The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have spoken about various legends which contain esoteric truths in the pictures which they present. These were given to man in this form at a time when he was not mature enough to receive the truths directly. These pictures took hold of man's ‘causal’ body—that part of man which bore the germ of his future Higher Manas—and thus made him ready to understand the truths directly in a future incarnation.

I would like now to show one such legend as this which dates back only a few centuries and is still extant today in many versions. It is the following.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century¹ a personality appeared in Europe who had been initiated into certain secrets in the East. This was Christian Rosenkreutz.² By the time this incarnation of Christian Rosenkreutz had come to an end, he had initiated about ten other people into such matters as he himself had learned through initiation—in so far as this was possible among Europeans at that time. This small brotherhood called itself ‘Fraternitae Rosae Crucis’, the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross. This small group of people then gave a certain legend to a larger, more exoteric fraternity, through whom it then became generally known to the world.

Christian Rosenkreutz himself had revealed certain deep secrets of the Mysteries to those people who were sufficiently prepared to receive them. But, as I said, there were not more than ten in this small circle, consisting of initiated Rosicrucians. What was taught by Christian Rosenkreutz could not be imparted to many people, but it was embodied in a kind of myth.³ Since it was first given out in the fifteenth century, it has often been repeated and explained in the various brotherhoods. It was told in larger brotherhoods, but was interpreted only in intimate circles.

This is the approximate content:

There was a time when one of the Elohim created a human being whom he called Eve. That Elohim united himself with Eve and she gave birth to Cain. After this, another Elohim, named Yahveh, created Adam. Adam also united himself with Eve and from this union came Abel.

Thus we see that Cain is a direct descendant of the gods, but Abel is a descendant of Adam and Eve who are human.

Now the myth proceeds:

The sacrifices which Abel made to Yahveh were pleasing to him, but the sacrifices brought by Cain did not please him because the birth of Cain was not ordained by him. The result was that Cain committed fratricide. He killed Abel and for this he was excluded from communion with Yahveh. He went away into distant lands and founded his own race there.

Adam again united himself with Eve and from this union came Seth, also mentioned in the Bible, who took over the role of Abel. Thus we have two generations of mankind: the race of Cain, who was a descendant of Eve and one of the Elohim, and the other race which had human parentage and was brought into existence at the command of Yahveh.

Among the descendants of Cain are all those who have been creators of art and science, as, for instance, Methuselah, the inventor of the Tau script, and Tubal-Cain, who taught the use and working of metal ores and iron. In this line of descent, stemming from the Elohim, were all those who trained themselves in the arts and sciences.

Hiram also descended from the race of Cain, and he was the inheritor of all that had been learned by the others of his line in technology and art. He was the most significant architect we can imagine.

Out of Seth's line came Solomon, who excelled in everything which came from Yahveh. He was endowed with the wisdom of the world and all the attributes of calm,clear, objective wisdom. This wisdom can be expressed in words which go straight to the human heart and can uplift a person, but it is unable to produce anything tangible of a technical nature, in art or science. It is a wisdom which is a directly inspired gift of God and not attained from below through human passions welling up from the human will—that would be the wisdom pertaining to the sons of Cain, a legacy of the other Elohim, not Yahveh. They are the hardworking industrious ones who seek to accomplish everything through their own efforts.

Solomon now decides to build a temple and calls upon Hiram, the descendant of Cain, to be his master builder. It was at the time when Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, was visiting Jerusalem because she had heard of the wisdom of Solomon. And she was certainly impressed and charmed by the exalted and clear wisdom and beauty of the King when she first arrived, and when he made love to her she consented to be his bride. Now she heard about the temple which was being built and she desired to make the acquaintance of the master builder, Hiram. When she first met him she was captivated merely by his glance. As a result, a certain mood of jealousy arose between Hiram and Solomon and the latter wished to do something or other against Hiram, but he was dependent upon him for the completion of the temple.

Now came the following: The temple was almost complete. Only one thing was still lacking, which was to have been Hiram's masterpiece; that was the Molten Sea, which was to represent the ocean cast in bronze and was to have adorned the temple. All the necessary mixtures of ores had been prepared by Hiram in a most wonderful manner, ready to be cast. Now, however, three apprentices got to work, whom Hiram had found so lacking in skill that he had been unable to promote them to become masters. They had therefore sworn to be revenged on him and desired to prevent the casting of the Molten Sea. A friend of Hiram, who got to know about these plans, confided them to Solomon, so that he should prevent their realisation. But Solomon, through jealousy, did nothing to stop them, because he wished to destroy Hiram. The result was that Hiram had to look on while the whole casting disintegrated due to the addition of a wrong ingredient in the mixture by the three apprentices. He tried to quench the bursting flames by pouring water over them, but this only made matters worse. Just as he was on the point of despairing about the work ever being completed, Tubal-Cain, his ancestor, appeared to him and told him that he should not hesitate to cast himself into the fire, as he was invulnerable to the flames. Hiram did as he was advised and came to the centre of the earth. He was led by Tubal-Cain to Cain, who there resided in a condition of pristine divinity. Hiram was thus initiated into the Mystery of Fire and into the secret of bronze casting, receiving from Tubal-Cain a hammer and a Golden Triangle which he was able to carry with him as a pendant round his neck. Then he returned and was able to complete the casting of the Molten Sea and to put everything in order again.

Hereupon the Queen of Sheba consented to become Hiram's bride. He, however, was set upon by the three apprentices and murdered. But before he died, Hiram managed to throw the Golden Triangle into a well. As no one knew where he had disappeared, a search was made. Even Solomon was afraid and was anxious to find out what had happened. It was thought that the ancient Master Word could be betrayed by the apprentices, and therefore another one was devised. The first word to be spoken when Hiram was discovered should be the new Master Word. At last Hiram was found and was able to utter a few last words. He said: ‘Tubal-Cain had promised me that I shall have a son who will be the father of many descendants who will people the earth and bring my work—the building of the Temple—to completion.’ Then he pointed to the place where the Golden Triangle was to be found. This was then collected and brought to the Molten Sea and both were preserved together in the Holy of Holies. They are only to be discovered by those who can understand the meaning of the legend of the Temple of Solomon and its Master Builder Hiram.

Now we shall proceed from the recounting of the legend itself to its interpretation.

This legend portrays the destiny of the third, fourth and fifth Post-Atlantean cultural epochs. The Temple is the Temple of the Occult Societies, that is to say, what is being built up by the whole of mankind belonging to the fourth and fifth cultural epochs. And the Holy of Holies is the place where these Occult Societies have their abode. The latter are aware of what is meant by the Molten Sea and the Golden Triangle.

We are dealing, therefore, with two races of mankind: with those who, like Solomon, are in possession of divine wisdom and with those of the Race of Cain, who are conversant with fire and know how to make use of it. This fire is not physical fire, but the fire of wishes, desires and instincts which bums in the astral world.

Who, then, are the Sons of Cain? In the sense of this legend, the Sons of Cain are the sons of those Elohim who, during the Moon Epoch, were a little retarded in their role of Elohim. We are dealing with Kama, astrality, during the Moon Epoch. This Kama, or fire, was penetrated with wisdom at that time. But there were two kinds of Elohim. The one kind of Elohim did not remain static with the union of wisdom and fire; they went further. And during the creation of man they were no longer filled with desires and so they were able to endow their creation with calm and clear wisdom. That is the essential Jahve—or Jehovah—religion, the wisdom of which is quite without personal desire. The other Elohim, those in whom wisdom was combined with the fire of the Moon Epoch, created the Sons of Cain.

