The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Instruction session without location or date given

The “Iron Sea” refers to pure, untroubled human nature. The three treacherous companions are doubt, superstition and the illusion of the personal self. By descending into earthly incarnation, man came to doubt his spiritual nature, to have false mental images. That is superstition, for example the idea that he is a being standing alone, not part of the great whole, the illusion of the personal self. These three traitors destroy the originally pure human nature. The fire of passions springs from it.

From the 22nd lesson in Cologne, December 22, 1907.

The Iron Sea, if it had come about, would have made the Earth a transparent, clear planet. Now the three companions have destroyed the casting. Doubt, superstition and belief in the personal self have clouded the casting. In the human etheric body, there are three points - heart, spleen and in the back - that are particularly significant. The one at the back means the Iron Sea in the microcosm. In the case of a person who still has doubts, superstition and belief in the personal self, this point is clouded, traversed by clouds, like a smoky topaz. Our task is to transform it into a radiant, clear one.

Cain, in the center of the earth, still possesses the pure divine Elohim power. Hiram Abiff descends to him and receives the original creator word, written on the golden triangle.

Place and date of these remarks unknown, according to a transcript by Mathilde Scholl, dated Landin, August 31, 1906.

Hiram Abiff could not create the Iron Sea until man had passed through the fire of passion, until he had not completely descended into the earthly fire. Until then, the Sea of Bronze could not become firm. It had to remain billowing, for if one wanted to solidify it in this way, it would have to burst. Passion, having become power, is the destructive principle that leads everything to ruin. But after Hiram Abiff had plunged into the fire, into the embers of the Sea of Bronze, and emerged from it again, bringing with him the Golden Triangle - the higher principles of wisdom, beauty and power (Manas, Budhi, Atma) - he was able to lead the Sea of Bronze to completion. The Iron Sea is the fusion of the lower and higher principles in physical existence, in the mineral round. It could only be fully restored after a complete descent into the mineral world, into the solidification of the physical.

The Iron Sea is the solidification of the astral. The astral was not allowed to solidify as it was before the physical solidified. By passing through the solidified physical, the astral was so purified that it could emerge pure afterwards, and only then was it allowed to solidify. Only then can the word be found that stands on the golden triangle. For only when the astral has been purified can the word arise anew, the etheric body in its new form, expressing the Christ principle.

Man's education is one of freedom. In order for the I to dwell in man and develop his individuality, it was necessary for it to take hold of a part of all the world's forces. That is why the development of egoism was a necessity from the middle of the Lemurian race onwards. Until the development of egoism, man had no kama of his own; all kama was only present cosmically. After the division into two sexes, the Kamic entered into the individual human being; the superfluous Kama was excreted in the moon. Now the development of Kama took place in the individual human being. The more the human being solidified physically, the more concentrated the Kama became in him, because he now increasingly confronted the outside world, increasingly learning to distinguish his ego from the rest of the world. He finally forgot that he was part of the rest of the world and therefore treated his environment as an enemy. (Cain kills his brother Abel.) From then on, he wanted to have everything for himself, to take possession of everything, because he felt the great difference between what he himself was and what did not belong to him, what belonged to his environment. This is how the power of Kama was taken to extremes.

While, on the one hand, man became more and more violent in his greed for possessions, he had to learn, on the other hand, that he cannot possess everything. He had to learn to renounce many things. He had to learn that in this way, as he wanted it - outwardly - he could never take possession of everything, and through death he was shown that even if he can apparently take possession of many things, he must renounce everything again when death tears him away from the physical world. So man learned resignation. Through many lives he had to learn the difference between the transitory and the eternal. He had to learn that all external possessions are impermanent. Then he looked for the imperishable, which he found in the higher worlds. Thus he learned to direct his desire to the imperishable. He learned to renounce external possessions. Now he began to build himself up inwardly. But as long as there was still any desire for his own possessions, he could not bring this work of inner development to completion.

First, the power of the kamasutra had to be pushed to the extreme by entering into mineral solidification, but then, precisely by passing through the mineral-objective world, it had to be purified again and emerge as selfless human love. Thus, cosmic warmth became individual warmth, individual power. This is initially found in devotion. Devotion brings order to unbridled passion. It shapes it into harmony and beauty. Devotion was the missing beam on the Temple of Solomon that was to connect the two columns. It had to be found before the temple could be built. Only after man had attained piety, devotion to the Higher, could humanity be led to perfection. He could only learn this devotion to the Higher by passing through the consciousness of the ego and by solidifying it in the physical world. Piety also leads him to find the Master Word, which leads him to perfection. After he has brought his astral body into harmony through devotion, he has attained the Master Word, the wisdom with which he transforms his etheric body into an eternal one, into the sounding word, which is productive.

Man was given the columns of Boaz (strength, physical body) and Jakin (wisdom, etheric body) and also the means to achieve his own perfection (astral body Kama - the fire).

He had to learn to work with fire: outside in nature with physical fire and inside in man with the soul fire (Kama). Outside, with the help of physical fire, he had to work with the mineral kingdom, shaping it into harmony, into a work of art; in the soul, with the help of the power of Kama, he had to develop first self-awareness and then inner harmony, devotion, enthusiasm (to be in God), to dive completely into passion and then emerge again like Hiram Abiff with the golden triangle, the higher forces. Only after he had transformed passion into devotion within and fire into beauty without, could he connect the columns Jakin and Boas. That is, he could develop himself up to wisdom and strength, to Budhi and Atma, because he had worked through Kama manasically. He attains wisdom by purifying his kama through devotion. In this way, his kama becomes pure human love and, on the other hand, he transforms it into enthusiasm by permeating his manas, the power of knowledge, with the purified kama. Thus, the kama is illuminated by manas, and the warmth of the kama moves into the manasic.

Thus the crossbeam laid across the two columns leads on the one hand to higher wisdom (Budhi) through piety, love, Christ, and on the other hand to creative power (Atma) through knowledge, enthusiasm, Lucifer. Thus the two columns of the temple are connected.

The transformation of the mineral kingdom into an outer temple goes hand in hand with the transformation of the surging astral body into harmonious human love. Thus the iron sea is built in the outer and in the inner. The mineral world will ultimately become an expression of human love. Love within, beauty without: that will become the image of the world.

The following is added to the above notes under the heading “Supplement”:

The three companions of Hiram Abiff are the three lower principles; Hiram Abiff is the I. These three must help him, but they must not become masters. They destroy the iron sea. The three lower principles are initially an obstacle for man in building up the higher, in developing the ego to freedom. Hiram Abiff plunges down into the interior of the earth by throwing himself into the sea of fire. He descends through the kamic fire into the physical. There he is endowed with the three higher principles: the Golden Triangle. But when he comes up again, he is attacked and killed by the three companions. This represents the struggle that the three lower principles wage against the higher ones in man. The I is the East through which the higher principles enter. (Like the sun, they rise in man.) The three companions come from the three other quarters of heaven.

Before he dies, Hiram Abiff writes the Master Key on the Golden Triangle and sinks it into a deep well. He thus points to the time when man will have purified his astral body to such an extent that the iron sea is fixed, that passion rests and his physical and astral body then forms the solid ground on which he can stand in his further development. At the time of Hiram Abiff, just after the emergence of the ego with self-consciousness, when the environment became objective, the Golden Triangle could not yet be erected over the Iron Sea. This could only happen after the complete purification of the astral body.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

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

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

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

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

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

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

The things which we wish to discuss today have not hitherto been discussed in front of women. Therefore, it is a rather bold step I am taking to speak about these things to you. However, particular occult currents make it necessary.

Within these currents there are some things of an intimate nature which, up to a short while ago, could not be mentioned in the presence of women, because the occult brotherhood, whose task it was to nurture these intimate things, had a strict rule, to admit no women members. What they had to do in the world might not be done in cooperation with the female element. Until just recently, this rule has been strictly adhered to. Nowadays, the sole possibility of creating a balance between the two sexes exists only in the Theosophical Society. Here is indeed the only place where these things are discussed in front of women.

Now we ask: Why has this separation of the sexes come about—which has taken such a grotesque form in the Lodges of Freemasonry? If one wants to understand why this segregation really became habitual, one has to use a rather grotesque metaphor: When two powers are at war with each other, it would be very foolish if the general of one side were to reveal his plan of campaign to the enemy general, before the battle started. It would be the same as handing over one's weapons to the enemy, if one were to enlist women in the Freemasons. For it is a matter of war for the Freemasons, a war indeed against the female spirit, a matter of sharp opposition to the female spirit as such. This way was necessary, yes, occult Freemasonry was founded precisely for this purpose. Therefore it was the custom to speak about occult matters to the two sexes separately. First, a form must be found, in which these things can be spoken of to women.

The founding of Freemasonry lies far back in the past. It took place at the beginning of the fourth Cultural Epoch of our present fifth [Post-Atlantean] Root Race. The Old Testament, which gives us an explanation of these things, was written down at that same time. We are told that higher spirits made revelations to Moses, which he then wrote down. The knowledge of higher things was already there, however, much earlier on, and was handed on from generation to generation, from priestly mouth to priestly mouth, until it was put into documentary form by Ezra¹ to whom the writing of these things is ascribed. When the Old Testament began to gain power through the priests, a tremendous opposition to this priestly book arose in the Freemasonry brotherhoods, for a particular reason. To be sure, this opposition has always been there, and it was necessary. We must be clear about why.

Let us agree that everything which happens on the physical plane has to recapitulate earlier stages in a particular way. On earth there is always a recapitulation of the events of earlier times. [In his life] before birth man has to go through the stages which he once experienced with his dull animal consciousness [in earlier times]. So, for instance, the Renaissance period of the Middle Ages was a recapitulation of ancient Greek times. We also find such recapitulation in planetary events. Before the present earth became what it is today, it had to recapitulate earlier conditions before it could become an independent planet, our earth in fact, in the Fourth Round [or recapitulation]. Thus, whenever anything new has to appear on earth, the earlier stages must always be recapitulated in a new form. So the human spirit in the fifth Root Race [our present Race] has worked through a recapitulation of the [happenings of] the Lemurian Root Race [the third Race], when humanity was still of one sex only, and then became two-sexed. That had a great influence on its spiritual development. In the third Sub-Race of the fifth Root Race, the Egypto-Babylonian period, there was a progressive recapitulation in the realm of spiritual life of what had happened physically to man of Lemurian times.

Before there was [separate] male and female, the two were combined; so then the two sexes separated from each other. As regards spiritual development, we have this happening in the fifth Root Race:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Third Root Race: Lemuria: division of physical evolution into two sexes, male and female.

Fifth Root Race: Division of spiritual evolution into male and female spirit, into Jehovah worship, or priesthood, and Freemasonry.

In the first Post-Atlantean epoch, in the [ancient] Indian culture, everything was still at a higher level than the physical plane. The original Indian wisdom, which stems from the first Post-Atlantean culture, is, spiritually speaking, primarily connected, not with the present physical plane, but with the conditions of that earlier time when humanity was still [combined] male-female. Therefore, at that time, little regard was paid to the existence of [separate] sexes. There was no question of a dualistic principle in this; that comes only in the following Sub-Race. The Vedas belong to a much later time. Already, in the second Sub-Race, there was a great schism. The outward expression of this schism is depicted for us in the Old Testament, quite wonderfully. Genesis has it very beautifully and clearly: Before Yahveh created man, he made fruits and animals and so on, on earth, and only then did he create man, Adam, whom he then divided into two sexes.

This account rests on occult perceptions of the physical facts. Now, of course, all occult wisdom presents a relationship between physical events and later spiritual wisdom; for physical events arise out of Divine Wisdom and wisdom later re-emerges out of physical life, out of man. There is a connection there between wisdom, perception and physical life.

The whole fertilising and fructifying force by which a new person is created, used to be combined in one sex. Then the human being was separated into male and female. Which sex can best lay claim to the generative power? It is the female. Therefore Zeus, who was worshipped as the progenitor of the human race, was portrayed in the oldest [versions of] Greek mythology as having female breasts.² Zeus as a superhuman being, was nearer to the female sex. The female sex was thus the first, the earlier one, and at that time had the power in itself of producing the complete human individual. This generative power lay within a human being of undivided sex, who approximated, in its outward physical form, more towards the female. In this single-sexed human being, the fertilising [principle] was wisdom, the spirit itself; and the fertilising of the female spirit by inspired wisdom is a later recapitulation of this. This human being of the single-sex era was the result of the fertilisation by the Divine Spirit of the substance produced in the woman.

Now you understand what it was by which a woman could give birth to a human being. Physically, there is first of all a woman, who is fertilised from above. It was the Divine Spirit in woman which was the fertilising principle. When the separation of the sexes happened, the differentiation started in the transformation of the female's spiritual organs of fertilisation into organs of wisdom. The masculine power that the woman had in herself turned the creative force into organs of wisdom. So half the generative force stayed with the woman; the creative physical forces stayed with the man. As a result of this separation, the spinal cord and the brain with the nerve branches appeared, as portrayed in the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. The organ of wisdom is formed in the vertebrae by the spinal cord and its extension into the brain. From that time on, there is a duality. in man; namely, the two trees of the biblical record, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

And now the new beings adapt themselves to the change. The individuals who had previously been female did not all subsequently take on the female form. The female side—the capacity to produce human beings—withdrew from one section and left behind, in substitution, the power to fertilise in a quite different way. Physical nature had divided itself into what fertilised and what needed to be fertilised. Spiritual nature, too, had similarly divided itself. In female individuals the spirit acquired male character and colouring; in the male the spirit had a female character. That is still the female within man.

The biblical legend shows this very clearly. As is known, the man having two sexes was forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The power with which Jehovah had invested mankind was: to make his wisdom work in the woman. ‘Thou shalt not eat of the Tree of Knowledge’ means the same as ‘Thou shalt not separate off the force of fertilisation and make it independent.’ For Jehovah's power, the fertilising power, would thereby be lost to the woman. When woman ate from the Tree of Knowledge, she thereby laid the basis for becoming independent in respect of wisdom, thereby ceasing to remain a mere tool of Jehovah as he had planned. But thus she lost, along with Jehovah's power, the power to fertilise herself through wisdom as well. By eating [from the Tree of Knowledge] and giving the apple to man, she wiped this power out. Thus woman became dependent on man. It was Lucifer who led mankind along this path in order to make him independent. Jehovah was against this, and forbade man to eat from the Tree of Knowledge for that reason. However the woman did eat and gave to the man. The man ate too, so that the punishment decreed by Jehovah ensued. New bodies have to come into existence, which will work out the Karma of previous existence; death and [re-] birth come into the world. Woman is now no longer fertile through herself, but has become barren. And with fertilisation coming from outside, the possibility of this kind of death enters the world.

The biblical story of Paradise reveals this deep connection in images; ancient priestly traditions became the content in these images, and ancient priestly wisdom was intuitively [? or evidently: German anschaulich] incorporated in them. Woman has, then, become infertile in respect of spiritual wisdom, because she has demanded physical perception. She gave to man and he ate as well; they were guilty, and were driven out of Paradise, to the formation of which they had made no contribution. That is the old priestly tradition about the origin of the sexes; this contains a profound insight into the connection between actual events.

