofold. And with the birth of man out of the fire, something came into our earthly world that had not been there before; only then did evil come into the world. Evil did not exist in the human sense before the origin of the sexes. These originated in the middle of the Lemurian period. And good and evil have only existed since that time. Good and evil filled the last Lemurian period and the first Atlantean period.

It is interesting to research, according to the spiritual documents called the ‹Akashic Records›, how these two forms of humanity express themselves. In the next issue of the magazine “Lucifer - Gnosis” you will find an explanation of how the duality in man unfolds, how, when man really appeared in two sexes, man's soul and man's physical willpower were initially distributed among the sexes. Even those who today, as occultists, decipher the wonderful records that have been preserved for us in the Akasha Chronicle may be amazed at how fundamentally different the masculine and feminine appeared on our Earth in those early times, because it is so different from our present-day conception. Woman initially developed the soul, under the guidance of the wise leaders of humanity; man developed the will element. This is how a duality of will and soul arises. They face each other in the Atlantic epoch in the two sexes of humanity. Because soul came into the physical body and thereby into humanity, evil came into humanity. And because our humanity had to repeat that epoch, which is characterized by the difference between good and evil, the fire religion, the Parsee religion, the doctrine of Ormuzd and Ahriman emerged. This precedes our history as a Persian cultural period.

The concept of “good and evil” lived on in the religion of Zarathustra. At that time, there was no talk of a trinity. This came only later, at about the time when our historical documents begin. The Akasha Chronicle does not report a trinity in prehistoric times. It was only when people knew how to distinguish between good and evil that they were forced to look to a third party. And so we see the mediator, in the form of the mediator, in the form that most clearly presents itself to us in the so-called Mithras mysteries, which spread from Persia across the whole world. We see the mediator, the reconciler, the redeemer of humanity from evil, the guide from evil to good.

In these ancient times, one must always see in the earthly an image of the divine, an image of what has taken place in the great vault of heaven. If you look at the zodiac, you will see that in this zodiac the signs of Cancer, Gemini, Taurus and Aries or Lamb follow one another. According to certain laws, the sun, or rather the sun's vernal point, advances, so that in ancient times the sun rose in spring in the sign of Cancer, later in the sign of Gemini, still later in the sign of Taurus, and still later in the sign of Aries or the Lamb. Around the time of the eighth century before the birth of Christ, the sun had reached the constellation of Aries or the Lamb in the celestial vault. Now, in our cultural era, it enters the constellation of Pisces.

Depending on what happens in the spiritual realm, what happens on earth takes shape. You are familiar with the sign of Cancer, but its true significance is not always known. This sign of Cancer must be understood; then one will also understand how it points to the dawning of a completely new era. They are two intertwined spirals or two intertwined vortices. When something important happens in the world, when one stage of development is replaced by another, when something completely new enters the world, then two such vortex movements intertwine. In this one vortex you have the end of the Atlantean culture, and in the other you have the beginning of the Aryan culture. Our ancestors saw the outer sign for the rise of the new Aryan culture in the sky above. Then, in later times, the sun entered the sign of Gemini. Gemini is a sign for good and evil; Gemini is the sign of the zodiac that dominated Persian thinking. Then the sun enters the sign of Taurus. This brings us to the third sub-race; it has the worship of the bull, the Egyptian Apis, in Babylonia the service of the bull, and finally in what was later to become Persia the bull sacrifice, the service of Mithras. Man brought the bull sacrifice down from heaven because it was marked there.

The fourth sub-race, which saw the rise of Christianity, begins with the sun entering Aries. An important saga – the bringing of the ram skin by the Greek hero Jason – indicates this important turning point in history. And a further important turning-point is indicated by the sacrifice of the mystic Lamb on the cross. This is the historical expression of the mystery that is indicated by the fact that the Sun, the ruler of the world, has reached the point in the vault of heaven that is signified by the Lamb or the Ram.

But now we have to understand this whole development in the right way. After the duality of good and evil, the trinity appears in human consciousness. This occurs in various religions. We only need to get to know it in what we know in the different countries around the Mediterranean as the Mithras mysteries. Let us look at one of these mystery temples. For those who only participate in the lesser mysteries, a symbolic act takes place. For those who are allowed to participate in the greater mysteries, the same thing takes place as a fact in the astral realm. I can only speak about the lesser mysteries of the Mithras service. The symbolic bull becomes visible. The mediator, the god, rides on it. He then holds the bull's nostrils shut and plunges his sword into its side. A snake comes, a scorpion; above the head of Mithras one sees a bird, and above the whole group, on one side, one sees the genius with a lowered torch and, on the other side, with a raised torch, which symbolizes the sun on its course through the vault of heaven.