Therefore, in the case of the Sons of Seth, we find representatives of the religious type of human being with detached wisdom, and in the case of the Sons of Cain, we find those who possess an impulsive nature, who are capable of flaring up and showing enthusiasm for wisdom. These two types are creative within all races of mankind and in all periods of history. Out of the desire life of the Sons of Cain, all arts and the sciences originate; out of the Seth-Abel current, all detached piety and wisdom, lacking enthusiasm, has its origin.

These two types were always present and continued thus until the fourth Post-Atlantean cultural epoch.

Then came the founding of Christianity. Through it, the earlier piety, which had been bestowed on mankind from above, became passionless and detached, and was merged with the element which came to the earth through Christ—Christ, who is not only the incarnation of wisdom, but who is also love itself, a supreme being who has so purified his astral body or Kama that it has been changed into Buddhi. A pure flowing Kama which seeks nothing for itself, but turns every passion into unending devotion towards the things outside itself, is inverted Kama. Buddhi is Kama which has been changed into its opposite.

A higher kind of piety is thereby being prepared among those who are of the pious type, the Sons of Wisdom. This new kind of piety can also develop enthusiasm. It is Christian piety, which was prepared during the fourth Post-Atlantean cultural epoch. This whole stream is not yet in a position to unite with the Sons of Cain, however; they remain adversaries. Were Christianity to take hold of human beings too quickly, they would certainly become filled with love, but the individual human heart would not become involved. It would not be a piety springing from freedom. Christ would not be born within man as his brother, but only as the ruler. It is therefore necessary that the Sons of Cain are active throughout the whole of the fifth Post-Atlantean period. They are active in their initiates who build the temple of all mankind, constructed out of worldly art and worldly science.

This worldly element becomes more and more evident in the history of the fourth and fifth cultural epochs, thus making manifest the entire development of world history at the physical level. And alongside this worldly stream of materialism, the personal element of egoism is involved, which leads to the War of All against All. Even though Christianity had come into the world, it was, in a sense, a secret shared by a few. But it made people of the fourth and fifth cultural epochs aware that everyone is equal in the sight of God. That is a basic principle of Christianity, but it cannot be completely understood by man on earth so long as he is enmeshed in materialism and egoism.

The French Revolution drew its conclusion from this Christian doctrine in a worldly sense. The spiritual conception that all are equal in the sight of God was changed into the purely earthly precept that all men are equal here on earth. That is couched in even more physical terms today.

Before the outbreak of the French Revolution a personality appeared to Madame d'Adhemar,⁴ the lady-in-waiting of Marie-Antoinette, who prophesied all the important events of the coming strife, in order to warn against them. It was the Count of St. Germain,⁵ the same as he who, in a former incarnation, had founded the Rosicrucian Order. He subscribed to the view that mankind at that time must be led in all tranquillity from a worldly view of life to a truly Christian culture. Worldly powers, however, desired to gain freedom for themselves by material violent means. Christian Rosenkreutz foresaw the French Revolution as a necessary consequence of this, but warned against it. He, Christian Rosenkreutz, in his incarnation in the eighteenth century, as guardian of the innermost secrets of the Molten Sea and the Golden Triangle, appeared with the warning that mankind should develop slowly. But he also saw what was to happen.

That is the course taken by mankind's evolution during the fourth and fifth Post-Atlantean epochs when seen esoterically. The temple of mankind's earthly culture, the great Temple of Solomon, has already been built, but what is to crown it must still remain a secret. That could only be brought into being by an initiate. That initiate was misunderstood, betrayed, killed. The secret may not yet be revealed. It remains the possession of a few initiated Christians. It is sealed up in the casting of the Molten Sea and in the Golden Triangle. It is the same as the secret belonging to Christian Rosenkreutz, who was present in a very highly evolved reincarnation prior to the birth of Christ, and who gave utterance to a remarkable saying at that time.

Let me describe in a few words how this Christian Rosenkreutz came to repeat a certain saying at the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution. He said: ‘For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’⁶ This was said by him long before it was said by Hosea and written down. It stems, however, from Christian Rosenkreutz.

This saying: ‘For they have sown the wind, and shall reap the whirlwind’, is the leading thought for the fourth and fifth cultural epochs and can be rendered in the following way: ‘Mankind shall be made free. The incarnated Buddhi will unite himself with this your freedom and make you equal in the sight of God, but the spirit (‘wind’ means spirit = Ruach) will first become a whirlwind (the War of All against All).’

At first Christianity had to appear as the Christianity of the Cross, which had to develop through the earthly sphere, through the physical plane. But the crucifix was not the symbol of Christianity from the beginning. It was when Christianity became political that the crucified Son of God was introduced, the Son of God suffering on the Cross of the World Body.⁷ It has remained thus to outward sight throughout the rest of the fourth epoch, and will continue to do so during the whole of the fifth epoch of our present Post-Atlantean cycle.

To begin with, Christianity is bound up with the purely materialistic culture of the fourth and fifth epochs, and the true Christianity of the future, which possesses the secret of the Molten Sea and the Golden Triangle, only exists secretly.⁸ This Christianity has another symbol—no longer that of the crucified Son of God, but the Cross encircled by roses. This will become the symbol of the new Christianity of the sixth Post-Atlantean epoch. Out of the Mystery of the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross will arise the Christianity of the sixth cultural epoch, which will recognise the significance of the Molten Sea and the Golden Triangle.

Hiram is the representative of the initiates among the Sons of Cain belonging to the fourth and fifth epochs. The Queen of Sheba is the soul of humanity—every female character denotes the soul in esoteric terminology. She has to choose between the detached piety which does not concern itself with worldly conquest, and the masterful wisdom which is achieved through the overcoming of earthly passions and desires. She is the representative of the true human soul, taking her position between Hiram and Solomon and uniting herself with Hiram in the fourth and fifth epochs, because he is still engaged in building the Temple.

The Molten Sea is what is created when the appropriate amounts of water and molten metal are cast. The three apprentices do it wrongly, and the casting is destroyed, but when the mysteries of fire are revealed to Hiram by Tubal-Cain, he is thereby enabled to unite water and fire in the proper way. This brings the Molten Sea into being. This is what the secret of the Rosicrucians is. It is brought about when the water of calm wisdom is united with the fire of the astral world, with the fire of passion and desire. A union must be brought about which is ‘of bronze’, that is to say, is lasting and durable. It must endure into the next epoch, when the secret of the sacred Golden Triangle is added to it; the secret of Atma, Buddhi and Manas. This Triangle, with all which it entails, will form the content of the renewed Christianity of the sixth cultural epoch. That is being prepared by the Rosicrucians and then what is symbolised by the Molten Sea will be united with a knowledge of reincarnation and karma. That is the new occult teaching which will be united again with Christianity. The higher self of man, composed of Atma, Buddhi and Manas, will become an open secret when the man of the sixth epoch has become ripe enough to receive it. Christian Rosenkreutz will then no longer be required to give warning, but everything which signified strife on the outer plane will be resolved in peace through the Molten Sea and the sacred Golden Triangle.

That is the course which world history will take in the future. What was disseminated by Christian Rosenkreutz in the Temple Legend through the Brotherhood, the Rosicrucians have made into their task: to teach not merely religious piety, but also science in an external way; not merely knowledge of the outer world, but knowledge of spiritual forces, too, and from both directions to go forward into the sixth Round of evolution.