What now happened as the result of the female separating itself from the male? Which of the sexes still possessed a shadow of that power of productive spiritual wisdom, the male or the female? We have seen that the wisdom of the female actually had a male character; this is the creative, the productive, the intuitive, what is original, what is fertile. The same divine power which formerly worked within woman to fertilise, to produce the physical human being, now worked as fertilising principle in the perception of the Divine centre in man's being. The religions work through words and images to further this process.

The female being becomes physically infertile, in the sense that she cannot produce offspring out of herself as she did before. The masculine, passive spirit is the one which is spiritually infertile, but the man is the one who can fertilise physically. Spiritually, he now lets himself be fertilised by everything in the world; he now becomes spiritually fertilised so that he himself can fertilise physically. The whole world penetrates him first; he becomes fertilised spiritually, the woman physically. Woman, by contrast, is spiritually self-fertilising, whereas man is fertilised by the spirit. The male wisdom is fertilised by everything external being gathered and combined. Male wisdom thus resulted, which was orientated towards assembling worldly wisdom. This [kind of wisdom] was not actually there at first, as [against] that which flowed down from above; it had first to be put together by perceiving the physical world. Female wisdom, by contrast, was actually transferred to the priesthood. The wisdom of the priests turns out to be a property deriving originally from the ancient feminine wisdom. Indeed, only if he separated it into two sexes could Jehovah sustain the human race. Two opposing factions resulted, Freemasonry and priestly rule, which were symbolised by Cain and Abel.

Now, there is a difference between the female priestly wisdom and the male aspiration. This is described to us in the legend of Cain and Abel. Abel was a shepherd and occupied himself with the life that was already there. He is the symbol of the inborn divine force which works in man as the wisdom which he does not acquire for himself, which flows into him. Cain creates something new out of what the world offers. He represents the passive masculine wisdom, which must at first be fertilised from outside, which goes out into the world to gather wisdom and to create from what has been gathered. Cain killed Abel; which means that male wisdom offers resistance against the female wisdom, since it feels that it must subdue and remodel physical wisdom.

The old Freemasons set themselves the ideal, therefore, of taking up this challenge. They wanted to use male wisdom to work against the female wisdom that had been taken over by the priesthood. The great images of the Bible were to be considered as intuitive female wisdom transferred to the priests; to which they wished to counterpose the wisdom self-acquired by the male. This battle against the wisdom of the priests expressed the opposition of the Freemasons. Those who took part in it had to be kept free of every influence of the female wisdom. This battle was concerned with physical evolution, and it was therefore necessary for the Freemasons to avoid any contact with the female sex as far as their work was concerned. They knew that their opposition to the female spirit could only be carried through if they were undisturbed by female thinking. One had to affirm something positive and generally prevent any disturbing element interfering.

Freemasonry thus created the Temple Legend as an answer to the Bible Legend. This was to be the sword of battle against the priesthood. We therefore want to bring this Temple Legend before your soul. It has the following content:

In the beginning one of the Elohim created Cain by uniting himself with Eve. Another Elohim, Yahveh, countered by creating Adam, who united with Eve, as a result of which Abel was born. Cain killed Abel and Jehovah therefore made the race of Cain subject to the race of Abel.

That means that originally the worldly wisdom rebelled against the priestly wisdom and was defeated; for the Abel fine was continued in Seth and all worldly wisdom was made subservient to the priestly wisdom.

Next, it is related how the descendants of Cain conquered the world, how they developed the arts. Music, arts and sciences were cultivated by them. Tubal-Cain (Genesis 4:21–22), the master of brass and ironwork, Jubal, from whom the pipers and violinists descend, and Hiram, the builder of Solomon's Temple (I Kings 7:13) are numbered among the descendants of Cain.

So, with Hiram, we have arrived at the transition from the third to the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch,³ when priestly rule turned into rule by kings. Kingship results from God's grace, as represented by King Solomon. Solomon's power was not sustained by work done on the physical plane, but was the manifestation of God's grace. Priestly wisdom was turned into rule by kings. This was thus regarded as the successor to priestly rule, which was [now] unable to do—from its own resources—what was necessary for the progress of mankind on earth. The one who was to build the Temple had to be enlisted from among the descendants of Cain, because he would possess the autonomously worked out thinking.

The legend goes on to relate that Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, was betrothed to King Solomon. She visited him and was [astounded] at the Temple building—as he was at her wisdom. She wanted to see the master builder himself, for she could not conceive how [such a] wonderful building could result from human wisdom. Hiram came and made a forceful impression on her, simply by his glance alone. Next she asked to see those who worked on the Temple as well. When Solomon said this was impossible, Hiram made the mystical Tau sign in the air and all the workers streamed together immediately. In the mystical Tau sign lie the forces which the Sons of Cain use to work on the physical plane.

Three of Hiram's apprentices are discontented because he did not promote them to the Master's Degree. They conspire to hurt him. They want to spoil his masterpiece. Now he intends to make the Molten Sea; this is a major work of art, to be cast out of a fluid element, out of molten brass. This is a symbol of the Great Work of Art for which the entire mineral kingdom must be re-cast; [which is] the task of our Manvantara.⁴ The three apprentices do the following: they wreck the casting of the Molten Sea. Hiram tries to put this right by pouring water on the casting; everything then flies apart in a shower of fiery rain. As Hiram, in despair, gives himself up for lost he is led to the centre of the earth by a figure whom he recognises as Tubal-Cain. There he is told that Jehovah, or Adonai, is nothing else than an enemy of the Sons of Fire; he wants to destroy the Sons of Fire. Hiram, however, would have a son, whom he would indeed never see, but who would start a new race on earth. Tubal-Cain then gave him a hammer with which he can complete the casting of the Molten Sea. However, the three apprentices murder him. Before his death, he breathes out a word, which he inscribes on a golden triangle, and buries. No one understands the word; it is the Lost Word of the Freemasons. Hiram is buried and an acacia twig is planted on his grave. The triangle is dug up again, but no one knows its worth. It is buried again and a cube set up, on which the Ten Commandments are inscribed.

Now what is meant by ‘Jehovah hates the Sons of Fire?’ These are the people who were born by means of the single sex. In them wisdom is mingled with Kama, the earthly kamic fire [- the astral body]. Those who have devoted themselves to the female priesthood are the sons of Abel. Hiram was promised: ‘You will have a son who will found a new race. However, you will not know him.’ This new race must come when the Lost Word regains its power, and is installed in a new way. The occult tradition which is embodied in Freemasonry works to bring about the re-establishment of the Lost Word. It works to enable the introduction of the active into the passive male element; so that it can regain the procreative [force] in the spirit, to turn what is passive into something active, so that the Sons of Cain can produce out of themselves.

The following tradition developed: the female was the primeval force. This gave the world everything that was in the world as wisdom. However, [the female element] lost part of the physical power of reproduction, which was transferred to the male. Now everything re-spiritualises itself again, in which process the male power attempts to grab control for itself. The male element in thinking seeks to outlast the female. There will come a time, however, when sexlessness will again be re-established and the struggle is about which of the two sexes will first attain this state of sexlessness. Hence Freemasonry endeavours to make the male sex—or, to express it better, the male spirit—outlast the female and attain to the state of sexlessness.

Now there is an occult connection between the power of speech and the power of sexual production. The Word has made everything. Originally it lived in man. Then man lost it. He can no longer create independently because he no longer has the Word. Only someone who was present at the Creation can know it. Tubal-Cain knew it and gave it to Hiram. Whoever wants to regain the power of procreation must gain possession of the Word. The truly creative power must unite itself with the Word. The Word will bring forth the man of the future; for the son of Hiram really will be seen. Fire, the Divine Power, will then establish itself in a new way. A new race will replace the old. In the ancient Hebrew language there is a Word, a Mantram, which, it is said, will create the world if uttered sufficiently strongly.⁵ Man will thus beget spiritual man by means of speech itself once the Word has developed sufficiently. Now we grasp what is represented by the Tree of Knowledge. The serpent is what winds itself upwards in the backbone as spinal marrow. Perception in the physical is that [kind of knowledge] which originates in the nervous system. ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed;’⁶ by that is meant enmity between the seed of the physical, physical perception, and the seed of the spirit, spiritual perception. The spiritual, the woman, indeed bruises the head of the serpent, but only after it has wounded her in the heel. This is that [power] which presses the foot [of man] from the centre of the earth.

The power of speech changes at man's puberty. This was regarded as a portent of the new Son of Hiram (II Chronicles 2:13). The ideal which the Freemasons had set themselves was therefore to bring about the procreation of this son from the male sex, which is to result from the power of the larynx. Everything which subsequently appeared on the earth in physical form had its origin in the spirit. In the very beginning, the only things to work on earth were those which had resulted from the Divine Spirit. There then appeared, on the one hand, the female image-wisdom of the priests, and on the other, the imageless wisdom of Cain. Now it is interesting that when an image-content was sought for the wisdom of Cain, the male wisdom then borrowed from the female wisdom; the Temple Legend and the entire content of Freemasonry derives from the old priestly wisdom, from the revelation from above. That was concealed in symbols. However, the symbols gradually ceased to be understood. Gradually, everything occult vanished from Freemasonry. The three Craft Masonry degrees are orientated wholly towards the physical plane.

Because we have seen why these spiritual currents run parallel to each other, we will now also understand the significance of the theosophical movement. It is preparing, in the spiritual realm, what will later happen on the physical plane—the reunion of the sexes. The divided wisdom must likewise flow together again in the one Divine wisdom.

Through theosophical wisdom, a balance must be found in man, between the religious priestly wisdom and the wisdom of Freemasonry. The wisdom of the future must be brought out of the higher human, which lives equally in both male and female. To develop what is needed, and what is completely uninfluenced by things of the physical plane, is the purpose of the theosophical movement.

Theosophy is truly male-female wisdom, wisdom which is equally valid for both sexes. Through the teaching of reincarnation one recognises that what comes to expression in every new earth life is not the personality of that particular earth life, but that the causal body, the entelechy, creates itself asexually. When we become aware of this we axe spiritually quickened with what is higher than the sexual, with what is independent of the causes of conflict between the two currents. Thus theosophy is the balancing movement; and it alone can bring about the balance. Only in theosophy can one speak about an occultism which applies equally to both sexes; only from this source can one think of a real balance between the two sexes. Everything else is an after-effect of the previous dual sexuality.

Freemasonry sets itself the task of preparing for the future. So, the wholly exclusive principle of former times was abandoned as early as the eighteenth century. And in 1775 the first of the so-called Adoption Lodges was founded; a lodge for women, since the law of the balance of the sexes was recognised. And so the connection was established between men and women through the founding of a lodge for women. But every member of a women's lodge had to be adopted by a man from a men's lodge.

Indeed, H.P. Blavatsky belonged to such an Adoption Lodge.⁷ And so this theosophical experiment was made by Freemasonry itself. This shows you that whatever is correct is always preceded by an experiment; only the reason why such an experiment is made may not be understood immediately. However, man can equally not expect that fundamental forces in the world will always be understood right away. It may be that one prefers one or the other current; therefore the two currents will run parallel to each other for a long time yet. In order to achieve a harmonious balance it may be necessary to pour into Freemasonry what will lead it over towards the theosophical movement.

Now you will also grasp why, in the Middle Ages, the Church had to evolve a quite specific ideal. Freemasonry created its ideal for the future—the Church created its ideal for the future. It had nothing to do with Freemasonry. Christ lived in the Church as ideal—a male ideal, indeed. This male ideal could not suffice for the occult current within the Church. Man needed the active as well as the passive [principle]; he had to think out what he lacked. He needed something which would complete him, as a means of concentration. He was already a man; he had to think out the woman. The occultist who understood something about this, who was not a Freemason, must conceive the woman. Thus did the Cult of Mary spring out of monasticism. This came to the Church—to the priesthood, and to Freemasonry, that is—as a third current.

All three currents had basically the same aim—to make mankind independent of the sexes. But the way of achieving this aim varied. The Christian occultist sought the male principle in woman, to embody it in himself.

One has to be clear about the fact that the true inner man is independent of the sexes, which are divisive; that is why one passes through both sexes during different incarnations. And now you must consider that, for Freemasonry, the battle on the outer physical plane is waged so that all individualities which incarnate in female bodies are gradually led towards the male, so that the male lasts longer than the female. It should outlast the female, because the female was the earlier one. This was in the back of the masonic mind, as an ideal; but it was one-sided.

What ideal does theosophy have in the back of its mind-, The ideal of theosophy is to use the wisdom that comes from higher planes to bring about, on the physical plane itself, a human race that is above sexuality. Therefore theosophy is indeed a wisdom that is not broken up into [various] religions, that does not rely on any particular religion but falls back on the primal wisdom that made the world, that replaces that wisdom which, as priestly wisdom, differentiated itself into the various wisdoms. It must do this; because, in the course of time, the priestly wisdom has completed its task. Theosophy, however, wants to conquer the future, to conquer what still has to come rather than what has already been; it is in a particular sense a continuation of the ancient priestly wisdom, of the Mysteries, and nevertheless, in another sense, is in contrast with them.

Opponents of the theosophical movement would be those who want to stick rigidly to the ancient priestly wisdom, who seek to retain it and, so to speak, mummify it in its old form. The plan of the higher [worlds] for world development is to guide evolution towards a modern spiritual life which will forge the future. The very first blush of the dawn of the development of a new wisdom—which has to come—showed at the time when the Rosicrucians brought a new spiritual life to human development, in the fifteenth century. This was a matter of a new impulse coming into the world. The theme of this ran, that the old priestly wisdom should be transformed into a new [wisdom].

Forces also existed which wanted to re-conquer the world for the ancient priestly wisdom; an Order was thus founded with the aim of winning the earth back for the old priestly wisdom. This Order [the Jesuit Order] chose the ideal male in contrast to the Cult of Mary. It used occult powers to erect something like a dam to hold back the whole stream of independent life, and to conserve what seeks to cling to the Cross. It championed the male principle, the Cross by itself, without the roses. However another Order added roses to the Cross, and new life sprang out of them.

So we have two modern currents. The one has brought the old into the present and seeks to check progress with all its might. The other has surrounded the old Cross with roses. It has grafted a new shoot—the Cross entwined with roses. These two currents run parallel with each other, the one order having a Cross without roses, and the other, which reveres the roses on a new Cross, which must come. These are the Rosicrucians. The theosophical movement grew out of this current; it springs from the newly flourishing scion of the rose, which must mature in the future.

Thus we have seen how this battle started, in which women were not allowed to play a part. Our task is to bridge the gulf between the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians. The work is difficult, but it must be done. It involves reaching towards the awareness of the higher humanity beyond sexuality. It is difficult to win through to that, but it is possible, and this will succeed, this will become reality.