Human life, as it was experienced in the consciousness of that time, is thus presented to us. Man had come to seek redemption within himself, the third divine principle, which leads him away from evil and can reconcile evil with good. Evil is the passions, that which pulls man down to earth, all the way to what is symbolized by the bull. But what can lead man up to the higher self, what appears as the immortal, is the mediator who has killed the lower being when he symbolically thrusts the sword into the bull's loins. Thus, as mediator between good and evil, that is, in the third sub-race, a trinity in the divine appears, and with that, humanity has grasped what is called Atman-Budhi-Manas in theosophy. The moment the mediator appears, the mystical secret is fulfilled: the trinity in the consciousness of man awakens.

Thus man was led through the human realization of unity, duality and trinity to Atman, Budhi, Manas. Atman or the spirit is the unity that man is able to perceive within himself when he has developed to it. Budhi or the spirit of life will express itself in man in that evil will be overcome by good, that duality will on the one hand purify the lower instincts or desire and on the other hand reconcile the higher so-called fire instincts or love, in that all evil will be consumed in the fire of love. Manas or the spirit self is the spiritual principle that already governs human development. Just as the Messiah, the redeemer, creates unity in the world, leading from disharmony to harmony, so duality dissolves through the trinity, in which evil is overcome by good.

Thus the human race had come so far that it saw its entire destiny in the trinity. But it sees fate in this trinity as imposed on people as an eternal world order. Man looks up to the threefold aspect of the Godhead, beholds a divine trinity in the world and sees himself as dependent on this divine trinity. He truly experienced that this divine Trinity descended directly to him in a human brother. This was the great event at the beginning of our era. For human consciousness, the Trinity has become something completely new as a result.

But we can only understand the deeper meaning of Christmas if we understand the mediator in the right way. From unity, duality has developed, from duality, chaos, from which harmony is to develop again. This harmony can only develop if the mediator creates this harmony. This harmony can only find expression in an eternal lawfulness, and this eternal lawfulness found its symbolic expression - in the time when the Mithras service originated - in the fact that an image was seen in man himself, this creating the eternal world harmonies of the world law.

In the same mysteries that I have already mentioned here, in the secrets of the Persian religion, you will find a sevenfold initiation for those who were admitted to the sacred secrets. The first degree included those who learned about the very first secrets: this was the degree of the “ravens”, as the symbolic name indicates. The second degree was that of the Occultists. The third degree was that of the fighters or for sacred truth. The fourth degree was that of the so-called Lions, and the fifth degree was that of the Persians. Only the latter was regarded as a full Persian, in whom the consciousness of the highest spiritual in man had awakened, which we call Manas. He in whom this had awakened could be called a fifth-degree initiate, and he was called a Persian. He was a member of a nation in the truest sense of the word. He represented the destiny of his people. And if he was initiated one degree higher, he no longer represented the personality of his people, but that of all mankind. He then represented not the karma of a people, but of all mankind, insofar as it had developed from the middle of the Lemurian race and further into the fifth root race. Then such an initiate was called a sun runner or a “sun hero.” All those whom you find in the books as solar heroes are none other than such initiates of the sixth degree. Then came the “Father”; he was connected with the evolution of the future of humanity.

What does the name Sunrunner mean? If you could look back into the primeval times of our solar system, you would see that this solar system emerged from the struggle of thermal chaos, and that harmony itself has established itself in our world of disharmony, that peace and the laws have developed out of discord and disharmony. But how did they come about? They came about like this: The sun has such a regulated course that we cannot even imagine that the sun could deviate from its path for a moment; our world is so firmly grounded in harmony that the sun is firmly determined in its direction by its path through the world, that nothing can bring it out of this direction. In this course of the sun across the vault of heaven, the ancient Persian initiate saw his own inner destiny in the sixth degree. The sun of his own inner being, the sun of his spirit, had to shine so firmly for him that he could not deviate from the path of good and wisdom any more than the sun could deviate from its path. A person who had reached the sixth degree of initiation had to be so imbued with this lawfulness that he could not possibly deviate from his path; then he was a solar hero, a sun-runner.