• 1 . At the beginning of the fifteenth century ...
  In the original notes this was given as fourteenth century. Rudolf Steiner sometimes reckoned centuries as the Italians do (Quattrocento = fifteenth century). In a handwritten document from 1907, however, Rudolf Steiner writes: ‘In the first half of the fifteenth century Christian Rosenkreutz. ...’ etc. (Letters and Documents 1901–1925).
• 2 . Christian Rosenkreutz is a personality of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, not considered historical by modern investigators, who became known through two legendary anonymous writings: Fama Fratemitatis and Confessio Fraternitatis, published in Cassel in 1614 and 1615 respectively, in which it is stated that Christian Rosenkreutz was of German aristocratic descent and lived from 1378 to 1484. The name first became known through an anonymous handwritten document of 1604, which appeared in 1616 under the title: Chymische Hochzeit: Christian Rosenkreutz, Anno 1459, whose author, Johann Valentin Andreae, was declared by Rudolf Steiner to have been inspired by Christian Rosenkreutz himself. According to Rudolf Steiner, Christian Rosenkreutz was a real historical personality.
  
  See: A Commentary on the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, Michael Press, 1965. Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, E. Foxcroft translation of 1690, Camphill Village Trust, 1969. A Christian Rosenkreutz Anthology, compiled and edited by Paul M. Allen, Rudolf Steiner Publications, Blauvelt, New York, 1968. The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. A Commentary by E.E. Pfeiffer, The Mercury Press.
• 3 . It is worth noting that Rudolf Steiner here attributes the origin of the Temple Legend to Christian Rosenkreutz in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but he never mentions how it came to be transferred to the Freemasons. Among Freemasons themselves its origin remains obscure. It is generally accepted that it arose in the eighteenth century, because that is the time of its first appearance in literature. Even though it is suspected that it formed a part of masonic knowledge at an earlier period, this cannot be proved from documents. For this lecture, too, Rudolf Steiner seems to have made use of the account given by Charles William Heckethorn in his Secret Societies, viz: Quotation from Vol. I. Book VIII, Ch. 1.
  
  The Legend of the Temple
  
  Ancestry of Hiram Abiff.
  
  Solomon, having determined on the erection of the Temple, collected artificers, divided them into companies, and put them under the command of Adoniram or Hiram Abiff, the architect sent to him by his friend and ally Hiram, King of Tyre. According to mythical tradition, the ancestry of the builders of the mystical temple was as follows: One of the Elohim, or primitive genii, married Eve and had a son called Cain; whilst Jehovah or Adonai, another of the Elohim, created Adam and united him with Eve to bring forth the family of Abel, to whom were subjected the sons of Cain, as a punishment for the transgression of Eve. Cain, though industriously cultivating the soil, yet derived little produce from it, whilst Abel leisurely tended his flocks. Adonai rejected the gifts and sacrifices of Cain, and stirred up strife between the sons of the Elohim, generated out of fire, and the sons formed out of the earth only. Cain killed Abel, and Adonai pursuing his sons, subjected to the sons of Abel the noble family that invented the arts and diffused science. Enoch, a son of Cain, taught men to hew stories, construct edifices and form civil societies. Irad and Mehujael, his son and grandson, set boundaries to the waters and fashioned cedars into beams. Methusael, another of his descendants, invented the sacred characters, the books of Tau and the symbolic T, by which the workers descended from the genii of fire recognised each other. Lamech, whose prophecies are inexplicable to the profane, was the father of Jabal, who first taught men how to dress camels' skins; of Jubal, who discovered the harp; of Naamah, who discovered the arts of spinning and weaving; of Tubal-Cain, who first constructed a furnace, worked in metals, and dug subterranean caves in the mountains to save his race during the deluge; but it perished nevertheless, and only Tubal-Cain and his son, the sole survivors of the glorious and gigantic family, came out alive. The wife of Ham, second son of Noah, thought the son of Tubal-Cain handsomer than the sons of men, and he became progenitor of Nimrod, who taught his brethren the art of hunting, and founded Babylon. Adoniram, the descendant of Tubal-Cain, seemed called by God to lead the militia of the free men, connecting the sons of fire with the sons of thought, progress, and truth.
  
  Hiram, Solomon, and the Queen of Sheba.
  
  By Hiram was erected a marvelous building, the Temple of Solomon. He raised the golden throne of Solomon, most beautifully wrought, and built many other glorious edifices. But, melancholy amidst all his greatness, he lived alone, understood and loved by few, hated by many, and among others by Solomon, envious of his genius and glory. Now the fame of the wisdom of Solomon spread to the remotest ends of the earth; and Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, came to Jerusalem, to greet the great king and behold the marvels of his reign. She found Solomon seated on a throne of gilt cedar wood, arrayed in cloth of gold, so that at first she seemed to behold a statue of gold with hands of ivory. Solomon received her with every kind of festive preparation, and led her to behold his palace and then the grand works of the temple; and the queen was lost in admiration. The king was captivated by her beauty, and in a short time offered her his hand, which the queen, pleased at having conquered this proud heart, accepted. But on again visiting the temple, she repeatedly desired to see the architect who had wrought such wondrous things. Solomon delayed as long as possible presenting Hiram Abiff to the queen, but at last he was obliged to do so. The mysterious artificer was brought before her, and cast on the queen a look that penetrated her very heart. Having recovered her composure, she questioned and defended him against the ill will and rising jealousy of the king. When she wished to see the countless host of workmen that wrought at the temple, Solomon protested the impossibility of assembling them all at once; but Hiram, leaping on a stone to be better seen, with his right hand described in the air the symbolical Tau, and immediately the men hastened from all parts of the works into the presence of their master; at this the queen wondered greatly, and secretly repented of the promise she had given the king, for she felt herself in love with the mighty architect. Solomon set himself to destroy this affection, and to prepare his rival's humiliation and ruin. For this purpose, he employed three fellow-craftsmen, envious of -Hiram, because he had refused to raise them to the degree of masters, on account of their want of knowledge and their idleness. They were Fanor, a Syrian and a mason; Amru, a Phoenician and a carpenter; and Metusael, a Hebrew and a miner. The black envy of these three projected that the casting of the brazen sea, which was to raise the glory of Hiram to its utmost height, should turn out a failure. A young workman, Benoni, discovered the plot and revealed it to Solomon, thinking that sufficient. The day for the casting arrived, and Balkis was present. The doors that restrained the molten metal were opened, and torrents of liquid poured into the vast mould wherein the brazen sea was to assume its form. But the burning mass ran over the edges of the mould, and flowed like lava over the adjacent places. The terrified crowd fled from the advancing stream of fire. Hiram, calm, like a god, endeavoured to arrest its advance with ponderous columns of water, but without success. The water and the fire mixed, and the struggle was terrible; the water rose in dense steam and fell down in the shape of fiery rain, spreading terror and death. The dishonoured artificer needed the sympathy of a faithful heart; he sought Benoni, but in vain; the proud youth perished in endeavouring to prevent the horrible catastrophe when he found that Solomon had done nothing to hinder it.
  
  Hiram could not withdraw himself from the scene of his discomfiture. Oppressed with grief, he heeded not the danger, he remembered not that this ocean of fire might speedily engulph him; he thought of the Queen of Sheba, who came to admire and congratulate him on a great triumph, and who saw nothing but a terrible disaster. Suddenly he heard a strange voice coming from above, and crying, “Hiram, Hiram, Hiram!” He raised his eyes and beheld a gigantic human figure. The apparition continued: “Come, my son, be without fear, I have rendered thee incombustible; cast thyself into the flames.” Hiram threw himself into the furnace, and where others would have found death, he tasted ineffable delights; nor could he, drawn by an irresistible force, leave it, and asked him that drew him into the abyss: “Whither do you take me?” “Into the centre of the earth, into the soul of the world, into the kingdom of great Cain, where liberty reigns with him. There the tyrannous envy of Adonai ceases; there can we, despising his anger, taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge; there is the home of thy fathers.” “Who then am I, and who art thou?” “I am the father of thy fathers, I am the son of Lamech, I am Tubal-Cain.”
  