• 1 . See note 2 to the preceding lecture.
• 2 . See note 3 to the preceding lecture.
• 3 . Hiram was living during the reign of King Solomon, which is reckoned as being 993–953 B.C. The fourth Sub Race had its beginning in 747 B.C. according to Rudolf Steiner.
• 4 . This is the Indian theosophical term for a great cosmic epoch of evolution. A period of manifestation such as the planetary states (Old Moon, Old Sun, etc.,)
• 5 . This possibly refers to the ‘Ineffable name of God’ which, according to Hans Ludwig Held (‘Von Golem und Shem’ in Das Reich, January 1917), ‘is a difficult formula sequence corresponding to the 12-, 42-, or 72-letter name, the knowing of which reveals the secret of God's works or God's activity from beginning to end.’
• 6 . Genesis 3, 15.
• 7 . H. P. Blavatsky belonged to such an Adoption Lodge. See notes 6 and 7 to the preceding lecture.

Text based on the original manuscript by Rudolf Steiner
Note sheets, archive numbers 6981 to 6987

I. Introduction

The third degree is attained by anyone who has acquired a sense of the fact that the inner experiences of the human being can be viewed from a point of view outside the human being in the same way as the facts of nature are otherwise viewed from a point of view within the human being. For a point of view outside the human being, the previous external world ceases to function as a perceptual world. It becomes an inner experience, as thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will are before. And a completely new outer world opens up before the human being. An outer world that appears as the expression of the thinking, feeling and willing of spiritual beings, which the human being now experiences as being within himself, just as he previously experienced his thinking, feeling and willing within himself. “I am” – which was previously only a mere point of thought – becomes a rich inner experience in which spirit-beings unfold their activity in organic interaction. This activity starts from a multiplicity and is directed towards a unity as its goal; and this goal is – the human being. The human being gets to know himself from an external point of view. To do this, it is necessary that he develops a feeling for what his experience is like when it is not his experience, but when it reveals itself in the ongoing process of nature. “Memento mori” contains the reference to a shift in consciousness. Through this shift, a feeling arises in the soul of what it can be like when the whole presence of its experience becomes the past, becomes memory. Another presence now lives in the soul. And just as in ordinary life consciousness feels itself as subject and an external world as object, so now consciousness arises as experience, for which a new presence is subject and ordinary human life as past is object. This switch in consciousness can be schematized in the following way:

The verbal formulation of the soul's orientation towards this shift in consciousness can be schematized in the following sentences:

1. Consider the end
2. Think of death
3. Think how all corporeality is transitory.

These three sentences are in reality not graspable at all by consciousness I. They can only make sense for this consciousness if it wants to deceive itself about its own experience.

For 1. this consciousness I cannot consider its own end. Such a thought can only be conceived when, in truth, thought is thought without words. In the face of experienced thought, the demand: “Consider the end” is as senseless as this: pluck out your eye so that you can hold it up in front of you and look at your own eye.

2. “Think of death”: death concludes thinking as it is for consciousness I. The demand is therefore completely senseless for this consciousness: do not think yourself thinking. Consciousness I can believe it is thinking when it imagines it still has an object of thought, even when it stops thinking.

3. “Think how all corporeality is transitory.” This means for consciousness I “Do not think.” For consciousness I cannot “think” without corporeality. With the thought of corporeality, thinking itself disappears.

Thus, when a person hears these three demands made of himself, he must, if he remains prudent, say to himself: here one speaks in a way that is impossible for my consciousness I. Here my consciousness I has no possibility of understanding. If he has now digested the impressions of the second degree, he makes the following demands on his thinking: This thinking wants an experience with every thought. It does not allow itself to think when the thought cannot be an experience. It says to itself: how should I think the end, when I cannot experience the end mentally with the end of thinking? How am I to think of death, since I could only see death in dying thought? How am I to think of the transience of the corporeal, since I must think with the corporeal; so without the corporeal my thinking passes away?

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Those who have not experienced the second degree can believe that they can think the above three sentences with the consciousness I, because this consciousness is accustomed to separating the thought from the being of the thought. In this way, this consciousness allows itself to think even where it no longer experiences the being of the thought. Therefore, this consciousness I does not know the inner experience that a thought, through its own nature, makes itself an unthought and thereby splinters into infinitely small fragments of thought into nothingness. But this must be how it is for consciousness I when it has gone through the second degree and hears the three sentences, which for consciousness I can only be thought thoughtlessly, but not lived thought.

Thus man stands before the end of consciousness I. He has measured out this consciousness. Before, it was a point from which rays seemed to go out in all directions, that is, it seemed to itself that thinking had no end in any direction.

Now thinking grasps itself as consciousness I as a circle that is closed in itself. And that must be broken through if further progress is to occur.

The preceding passage characterizes the state of mind in which what is the content of the introduction to the third degree must be taken up.

The opening is made as for Gr. 3.¹

Then:

The inductee is led through the gate. First he hears:

"Memento mori.

Then, as he is led further into the room, which is so dark that he cannot see clearly what is inside,

“Consider the end.”

Then:

“Think of death.”

Then:

“Think that everything physical about you is transient.”

When the person being initiated hears these words, he is led forward in an arc and turned so that he does not see the coffin-like device along which he is being led. At the gate, a pointed object is placed on his chest (a copper rod with a point) and he is admonished: “What is going to happen now, you shall not only hear and understand, but experience it in the deepest part of your soul.”

Now the person to be initiated stands with his back to the coffin so that he cannot see it.

The Servant of the East now speaks. While up to now the one who stands by the Servant of the East speaks.

The Servant of the East:

“When Hiram Abiff had completed the construction of his temple, he was to go inside to see if everything was in order. He did this. When he had seen everything, he wanted to go back outside. He sought the western gate to exit. But there stood one of three conspirators. These three were conspiring because the Master had not been able to give them the Master word and the Master degree, for he found them not ripe enough. One of the conspirators in the West - (he is to be represented by the Servant of the West) - struck the Master Hiram Abiff with a straight edge on the left temple, so that the blood flowed down the Master's shoulder through the wound. (This act is symbolically performed by the Servant of the West.) - The Master then sought to leave by the southern gate. But there stood the second of the conspirators. He demands - (as was also the case with the first) - a degree and word from the Master, which the latter cannot give him. Then the second conspirator raised a ladle and struck the Master on the right temple, so that blood ran down his right shoulder. (The action is symbolically performed by the Servant of the South.) Thereupon the Master sought to reach the open air by the third of the gates. Then the same procedure was repeated with the third conspirator. He demanded the word and the grade, which the Master could not give him. Thereupon the third conspirator struck him on the forehead with a measuring rod, so that the Master fell down. But before he expired (the event is symbolized by the Servant of the East) he could throw the golden triangle, on which was written the ancient Master word, into a deep well near the gate, so that the word was lost. Then Master Hiram Abiff passed away. You yourself are Hiram Abiff. It is your soul. Thereupon the three traitors took the body, carried it away and buried it in a lonely place. As now happens to you.

A symbolic burial is now performed – vicariously by the servant of the West – in a black robe; the servant of the South – in a red robe; the servant of the East – in a white robe or robe.

When the person to be initiated is now lying in the coffin,

a tolling of the bell ²

then (by the servant of the East) the words:

"The master's soul now takes its way back through the earth times through the spirit world. It hears the music of the spheres. It hears it at the time when, in the course of the world, the earth broke away from the sun and moon and became a world body. The master's soul was already there. You hear the beat now, you will hear it in full reality in the future. And your soul goes further back in the course of the world. To where the earth, sun and moon were still connected. Your soul was there.

(Three chimes sound.)

So you hear the sound of the spheres. You will actually hear it again in the future. And further back your soul goes in the course of the world. To where the Earth was still the Sun. Where it was surrounded by planets, a planet among planets, forming the seven with them – you hear this in the sound of the spheres.

(Seven chimes ring out.)

You will hear this again in reality one day. And further back your soul goes in the course of the world. To the point when the Earth was Saturn, surrounded by the twelve starry powers. It was the great midnight hour of existence, when eternity passes into time.

(There are heard the twelve strokes of the clock.)

Thou hearest it, the great midnight hour of existence. Thou shalt hear it in reality in the days to come.

When this was spoken, he who stood to the left of the Servant of the East, took up the word, saying:

"When Solomon's companions saw that Hiram Abiff was not present, they sent twelve of their number to seek the Master. They found a freshly dug grave mound in a lonely place, which they recognized by a cassia branch on it.“ ³

(This branch was placed on the coffin after the burial.)

“They dug for it.”

(A procession is now made around the coffin by those present.⁴ The following is spoken by the assistant to the servant in the east:

“Like Hiram, may he be reborn.”

(As it was dark before, the south is illuminated.

“Like Hiram, may he be victorious over death.”

(The west is illuminated.

“Like Hiram, may light shine for him from the east.”

(The east is illuminated.)

(Now the coffin is opened. The servant of the east takes the hand of the initiate.) He speaks:

"With the master's lion's grip I lift you from your grave.” ⁵

Then:

“I find you in such a state that the bones of your body have become loose.” Then the initiate is whispered in the ear:.....

Then the servant of the servant in the East says:

"What you have now symbolically gone through should one day pass through your soul in this way. But you should keep it in your deepest memory. It should be recalled again and again in your meditation. It is not by brooding over this pictorial experience that it can work in your soul, but by pictorially renewing the process again and again in your memory and living entirely in it. The image will have the power to help you find the way to see the things of the world, your own life and all life from the point where the spirit stands, not the body. You have felt the grasp – this will be repeated. – You have heard the word – (this will be whispered into the ear again – syllable by syllable: first syllable into the left ear – then the second syllable from the other into the right ear of the first – then the third syllable again into the other ear of the other from the first – then completely from the other to the first.)

Receive the sign as well.

As a special admonition is added:

"Do not understand with the head the deeply significant image in which you yourself were interwoven and [in] which you are to be interwoven many times more in memory; understand it with your whole being, so that it becomes part of that being of yours; so that you can get to know the feeling that results when you are completely one with it and still live and breathe in it for a while, even though it has already been allowed to fade from your consciousness. Then the picture will have achieved its purpose for you, that you experience what it is to recognize things and yourself and all life from the point of view of the spirit."

Then a teaching brother will give a speech, which is not meant to be an interpretation of the image of initiation, but to suggest thoughts that will guide the soul in the same direction as the image. It should be included in this speech that the soul was already aware of the essence of world evolution before the present solar system was formed. That this solar system was formed by the high cosmic powers for the further development of particular human powers. How man, as a spiritual being in the solar system, can feel connected with Christ without arrogance, is characterized.

Then with the ceremony of the third degree the act concludes.

• 1. A participant's note reads: Knock 3 times. 1. Who knocks? 2. A sister (brother) of the second degree who wishes to be admitted to the third degree. Are all conditions met? The Grand Master has granted him a dispensation.
• 2. By striking a sounding plate (after a participant has recorded it).
• 3. Is considered a symbol of immortality.
• 4. See the participants' notes on page 200.
• 5. Regarding the symbol of the lion, it says in the lecture Berlin, February 16, 1905, that the “human principle, which initially strives in selfhood, is represented in alchemy as a lion, which, freed from selfhood, desires and passions, may unite with the lily (the spiritual). See also the lecture in Berlin, March 2, 1915.

We have already spoken of how the cultural development of mankind, in so far as it is spiritual, is permeated by all kinds of brotherhoods which bring to expression in their total content the symbolic actions which have been taken from certain imaginative ideas. The most significant symbol of such brotherhoods is that which is connected with the thought of death and resurrection. Again and again the thought of death and the thought of resurrection is brought together before such brotherhoods. Thus, one can say that as a middle point symbol man is shown how the thought of immortality proceeds out of both of these thoughts. First a man dies and is buried.

Now, in most of these brotherhoods, the personality to which this symbol is attached is called Hiram; this symbol is connected with what is called the legend of Hiram. Thus the name of Hiram, the architect of King Solomon who according to the legend built the Solomon Temple with King Solomon and then as a result of certain of his servants becoming his enemies, Hiram was killed and his death is shown in a symbolic way. It is shown how he is buried and the presentation is brought to a certain resurrection out of the grave, a proceeding of Hiram out of the grave. Through this symbol, they want to carry the thought of immortality to the soul in a much more penetrating way than is possible through mere theories. Through this symbol which takes hold of the unconscious forces of man, through this imagination one wants to show what the situation really is when one passes through death and then is resurrected.

Now, when you consider that the death of Hiram, the resurrection of Hiram is led before the brothers of the lodges, so indeed, we have the connection with the Easter thought. Now you know that in the Catholic cult there is also a symbolic presentation occurring; that the festivities of Maundy Thursday pass over to the Good Friday, and then the Festival is concluded in the symbolic placing of Christ Jesus in the grave. Then you have Christ Jesus lying in the grave from Good Friday through Saturday evening; and as is the modern custom the Resurrection is celebrated, which means that Christ is again taken out of the grave and you have celebration with the Resurrected Christ. When one considers the action which occurs there in the cult, particularly in the Catholic cult, it is just the same as that which occurs in occult brotherhoods as the putting in the grave and the resurrection of Hiram. So you see, the Easter thought stands as the center point in a certain connection in these occult brotherhoods. The meaning which is connected with this ceremony is that the human being, by gazing on this symbolic activity, goes deeper into his soul than he would with the normal forces which are present in his consciousness; it goes much deeper than that. Such a symbolic action would actually have no significance if you could not presuppose that deep down in the human soul you have an activity where the consciousness does not reach. The human soul contains activity below his conscious awareness.

We speak in art of the fact that that which gives the artist power enabling him to produce works of art or to reproduce them cannot originate from the ordinary conscious forces of the soul, but come up out of the unconscious and then enter into the consciousness. Hence, in connection with the artist, it is so that for him any sort of rules to which he might direct himself to, will become a disturbing factor; he cannot regulate himself according to rules; he must direct himself to that which as an elementary consciousness in his soul gives wings to those forces which he needs. He can, if he wants, subsequently to look back and give a certain explanation of that which comes to the surface from the subconscious aspect of his being. Therefore we must assume that many other hidden qualities hold sway in the soul, forces which do not play up into consciousness.

We speak of the fact as we have often spoken about it, that the astral life of man is much broader, much more extensive than the conscious ego life of this human being and these forces play out of the astral life of man into the conscious ego experience. Hence,these forces are present underneath. There is already a large number of people in our time who have so adapted themselves to the external, purely materialistic life and look for their salvation in this external materialistic life so that, in the main, in their soul life they only possess that which is connected with the external material life. You can really notice the difference when you lead a symbol such as the death and resurrection of Hiram in front of human beings who have only been educated for the external material life. They find it very comical, very superfluous. However, those people who have the unconscious soul forces, who are able to perceive the unconscious forces which hold sway in the astral, are taken hold of in the deepest sense by the symbol and call up those faculties out of their soul which are able to understand what is meant by immortality; whereas the ordinary forces which are bound to the physical life cannot understand this immortality.