All the earlier degrees of initiation had no other purpose than to give the human being this inner security, this inner sun-likeness. Thus, the person who knew something of these mysteries saw a deep harmony between human destiny and the path of the sun across the vault of heaven. The sun – so he said – causes the days to grow shorter and shorter, nature to die towards autumn, everything to withdraw into the interior. And when we approach the time that is celebrated today as Christmas, a new turn occurs: the light emerges, the days become longer in nature, nature can awaken again. The birth of the light – that was the moment celebrated since the times when it was said that the light is the symbol of revelation in the world and in man. So that in the East all peoples of our root race regarded the light as the garment for the wise ordering of the world. In the light they saw the garment for world wisdom. When we direct our eyes into the universe, light appears, harmoniously and firmly imprinted, in the stars outside. In reality, the spirits of wisdom reveal themselves through the light that the ancient religions saw as the garment of wisdom in the world.

Thus the trinity appeared to the ancient religions, that they first celebrated unity, primordial wisdom, then duality, light and darkness, and finally, as a trinity, also the enlightened man, the teacher and mediator, Mithras.

But mankind could not attain salvation in the sense of this consciousness until the consciousness of this universal harmony was born out of human hearts themselves. That which lives outside in the world as light, as the birth of light, must at the point in time we are now approaching arise in the human heart itself. The external mystical fact that has taken place is the founding of Christianity. In Christ, that which has been present on our earth from the very beginning, but which has remained hidden from humanity throughout the ages we have just spoken of, has appeared. During this time, humanity has gradually repeated those three stages. But now a new point of view, a new high point can be reached: the light can be reborn. Just as after the light grows weaker and weaker as we approach autumn, and then, when we come to the winter solstice, the light is reborn, so too was the savior, the Christ, born to humanity in the fourth sub-race. He is the new solar hero who was not only initiated in the depths of the mystery temples but appeared before the world, so that even those who do not see can be blessed by believing! It was therefore a natural consequence that when it was realized that the Divine can descend to the level of personality, one could at that moment replace the birth festival of the Light with the birth festival of the solar hero of the fourth post-Atlantean race.

This happened in the fourth century of our fourth sub-race. What had never been there before was now there, namely, the possibility that man could give birth to the light within himself. He could do so because the light principle had been incarnated in a human being for the first time. With this happening, the winter solstice festival was necessarily associated with Christmas. The entire significance of the preceding sub-races is determined and established with the transfer of the celebration of the birth of Christ to the winter solstice festival. At first, wisdom and light appeared to people from outside, but now the light was to be brought forth from within the human heart. Christ was to be born within man himself. Therefore, the event also had to take place in Palestine, a mystical event and an historical fact.

We are therefore dealing with a historical event, and that is precisely the great mystery that is so little understood: that what happened in Palestine happened literally as it is described in the Gospel of John, and that at the same time it is a mystical fact. Those who do not understand the event in this way do not yet understand it at all. But if you understand it that way, then you will also understand why from this moment on God is to be imagined as a personality, and that the Trinity, which had been imagined differently before, is to be imagined in the form of three divine persons. Christ had now become a person, and with that the proof was delivered that the divine can be realized in man. With that a firstling had appeared on earth, in whom the divine once dwelt. And this could henceforth become a lasting, an undestroyable ideal for mankind.