  Tubal-Cain introduced Hiram into the sanctuary of fire, where he expounded to him the weakness of Adonai and the base passions of that god, the enemy of his own creature whom he condemned to the inexorable law of death, to avenge the benefits the genii of fire had bestowed on him. Hiram was led into the presence of the author of his race, Cain. The angel of light that begat Cain was reflected in the beauty of this son of love, whose noble and generous mind roused the envy of Adonai. Cain related to Hiram his experiences, sufferings, and misfortunes, brought upon him by the implacable Adonai. Presently he heard the voice of him who was the offspring of Tubal-Cain and his sister Naamah: “A son shall be born unto thee whom thou shalt indeed not see, but whose numerous descendants shall perpetuate thy race, which, superior to that of Adam, shall acquire the empire of the world; for many centuries they shall consecrate their courage and genius to the service of the ever ungrateful race of Adam, but at last the best shall become the strongest, and restore on the earth the worship of fire. Thy sons, invincible in thy name, shall destroy the power of kings, the ministers of the Adonai's tyranny. Go, my son, the genii of fire are with thee!” Hiram was restored to the earth. Tubal-Cain before quitting him gave him the hammer with which he himself had wrought great things, and said to him: “Thanks to this hammer and the help of the genii of fire, thou shalt speedily accomplish the work left unfinished through man's stupidity and malignity.” Hiram did not hesitate to test the wonderful efficacy of the precious instrument, and the dawn saw the great mass of bronze cast. The artist felt the most lively joy, the queen exulted. The people came running up, astounded at this secret power which in one night had repaired everything.
  
  One day the queen, accompanied by her maids, went beyond Jerusalem, and there encountered Hiram, alone and thoughtful. The encounter was decisive, they mutually confessed their love. Had-Had, the bird who filled with the queen the office of messenger of the genii of fire, seeing Hiram in the air make the sign of the mystic T, flew around his head and settled on his wrist. At this Sarahil, the nurse of the queen, exclaimed: “The oracle is fulfilled. Had-Had recognises the husband which the genii of fire destined for Balkis, whose love alone she dare accept!” They hesitated no longer, but mutually pledged their vows, and deliberated how Balkis could retract the promise given to the king. Hiram was to be the first to quit Jerusalem; the queen, impatient to rejoin him in Arabia, was to elude the vigilance of the king, which she accomplished by withdrawing from his finger, while he was overcome with wine, the ring wherewith she had plighted her troth to him. Solomon hinted to the fellow-craftsmen that the removal of his rival, who refused to give them the master's word, would be acceptable unto himself; so when the architect came into the temple he was assailed and slain by them. Before his death, however, he had time to throw the golden triangle which he wore round his neck, and on which was engraven the master's word, into a deep well. They wrapped up his body, carried it to a solitary hill and buried it, planting over the grave a sprig of acacia.
  
  Hiram not having made his appearance for seven days, Solomon, against his inclination, but to satisfy the clamour of the people, was forced to have him searched for. The body was found by three masters, and they, suspecting that he had been slain by the three fellow-craftsmen for refusing them the master's word, determined nevertheless for greater security to change the word, and that the first word accidentally uttered on raising the body should thenceforth be the word. In the act of raising it, the skin came off the body, so that one of the masters exclaimed “Macbenach!” (the flesh is off the bones!) and this word became the sacred word of the master's degree. The three fellow-craftsmen were traced, but rather than fall into the hands of their pursuers, they committed suicide and their heads were brought to Solomon. The triangle not having been found on the body of Hiram it was sought for and at last discovered in the well into which the architect had cast it. The king caused it to be placed on a triangular altar erected in a secret vault, built under the most retired part of the temple. The triangle was further concealed by a cubical stone, on which had been inscribed the sacred law. The vault, the existence of which was only known to the twenty-seven elect, was then walled up.
• 4 . The historical basis for this lies in the work of the writer, Etienne-Leon, Baron de Lamothe-Langon, who published the Souvenirs sur Marie-Antoinette, Archiduchesse d’Autriche, Reine de France, et sur la cour de Versailles par Madame la Comtesse d’Adhemar, Dame du Palais, Paris, 1836. About fifty years later these memoirs were rescued from oblivion by H.P. Blavatsky and her friends. One of the very rare copies of these memoirs was to be found in the library of H.P. Blavatsky's aunt who lived in Odessa. Henry Steel Olcott, who founded the Theosophical Society with Blavatsky in 1875, wrote in his Old Diary Leaves—the true story of the Theosophical Society, 1895, Vol. 1, p. 24: ‘If Mme. de Fadeef—H.P.B.'s aunt could only be induced to translate and publish certain documents in her famous library, the world would have a nearer approach to a true history of the pre-revolutionary European mission of this Eastern Adept than has until now been available.’
  
  The English theosophist, Isabel Cooper-Oakley, published all the parts of the Souvenirs de Madame d’AdhemarThe Comte of Saint Germain—The Secret of Kings, Milan, 1912. (See also note II to lecture 9 of 16th December 1904).
• 5 . The spiritual identity of Christian Rosenkreutz and the Count of Saint Germain is a result of Rudolf Steiner's own investigations. See also the lecture of 27th September 1911, translated in the Anthroposophical Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4, (winter, 1960).
• 6 . Quotation from Hosea 8, verse 7. See also note 7 to lecture 9 of 16th December 1904.
• 7 . See note 10 to lecture 12 of 22nd May 1905.
• 8 . The German rendering is: exists only in between [?] (dazwischen). The sense is somewhat obscure.

Today I wish to make a brief survey of the Rites and Orders of Freemasonry, as I agreed to do. Of course I can only impart to you the main essentials, as the whole subject is so comprehensive, and so many inessential things are connected with it.

The basis for the whole of Freemasonry is to be found in the Temple Legend concerning Hiram-Abiff or Adonhiram about whom I have already spoken in connection with the Rosicrucian Order.¹ Everything to do with what is called the secret of Freemasonry and its tendency is expressed in this Temple Legend.² We are led to a kind of Genesis or theory of evolution of the human race. Let us therefore recall to mind the essentials of this Temple Legend.

One of the Elohim united himself with Eve and out of this union of a divine creative spirit with Eve, Cain was born. Then another of the Elohim, Jehovah or Adonai, created Adam, who is to be regarded as the primal man of the third Root Race. This Adam then united himself with Eve, and from this union Abel was born. Thus at the outset of human evolution there are two starting points: Cain, the direct descendant of one of the Elohim with Eve, and Abel, who, with the help of a divinely created human being, Adam, is the true representative of Jehovah.

The whole conception underlying the creation story according to the Temple Legend is based upon the fact that there is a kind of enmity between Jehovah and everything which is derived from the other Elohim and their descendants, the ‘Sons of Fire’—this being the designation of the descendants of Cain according to the Temple Legend. Jehovah creates enmity between Cain and his race, and Abel and his race. The outcome of this was that Cain slew Abel. That is the arch-enmity which exists between those who receive their existence from the divine worlds, and those who work out everything for themselves. The fact that Abel makes the sacrifice of an animal to Jehovah, while Cain brings the fruits of the earth, is an illustration, which the Bible gives too, of this contrast between the race of Cain and the race of Abel. Cain has to wrest from the earth with hard labour the fruits which are necessary for the sustenance of mankind; Abel takes what is already living, what has been prepared for his livelihood. The race of Cain creates, as it were, the living out of the lifeless. Abel takes up what is already alive, what is already imbued with the breath of life. Abel's sacrifice is pleasing to God, but Cain's is not.