Something has remained in the Easter Festival of what in the primal consciousness of mankind was connected, in the main, with the thought of this festival. We have often spoken about the question—When do we celebrate this Easter Festival? Well, we celebrate it on the Sunday following the first full moon after the beginning of Spring which falls on the 21st of March. Thus the establishment of the point of time of the Easter Festival is dependent upon the relationship between the sun and moon positions, which means that we upon the earth celebrate the festival which is dependent upon the cosmic connections. What does the human soul say in so far as it has undertaken such an establishment of the Easter Festival. It says the following: Here upon this earth everything shall not be regulated according to purely earthly relationships. However, at least that which touches the soul most deeply ought to be directed according to extra earthly relationships. Man should gaze upon the symbol of immortality; the placing in the grave and the Resurrection; the thought of immortality of the living; the soul going through the Portal of death. That should be carried in front of the human being either in the occult picture as in the Catholic cult or more in thoughts as happens in other confessions—that is not so important at the present time. However, in so far as the human being allows the picture of the placing in the grave and the Resurrection to sway in his soul, this should happen when the sun and the moon come into a corresponding constellation. This is a protest of the human soul, that the gazing upon such an important symbol should not be carried out purely under earthly conditions; it is a recognition that the gazing upon this symbol should be bound up with the cosmic relationships external to the earth.

Here, as I am giving a lecture, certain things are happening to your human soul. Just imagine that so-called Monists were sitting here instead of you. Naturally, there would be an entirely different effect upon their soul than is upon your soul, because you have taken up into your soul certain preliminary ideas from spiritual science. Man is continuously changed by that which he has experienced. You have been exposed to anthroposophical spiritual science; your soul is different from those people who have not been exposed to it. It is not realistic to speak in general terms abut the human being as is done by the academic would. As soon as one goes into the realities, one sees how unrealistic the way the human being is considered by anthropologists.

Now, you see, it is very easy for you not to assess correctly or even to overlook what has happened to your soul in so far as the work of spiritual science has impinged upon it. Much, much more is imprinted upon this soul. Much is imprinted in the human soul, because there is the unconscious, the astral united with the human soul and you will be able to say: That which plays into the human being from the external world and which remains unconscious is nevertheless far more powerful, far more significant, than that which enters consciously. You all know the beautiful love poems which unite themselves with the light of the moon. Here we see that the unconscious soul itself stands in a connection with the non-earthly, that which comes into the earth with the light of the moon. Here you have the moon with its light streaming in and it is something that you have coming from the cosmos, from the extra earthly and has to do with the unconscious weaving and swaying of the human soul. And, if you remember what I said to you on Thursday and again that which I said on Saturday evening at the public lectures about the swaying, the dominating, the ruling and weaving of the Folk Soul element in the human soul life, then, indeed, you must say to yourself that this Folk Soul element comes up out of the unconscious much more than from the conscious. It is really true that that which rules in the depths of our soul and can only echo faintly up into the consciousness, is precisely what rules and weaves in the astral body; that is very important and is of a non-earthly nature. And that person whose soul is open for the impressions of the spiritual world knows that our earth is not only different in spring and in Autumn, that in spring the vegetation shoots up and in autumn there is harvesting, but the portion of the earth which is illuminated by the light of the moon is something different than the earth when it is not illuminated by the light of the moon. After the 21st of March the sun stands in a different relationship to the earth than it had before the 21st of March and that which is reflected back to us as sunlight from the moon upon the earth is therefore something quite different from that which radiated down before the 21st of March. The first full moon after the beginning of Spring gives back to us the first strength of the resurrected sun and this is quite different from any other full moon. Thus our astral nature would not be the same if, shall we say, we would gaze upon the symbol of laying in the grave and Resurrection in December; it is not the same as when we do it in the week after the streaming down of the spring full moon. Our soul is in another condition at this particular time. Now, if our soul is something quite different through the fact that we have taken up spiritual science into it and are not just Monists, so our soul is also something different in the moonlight after the Spring Equinox than, shall we say, after the Winter Solstice. Hence our soul can experience something different at this time as compared with any other time.

Now, when spiritual science appears today, it does so in order that the circle of vision of human beings which has been shrunken by the materialistic development can again be expanded. If you take the thoughts of spiritual science into yourself in a thoroughly correct sense, then you actually are expanding the thinking, the perception, the willing, the feeling of your soul. Today people are not sufficiently clear about the fact that materialistic development has brought not only that which one calls materialism, but this materialistic development has brought something else; it has brought, I might say, short-sightedness of the thought life into all things. The thoughts have become small and now they must be made much larger. The possibility of seeing things in their larger perspective must again arise among human beings.

Just think if the human being were again to become clear about the fact that man actually consists of two parts, out of the head which stands at a much later stage of development and which, one might say, is much more hardened than the rest of the organism and the rest of the organism which stands at a much older stage of evolution. Just think what proceeds from the working together, of this head organism with the rest of the human organism. When we move a hand, the body is at the basis of this movement which participates in this movement. What occurs when I move a hand? I have previously told you about this. The physical hands and the ether hands both move, they move together. When I think, the left and the right lobes of the brain also execute ether movements, that is to say, the ether portion of the left and right brain lobes also execute movements which are quite similar to the hand movements. The ether movements are there, but the physical movements are imprisoned, they are enclosed in the solid skull. It is a bound Promethius and because of this, it is possible to have thinking. If it were not through this external imprisonment, but through the organic fettering of the human being man's arms would now be imprisoned as they will be in the future when the earth will have disappeared and developed into the Jupiter existence just as the brain lobes are imprisoned now. Man's arms will be imprisoned in the future as now the lobes of his brain are imprisoned. Then that which we call thinking will also be left over from the movement of the hands. I will show you what can be made clear with a much more concrete example presicely from the history of our time. It can be clearly shown how the thoughts of the best man of our age are very short.

Now, let us consider Eduard von Hartmann who was the philosopher of the unconscious. As far as his own estimation of himself was concerned, he would never consider hinself to be a materialistic thinker. However, how we think of ourselves does not depend on what we think, but the point is, are our thought habits of a materialistic nature? A person can establish a quite idealistic philosophy and nevertheless can still possess quite materialistic habits of thought; and these habits of thought determine whether he has short carrying thoughts or wide carrying thoughts. Now, as far as Eduard von Hartmann is concerned, among many of his contributions he has also written a great deal about politics, and I want to present Hartmann, the political author, to you, because in his age he was held in the highest esteem as one of the best German, nay, one of the best Prussian patriots as well as being a good political writer. Obviously Eduard von Hartmann's thoughts were so wide carrying that he was able to represent the constellation of the different great powers of Europe to himself: Germany, Austria, Italy, France, England, Russia and in between them the different small neutral states. He continually studied and wrote papers about the different political interest of these single states. Now, he wrote a very significant thesis which came out in 1888 and appeared in book form in 1889, and in it he set forth his ideas as to what represents the best political constellation for Europe.

Now, I have to make the preliminary comment that he was not only a German, but also a Prussian patriot, he spoke so obviously from the standpoint of Prussian patriotism. He attempted to represent what the best thing for Germany and Europe would be as far as alliances which must be developed were concerned, and he saw the salvation of Germany and of Europe in an alliance of common neutrality in the arising of an alliance between Switzerland, Belgium and Holland under English leadership. Just think, Eduard von Hartmann wanted Belgium, Switzerland and Holland under English leadership. You can see exactly what I am driving at from such a concrete example, and the same thing can be seen in other domains of life; When you look back 30 years you can see how ridiculous these thoughts were; how the whole development which one can describe as the age of materialism brings with it short thoughts, thoughts when they relate themselves to time relationships are perhaps valid for 2 or 3 centuries.

Now I will give you an example from the realm of medicine, but things do not go as easily here as in the realm of politics. Nevertheless here is an example from the philosopher Lotse, who had a well developed medical background. He said: “The enthusiasm for any given remedy, as a general rule, is only valid for five years. The enthusiasm for a remedy discovery today disappears and soon as another remedy comes into fashion.” this is noticed far more easily in the medical field than with politics. Gustav Theodore Fechner who really was a very intelligent person wrote a very interesting thesis in the 1820's. At that time iodine, a new medicament, appeared on the scene. Everyone began to claim that it could cure numerous types of illnesses. Then Gustav Theodore Fechner wrote a very neat thesis in which, according to the rules of science, and all you need to do is develop a method of receiving the light of the moon and then this universal medicament could be used in a wonderful way everywhere. Can you see from this that a shortness of judgment, a certain living concepts which cannot be carried very far.

Now, when you entered the domain of folk psychology or race psychology and read what the foremost writers had to say and then placed these side by side, you would be surprised at what you had before you. For example, you could find that men, in so far as they claim to be objective scientists with present ways of thinking, depict the population of Middle Europe as being descended from the Germans. Now, they depict these Germans as having all sorts of qualities. Then the Frenchman, shall we say tries to describe the French and says that they became wise through the fact that France descends partly from the ancient Celts and then he describes the Celts. When you compare and find that person who describes the Germans in Central Europe attributes the same qualities to the Germans which the Frenchman ascribes to the ancient Celts. However, there is much more of a Celtic element living within central Europe than within France. But this the people.

I can repeat numerous examples which will show you how the concepts are so very small that they do not carry very far. You can see what happens today when these so-called secure natural scientific methods attempt to go on into the spiritual life. When you realize all these things, then you will see how necessary it is that the spirit should beat into this realm. How long will it take however until one has such a psychology, a science of the soul of the type which I attempted to give in the lecture last Thursday? Only such a science of the soul can make that which actually rules in Europe understandable, and can also bring that understanding which is necessary if a culture your is to proceed further. One can think of all sorts of domains which are so advanced in materialistic directions, directions which are without any spiritual value. Then we see that this material element—it can be a state or any other structure—can never succeed, can never get better, because the way things are is that everyone needs a soul.

Now, that which we foster, that which we have as our science of the spirit within the Anthroposophical Society cannot be just one society among others. Why not? The answer lies in the following question: what do other societies do when they establish themselves? They set up programs and one unites round a certain program. You print the agreement of this program and when you leave this society, that means you no longer agree with the program. When the whole society dissolves, no one is hurt about these programs. One can get together and then one can also depart. That is the case which happens with every mechanism in the world.

Now, Weissman once attempted to characterize an organism from the natural scientific standpoint. Naturally he could only bring a negative quality, but this negative quality really is correct. He asks the question: how can you tell if something is living? His answer is: that which, when it does, leaves behind a corpse. Now, naturally in this way he is not characterizing that which is living. However, one has to concur that he is quite correct when he says: “The living is negatively characterized by the fact that this living being leaves behind a corpse.” Now, our Anthroposophical Society is a living being through the fact that there are a large number of cycles in the hands of our members of which, in the first place we know as a general rule non-members should not receive these cycles. However, one can now go into second hand stores everywhere and buy these cycles. You see from that that the Anthroposophical Society must be an organism, because just imagine, if the Anthroposophical Society dissolved itself away, then it would leave a corpse behind, and the corpse would be the cycles.

Now, one must be able to think about all these things. Other societies, when they dissolve away, can actually do so without leaving behind a corpse, because they are more mechanistically built. These people depart, the point of the program cannot be called a corpse because nothing is left behind. We are trying to deal in realities. This is something that must enter into our souls. When spiritual science becomes a real perception in us, every thought is felt in such a way that this thought stands in reality; whereas the abstract thinking which corresponds to the materialistic thinking does not bother itself with whether thoughts stand in reality or not. All this, my dear friends, show how limited the thinking is when it only restricts itself to the consciousness; when it is only bound up to the material aspect. Hence we should not wonder when those particular cultural streams in the development progress of mankind they want to take hold of everyday life, must also reckon with other than that which works only upon the ordinary consciousness. And so it has always been with the deep religious cultural impulses.

Why, for example, did something like the cult of Easter enter into the evolutionary history of mankind? Why was this Easter Cult brought into connection with cosmology, with that which occurs in a wide spaces of heaven between the Sun and moon? Because if man were only restricted to the experiences of the Earth, he would fall into the most extreme shortsightedness thinking, feeling and willing. Only through the fact that man is able to receive a greater perspective for his life can his thoughts be made much wider so that not only his physical ego consciousness is inserted in the right way into the earthly experiences but also his astral subconsciousness is membered into the great cosmic events. When the most important thought, the thought of immortality, is attached to the cosmos, it finds its fundamental basis in the religious connection. If man were only to originate out of that which is earthly, he would never be able to grasp the thought of immortality. If man was actually that which the materialistic natural science tries to say he is, if he was merely a highly developed ape, there would be nothing inside of him which would arrive at this thought of immortality.

I can give you a beautiful example from the philosophical aspect about how short the thoughts of natural researchers are in this domain. A few days ago I opened a book in which a person spoke about the connection of man with the apes in the sense that the monists do, in the material sense, not in the sense in which it is justified, but in the sense in which it is quite often expressed. At the beginning of his thesis, he says that he could prove that people who travel in certain districts where the cultural situation of the human being have so deteriorated could see that these people have the same instincts and drives as the apes. Now he says: “If it can be experienced that man can sink down to an ape condition, then it is logical that man can develop out of the apes.” Obviously, that is logical and quite clear. If a person becomes older, then you can get an old man out of the child; you can realize that without having to travel. In the same sense when you say that through cultural decadence man sinks down to ape condition, that is just as logical the same day man can become ape, why shouldn't the eighth also become a man! Therefore with the same logic you can say that if the child can become an old man, why shouldn't a child develop out of an old man; the logic is exactly the same. Material aspect is not that these people develop such logic, but that everyone reads this and no one notices what utter nonsense is being expressed.

If the present type of science, the present type of culture continues as it has, it can give people thoughts and feelings and perceptions only about what is earthly. Nevertheless there lives in man's depths that which is present as super sensible forces. They live there, but they must be repressed. And gradually as a result of this repressed spirituality in human soul, you would get the illness of culture. We cannot sufficiently emphasized the earnestness of our times. If from the heavy trials and tribulations which mankind is going through now, a small number of people can be permeated by the consciousness that what mankind needs is a spirituality, then out of this difficult time of trial something would happen which would be in the sense of the world spirit. But unless we get this spiritualization, nothing will go well for mankind.

We understand spiritual science only when we see in it not just a Christmas Festival but also an Easter Festival; that we understand what actually is meant when we have the thought of immortality for the whole being of man. When we grasp that which is immortal in the human being, only then are we able to understand immortality. Fichte, Hegel, many others knew that the human soul does not only become immortal when it passes through death, it is immortal now; that mortal element can now be found in us. Hence a science must be sought for, which besides taking into view the mortal body, takes into view the immortal soul of man.

It was natural that under the great advances and brilliance of natural scientific development in the last four centuries, that the consideration of spiritual life had to recede and the tendency towards the spiritual was also being eliminated from the external world. However, a time must come again when that Hiram, or shall we say that portion of Christ which always is there and which speaks of the super sensible, when that again resurrects itself after it has been buried in the Good Friday period of cultural development. We grasp the thoughts which at the time when the great Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo are all those who in the first place in a true way and can call that time cosmic Maunday Thursday. This has to be followed by a Good Friday. This view of the immortal element had to be buried. However, now the time has arrived when the cosmic Easter Sunday has to come and when we must celebrate the Holy Resurrection of the human soul and of the spirit knowledge.