All the earlier great teachers of wisdom - the Egyptian Hermes, the ancient Indian Rishis, the Chinese Confucius, the Persian Zarathustra - they spoke the word of the divine, they were the great teachers. With Jesus, who was the Christ, the divine itself walked on earth in a living form for the first time. Before that, we only had the way and the truth on earth. Now we have the Way, the Truth, and the Life. That is the great difference between the earlier religions and Christianity, that the latter is the fulfillment of the former, that in the case of Christ we are not dealing with a teacher of wisdom – for teachers of wisdom are also present in all other religions – but with a human personality who must at the same time be venerated as a divine personality. This is why the disciples' message is so important: “We have laid our hands in his wounds, we have heard his message.” This is also why they relied on appearances, on direct sensory impressions; that one should not just listen to the word, but also look at the personality. And this is also the reason for the conviction that he was the world solar hero in a completely unique way. If we grasp this, we also understand that the old festival of the winter solstice used to mean something different from today's Christmas. In Egypt we find Horus, Isis and Osiris, the archetype of what also lives in Christianity. In ancient India we have the birth of Krishna from the Holy Virgin. Everywhere we find echoes of this myth. But what is important about Christianity is what I have just mentioned: the fact that not only the trinity, but the tetrad has become sacred, that the sacred has descended to the personality. Before that, the sacred was divine and enthroned at an inaccessible height above human beings. The old teachers of wisdom, the holy Rishis, revered it as the indefinite, unutterable Brahman; the old Zarathustra disciples saw it in the duality of good and evil; in Egypt, as already mentioned, it is the triad of Isis, Osiris and Horus. But that the Divine dwelt among men, that it became personality, that was the secret of the fourth sub-race. This is the most important event of our human epoch, that Christmas, which has always represented the birth of an initiate, now represents the birth of the greatest solar hero, the Christ Himself. Thus we see the necessity of these two things resonating in the course of the world. If we look at the fourth sub-race and compare it with the point in time at which we ourselves stand, then we see the divine having moved down even further. And it has taken on a peculiar form in our present time, a form that one must understand if one wants to fully decipher the Christmas festival. Go back to the fourth sub-era, to the twelfth or thirteenth century: everywhere you will find full understanding of the real personality of Christ among those who know it; this personality of Christ is so comprehensively described that, for example, in the poetry of 'Heliand', German conditions are transferred to the Christ. The Christ stands so firmly within humanity that the conditions of other countries can be related to his redemptive deed. He is so firmly rooted in humanity as a whole as a personality. But then a different mood sets in. There is a certain shaking of faith in this archetype of humanity. Something occurs that is a step forward on the one hand, but on the other hand a much larger circle of humanity enters into the further evolution of Christianity. But in return, people cease to understand that the center of his thinking, feeling and willing can lie in the individual personality of Christ. There are fewer and fewer people who dare to say that it is not the doctrine but the personality of Christ that is at issue. Finally, it dissolves altogether into the worship of the abstract ideal, which one thinks only spiritually and towards which man strives. In the time of the first sub-race it was Brahman, in the time of the second it was light and darkness, in the time of the third it was the Trinity. Then, in the time of the fourth sub-race, this Trinity had descended and become a person. The personal aspect descended even further, to the level of mere intellect, which has dissolved the human personality and is only worshipped as an abstract ideal.

In our fifth sub-race, however, the moment that must still come is already approaching, and it must bring us faith in the new initiates, in the 'Fathers'. Those initiated in the seventh degree are called the Fathers, and in the spiritual scientific world view we speak of the realization of the Masters, because it is not just one, but because it will be the Masters to whom man will look in gratitude and adoration as the great leaders of humanity. Thus the fifth sub-race connects us with our future. And so this fourth sub-race appears to be placed right in the middle of the great process we are going through, the process of Advent, that is, of the three preceding races, of which the three-week Advent is a reflection, because in a short time people will once again go through the process of how, in earlier times, the light dawned at Christmas time. Then comes the life in the light. That is why Christmas is not something temporary for Christians either, not a commemoration of what has passed; because the Christmas antiphon is not: Christ was born, or Christ was born, but it says: Today Christ was born. Today is always spoken of. That is important and significant. Today is spoken of in the sense that Christ Himself spoke: 'I am with you until the end of days'. This is something that stands before us anew every year and reveals to us the connection between man and heaven. It shows us that what has taken place in heaven must also take place in man. And just as the sun could not deviate from its orbit by a single inch without causing confusion, so too must man keep to his path. He must achieve that inner harmony, that inner rhythm, which is given to him by Christ, who was incarnated in Jesus and who will work in the Fathers, whose guidance man must follow in the times of the future.

This is the connection between man and heaven: the sun should not only move unerringly in the sky and gain new strength at the winter solstice, it should also bring about a birth of light from deep within in man, a resurrection, a solar heroism of the fifth root race. Hence the Christmas saying: “Gloria in excelsis deo et in terra pax”, “Peace on earth to those of good will”. Inner peace will also bring humanity's evolution into a rhythmic process, just as the sun has brought its own process into a regular rhythm. In the sun we have an image of the eternal cycle of the cosmos. It has overcome chaos within itself and brought it to peace. In this sense, Christmas is a festival of peace, from which the mood of peace and harmony should also radiate. Then it is celebrated in the right way, when the power of peace and harmony radiates from this festival. With the Christmas bells, not only the sounds of the Church resound, but the sounds of all striving humanity, which is working and has worked on present-day culture and its further development, ever since the Earth with its spirituality rose again from the great frost.