Thus we find two kinds of human being characterised in Cain and Abel. The one consists of those who accept what God has prepared for them. The others—the free humanity—are those who till the soil and labour to win living products out of what is lifeless. Those who regard themselves as Sons of Cain are they who understand the Temple Legend and wish to live by it. Out of the race of Cain spring all those who are the creators of the arts and sciences of mankind: Tubal-Cain who is the first true architect and the God of smithies and working tools; and also Hiram-Abiff, or Adonhiram, who is the hero of the Temple Legend. This Hiram is sent for by King Solomon, famous for his wisdom, who belongs to the race of Abel, those who receive their wisdom from God. Thus this contrast appears once more at the court of Solomon—Solomon the wise, and Hiram the independent worker, who has achieved his wisdom through human striving.

Solomon called to his court Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, and when she arrived her impression of him was as of a statue made of gold and precious stones; it was as though she were looking at a monument bestowed on mankind by the gods. As she gazed in wonderment at the great Temple of Solomon, her desire was to meet the architect of this wonderful building, and her wish was fulfilled. Merely through a single glance which the architect cast on her, she was able to appreciate his true worth. Solomon was immediately seized by a kind of jealousy of Hiram. This grew as Balkis demanded that all the workers engaged in the building of the Temple should be presented to her. Solomon declared that this was impossible, but Hiram conceded to her wishes. He climbed onto a slight eminence, made the mystical sign of the Tau and, behold, all the workers streamed towards him. The will of the Queen had been fulfilled.

Because of this, Solomon is disinclined to oppose the enemies of Hiram and to stand out against them. A Syrian stonemason, a Phoenician carpenter and a Jewish miner were antagonistic towards Hiram. These three fellow craftsmen had been totally denied the Master Word by Hiram-Abiff. The Master Word is that which would have enabled them to work independently as master builders. The Master Word is a secret which is imparted only to those who have made the grade. Therefore they came to the decision to do Hiram some harm.

The opportunity for this came about as Hiram-Abiff was about to fulfil his masterpiece, the casting of the Molten Sea. The movement of the waters was to be held fast in Form. The surging sea was to be preserved alive artistically in a rigid form. That is the point. The three apprentices conspired to make the casting in such a way that instead of flowing into the mould it would flow out over the surroundings. Hiram tried to arrest the flow of the fiery mass by throwing water over it, but this caused the metal to spray up into the air and descend again with great force in a rain of fire. Hiram was powerless to do anything. But suddenly a voice called out to him: ‘Hiram! Hiram! Hiram!’ He was ordered by the voice to plunge into the sea of fire. This he did and he sank down ever deeper until he reached the centre of the earth where fire has its origin. There he met two figures, his ancestor Tubal-Cain, and Cain himself. Cain was irradiated with the brightness of Lucifer, the angel of light. Then Tubal-Cain gave Hiram his hammer which had the magical property of restoring all things to their proper order and he said to him: You will beget a son who will gather about him a race of wise folk, and you will be the progenitor of those who have been born out of fire which brings wisdom and makes man thoughtful. The Molten Sea was now restored by means of the hammer.

Hiram and Queen Balkis then met again outside the city. She became his wife, but Hiram was unable to avert the jealousy of Solomon and the revenge of the three fellow craftsmen. He was slain by them. The only thing he was able to save was the Triangle with the Master Word engraved upon it, which he threw into a deep well. Then Hiram was buried and a branch of acacia was planted on his grave. The acacia branch betrayed the whereabouts of the grave to Solomon, and the Triangle was also discovered. It was sealed up and buried in a place known to only a few people—twenty-seven in all. [It was agreed that] the new Master Word should be the word first uttered after the finding of the corpse—it is the word which is used by the Freemasons. The Freemasons trace back their origin, with some justification, to the Temple Legend and to the old days in which the Temple was built by Solomon as a lasting memorial to the secret of the fifth Root Race.

And now we have to learn to understand how mankind can benefit by Freemasonry. That is not so easy. A person who gets to know something of the complicated initiation ceremonies of Freemasonry might be inclined to ask: is what takes place in such ceremonies very trivial and petty?

I will now describe to you the initiation ceremony of an apprentice wishing to join the Order of Craft Masonry.³ Just imagine someone has decided that he wants to become a member of the Craft Masonry. It consists of three degrees: Apprentice, Fellow Craftsman and Master Mason. After these three degrees come higher degrees which lead the candidate into occult knowledge. I will now describe what happens to a novice about to be initiated into the first degree,⁴ that is the degree of apprentice. When he is brought into the Lodge building for the first time, he is led into a remote chamber by the Brother Warden and left for some minutes to his own thoughts. Then he is deprived of all metal he has about him, such as gold, silver and other metals, his clothes are rent at the knee and the heel of his left shoe is trodden down. In this condition he is led into the midst of the brethren who are assembled in another room, a cord is passed round his neck and a sword is pointed at his naked breast. In this state he is confronted by the Worshipful Master, who asks him if he is still determined to undergo initiation. Then he is cautioned very seriously and during the further procedures the meaning of the treading down of the heel and other procedures are explained to him. There are three things which he is obliged to forego. If he is unable to forswear these three things he will never be accepted as a Freemason. He is told: If you retain the slightest curiosity about anything, then you must leave this house immediately. Secondly, he is told: If you should hesitate to acknowledge every one of your failings and mistakes, then you must leave this house immediately. Thirdly: If you are unable to rise in spirit above all things which differentiate one human being from another, then you must leave this house immediately. These three things are most strictly required from every candidate for initiation.

Then a kind of frame is held in front of the candidate. through which he is thrown, while at the same time an unpleasant noise is produced, so that he flies through the frame with the worst of feelings. In addition to this they shout to him that he is being thrown into Hell. At that same instant, a trapdoor is closed with a bang, and he is given the impression of being in very peculiar surroundings. His skin is then scratched slightly, so that blood is made to flow, and at the same time a gurgling sound is made by those around him, giving him the impression that he is losing a great deal of blood. After that three hammer blows are struck by the Worshipful Master. What is said thereafter in the Lodge must be treated in the strictest secrecy. Were the candidate to reveal it, his connection with Freemasonry, would be changed, just as the drink he is offered also changes: sweet from the one side, bitter from the other. This drink is handed to him in an artfully constructed vessel, so that the drink is sweet from one side, but when turned around it changes to bitter. That is to symbolise how it will be for the candidate if he betrays the secrets.

After these proceedings he is led to a flight of stairs in a room which is very dimly lit. This staircase is so constructed that it moves and thereby gives the impression that one has descended a long way, whereas one has really only descended a short distance. It is the same when the candidate falls. When he thinks he has fallen into a deep well, he has in reality only fallen a very short way. At this point it is explained to him that he has arrived at a decisive moment. In addition to this he is blindfolded again when he is by the staircase. Then the Brother Warden is asked: ‘Brother Senior Warden, deem you the candidate worthy of forming part of our Society?’ If the answer is ‘Yes’ he is then further asked: ‘What do you ask for him?’ He is obliged to answer: ‘Light’. Then the bandage is removed from the candidate's eyes and he sees himself in an illuminated chamber. Then follows the basic question: ‘Do you recognise who is your Master?’ He makes answer: ‘Yes, it is he who is wearing a yellow jacket and blue trousers.’ The blue trousers refer to the rank he possesses. Then he receives the three attributes of apprenticeship: Sign, Grip and Word. The Sign is a symbol of the same kind as occult symbols ... [Gap] The Grip is a special kind of handclasp to be used when shaking hands. These handclasps are different in the case of an apprentice and in the case of a Master. The Word changes according to degree, It does not behove me to reveal what the Words are.