Now, it is quite all right if, for example, we celebrate the Good Friday mood of soul in our present age. However, only when we have the power to gird ourselves for the Cosmic Easter Sunday, shall we also be able to perform the cult activity within our soul life which is there externally as the Easter Cult. Black mood of soul—that belongs to the days of Good Friday. The priests wear black clothes, because the corpse of the dead Christ rests in the grave. Then follows the Resurrection in the place of the thought of the grave. Today it is appropriate for us to carry in our soul the sorrow and the tragic. However, we ought to be able to know ourselves that we will be able to carry the spiritual Easter clothes when the times will again be different.

Notes from an unknown person

In the beginning of the world, one of the Elohim or light spirits descended and married Eve, the Earth Mother, and from this union of the Elohim with Eve, Cain was born. And again one of the Elohim descended and created Adam. And he married Eve, and from this union came Abel, the first human being to come into being through sexual union; for Cain was born of Eve's irradiation by the Eloah; thus, in a purely spiritual way. Through this descent into matter, Cain, the son of God, had lost the memory of the spiritual world from which he came, and he had to work out the abilities to get back into it again through his own strength from below. Abel, on the other hand, received spiritual wisdom through abnormal states of consciousness without any effort on his part, in a half-asleep consciousness.

This is indicated in the Bible, where it says: Cain was a farmer, Abel a shepherd. And two lines arose from which the human race descended, the Cain line, that is, all those who who have to work their way up from below through their own strength and effort; and the Abel or Abel-Seth line - from Seth, the replacement son whom Jehovah gave to Adam and Eve for the slain Abel - who receive their wisdom from the spiritual worlds themselves in abnormal states of consciousness.

From Cain came Lamech, the progenitor of Noah; he came from Jubal. The fiddlers and pipers come from him. And he came from Tubal-Cain. He was a master in ore and iron works. Furthermore, Hiram Abiff or Adoniram, the great builder of the Temple of Solomon, came from him.

From the Seth-Abel current comes Solomon, the wise King Solomon, who received his wisdom from the higher inspirations. He was able to conceive the plan for the construction of the temple, but he could not execute it or bring it about by his own efforts. For that he needed Hiram Abiff from the Cains bloodline. Solomon wanted to build the temple in such a way that everyone inside should express a piece of human development. An image of this temple is our Masonic temple. The two pillars represent, for example, the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar, through which humanity moved from the West to the East. Hiram Abiff built this temple.

(See continuation of the first version)

The brazen sea represents pure, unclouded human nature. The three treacherous companions are doubt, superstition, and the illusion of the personal self. Through descent into earthly incarnation, man came to doubt his spiritual nature, to entertain false ideas. This is superstition, for example, the idea that he is a single being, not part of the great whole, the illusion of the personal self. These three treacherous companions destroy the originally pure human nature. The fire of passions springs from this.

Today we will explain a great allegory, and deal with an object which is known to occult science as the image or teaching of the lost temple which has to be rebuilt. I have explained in earlier lectures¹ why in occult science one starts from such images; today we shall see what an enormous number of ideas are contained in essence in this image. Thereby I will also have to touch upon a theme which is much misunderstood by those who know little or nothing about theosophy. There are some people who do not understand that theosophy and practical [everyday things] go hand in hand, that they must work together throughout the whole of life. Therefore I shall have to speak about the connection between theosophy and the practical things of life. For, basically, when we take up the theme of the lost temple which has to be rebuilt, we are speaking about everyday work.

I shall, indeed, thereby be in the position of a teacher who prepares his pupils for building a tunnel. The building of a tunnel is something eminently practical. Someone might well say: building a tunnel is simple; one only has to start digging into a hill from one side and to excavate away until one emerges at the other side. Everyone can see that it would be foolish to think in this way. But in other realms of life that is not always perceived. Whoever wishes to build a tunnel must, of course, first of all have a command of higher mathematics. Then he will have to learn how it is to be made, technically. Without practical engineering knowledge, without the art of ascertaining the right level, one would not be able to keep on course in excavating the mountain. Then one must know the basic concepts of geology, of the various rock strata, the direction of the water courses and the metallic lodes in the mountain, and so on.. It would be foolish to think that someone would be able to build a tunnel without all this prior knowledge, or that an ordinary stone mason could construct a whole tunnel.

It would be just as foolish if one were to believe that one could begin building human society from the point of view of ordinary life. However, this folly is perpetrated not merely by many people, but also in countless books. Even one today supposes himself called upon to know and decide how best to reform social life and the state. People who have hardly learnt anything write detailed books about how society should best be shaped, and feel themselves called to found reform movements. Thus there are movements for reform in all spheres of life. But everything done in this way is just the same as if someone were to try to cut a tunnel with hammer and chisel. That is all a result of not knowing that great laws exist which rule the world and spring forth out of the life of the spirit. The real problem of our day consists in this ignorance [of the fact] that there are great laws for the building of the state and of the social organism, just as there are for building a tunnel, and that one must know these laws in order to carry out the most necessary and everyday tasks in the social organism. Just as in building a tunnel, one has to know about the interaction of all the forces of nature, so must anyone wishing to start reforming society know the laws [which interweave between one person and the next] . One must study the effect of one soul on another, and draw near to the spirit. That is why theosophy must lie at the basis of every practical activity in life. Theosophy is the real practical principle of life; and only he who starts from theosophical principles and carries them over into practical life can feel himself called as able to be active in social life.

That is why theosophy should penetrate all spheres of life. Statesmen, social reformers and the like are nothing without a theosophical basis, without theosophical principles. That is why, for those who study these things, all work in this field, everything done today to build up the social structure, is external patchwork and complete chaos. For one who understands the matter, what the social reformer is doing today is like somebody cutting stones and piling them one on top of another in the belief that a house will thereby come into being of its own accord. First of all a plan of the house must be drawn up. It is just the same if one asserts that, in social life, things will take shape of their own accord. One cannot reform society without knowing the laws of theosophy.

This way of thinking, which works according to a plan, is called Freemasonry. The medieval Freemasons, who dealt with and made contracts with the clergy, about how they should build, wanted nothing else than to shape outer life in such a way that—along with the Gothic cathedral—it could become an image of the great spiritual structure of the universe. Take the Gothic cathedral. Though composed of thousands of individual parts, it is built according to a single idea, much more comprehensive than the cathedral itself. To become complete in itself, divine life must flow into it, just as light shines into the church through the multi-coloured windows. And when the medieval priest spoke from the pulpit, so that the divine light shone in his listener's hearts just like the light shining through the coloured panes, then the vibrations set up through the preacher's word were in harmony with the great life of God. And the life of just such a sermon, born out of the life of the spirit, set itself forth in the cathedral itself. In like manner, the whole of outer life should be transformed into the Temple of the Earth, into an image of the whole spiritual structure of the universe.

If we go still further back in time, we find that it is just this way of thinking which was mankind's from the very earliest times. Let me explain what I mean by way of an example. Our epoch is the time of the chaotic interaction of one human being with another. Each individual pursues his own aims. This epoch was preceded by another one, the age of the ancient priestly states. I have often spoken about the cultural epochs of our fifth Great Epoch. The first of these was the ancient Indian epoch, the second, that of the Medes and the Persians, the third, that of the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians and the Semites, and the fourth was the Graeco-Roman period. We are now in the fifth epoch.

The fourth and fifth cultural epochs were the first ones to be based on the intelligence of men, of individual men.

We have a great monument to the conquest of the old priestly culture by the intelligence of men in art, in the Laocoon.² The Laocoon priest entwined with serpents—the symbol of subtlety—symbolises the conquest, by the civilisation of intelligence, of the old priestly culture, which held other views about truth and wisdom, and about what should happen. It is the overcoming of the third cultural epoch by the fourth. That is represented in still another symbol, in the saga of the Trojan Horse. The intelligence of Odysseus created the Trojan Horse, by means of which the Trojan priestly culture was overthrown.

The development of the old Roman State out of the ancient Trojan priestly culture is described in the saga of Aeneas. The latter was one of the outstanding defenders of Troy, who afterwards came over to Italy. There it was that his descendants laid the foundation of ancient Rome. His son Ascanius founded Alba Longa and history now enumerates fourteen kings up to the time of Numitor and Amulius. Numitor was robbed of his throne by his brother Amulius, his son was killed and his daughter, Rhea Silvia, was made to become a vestal virgin, so that the lineage of Numitor should die out. And when Rhea gave birth to the twins, Romulus and Remus, Amulius ordered them to be thrown in the Tiber. The children were rescued, suckled by a she-wolf, and brought up by the royal shepherd Faustulus.

Now history speaks about seven Roman kings: Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tuflus Hostilius, Ancus Martius, Tarquinius Pliscus, Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus.

Following Livy's account³ it used to be believed that the first seven kings of Rome were real personalities. Today, historians know that these first seven kings never existed.

We are therefore dealing with a saga, but the historians have no inkling of what lies behind it. The basis of the saga is what follows:

The priestly state of Troy founded a colony, the priestly colony of Alba Longa (Alba, an alb, or priest's vestment).⁴ It was a colony of a priestly state and Amulius belonged to the last priestly dynasty. A junior priestly culture sprang from this, which was then cut off by a civilisation based on cleverness. History tells us no more about this priestly culture. The veil which was spread over the priestly culture of the earliest Roman history, is lifted by theosophy. The seven Roman kings represent nothing else than the seven principles as we know them from theosophy. Just as the human organism consists of seven parts—Sthula-Sharira [physical body], Linga-Sharira [etheric], Kama-Rupa [astral], Kama-Manas [ego], higher Manas [spirit-self], Buddhi [life-spirit] and Atma [spirit-man]—so the social organism was conceived, as it formed itself at the time, as a sequence in seven stages. And only if it was developed according to the law of the number seven, which lies at the base of all nature, was it able to prosper. Thus the rainbow has seven colours; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Likewise there are seven [intervals in the scale]: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on; likewise the atomic weights in chemistry follow the rule of the number seven. And that permeates the whole of creation. Hence it was self-evident to the Guardians of the Ancient Wisdom that the structure of human society must also be regulated by such a law. According to a precisely worked out plan, these seven kings are seven stages, seven [integral] parts. This was the usual way of inaugurating a new epoch in history at that time. A plan was devised, since this was considered a means of preventing any stupidities, and a law was written for it. This plan was actually there at the beginning. Everyone knew that world history was guided according to a fixed plan. Everyone knew: When I am in the third phase of the fourth epoch, I must be guided by this and that. And so, at first, in ancient Rome, one still had a priestly state with a plan at the basis of its culture, which was written down in books, called the Sibylline Books. These are nothing else than the original plan underlying the law of the sevenfold epoch, and they were still consulted when needed in the earliest days of the Roman Empire.

The physical body was taken as a model for the foundations. That is not so unreasonable. Today people are inclined to treat the physical body as something subordinate. People look down on the physical with a kind of disdain. However, that is not justified, because our physical body is our most exalted part. Take a single bone. Take a good look at the upper part of a thigh bone and you will see how wonderfully it is constructed. The best engineer, the greatest technician, could not produce anything so perfect, if he were set the task of attaining the greatest possible strength using the least amount of material. And so the whole human body is constructed in the most perfect way. This physical body is really the most perfect thing imaginable. An anatomist will always speak with the utmost admiration of the human heart, which functions in a wonderful way, even though human beings do little else throughout life than imbibe what is poison for it. Alcohol, tea, coffee and so on attack the heart in the most incredible fashion. But so wonderfully has this organ been built that it can withstand all this into ripe old age.

The physical body, the lowest of the bodies, therefore possesses the greatest perfection. Less perfect, on the other hand, are the higher bodies, which have not yet gained such perfection in their development: the etheric body and the astral body continually offend against our physical body through the attacks of our lust, desires and wishes. Then follows, as the fourth [principle], the real baby [of them all], the human ego, which like a wandering will-o’-the-wisp, must still wait for the future to offer it those rules which will act as a guide for its conduct, just as the physical body has long since had.

When we develop a social structure, we must have that which will make the foundations firm. Thus the saga allows Romulus, the first Roman king, who represents the first principle, to be raised to heaven as the god Quirinus. The second king, Numa Pompilius, the second principle. embodies social order; he brought laws for ordinary living. The third king, Tullus Hostilius, represents the passions. Under him, the attacks against divine nature begin, causing discord, struggle and war, through which Rome became great. Under the fourth king, Ancus Martius, the arts develop, those things which spring out of Kama-Manas, [the human ego].

Now the four lower principles of man are not able to give birth to the three higher principles, the fifth, sixth andc seventh. This is also symbolised in Roman history. The fifth-Roman king, Tarquinius Priscus, was not engendered out of the Roman organism, but was introduced into Roman culture from the Etruscan culture as something higher. The sixth king, Servius Tullus, represents the sixth member of the human cyclic law, Buddhi. He is able to rule over Kama [the astral body], the physical-sensual counterpart of Buddhi. He represents the canon of the law. The seventh king, Tarquinius Superbus, the most exalted principle, is he who must be overthrown, since it is not possible to maintain the high level, the impulse, of the social system.

We see it demonstrated in Roman history that there must be a plan underlying the building of the state, just as for any other building in the world. That the world is a temple, that social life must be structured and organised, and must have pillars like a temple, and that the great sages must be these pillars—it is this intention which is permeated with the ancient wisdom. That is not a kind of wisdom which is merely learned, but one which has to be built into human society. The seven principles were correctly applied. The only person able to work towards the building up of society is he who has absorbed all this knowledge, all this wisdom, into himself. We would not achieve much as theosophists if we were to restrict ourselves to contemplating how the human being is built up from its different members. No, we are only able to fulfil our task if we carry the principles of theosophy into everyday life. We must learn to put them to use in such a way that every turn of the hand, every movement of a finger, every step we take, bears the impress, is an expression of the spirit. In that case we shall be engaged in building the lost temple.

Along with that, however, goes the fact which I mentioned recently—that we should take into ourselves something of the greatness and all embracing comprehensiveness of the universal laws. Our habits of thought must be permeated by that kind of wisdom which leads from great conceptions into the details—just in the same way as house construction starts from the finished and complete plan and not by laying one stone upon another. This demand must be made if our world is not to turn into chaos. As theosophists we should recognise the fact that law is bound to rule in the world as soon as we realise that every step we make, every action of ours, is like an impression stamped in wax by the spiritual world. Then we shall be engaged in the building of the temple. That is the meaning of the temple building: whatever we set ourselves to do must be in conformity to law.