What the preceding races longed for as their future was born into the fourth post-Atlantean sub-race. And what the three following races must strive for, that resounds from the Christmas sounds. The harmonies of the heavens truly speak to us when we understand what Christmas expresses. Every festival of the year is so firmly grounded in ancient wisdom.

It is no coincidence that these festivals have been set, they have not sprung from arbitrariness, but are drawn from the deepest wisdom of the world, and those who can truly understand and celebrate them with full understanding will find in them the scriptural characters of ancient wisdom for what has happened from the beginning and will happen in the future. In this way the festivals take on a new meaning; they cease to have the conventional significance that they have for many people. To read the great truths of the world is to celebrate the great world festivals in the right spirit. With the heart, with the mind, with the soul you read the primal truths of heaven when you celebrate the great world festivals. Then they are truly celebrated out of the spirit, then they are something for humanity again.

Spiritual science is not mere abstract thought, not a tangle of dogmas. It has a great task and a world mission to revive what humanity has forgotten, to strike the fire out of what has been given to us by our ancestors. Then human selfishness will also cease. They will learn to live in the unified spirit of the world. This is the wisdom that, among many other things, emanates from spiritual science, and it is practical in a good sense; it gives us inner support and secure hope. And that is why the spirit of peace and spiritual confidence that emanates from the Christmas festival can inspire those who strive for spiritual knowledge in their innermost being.

The exalted spiritual leaders of humanity once prescribed this festival for us in primeval times. Let us visualize this as genuine Christmas wisdom at the end of this hour: Advanced human brothers are the leaders of the spiritual movement, advanced human brothers who were already present at the beginning of the fifth root race when the great world festivals were established, and who, as the great teachers of humanity, are still revealing such truths to us today. They do not give us the wisdom teachings out of speculation, out of their own opinion, but because they were there when the things were revealed. They have prepared the peace that shall one day flow over humanity, and they have composed the holy scriptures in the festivals, from which we shall read the message of peace, the message of inner soul bliss, which we shall regain through spiritual science. If we live in the spirit of the masters of harmony, then we live more and more towards the great ideal that they themselves exemplify to us. Spiritual science reminds us of those exalted leaders of humanity when we are seized by the Christmas spirit, which speaks to us of peace and of the sacrifices of the great masters. This peace flows into the future of humanity. We see it completely surrounded by the splendor of this spiritual light and the harmony of feelings. In this glory in which they appear to us, we recognize them as the fathers who lead us towards the future. We follow in their footsteps, and out of our own soul is born a life that is immersed in peace, in harmony and unity - in that harmony that is an image of the sun's path around the world.

The birth of peace at Christmas time is a reflection of the sun's passage around the celestial vault. This is taught by the wise magicians, the great masters, and spoken by those who not only have blind faith in these masters, but who also know and say out of their full knowledge: the masters they are, and the spiritual world movement under the guidance of the masters is the great and lofty peace movement that leads people to that world harmony in which human souls will live with the same harmonious regularity and imperturbability with which the sun moves through the worlds, showing us the way to the radiant beauty of the spiritual sun.

We will begin by pointing to a great thing in our time, namely, to that great thing which must consist of an entirely new attitude of the human soul to what works its way through priests' activities. For as long as mankind has existed on earth, people have always been attracted to what is present in the activities of priests when an act of consecration of man was performed. However, if we want to understand how the act of consecration of man must appear to the priest who celebrates it and to the layman who participates in it, we must take a look at what the act of consecration of man was in the course of man's development on earth, what it is and what it must become.

Looked at from another angle what the act of consecration of man is when it is celebrated, is a permeation of this religious service with the real content of what John, who had been initiated by Christ, wanted to give to the later Christian world with his Apocalypse. The right spirit when one is celebrating an act of consecration of man and the right consciousness when one is permeated with the substance of the Apocalypse are two things which really belong together. Let's disregard the particular form and connotations which the Apocalypse has for Christians, and let's call all the occult truths which have been and are being given in order to assure a right continuation of the priestly impulse “apocalypse.” The apocalypse concept covers a great deal, and it is concentrated and summarized in John's Apocalypse, which is attuned to the Christ. People who have striven towards an apocalypse have always been aware that one can only arrive at the complete and profound significance of the reception of apocalyptic things through an immersion in an act of consecration of man.