After that, the person concerned can be admitted to his apprenticeship. On admission he is asked: ‘How old are you?’ He makes answer: ‘Not yet seven years.’ He has to serve seven years as an apprentice before he can progress to become a journeyman.

When someone has progressed so far that he is eligible for his Master I s degree, the initiation ceremony is somewhat more difficult. The main thing is, however, that what is contained in the Temple Legend is actually carried out in practice on the candidate himself. He who wishes to attain to the Master's degree is led into one of the rooms in the Lodge building and has to lie in a coffin and to undergo the same fate as the Master-builder Hiram suffered. Then the new Sign, Grip and Word are revealed to him. The Word is the same as the Master Word which was uttered at the finding of Hiram's body. The signs by which a Master is known are extremely complicated. Recognition is achieved with the help of many forms and gestures.

The Freemasonry Masters call themselves ‘Children of the Widow’. Thus the Company of the Masters is directly derived from the Manicheans. I shall still speak about the connection between Manicheism and Freemasonry.⁵

The task of Freemasonry is connected with that belonging to the whole of the fifth Root Race. You could, of course, from the point of view of modern rationalist thinking, dismiss all I have told you about the initiation of an apprentice and the various ceremonies connected therewith as mere tomfoolery and play acting. But that is not what it is. All the things I have mentioned are the outward symbolical enactment of ancient occult practices which once took place on the astral plane through the mystery schools. Such proceedings, therefore, which take place symbolically among Freemasons, are carried out on the astral plane in the mystery temples. The initiation into the degree of a Master, the lying in the coffin and so on, is actually something which takes place on a higher level. However, in Freemasonry, it only takes place symbolically.

One could now ask: Where does all this lead? A Freemason should be conscious of the fact that one should act on the physical plane in a way which will maintain a connection with the spiritual worlds. It makes a difference whether one is a member of a community which believes in symbols which help to create a higher community, or whether ... [Gap] A Freemason need not necessarily have different thoughts from the man in the street, but his feelings are quite different. Feelings are connected with symbolical enactments, and it is not a matter of indifference whether or no a feeling of this kind is aroused, because it corresponds with a certain rhythm on the astral plane.

The meaning behind the first part of the ceremony—the taking away of metal objects—is that the candidate should not retain about his person anything which he has not produced by his own labours. A feeling for this is necessary for anyone who has had his attention drawn to the significance of symbols. He should also retain an enduring memory of the tearing of the trousers at the knee. He should think upon the fact that he ought to present himself in life as if he were appearing completely naked in the eyes of his fellow men. In like manner, the treading down of the heel should act as a constant reminder that—even though he may be strong as far as Freemasonry is concerned—he nevertheless is made vulnerable through his heel of Achilles. All subsequent parts of the ceremony have basically a meaning of this kind—particularly in the case of the eerie feeling which is engendered when a cold, sharp-edged sword is laid against his breast. That is a feeling which persists for a long time and becomes focussed in a suggestion which returns to his mind at important moments and reminds him that he should develop a kind of cold-blooded attitude. Cold-bloodedness should be the suggestion he receives. Complete responsibility for his own actions is what is symbolised by the cord laid about his neck which can be drawn tight at any moment. Presence of mind is suggested by the procedures connected with trapdoors, moving stairways, etc. Those are procedures which take place quite differently in the mysteries because they are performed on the astral plane.

The candidate must then take the oath. Everything about him is horrible, dark, the room only lit by one or two tiny flames. I want you to consider this oath in its full portent: ‘I hereby swear that by Word, Sign and Grip I shall never disclose anything which is henceforth revealed to me within this Lodge. Should I betray any of the secrets, I will allow any of the Brethren who may get to know about it, to slit my throat and wrench out my tongue.’ That is the oath of the apprentice. Still more dreadful is the oath of the journeyman, who consents to having his breast cut open and his heart torn out and thrown to the birds. The oath which the Master has to swear is so terrible that it cannot be repeated here.

These things are used as a means of evoking a certain kind of rhythm in the sensations of the astral body. The result of this is that the spirit is influenced intuitively. This influencing of the spirit was the main purpose of the masonic initiation in ancient times—Freemasonry is really very ancient.

The Freemasons of old were actually stonemasons. They performed all the duties of a mason. They were the builders of temples and public buildings in ancient Greece, where they were known as Dionysiacs.⁶ The building work was carried out in the service of the temple of Dionysus. In Egypt they were the builders of the pyramids, in ancient Rome, the builders of cities, and during the Middle Ages they built cathedrals and churches. After the thirteenth century they also began to build independently of the authority of the Church. At this time the expression ‘Freemason’ came into use. Before that they were under the authority of the religious communities and were the recognised architects.

Let us take our start from the fact that the Freemasons were the builders of the pyramids, of the mystery temples, and of the churches. You will easily gain the conviction—especially by reading Vitruvius⁷ —that the manner in which architecture was formerly studied is quite different from our present method. One did not study it at that time by making calculations, but instead, definite intuitions were imparted by means of symbols.

If you read in Luzifer⁸ how the Lemurians developed their building capacity you will get an inkling of the way in which this art was then practised. It is not possible today to build in that manner. With amazement and wonder we behold the buildings of the ancient Chinese and of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and know that they were constructed without a knowledge of our present-day mathematics. We behold the wonderful engineering feat of Lake Moeris in Egypt; a lake which was constructed to collect water which could be diverted into irrigation channels in times of need. It was not built with our modern engineering technique. The wonderful acoustic effects produced in old buildings were achieved in a way which modern architects are not yet able to imitate. At that time men were able to build by means of intuitive faculties, not through rational understanding.

The whole of this kind of architecture stood in relationship to a knowledge of the universe. If you take the Egyptian pyramids, for instance, their measurements correspond to certain measurements in heavenly space, to the distances of the stars in space. The whole configuration of stellar space was depicted in these buildings. There was a connection between the individual building and the dome of heaven. The mysterious rhythm presented to our gaze when we behold the starry heavens—not just with our outer sense, but with an intuitive gaze which penetrates to higher relationships, to rhythmical relationships—that was what the original architects included in their building, because they were building out of the universe.

This art of building was taught in a fashion as different from our own as the teaching of the art of medicine among certain primitive tribes today differs from our own. Our teaching today stems from the intellect. In primitive tribes the doctor is not trained like our doctors, but has certain occult forces developed in him. He has to undergo a bodily training which would be horrible for anybody of a nervous or weak disposition living in our modern culture. This training teaches him indifference to joy and pain and he who is indifferent to these is already in possession of occult powers. The extent to which the astral body could originally be trained was so great that it led to the development of powers which were designated as the Royal Art, which is an art derived from the mighty symbols of heavenly proportions.

Now you will have an idea of what Freemasonry used to be and you will realise that it had to outgrow its real task. It was bound to lose its significance as the world became rationalistic. It had its meaning when the fourth cultural epoch was still being developed. The fifth epoch brought about the loss of its importance. Today, Freemasons are no longer masons. Anybody can become a member. For occultists, symbols have a real meaning. A symbol that is merely a symbol, merely a copy or image, has no meaning; there is only significance in what can become a reality, in what can become a living force. If a symbol acts upon the spirit of humanity in such a way that intuitive forces are set free, then we are dealing with a true symbol. Today, Freemasons say they have symbols which mean this or that. An occult symbol, however, is one which takes hold of the will and leads over into the astral body. Inasmuch as our culture has become an intellectual culture, Freemasonry has lost its meaning.