The knowledge that man has to include himself in the construction of the great world temple has become increasingly forgotten. A person can be born and die today without having any inkling of the fact that laws are working themselves out in us, and that everything we do is governed by the laws of the universe The whole of present-day life is wasted, because people do not know that they have to live according to laws. Therefore the priestly sages of ancient times devised means of rescuing, for the new culture, something of the great laws of the spiritual world. It was, so to speak, a stratagem of the great sages, to have hidden this order and harmony in many branches of life—yes, even so far as in the games which men use for their recreation at the end of the day. In playing cards, in the figures of chess, in the sense of rule by which one plays, we find a hint, if only a faint one, of the order and harmony which I have described. When you sit down with someone to a game of cards, it will not do if you do not know the rules, the manner of playing. And this really conveys a hint of the great laws of the universe. What is known as the sephirot of the Cabbala, what we know as the seven principles in their various forms, that is recognised again in the way in which the cards are laid down, one after the other, in the course of the game. Even in the allurements of playing, the adepts have known how to introduce the great cosmic laws, so that, even in play, people have at least a smack of wisdom. At least for those who can play cards, their present incarnation is not quite wasted. These are secrets, how the great Adepts intervene in the wheel of existence. If one told people to be guided by the great cosmic laws, they would not do so. However, if the laws are introduced unnoticed into things, it is often possible to inject a drop of this attitude into them. If you have this attitude, then you will have a notion of what it is which is symbolised in the mighty allegory of the lost temple.

In the secret societies, among which Freemasonry belongs, something connected with the lost temple and its future reconstruction has been described in the Temple Legend. The Temple Legend is very profound, but even the present-day Freemasons usually have no notion of it. A Freemason isnot even very easy to distinguish from the majority of people, and he does not carry much of importance with him in new life. But if he lets the Temple Legend work upon him, it is a great help. For whoever absorbs the Temple Legend receives something which, in a specific way, shapes his thinking in an orderly fashion. And it [all] depends on ordered thinking. This Temple Legend is as follows:

Once one of the Elohim united with Eve, and out of that Cain was born. Another of the Elohim, Adonai or Jehovah-Yahveh, thereupon created Adam. The latter, for his part, united with Eve, and out of this marriage Abel was born. Adonai caused trouble between those belonging to Cain's family and those belonging to Abel's family, and the result of this was that Cain slew Abel. But out of the renewed union of Adam with Eve the race of Seth was founded.

Thus we have two different races of mankind. The one consists of the original descendants of the Elohim, the sons of Cain, who are called the Sons of Fire. They are those who till the earth and create from inanimate nature and transform it through the arts of man. Enoch, one of the descendants of Cain, taught mankind the art of hewing stone, of building houses, of organising society of founding civilised communities. Another of Cain's descendants was Tubal-Cain, who worked in metal. The architect Hiram-Abiff was descended from the same race.

Abel was a shepherd. He held firmly to what he found, he took the world as it was. There is always this antithesis between people. One sticks to things as they are, the other wants to create new life from the inanimate, through art. Other nations have portrayed the ancestor of these Sons of Fire in the Prometheus saga⁵ It is the Sons of Fire who have to work into the world the wisdom, beauty and goodness from the all-embracing universal thought, in order to transform the world into a temple.

King Solomon was a descendant of the lineage of Abel. He could not build the temple himself; he lacked the art. Hence he appointed the architect Hiram-Abiff, the descendant of the lineage of Cain. Solomon was divinely handsome. When the Queen of Sheba met him, she thought she saw an image of gold and ivory. She came to unite herself with him.

Jehovah is also called the God of created form,⁶ the God who turns what is living into a living force, in contrast with that other Elohim who creates by charming life out of what is lifeless. To which of these does the future belong? That is the great question of the Temple Legend. If mankind were to develop under the religion of Jehovah all life would expire in form. In occult science, that is called the Transition to the Eighth Sphere.⁷ But the point in time has now arrived when man himself must awaken the dead to life. That will happen through the Sons of Cain, through those who do not rely on the things around them, but are themselves the creators of new forms. The Sons of Cain themselves frame the building of the world.

When the Queen of Sheba saw the temple and asked who the architect was, she was told it was Hiram. And as soon as she saw him, he seemed to her to be the one who was predestined for her. King Solomon now became jealous; and indeed, he entered into league with three apprentices who had failed to achieve their master's degree, in order to undermine Hiram's great masterpiece, the Molten Sea. This great masterpiece was to be made by casting it. Human spirit was to have been united with the metal. Of the three apprentices, one was a Syrian mason, the second was a Phoenician carpenter, and the third was a Hebrew miner. The plot succeeded: the casting was destroyed by pouring water over it. It all blew apart. In despair the architect was about to throw himself into the heat of the flames. Then he heard a voice from the centre of the earth. This came from Cain himself, who called out to him: ‘Take here the hammer of the world's divine wisdom, with which you must put it all right again.’ And Cain gave him the hammer. Now it is the spirit of man which man builds into his astral body, if he is not to let it remain in the condition in which he received it. This is the work which Hiram now had to do. But there was a plot against his life. We shall proceed from there next time.

I wanted to recount the legend up to this point, to show how, in the original occult brotherhoods, the thought lived, that man has a task to fulfil; the task of restructuring the inanimate world, of not being satisfied with what is already there. Wisdom thus becomes deed through its penetration of the inanimate world, so that the world should become a reflection of the original and eternal spirituality.

Wisdom, Beauty, Strength are the three fundamental words of all Freemasonry. So to change the outer world, that it becomes a garment for the spiritual—that is its task. Today, the Freemasons themselves no longer understand this, and believe that man should work on his own ego.⁸ They regard themselves as particularly clever when they say that the working masons of the Middle Ages were not Freemasons. But the working masons were precisely those who have always been Freemasons, because outward structure was to become the replica of the spiritual, of the temple of the world, which is to be constructed out of intuitive wisdom. This is the thought which formerly under lay the great works of architecture, and was carried through into every detail.

I will illustrate by an example the superiority of wisdom over mere intellect. Let us take an old Gothic cathedral, and consider the wonderful acoustics, which cannot be matched today, because this profound knowledge has been lost.

The famous Lake Moeris in Egypt is just such a wonder-work of the human spirit. It was not a natural lake, but was constructed through the intuition of the wise men, so that water could be stored in time of flood, for distribution over the whole country in time of drought. That was a great feat of irrigation.

When man learns to create with the same wisdom with which the divine powers have created Nature and made physical things, then will the temple be built [on earth]. It does not depend upon how many separate things we have the power to create out of our own wisdom; we must however just have the attitude of mind that knows that only by means of wisdom can the temple of humanity be created.

When, today, we go about the cities, here there is a shoe shop, there a chemist, further on a cheese-monger and a shop selling walking sticks. If just now we do not want anything, why should that concern us? How little does the outward life of such a city reflect what we feel, think and perceive! How very different it was in the Middle Ages. If a person walked through the streets then, he saw the house fronts built in the resident's style, manner and character. Every door knob expressed what the man had lovingly shaped to suit his spirit. Go, for instance, through a town such as Nuremberg: there you will still find the basis of how it used to be. And then, by contrast, take the fashionable abstraction that no longer has anything to do with people. That is the age of materialism and its chaotic productions, to which one has step by step come from an earlier spiritual epoch.

Man was born from a nature which was once so formed by the gods that everything within it fitted the great scheme of the world, the great temple. There was once a time when there was nothing on this earth upon which you could gaze without having to say to oneself: Divine beings have built this temple to the stage in which the human physical body was perfected. Then the higher principles (the psychic forces) [of man's nature] took possession of it, and through this disarray and chaos came into the world. Wishes, desires and emotions brought disarray into the temple of the world. Only when, out of man's own will, law and order once again shall speak in a loftier and more beautiful way than the gods once did in creating Nature, only when man allows the god within him to arise, so that like a god he can build towards the temple—only then will the lost temple be regained.

It would not be right if we were to think that only those who are able to build should do so. No, it depends upon the attitude of mind, even if one knows a great deal. If one has the right direction to one's thinking, and then one engages in social, technical and juristic reform, then one is building the lost temple which is to be rebuilt. But should one start reforms—however well-intended they may be—lacking this attitude of mind, then one is only bringing about more chaos. For the individual stone is useless, if it does not fit into the overall plan [of the building]. Reform the law, religion, or anything else—as long as you only take account of the particular item, without having an understanding of the whole, it only results in a demolition.

Theosophy is thus not just theory, but practice, the most practical thing in the world. It is a fallacy to suppose that theosophists are recluses, not engaged in shaping the world. If we could bring people to engage in social reform from a theosophical basis,⁹ they would achieve much of what they want swiftly and surely. For, without needing to say anything against particular movements, they only lead to fanaticism if pursued in isolation. All separate reform movements—emancipators, abstainers, vegetarians, animal protectors and so forth—are only useful if they all work together. Their ideal can only be properly realised in a great universal movement that leads in unity to the universal world temple.

That is the idea that lies behind the allegory of the lost temple which has to be rebuilt.

Notes from replies to questions

Question: What is the difference between the sons of Cain and the sons of Abel?

Answer: The sons, of Cain are the unripe ones; the sons of Abel are the over-ripe ones. The sons of Abel turn to the higher spheres when they have finished with these incarnations. The sons of Abel are the Solar Pitris [those who underwent their human stage on the Old Sun]; the sons of Cain are the most mature of the Lunar Pitris [those who passed their human stage on the Old Moon].

Question: Why have so many mystical and masonic associations developed?

Answer: All higher work is only to be undertaken in an association. The Knights of the Round Table generally numbered twelve.

Question: Are you acquainted with the work of Albert Schaffle?¹⁰

Answer: Albert Schaffle wrote a work about sociology, and the account he gives is much more masonic than what emanates from the lodges of Freemasonry.

• 1 . e.g., lectures 3 and 5 of 30th September and 4th November 1904.
• 2 . In this connection see lecture held in Munich, 14th March 1910, published in: Metamorphoses of the Soul.
• 3 . Titus Livius (59 B.C.—A.D. 17), Roman historian; author of a history of Rome (Annales) from the foundation of the city to the death of Drusus (9 B.C.); of the 142 books of this history, 35 of them and epitomes of most of the rest are extant.
• 4 . A white vestment reaching to the feet, worn by the celebrant at Mass over the cassock and having long pointed sleeves. The oldest type of vestment derived from Egyptian and Hebrew times.
• 5 . See lecture 4 of 7th October 1904 in the present volume.
• 6 . See lecture of 25th October 1905 in: Foundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1983.
• 7 . See note 26 to lecture 6 given on 11th November 1904.
• 8 . At this point the texts diverge: according to Seiler it is ‘egoistical’ egos; according to Vegelahn and Reebstein ‘spiritual’ egos, which might have resulted from a mis-hearing or mistake in writing and could have been ‘own’ egos—(geistigen = eigenen).
• 9 . Rudolf Steiner was working towards establishing a reform of the social life soon after the end of the Great War. See: ‘The Threefold Order of the Body Social.’ RSE 252, 253 and 254.
• 10. Albert Eberhard Friedrich Schäffle, 1831–1903, sociologist, wrote much on this subject. In another connection Rudolf Steiner mentions his work: Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers (‘Construction and Life of the Body-Social’), a four volume work published in Tübingen, 1875–78.

Undated sheet of notes, probably by Eugenie von Bredow

Left, from top to bottom:
Early Lemurian period
Makbena still higher
[written in italics]; ¹ The solidifying bronze (brazen) sea.
Boas strength
(beauty?)
Jakin wisdom
Hiram Abif –
dreamt of progress
ahead.

Right, from top to bottom:
The brazen sea
is recreated by man
becoming firm as if made of
illuminated metal and governing his
body from the outside
as, for example, a snail carries its
house.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

• 1. The earth became firmer, man, who had been jellyfish-like, got a skeleton: / Makbena

On the meaning and spiritual origin of the cult of knowledge

It is quite impossible to make real progress in penetrating into higher worlds without going through the stage of imaginative knowledge.¹

The motif of the temple in Goethe and in Rudolf Steiner is to be a vessel for supersensible worship, which Goethe has performed by the three kings and which Rudolf Steiner has performed at the three altars.²

One important reason for working with cultic symbolism at all lies in the original knowledge that events in the higher world immediately adjacent to the physical world - the astral or imaginative world - express themselves in symbolic images that correspond to astral facts just as what is seen in the physical world corresponds to physical facts. In this sense, symbolic-cultic work can be seen as a practical tool for becoming familiar with the astral world. Rudolf Steiner once emphasized that the higher worlds cannot be penetrated in any other way than through symbolic representations. Literally it says: “In the various occult currents of the present time, the opinion prevails that there are other ways of ascending into the higher worlds than by using imaginative and symbolic images. And for people of the present time, ascending to the astral world with the help of symbolic signs or other occult means of education is associated with a certain fear, even aversion. If one raises the question: Are such states of fear justified? - one can say: Yes and No. - In a certain respect they are justified, in another respect they are completely out of place, because no one can really come up into the higher worlds without passing through the astral world.” (Cologne, December 29, 1907).

Regarding the statement about the spiritual origin of the cult of knowledge in the letter of August 15, 1906 (p. 68): “This ritual cannot be any different than the reflection of what is the fact of the higher planes,” there is an important addition in lectures from 1924, in which this fact of the higher planes is described as follows: “At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, hovering very close by, of course, I mean in terms of quality, to the physical-sensuous world, there is a supersensible event which presents supersensible acts of worship, powerful developments of images of spiritual life...” These illuminated Goethe's spirit in miniature images and were shaped by him into his ” Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (Dornach, September 16, 1924). One of the central motifs of this fairy-tale is the temple with the three kings, the representatives of wisdom, beauty, power or strength; also characterized by Rudolf Steiner as representatives of initiation: the golden king for the imagination, the silver king for the cognitive faculty of objective feeling, the brazen king for the cognitive faculty of the will (Berlin, October 24, 1908). The three altars with their servants are in line with this, both in the cult of knowledge and in the temple scenes of the mystery dramas. And if the letter of August 15, 1906, goes on to say that the ritual recognized by occultism for 2300 years ³ was prepared by the masters of the “Rosicrucians” according to European standards, the connection with supersensible cult appears in the following words: “The Rosicrucians said: Shape the world so that it contains wisdom, beauty and strength, then wisdom, beauty and strength are reflected in us. If you have devoted your time to this, you yourself will emerge from this earth with the reflection of wisdom, beauty and strength. Wisdom is the reflection of the manas; beauty, devotion, kindness is the reflection of the budhi; strength is the reflection of the atma. ... Man advances on earth, not by idle contemplation, but by assimilating wisdom, beauty and strength from the earth.

Goethe's riddle-tale, as it has often been called, was written at the end of the 18th century (1795). A century later, in 1899, as the so-called Kali Yuga, the spiritually dark age, came to an end and a spiritually bright age was to begin again, Rudolf Steiner grasped the far-reaching decision to bring the esoteric that lived in him to public display, in the sense of the decisive word for the whole event in Goethe's fairy tale, “It is time!” And true to the esoteric law of maintaining continuity, he took up the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, the images of which had been his meditation for twenty years. On August 28, 1899, the 150th anniversary of Goethe's birth, he published the essay “Goethe's Secret Revelation” and a year later, in the fall of 1900, he continued the interpretation of the Goethean apocalypse begun in it in a lecture given to the Berlin Theosophists and now became “completely esoteric”. ⁴ Twenty years later, on the eve of the first event in the first Goetheanum building, the so-called first college course, he referred to this lecture as the “primordial cell” of the anthroposophical movement, looking back on its development (Dornach, September 25, 1920).