We will be able to explain many things if we tell ourselves that mysteries once existed, which I want to call the ancient mysteries. We don't want to take up time in this introduction with the giving of dates, so we will only describe four successive stages. There were ancient mysteries, semi-ancient mysteries, half new mysteries, and we are now at the beginning of a new mystery impulse. Therewith we have four stages before us, four stages in the development of man's understanding of apocalypses and acts of consecration of man. If we look at the ancient mysteries which existed among men at the dawn of human evolution on earth and which had to bring holy, true and beautiful things to human beings, we can say that their importance derived from the fact that dignified priests in the mysteries worked with the gods on a being to being basis. Just as human beings relate to each other on a being to being basis today, so gods associated with men and men with gods in those ancient times in the mysteries.

However, just as there are laws of nature which are valid during certain periods of time, so there are eternal laws which don't interfere with man's freedom, even though they exist. Among these eternal laws are some which refer to associations between gods and human beings. These eternal laws had to be taken into consideration when the gods associated with men in the holy mysteries in the far distant past, when everything that is connected with human instruction was occurring between divine teachers and human beings, and when what took place in the cults occurred in such a way that supersensible and powerfully active gods walked among the celebrants of the religious ceremonies. People in these ancient mysteries did the things which had always given the act of consecration of man its meaning when transubstantiations were being carried out. But what was transubstantiation in the ancient mysteries? Transubstantiation in the ancient mysteries was something which gods regarded as the last thing through which they were still entering into relations with human beings. The eternal laws which I mentioned determined the way a path is made from gods to men and from men to the gods during certain constellations of the stars and planets which one became familiar with in genuine ancient astrology, when conditions for finding out things from the stars were favorable.

You will be able to perceive one thing everywhere: if you look at the way people calculated time in the old/days, you will see that there are chronologies where they assume the existence of 354 days and others where they have 365 days. They interpose leap days and intercalary months in order to correct the discrepancies between human calculations and the true course of cosmic events. What human beings can calculate never coincides with the true course of cosmic events. A small remainder is always left over, that is, human calculations always have a small remnant in them. Priests in the ancient mysteries, were particularly interested in these small remainders where human calculations of time don't agree with the cosmic course of events. One could say that this non-coincidence became particularly noticeable at certain times, for after they divided the year into weeks and lunar months, extra days and weeks remained between the end of one year and the beginning of the next.

Anyone who wants to find his way into the course of human evolution has good reason to look at the times where men—when they interpolated weeks—expressed the non-coincidence of human calculations with the course of cosmic events, ind where priests looked upon such weeks as holy weeks. These holy weeks made it very clear that the ways gods and men think are different, but if one places the heart of the gods alongside the heart of man, one sees the difference between the two, and one can then find the way from the gods to men and from men to the gods.

The people who really understood this and who were conversant with ancient astrology were able to observe when gods visited their mysteries. There were always holy times at the end of each year or at the end of a lunar cycle of 18 years or of other periods of time which indicated the difference or boundary between human intelligence and divine intelligence, and during which the priests in the mysteries could tell that gods can find the way to them and that men can find their way to the gods.

At such times priests tried to capture the activities of the sun and the moon in the substances with which they celebrated the act of consecration of man, so that they could extend what they had received during sacred times to the other times in which they had to celebrate. They preserved what the gods had made out of earthly substances and forces during the sacred times. They kept the water and its mercurial element, etc., from those times in order to celebrate the act of consecration of man during the rest of the year in such a way that it had a transubstantiation which was done in the same way it had been done by the gods in the services which had taken place during so-called dead times which, however, were sacred times.

During these times when cosmic language was more important than human language, the men in the ancient mysteries wanted to connect themselves with the gods who descended into the mysteries and who consecrated each religious service anew. The gods gave the human beings who carried, out or participated in these acts of consecration of man an understanding of apocalyptic things. This is how great truths were taught in ancient times, when an immersion in an act of consecration of man meant that one was permeated with apocalyptic substance. The act of consecration of man is a path of knowledge, and apocalypse is the object of this holy knowledge.

Then we come to the semi-ancient mysteries, of which there is a slight reflection in the literature, unlike the ones which I called the ancient mysteries, for the latter can only be investigated by occult science. During this time the gods withdrew from men and sent their forces down into the mysteries, and no longer appeared there as beings. It was the time in which the act of consecration of man acquired that radiance or divine glow which should always radiate above acts which consecrate human beings.