Regarding connections with Manicheism ... [Gap]⁹ And after that come the high degrees, which extend as far as the ninetieth, indeed the ninety-sixth degree, and start at the fourth degree. The importance of the first three degrees has gradually been transferred to the high degrees. There is a kind of residue still remaining in what is called the ‘Royal Arch’,¹⁰ which is still extant in Freemasonry today. About these lighter sides and some of the darker sides of Freemasonry we shall have to speak again.

• 1 . Lecture 5 of 4th November 1904.
• 2 . See note 3 to lecture 5 of 4th November 1904.
• 3 . Craft Masonry covers the three degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craftsman and Master Mason. It is referred to by Heckethorn as ‘Blue Masonry’ and by Rudolf Steiner as ‘Johannesmaurerei.’ See notes 2 and 11 to the succeeding lecture (lecture 8, 9th December 1904).
• 4 . For this description Rudolf Steiner again drew on the account given in Charles William Heckethorn's Secret Societies, (pp. 267–271) some passages of which were marked by him accordingly.
• 5 . It is not known whether this intention was carried out.
• 6 . Dionysiacs are mentioned by Heckethorn pp. 79 and 250.
• 7 . Vitruvius Poflio, royal architect under Caesar Augustus, wrote his ten-volume work, De Architectura, between 16 and 13 B.C., drawing from Greek sources and from his own experiences.
• 8 . Rudolf Steiner refers here to articles which he at that time contributed to his periodical Luzifer, later known under the title Luzifer Gnosis, which were then published in book form and are available in English under the title Cosmic Memory, (Rudolf Steiner Publications, Chapter ‘Lemuria’).
• 9 . See note 5.
• 10. Since the Tolerance Agreement of 1813 the ‘Royal Arch Degree’ has passed as the Fourth Degree. See note 16 to the succeeding lecture, also the notes about ‘Goethe's relationship to Rosicrucianism’ which appear as an appendix to these lectures.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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:

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.

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.

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.

Last time I spoke about Freemasonry, and today I wish to add something to that. I should like you to consider that I am in a different position with regard to Freemasonry than to the other subjects we have spoken about, or which we still intend to discuss, as I usually only speak about things of which I have personal experience. In the present instance I should stress to you that I am speaking to you as a non-mason¹ and only from a theosophical point of view, whereas to do full justice to the subject of what Freemasonry really is, it should be treated by one who is himself a Freemason. He would not do this, but this is for other reasons which it is best not to discuss. At the same time I would request that you treat what I have to say with reserve.

When I said to you that only a Freemason himself could speak about what it really represents in its innermost core, so I would beg you to take into account that, in spite of that, there is probably no such Freemason in existence in the whole of Europe. This may strike you as odd, but it is so. Since the eighteenth century Freemasonry has been in a very peculiar stage of its development, and I would ask you to regard everything I told you about it last time as being applicable to what it probably would have been like if it had remained as it was in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. As this is not the case, Freemasonry is, so to speak, only a kind of husk devoid of its true content. It can be compared to a petrified plant which is no longer the same as what the plant formed, but is a crust or shell made up by something else.

The ordinary craft masonry does not come into consideration where the things we are going to discuss are concerned, for this craft masonry, with its three degrees of apprentice, journeyman and master, took its start from the Charter of Cologne in 1535.² Today it is not really anything more than a union for mutual stimulation with regard to higher education and schooling, a union for the purpose of mutual support andstimulation among its members. It is true that these first three degrees are, as it were, only the last remaining vestiges of the original Three Degrees of Freemasonry, and if the ceremonies were to take place as in former times—which they do not—then apprentice, journeyman and master would be initiated in the way I described last time. The regulations are certainly that they should take place in this way, but only a few people know that these regulations exist, and still fewer know the meaning of these things. Everything I have told you about the effect of these ceremonies on the astral plane is something of which craft masonry has no clear understanding.

Now both the British and also the St. John Lodges in Germany possess these three degrees which I have named. And they are actually all in the same state as I have just described. But the possibility is there, within these three degrees, through the very fact that the symbols exist, of penetrating through them to the deeper wisdom which underlies them. A proof of this is provided by the fact that a mason whom you all know well by name has addressed his brother masons in such a way that the germ of his theosophical awareness is thereby revealed; that he was able, in a certain sense, to speak in theosophical terms to an audience of masons. The Freemason of whom I speak is Goethe.³

As theosophists you will immediately find something very familiar when I read to you two verses of his Freemasonry poem⁴ which he intended for his brethren of the Lodge.

Yet call from beyond
The voices of spirits,
The voices of masters:
Omit not to practise
The powers of the good.

Crowns here are woven
In quiet eternal
Rewarding with plenty
Those who are active!
We beg you, have hope.

Goethe speaks here of the masters and he speaks of them within the precincts of the Lodge—in spite of the fact that he knows that those sitting around him have no inkling of the profundity of his words—because he is also aware of the fact that through the atmosphere which surrounds a Freemasonry Lodge, through the presence of symbols, vibrations are set in motion which influence the astral body and thereby bring about a certain result. That is something which scarcely enters into the consciousness of Freemasons but upon which those who know can still build today.

Those who are led beyond the first three degrees to the higher degrees possess rather more consciousness. The first of these higher degrees is the Royal Arch degree,⁵ the degree of royal art. This degree is distinguished by the fact that its ‘chapter’ or ‘union’ has a special organisation, which is filled with deeper meaning. In their gatherings—especially in those in which a new member is to be initiated into the secrets—never more than twelve fellow members are allowed to be present, so that—after the manner of occult brotherhoods—they really represent something other than themselves, something which lives among them in a mysterious fashion. They are not regarded just as persons, but as the personification of particular qualities.

The first, who represents the most important in the circle of twelve, is called Zerubbabel.⁶ He is a leader, the sun from whom radiates the light which is to illuminate the others. He must needs be the cleverest and has to have a certain knowledge of the essence and meaning of the secret sciences. That is seldom the case with present fashions in the Royal Arch degree. I am talking about an ideal situation, in fact, which only very rarely arises when suitable people happen to be present.⁷

The next officer is Jeshua, the high priest;⁸ the third, Haggai the prophet. Together with Zerubbabel these three compose the Grand Council. The first and second Principals come next, then the two scribes, Esra and Nehemia and the Janitor or Tyler without the Door. After that come the so-called lesser companions. Not more than twelve people may be present at any time. These twelve represent the twelve signs of the zodiac. The whole is a portrayal of the sun's passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. That reminds us of what I have told you about the masons having taken their start in reproducing astronomical laws in particular buildings, in churches, cathedrals, etc.

The arrangement of the Lodge—though this is not always the case—is a large square hall with a vaulted ceiling,⁹ painted blue and covered with golden stars to represent the heavens. The positions taken up by the participants is closely prescribed by ceremony. The novices, who are last to enter, take their places in the North, as they are not yet able to endure warmth. In the East stands Zerubbabel. In the West is the High Priest Jeshua, and the Prophet Haggai. And those who take their places in the South are roped together. Each of them has the rope wound around him three times, uniting him with his fellows at a distance of three or four decimeters.¹⁰

He who is initiated into this Fourth Degree, the first of the higher degrees, which in certain regions still provides an inkling of the significance of the Temple Legend, has to pass three veils.¹¹ At each passing of a veil one of the secrets is imparted to him. He is told the secret meaning of a particular verse from the Pentateuch. After this the secret of the Tau sign is explained, and the Holy Word, the Master Word, is given him, which is the word by which masons of the Fourth Degree recognise one another. And then, before all else, it is made clear to him in his first instruction how ancient Freemasonry is. The craft masons do not usually get to know that, or if they do hear it, they have not the slightest understanding of these matters. The history of Freemasonry is related to them in the following way: The first true mason was Adam,¹² the first man, who had an extraordinary knowledge of geometry at the time of his expulsion from Paradise. He was recognised as the first mason because, being the first man, he was a direct descendant of the Light. The true, deeper origin of Freemasonry, however, pre-dates humanity entirely. It resides in Light itself which existed before mankind.