This probably meant not only that the anthroposophical movement had its external beginning with this lecture, but also, unspoken, that at that time the realization of the central demand of the Goethe fairy tale had begun: to bring the mysteries - the temple - out of the hidden into the full light of day, that is, into the public sphere. For it was in this deeper sense that anthroposophical spiritual science was developed as the herald of the spiritually bright age that had dawned for humanity. And that is why, in the last year of his lecturing activities, Rudolf Steiner said the following, which is so important in connection with the description of the supersensible cult: “What is anthroposophy in terms of its reality? Yes, my dear friends, when you see through all the wonderful, majestic imaginations that existed as supersensible worship in the first half of the 19th century [and also at the end of the 18th century], and translate that into human concepts, then you have Anthroposophy” (Dornach, July 8, 1924).

Thus, a straight line leads from the perception of the cult in the supersensible world - which is undoubtedly connected with the ancient ritual prepared by the masters of the Rosicrucians for European conditions - through the Goethe fairy tale to the translation of these images of spiritual life into the scientific concepts of anthroposophy and to the design of the cult of knowledge.

In this sense, Rudolf Steiner brought the cult of knowledge, with its three altars, which Marie Steiner describes as the signs and seals of his work, “out of the depths of the temple in which they have stood since the beginning of mystery religions” and handed it over to “mankind” ($. 486).

Why the cult of knowledge was cultivated in fraternal union

It is not the one and the other and the third, but something completely new that arises through union.⁵

To answer the question of why cult symbolism is used in fraternal associations, certain spiritual facts must be taken into account. One is the nature of such associations, which Rudolf Steiner characterized in his lecture on brotherhood and the struggle for existence, given in Berlin on November 23, 1905, one day before he entered the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry:

"Unity means the possibility of a higher being expressing itself through the united members. This is a general principle in all life.” Five people who are together, thinking and feeling in harmony with each other, are more than 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1; they are not merely the sum of the five, just as our body is not the sum of the five senses, but the living together, the living into each other means something very similar to the living into each other of the cells of the human body. A new, higher being is in the midst of the five, even in the midst of two or three. “Where two or three are united in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” It is not the one and the other and the third, but something completely new that arises from the union. But this can only come about if the individual lives in the other, if the individual draws his strength not only from himself but also from the others. But this can only happen if he lives in the other selflessly. Thus human associations are the mysterious places into which higher spiritual beings descend in order to work through individual people, as the soul works through the members of the body.

In our materialistic age, this is not easily believed, but in the spiritual scientific world view, it is not merely something figurative, but highly real. Therefore, the spiritual scientist is not just talking about abstract things when he speaks of the folk spirit or the folk soul or the family spirit or the spirit of another community. You cannot see this spirit at work in an association, but it is there, and it is there through the brotherly love of the personalities working in this association. Just as the body has a soul, so a guild, a brotherhood, also has a soul, and I repeat once again, it is not just a figure of speech, but is to be taken as a full reality.

The magicians are the people who work together in the brotherhood because they attract higher beings into their circle. There is no longer any need to invoke the machinations of spiritualism when working together in a community with brotherly love. Higher beings are manifesting themselves there. When we give ourselves up in the brotherhood, this giving up, this merging into the whole, is a strengthening, a fortification of our organs. When we then act or speak as a member of such a community, it is not the individual soul that acts or speaks in us, but the spirit of the community. This is the secret of the progress of future humanity, to work out of communities. Just as one epoch replaces another and each has its own task, so it is also with the medieval epoch in relation to our own, with our epoch in relation to the future. The medieval brotherhoods were active in the practical side of life, in the foundation of the useful arts. They only showed a materialistic life after they had preserved their fruits, their basis of consciousness, namely brotherhood, but had more or less disappeared after the abstract principle of the state, the abstract, spiritual life had taken the place of real empathy. It is incumbent upon the future to found brotherhoods again, and to do so out of the spiritual, out of the highest ideals of the soul. Human life has so far produced the most diverse associations; it has given rise to a terrible struggle for existence, which today has almost reached its peak. The spiritual-scientific world view aims to develop the highest goods of humanity in the sense of the brotherhood principle, and so you see that the spiritual-scientific world movement is replacing the struggle for existence with the brotherhood principle in all fields. We must learn to live a life of community. We must not believe that one or the other is capable of carrying out this or that.

Everyone would like to know how to combine the struggle for existence and brotherly love. That is quite simple. We must learn to replace struggle with positive work, to replace war with the ideal. Today, however, people understand too little what this means. We do not know what fight we are talking about, because we only talk about fights in life in general. There is the social fight, the fight for peace, the fight for the emancipation of women, the fight for land and so on, everywhere we look we see fight.

The spiritual scientific worldview now strives to replace this struggle with positive work. Those who have embraced this worldview know that fighting in any area of life does not lead to real results. Seek to introduce into life that which proves to be right in your experience and knowledge, to assert it without fighting your opponent. It can, of course, only be an ideal, but there must be such an ideal to be introduced into life today as a spiritual-scientific principle. People who attach themselves to other people and use their strength for the benefit of all are the foundation on which a fruitful development into the future can be built. The Theosophical [or Anthroposophical] Society aims to be exemplary in this respect. It is therefore not a propaganda society like others, but a brotherhood. In it, one works through the work of each individual member. One must only understand this correctly. The one who works best is not the one who wants to enforce his opinion, but the one who sees what he sees in his fellow brothers; who searches the thoughts and feelings of his fellow human beings and makes himself their servant. He works best within this circle, which can implement in practical life, not sparing one's own opinion. If we try to understand in this way, that our best powers arise from union and that union is not to be held merely as an abstract principle, but above all to be practiced in a theosophical way in every action, in every moment of life, then we will make progress. We must only not be impatient in this progress."

Another spiritual fact on which communal work on cult symbols is based is that the powers of thought developed through genuine cult symbols, when thought through long periods of time, increase to such an extent that they become external reality in later times. In this way progress is effected. For everything happens from within, not from without: “What is thought and feeling in one period is outer form in the following period. And the individualities that guide the evolution of humanity must implant the thought forms that are to become outer physical reality many millennia in advance. There you have the function of thought forms, which are stimulated by such symbolic images as Noah's Ark, the Temple of Solomon, and the four apocalyptic creatures man, lion, bull, eagle. ... Images that guide people when they surrender to them... to take part in the world that directly borders on theirs,” as it says in the lecture Cologne, December 28, 1907, in which the transformation of the human body is described as a prime example of how the ideas of Noah's Ark and Solomon's Temple are brought about.

These spiritual scientific insights also provide a concrete background for the following statement about Freemasonry: “If you ask me what Freemasonry actually consists of, I have to tell you in abstract terms: Freemasonry consists in its members thinking ahead, for several centuries, of the events that should advance the world, “which, however, has already been realized to a large extent today (Berlin, January 2, 1906).

If the whole of progress is served by symbolic-cultic fraternal cooperation, then the progress of the individual is also served. The fact that Rudolf Steiner points out that real consciousness of immortality is bound to practical fraternity, for the decisive law for the real consciousness of immortality is: Only that which a person does not do for himself alone in order to attain it contributes to the development of the consciousness of immortality, to a spiritual survival filled with full consciousness (Berlin, December 23, 1904).

As is well known, realizing ideals requires a great deal of patience. Rudolf Steiner spoke about this in an instructive and consoling way in a lesson in the following way:

Instruction lesson, Berlin, October 28, 1911

Perhaps there are some among you who feel oppressed because they cannot yet apply what they have learned here in their lives to their outer work, so that they can only keep taking in spiritual teachings and now have to ask themselves: Am I perhaps a spiritual hedonist? The wise masters of the East give us this answer: When spiritual teachings are assimilated, something happens that also lasts for all eternity. The spiritual development of humanity could not be furthered by the “spirits of the past” - whether people who lived in the distant past or gods who preceded us in their earthly development - if there were no souls into which they could pour these teachings. It is like the seed of a plant: as long as it is still inside the flower or ovary, it has no value; only when it enters the earth can it flourish. Of much more importance for the development of the earth are the people who allow works of art such as the Sistine Madonna, Faust and so on to have an effect on them than the artists themselves. If Raphael had only painted the [Sistine] Madonna and no one else had ever seen it, it would have been significant only for him, but not for eternity. Only by allowing people to be affected by works of art or other intellectual products is something created that will outlast the earth and be taken into the Jupiter state. The creator is not the most important thing; by far the most important are the viewers, readers and so on. If someone who creates a work of art or writes a book receives the inspiration for it from the spiritual world, then, until the moment of conception, it also has an eternal meaning for him. But as soon as he sets to work with pen or brush, he works only for the temporal, it has meaning only for him. Everything that is produced for the world is temporal. Only that which is inspired in human souls remains. The greatest weight is therefore not where one would expect it to be according to ordinary intellectual judgment. That the evangelists wrote the Gospels was significant for them, but it would mean nothing for eternity if there had not been innumerable hearts on which these Gospels had an effect. It is infinitely better to read a good book from an earlier time and let it have an effect on you than to write a bad book yourself. Those who believe they have to achieve something in the world should wait until their karma calls them to this or that work. And those who, for example, have had a spiritual vision and wonder whether they should share it with the world can apply the following criterion: If sharing it gives them joy, then they should certainly refrain from doing so. Only that which causes pain when communicated has value. Humorists who enjoy their ideas do not produce anything that has meaning for humanity; only those who have painfully relived the folly of men and have risen to their humor from it give something lasting in history. Nothing but “devotion to the spiritual world” can make a work fruitful in the world.

People may have accumulated treasures and feel the need to use them again for the benefit of humanity, but without occult insight it is impossible to know whether one or the other philanthropic institution will serve the good or the misfortune of people after a short time. No matter how many Samaritan deeds are performed and how many people are made happy, it could be, and without the devotion to the spiritual world just mentioned, it is even very likely, that great harm will be done, for instance to the children of those people, that is, to the next generation.

Here, in our lodge, because people are present with their thoughts, more is being done for the good of the world than all philanthropic work. Physical values are destroyed by using them for oneself; spiritual values, on the other hand, are created by absorbing them. Thus, the creator himself is not the most important thing at all. If one were to go back to the Akasha Chronicle to the age of Raphael, Michelangelo and so on, and pay attention only to them, one would not get the right picture. Likewise, if one were to only pay attention to what was in the souls of the great leaders of the mysteries when researching the Atlantean period in the Akasha Chronicle – which, by the way, is very difficult – one only sees the right thing when one pays attention to what was awakened in the hearts and souls of their disciples.

Anyone capable of writing a mediocre book is then also capable of understanding a good book from the past and will derive infinitely more benefit from it than from writing a mediocre book.

So it is not unauthorized enjoyment when the members endeavor to absorb what is offered here. Without this acceptance by the members, nothing could be done for the further spiritual development of people. Then people would have to fall completely prey to materialism; future generations would be sick in body and soul. The children born among us would not find the thoughts they need for their proper development in the spiritual atmosphere if there were no circles in which spiritual knowledge is received, even if it is not carried out. Materialism sins so much that one cannot do enough in this direction, that exaggeration is not possible at all. Even if ten or a hundred times more were studied than is really the case, it would still not be too much to make up for what is sinned against the world through materialism.

Regarding the name of the working group

It was a “cult of knowledge”.

For inner reasons, the working group had no actual name for Rudolf Steiner (see page 237). It was therefore sometimes abbreviated to “FM” (Freemasonry), sometimes to “ME” (mystica aeterna), and later, at Rudolf Steiner's express request, to “MD” (Misraim Service) (see page 94). For the present publication, the term “cult of knowledge” was chosen because it best expresses the essence of Steiner's intentions. It was in 1923 when he answered a question from priests of the “Christian Community” about the relationship between their cult and the earlier esoteric cult:

"The earlier cult was purely demonstrative. It was a cult of knowledge with degrees. The first degree brought the knowledge of the earthly man, showed man from the Lemurian time to the present, in the imagination. The second degree represented the relationship to the spiritual world, the third the secrets of the gate of death and so on. This cult was a non-temporal, interdenominational and interreligious one; only a certain degree had a Christian character. The use of this cult had to be discontinued because the demonstration character could no longer be made clear to the outside world.6

Even before Rudolf Steiner referred to the cult as a “cult of knowledge” in this question-and-answer session, he had pointed out the importance of knowledge for the cultic in his Dornach lecture of December 30, 1922, with the words: “For everything that is cultic must ultimately dissolve if the backbone of knowledge is lacking.”

Admission Procedure

Those approaching the institution were told in the clearest possible terms that they were not joining a religious order, but that as participants in ceremonial acts they would experience a kind of sensitization, a demonstration of spiritual knowledge. If some of the forms in which members were accepted into traditional orders or promoted to higher degrees were retained, this too had nothing to do with the purpose of such an order, but only to illustrate spiritual ascent in soul experiences through sensual images. ⁷

An example of how admission was sought can be found in a letter from the leader of the Munich group, Sophie Stinde, which Steiner passed on to Rudolf Steiner on February 24, 1908: “Countess H. would like to become a member of the FM. but wanted to ask you in Stuttgart beforehand whether she could join at her next visit or whether you thought it better if she waited. Since she did not get around to asking you in Stuttgart, I suggested that I should ask you. Since we probably have recordings, we could include her, if you don't think it's too soon for Grf.H. Miss L. was with us recently and repeated that she and Dr. W. would like to be included in March. Miss Kr. and Mr. R. also repeated the request. (...) We had thought of the work plan as follows: On the 17th in the evening, Lodge. On the 18th in the morning ES. - In the evening public lecture Man and Woman. On the 19th in the morning FM-admission. We would certainly have placed the admission before the instruction, since we know that you prefer it that way, but since there is a public lecture on the 19th in the evening, we must refrain from it this time, since the admission will be a very extensive one after all."

Depending on how many candidates were admitted, the admissions often lasted for hours; individual admissions were only undertaken in exceptional cases. Before the actual admission, there was a preparatory session in which the candidates were informed about the tasks and duties. Only two records of Rudolf Steiner's remarks in such preparatory sessions are available (p. 143f.). In exceptional cases, such preliminary meetings were also formally organized, as can be seen from a letter from Rudolf Steiner to Sophie Stinde dated June 10, 1908, which states: “St's are to be admitted to the FM this time. It will not do to have a short preliminary celebration on Monday for the FM. The most urgent wish of the St. is to be admitted precisely on his 50th birthday. Of course, the admission cannot take place until Tuesday – the day after his birthday – but one could briefly – perhaps without a lodge ceremony – hold a preliminary celebration of the admission on Monday, which would be specially arranged.