The secret behind transubstantiations was now sought in a different way. The substances and forces which were supposed to flow into the celebration of a transubstantiation were no longer determined by an astrological investigation of cosmic processes. Instead, one tried to arrive at an understanding of the inner nature of what ancient alchemists called ferments. A ferment is a substance which has attained a certain maturity, that is, it has passed through all of the preparatory stages of its material existence and activity. To take a trivial example, just think of how one bakes bread, for this occurs according to the same principle. One saves the yeast in a small part of the dough and adds it to the new dough. Try to imagine how ancient materials which had undergone inner events or a transubstantiation in the course of time were preserved in sacred vessels, which were greatly esteemed in the ancient and semi-ancient mysteries, and how they were taken out of these vessels after they had been transformed by very ancient and sacred processes.

Ferments were taken out of sacred vessels and they were used to transform substances through ancient and still sacred alchemical processes. The priest was an initiate who saw how the preserved substances and forces shone in the sacred crystalline vessels, and so he knew how the transubstantiation occurred. One looked upon these substances and forces as a cognitional organ for the people who were celebrating rituals, which enabled them to receive apocalyptic things.

The following state of affairs existed at the time of these semi-ancient mysteries. A priest passed his entrance exams, as it were, the moment he could stand before the sacred place or structure, and the old, fermenting substances in the sacred crystalline vessels became transformed for him in such a way that he saw a small sun or a natural small monstrance in the crystalline vessel, as the substances spread sunshine around them. This was something holy, and it can only be reproduced externally today. The moment he saw this he became a priest in an inner sense.

Today everyone who goes into a Catholic church sees a monstrance, but it is only a symbol for what it once was. In ancient times the only one who saw it was a true priest who saw a radiant sun appear in the preserved substances. At that moment his soul gained knowledge of apocalyptic things.

Then came the mysteries which are reflected in the modern mass. The Catholic mass, the Armenian mass and other masses arose from the half new mysteries in a very complicated way, and even though they have become externalized, they still contain the complete initiation principle. What man can perceive when magical words awaken within him began to be present in these half new mysteries, instead of the god's presence in the ancient mysteries and the presence of forces which the gods sent in the semi-ancient mysteries. These words enable one to acquire very profound knowledge of the inner nature of sound, and intense feelings resound in them.

During the time of the half new mysteries human language and cultic language were two different things, and remnants of the latter are still present in individual religious confessions. Ln this cultic language everything depends upon rhythm, a deep understanding of sounds and an understanding of the way that sounds from the priest's mouth penetrate human hearts. The intonation of magical cultic words in sacred places enabled people to ascend to the forces of the gods for the first time.

1. The first human period—ancient mysteries—the gods descend.
2. Second human period—semi-ancient mysteries—the gods send their forces down.
3. Third human period—half new mysteries—man learns a magical language and begins to ascend to the forces of the divine world through the intonation of magical words.

This is why words were intoned during the third period of acts of consecration of man. The Kabiri element lived in all religious cults which arose during this third period. For the Kabiri services and sacrifices which were celebrated in Samothrace were brought into all of the half way new ceremonies in the act of consecration of man and into all the ceremonies which belong to This. Let's place the Kabiri altar at Samothrace before our souls. The Kabirs who stood upon it as external relics were sacrificial urns that contained no ferments, but substances which men find if they can penetrate the inner spiritual aspect of matter. The sacrificial urns contained such substances. The sacrificial substances in the urns were ignited, and smoke ascended. The magical language created an Imagination of the intoned words in the rising smoke. Thus the way up to divine forces was outwardly visible in the sacrificial smoke. The priests who were surrounded by this smoke knew that they were in the right atmosphere for carrying out a transubstantiation.

As Aristotle explained to Alexander, the substances were mixed in such a way that a sacred Imagination emerged from the sacrificial smoke, and this showed one the way to the, gods. If people found this way, the priest's transubstantiation was a right one and the act of consecration of man was executed correctly. Those who celebrated and participated in it knew that it was an organ of cognition. For when the ceremonially shaped, magical words and prayers flamed up in the sacrificial smoke and streamed up to the gods, an apocalyptic revelation came down from above as a gift of grace. This was the third stage in the development of apocalyptic things and of an act of consecration of man.

These stages have deteriorated somewhat. Only their external features are still real today. A new period for the act of consecration of man and for apocalyptic things began when we inaugurated the new priesthood and a Christian renewal here at the Goetheanum. Tomorrow we will go into what the act of consecration of man must bring about in you and what should stream through your hearts in order for you to carry it out in the right way during this fourth stage.