On the degrees

A truth is either known or not known. ... Therefore, the democratic principle is impossible in matters of knowledge.⁸

Regarding the right to work in degrees, one of the lectures given during the period of preparation of the circle states: “Truth is not something about which one can have opinions. One either knows a truth or one does not know it.... Just as little as one can discuss whether the sum of the angles of a triangle is such and such or has so many degrees, just as little can one discuss higher truths. Therefore, the democratic principle is impossible in matters of knowledge (Berlin, December 16, 1904).

In this sense, the working group of the Knowledge Cult was structured in degrees. One participant described it as follows: “It was an institution in which there were different degrees to which the participants were promoted, depending on the readiness of their souls for the content of these degrees, as determined by their karma. Promotion to a higher degree took place partly in forms that were also practiced in occult societies, for example in Freemasonry - but not in imitation of such orders, but because they resulted from spiritual research. ... It is easy to see that the esoteric impulses flowed ever more abundantly as the degrees rose, and that in the almost ten years of the events – right up to the outbreak of war – the experiences of these hours meant something tremendously profound for the development of the soul life of many participants.” ⁹

There were nine degrees in all, divided into three and six, forming two sections or classes, which, together with the so-called “ES”, formed the three sections or classes of the Esoteric School, as it existed from 1904 to 1914. In the first three degrees, the emphasis was on ritual acts; in the following six degrees, which, according to tradition, only a few belonged to, teaching was said to have been the main focus. The extent to which nine degrees correspond to the number of degrees that can be taught in a true secret training course today was once explained as follows:

”...Now it is very important to know that every occult fraternity is built upon the foundation of three degrees. In the first degree, when the symbolism is used in the right way (and by 'right' I naturally mean as I have just indicated for our fifth post-Atlantean period), the souls come to the point where they have a precise inner experience of the fact that there is knowledge independent of ordinary physical-sensory knowledge. And in the first degree they must have a certain sum of such knowledge independent of the physical. Everyone in the first degree today within the fifth post-Atlantic period should know approximately what is in my “Occult Science”. Everyone who has reached the second degree should know - that is, know inwardly in a living way - what is contained in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. And anyone who has reached the third degree and receives the meaningful symbols, signs, grip and word of the third degree already, knows what it means to live outside of one's physical body. That would be the rule, that would be what is to be attained.

But then there are people who arrive at the so-called high degrees, at higher degrees. Now, this is certainly an area where an enormous amount of vanity comes into play, because there is fraternization in which one can reach ninety or more than ninety degrees. Now just imagine what it means to bear such a high degree! The so-called Scottish High Degree system has thirty-three degrees, simply due to an error arising from grotesque ignorance. This system is built on the three degrees that run in the way I have described. So there you have the three degrees, which, as you can see, have their profound significance. But after these three degrees, there are another thirty. Now you can imagine what a high being you are if you are able to experience yourself outside of your body in the third degree, what a high being you are if you go through another thirty degrees after that. But it is based on a grotesque error of knowledge. In the occult sciences, degrees are read differently than in the decimal system: they are read in such a way that one does not calculate according to the decimal system, but according to the system of numbers that are currently being considered. So when you write: 33rd degree, in reality, according to the system of numbers that are being considered, it means: 3 times 3 = 9. ... Just because people can't read, they read 33 instead of 9.

Well, but let's disregard these vanities. There are still six degrees that build on these three degrees, and these are counted as legitimate degrees. And when they are gone through, they already give very significant results. But basically, they cannot be fully experienced in the present. It is absolutely impossible. They cannot be fully experienced because humanity in the fifth post-Atlantic period is not yet so far advanced that all that can be experienced can actually be experienced. For not enough has emerged from the spiritual worlds – I will not say in the way of knowledge, but in the way of the exercise of knowledge. This will come out only later.” (Berlin, April 4, 1916)

On the symbolism of the institution

In fact, Freemasonry originally emerged from the mystery schools through a betrayal. This is why many of the symbols found in Freemasonry can also be found here.¹⁰

The interior design of the lodge or temple has been handed down in detail only for the first two degrees, but it is likely that it was also largely the same for the third degree, at least: walls draped in black, which were transformed into glowing red in the final act, at the Rose Cross conclusion. ¹¹ On the east wall, in a blue square of cloth, there was a radiant sun with a triangle in the middle. On the ceiling was a lamp with a second-degree letter “G” made of gilded cardboard or sheet metal.¹² The floor was covered by a carpet in a black and white checkerboard pattern. At the edges of the large carpet were three altars: in the east the altar of wisdom (master), in the south the altar of beauty (2nd overseer), in the west the altar of strength (1st overseer). ¹³ Each officiant carried a herald's staff, presumably as in the Mystery Dramas. A large candelabrum stood beside each altar. A plumb line made of gilded sheet metal was affixed to the front of each altar. Furthermore, each altar had a candle, matches, scissors for cutting candles, a candle snuffer, a hammer and a trowel. A chalice belonged to the altar of the East, the so-called “Holy of Holies”; a censer with a bowl and an angle to the altar of the South; two compasses, a yardstick and a skull to the altar of the West.

At the altar of the East stood a cross with a wreath of thorns, which in the final act, at the Rose-Cross conclusion, was exchanged for a wreath of red roses. Close by stood a somewhat smaller altar with the 13th chapter of the Gospel of John open at the Bible, on which lay a gilded sheet metal triangle and a ladle that fit into each other. In the beginning, one had to swear at this altar not to reveal the secrets of the Temple. This was in keeping with an ancient tradition in occult contexts.¹⁴

Although this was also linked to the old, it was later abandoned, as reported by participants. For Rudolf Steiner, people in the modern age should be increasingly called upon to take personal moral responsibility in their esoteric lives. In the north, outside the large carpet, stood the two round columns Jakin and Boaz, also called the Pillars of Hercules. The left one (Jakin) was brick red; on top lay a hewn cube-shaped stone (blue). The right one (Boaz) was dark blue; on top of it lay an unhewn stone (red). Between the two columns lay the symbolic table, which Elisabeth Vreede's sketch shows as a “small carpet”, as it is also used in general Masonic lodges (so-called Tapis, Tableau). The participants had their seats on the north and south sides of the lodge room.

In the third degree, a fourth altar appeared in the north, as well as a coffin, just as in certain temple scenes in the mystery dramas.

The sketches for the first and second degree settings, as well as the detailed sketches and explanations, were done by the Dutchwoman Elisabeth Vreede.

Clothing

There is no authentic information about clothing. It is known that the apron (mason's apron, lambskin) was worn, and that Rudolf Steiner wore an alb (the long white priest's robe), over which a red cloak was thrown when the color of the room changed from black to red.

For the symbolic meaning of such clothing, see the remarks in the workers' lecture of June 4, 1924, reproduced on page 272 under “Zeichen, Griff und Wort”.

Regarding the rituals

Everything that was presented in terms of the content of “actions” ... was without historical reference to any tradition. In the possession of the formal diploma, only that was cultivated which resulted from the visualization of anthroposophical knowledge.¹⁵

All the extant ritual texts are summarized in the second part of this volume. It is known that there were also one or two smaller ritual acts: for example, the so-called baptism of fire in the fourth degree. Before a burning sulfur flame, the person in question was given the name that is appropriate for him in the spiritual world; ¹⁶ There are also isolated reports of marriages. But there are no texts for these small ceremonies. Presumably there were none for them, or no ritual text was necessary.

The rituals can no longer be reconstructed in their full entirety, insofar as they were determined not only by the wording but also, and just as essentially, by the actions, the implements, the clothing and so on. But there is not enough authentic information available about these.

At the beginning of 1913, after some members left the Erkenntniskultischer Arbeitskreis in connection with the separation from the Theosophical Society and the founding of the independent Anthroposophical Society, and apparently betrayed some of it, Rudolf Steiner announced that it had become necessary to change the rituals as a result. In the notes from the instruction session for all degrees in Berlin on February 8, 1913, it says: “Because of this betrayal, it has become necessary to change our ritual and to transform it so that - while the meaning remains essentially the same - the rituals will nevertheless be different from before, so that they will not resonate with those of the others.” Another participant noted the statement as follows: “We were talking about those who have fallen away. In order for their thoughts not to resonate with our work here, it is necessary to change the ritual.” There is no original document for this announced change. However, one participant has passed on the extent to which the words spoken at the three altars have undergone a certain change (see page 170).

Ritual events only take place in places where appropriate rooms are available, such as in the anthroposophical centers in Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, Munich, Stuttgart, among others, but also in other countries. ¹⁷

On the explanations of the cult of knowledge and the symbolism of the furnishings

Theosophy is the inner truth of these ceremonies; it says what these ceremonies show, it has the spirit of these signs and images.¹⁸

The instruction or teaching sessions in which the rituals and the symbolism of the furnishings were explained and general spiritual scientific research results were presented, took place between the ritual beginning and the ritual end of a meeting. But there were also instruction sessions without ritual; mostly for one degree, sometimes for several, sometimes for all degrees together.

Since it was not allowed to take notes during such lessons, it should be noted that all the records handed down were made afterwards from memory and are therefore fragmentary or only in note form, and in terms of style, and possibly also content, do not always do justice to Rudolf Steiner.

In the present documentation, only those notes were included that directly refer to the cult of knowledge, the symbolism of the furnishings, as well as the temple legend and the golden legend. Since this information is widely scattered, it was extracted and assigned to the respective terms for a better overview. In some cases, where no explanations from instruction hours are available, illustrations from general lectures given later were included.¹⁹ On the other hand, notes from general spiritual scientific presentations were not included, since these can be found, for the most part, in better reproduction in the part of the lecture work that is already available in the complete edition, because they are based on stenographic notes.

Regarding the Temple Legend and the Golden Legend as they appeared in the rituals.

The nature of Hiram is in all of us; we must bring it to resurrection in us.²⁰

Legends as pictorial representations of esoteric truths play an important role in all secret teachings, since such images summarize a vast number of ideas and not only affect the intellect but also the feelings of the human being. In this sense, the two legends were of great importance because their images reflect the exemplary advancement of the Hiram individuality on the occult path.

The Temple Legend - of which it was once said that he who takes it up takes up something “that forms his thinking in a certain lawful way, and lawful thinking is what matters” ²¹ - appeared in two forms. The part symbolically interpreting the evolution of humanity was taught as meditation material when entering the first degree; the conclusion of the legend, referring to Hiram's death and resurrection, formed part of the initiation ritual into the third degree. The legend was repeatedly treated in instruction hours. The records handed down are summarized in the section 'Explanations of the Temple Legend'. The information contained therein about the re-embodiments of Hiram Abiff requires supplementation, since it forms only part of what may be called Rudolf Steiner's Hiram research in the field of reincarnation. This supplement is attached to the section 'Explanations of the Temple Legend'.

The Golden Legend – referred to in one of the traditional explanations as the “second” Master Legend – was symbolized by the two round columns, Jakin and Boaz. The text of this legend and the explanations that have been handed down can be found in the section “Explanations of the symbolism of the furnishings”.

• 1. From “The Stages of Higher Knowledge,” GA 12.
• 2. E.A. Karl Stockmeyer, a member of the working group on the cult of knowledge, in his essay “On the Unity of Temple and Cult in the Context of the Goetheanum Building Idea,” contained in “Bilder okkulter Siegel und Säulen. Der Münchner Kongreß Pfingsten 1907,” GA 284.
• 3. According to a note by Günther Schubert, Rudolf Steiner said that the whole thing goes back to Melchizedek.
• 4. "My Life” (Chapter 30), GA 28. Marie Steiner noted in a notebook (archive number 21): 'When Rudolf Steiner first came among people with the intention of lifting the veils of esotericism, he took Goethe's fairy tale as his starting point and spoke about the altars of wisdom, beauty and strength. He placed them in the temples of his mystery dramas and spoke to us again and in greater depth about their significance. And again he placed them in our esoteric school and had us approach the various aspects of thinking, feeling and willing, which are an expression of these altars, again and again.”
• 5. From a lecture in Berlin, November 23, 1905.
• 7. “My Life”, see page 95f.
• 8. Berlin, December 16, 1904.
• 9. Adolf Arenson in “Circular letter to the members of the Anthroposophical Society”, October 1926.
• 10. Instruction Lesson Berlin December 16, 1911, see p. 93.
• 11. Rudolf Steiner also indicated the transformation from black to red for the “Easter Night” from Goethe's “Faust”, which he and Marie Steiner staged.
• 12. It is known that the “G” had various meanings, such as “gnosis” or “geometry”.
• 13. At the altar of the east, Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers always officiated together, while the other altars had alternating officiants.
• 14. See page 245.
• 15. “My Life Course”, see page 95f. of the present volume.
• 16. A baptismal ceremony with water took place in the first degree, see page 208 ff. of the present volume.
• 17. From documents in the archive of the Rudolf Steiner estate administration, it can be seen that there must have been translations of Rudolf Steiner's ritual texts (at least in part) into English and French.
• 18. From notes by Marie Steiner from the lecture in Bremen, April 9, 1906.
• 19. Evidence of symbolism in cultural history can be found in Joseph Schauberg, op. cit.
• 20. See the section 'Notes on the Temple Legend'.
• 21. Berlin, May 15, 1905.

Notes by Amalie Künstler

There are entities that permeate our physical body, our etheric body and our astral body. Entities of a gnome-like nature permeate the physical body of a person, those of a ghost-like nature permeate the etheric body and those of a demon-like nature permeate the astral body of a person.

They saturate themselves, they suck themselves full of what the person gives them, they live off of it. Behind these entities, which permeate the physical body of the person and which play a very special role in our time, are particularly prominent and are gaining more and more influence, stand the Asuras. We are living in a particularly important time because these entities are threatening to gain a predominant influence, just as such entities, which permeate the etheric body, gained a predominant influence around the middle of the Atlantean period.

As soon as a person strives for spiritual development, his thoughts and feelings have a completely different effect on his various bodies. And what used to feed these entities no longer nourishes them, because what the soul's spiritual direction brings about in the various bodies of a person deprives them of their nourishment. This puts the person in a dangerous position. Because if he merely kills these entities by depriving them of their nourishment, he is taking the first step towards black magic. He thereby turns these entities into machines that he can use for his own purposes. This is not right. Man must transform them. We must not kill them, transform them into machine-like creatures.

The materialist is completely surrounded by such beings, who have been frozen by the outpourings of materialism. They are not dead, only frozen. Our task should be to dissolve the rigidity of these beings through our spiritual powers and transform them. That was the task of the Manicheans in particular.

The Molten Sea, if it had come about, would have made the earth a transparent, clear planet. Now the three journeymen have destroyed the casting. Doubt, superstition and belief in the personal self have clouded the casting. In the human etheric body, there are three points - heart, spleen and back - that are particularly significant. The one on the back means the brazen sea in the microcosm. In a person who still has doubts, superstition and a belief in the personal self, this point is clouded, with clouds passing through it like a smoky topaz. Our task is to transform it into a radiant, clear one.

Cain, at the center of the earth, who still possesses the pure divine Elohim power. Hiram Abiff descends to him and receives the original creator word written on the golden triangle.