That is most profound and reveals, for those who can understand it, what theosophical wisdom has again made public through its description of the formation of the earth through the first two Root Races and into the third (the time of Lemuria). Whoever can apprehend this through Freemasonry has received into himself something of tremendous importance. But that takes place in only the rarest cases because Freemasonry is, as it were, degenerate today. This has come about because, since the sixteenth century, man has had little understanding of the true meaning of Freemasonry, namely that a temple has to be built in such a way that its proportions are a reflection of the great cosmic proportions, that a cathedral has to be built in such a way that its acoustics reproduce something of the harmony of the spheres, which is the source of all acoustics in the outer world.

A knowledge of this original insight was gradually lost. Thus it came about that when Desaguliers¹³ reunited Freemasonry in England during the first half of the eighteenth century, no one had any proper understanding of the fact that the word Freemasonry had to be taken literally; that it really did concern the work of the practising mason and that the mason was one who built churches and temples and other great buildings according to cosmic laws and incorporated into them heavenly and not earthly proportions.

This original insight and its reflection in Freemasonry was lost; there was no longer any conscious appreciation of the transformation wrought by a proper use of acoustics in a building where the speaker's words are thrown back and are thereby changed in their effect. Those who built the great cathedrals of medieval times were the great Freemasons. They were aware of the importance of the fact that what was spoken by the priest should be reflected back from the individual walls and the whole congregation immersed in a sea of sound, breathing and fluctuating in significant vibration which would exercise still greater effect on the astral body than on the physical ear. That has all been lost and it was inevitable that this should be so in the new age. That is what I meant when I told you that what is left of Freemasonry is only the husk of what it was in former times.

Apart from these three degrees there are also the higher degrees. And those are possessed in a fairly complete form by the larger communities of Great Britain, America, Italy, Egypt, and also by eastern Freemasonry—especially that known as Oriental or Memphis Masonry.¹⁴ In Germany, where there is a branch of the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry with world-wide masonic connections,¹⁵ the higher degrees are also functioning. But in Germany, within the St. John Freemasonry, there is so little understanding of the real significance of the higher degrees that the St. John masons there generally look upon the higher degrees as nonsense. The Grand Orient of Germany is obliged, for this reason, merely to let the St. John masons in general pass properly as masons.

In this respect there are great differences between the masonry practised in Germany and that of England or Great Britain. In British masonry a kind of reconciliation has been achieved through the Articles of Union of 1813 between craft masonry with its three degrees and those branches of masonry which recognise the higher degrees.¹⁶ Thus, as an apprentice in craft masonry one is allowed to enter and also graduate into the fourth, fifth and sixth degrees, that is, into the higher degrees. The degrees pertaining to craft masonry are credited to one in England; that is not the case in Germany. The German Grand Orient of the Memphis and Misraim Order undertakes the working of the three lowest degrees itself. The Orient Freemason must therefore have passed the first three degrees at the outset. He must furthermore commit himself to rising at least to the eighteenth degree. He may not rest until he has done so. A German mason of the St. John's Order is therefore never admitted to the higher degrees of Orient masonry [without having attained the three lesser degrees]. The Orient masonry consists of a graded instruction in occultism. As I said last time, it gives a picture of the teaching given in the higher degrees, those which succeed the Royal Arch degree: these provide a kind of astral training which leads up to the eighteenth or twentieth degrees. Then comes that which provides a kind of mental training, a training which leads to a kind of life on the mental plane, and advances to the sixtieth or seventieth degree. Lastly comes the highest training of all, the most profound occult instruction, which can be undertaken in the Grand Orient up to the ninety-sixth degree.

There are only very few in Germany who have advanced to the ninety-sixth degree. But in spite of everything there is something in all this which will presently prove to you how little is left in present-day masonry of what it formerly encompassed. The most interesting point is that those who have progressed to the ninety-sixth degree have not always been through a masonic training, and that there is scarcely anyone at all who has completed the whole gamut of the training. There are indeed a few who have higher degrees. They have been invested with the third or the thirty-third or the ninety-sixth degree, but those who possess these distinctions have not gained them through masonic training but through other occult institutions, and they have allowed their knowledge to be used to bring about the redemption of Freemasonry. If someone has attained to the ninety-sixth degree, it has not been achieved through masonic training. Bluntly, it is considered that in this respect Freemasonry is indebted to the occult training of other schools.

In this sense we have to interpret the manifesto which has been given by the Grand Orient of the Memphis and Misraim rite¹⁷ as a kind of ideal document. I will read it to you with one or two explanations. What is given here must not be construed as though it could be put into practice in the present day. It must be pointed out today that no Freemason—not even one who has the ninety-sixth degree—would take responsibility for taking another Freemason through these prescriptions, since he himself has not undergone them.

‘Concerning the Secrets of the Higher Occult Degrees of our Order. A Manifesto of the Grand Orient.

‘One of the secrets belonging to the highest degree of our Order consists in providing the appropriately conditioned Brother with the practical means of erecting the true Temple of Solomon within Man; of restoring the ‘Lost Word’, that is, our Order provides the initiated and selected Brother with practical means enabling him to gain proof of pure immortality during his present earthly life.’

That is one of the points which are of utmost importance. The next point is one which exists in all centres of occult training: no calling-up of spirits or spiritualistic activities. Anyone who practises spiritualism is strictly excluded.

‘This secret is one of the true masonic secrets and rests solely in the possession of the higher occult degrees of our Order. It has been handed down by word of mouth in our Order from the ancestors of all true Freemasons, “the Wise Men of the East”, and will only be transmitted by us in like manner.’

That is the practice in occult societies.

‘Naturally, however, the success of this practical instruction for the attainment of this secret again depends entirely on the candidate himself.

‘For of what use are the best and most tested and detailed instructions given to a candidate wishing to learn to swim if he is not himself prepared to move hands and feet when he comes into contact with the water? Or of what use is the most comprehensive guidance in learning to paint, or the exposition of the most vivid colours by way of example, if the candidate to whom painting is being taught will not take the paintbrush into his own hand and seek to mix the colours himself? He will never become an artist unless he does so.

‘Those brothers, the discoverers of this secret, guarded it as a rare,self-acquired possession and, in order not to be misjudged or even derided by the man in the street, they concealed it by means of symbols, as we do to this day.’

These symbols are no longer decipherable for the Freemason of the present day. Such symbols are not arbitrarily chosen. These are not things by means of which someone can portray something, like a professor who says: I will illustrate this graphically. These symbols have been taken from the objects themselves, which have been engraved by Nature. He who recognises them for what they are, who can really read what they contain, comes into contact with their innermost being, he is led by them into their inner nature. These symbols portray the thing itself and do not have a merely symbolical meaning. Within Freemasonry there is noone who is able to give guidance which would enable a person to arrive at the object itself.

‘These symbols are, however, no arbitrarily chosen pictures and they do not rest upon any chance occurrence, but are founded on the attributes of God and of man, and must be regarded as archetypal. But we will never take the form, the vessel, the ritual, the symbols for their content, but will seek the spiritual content within the form’

These words show [Gap] for the symbol itself portrays the object.

‘and when we have found this the spiritual content—and have absorbed it into ourselves, we shall recognise through this spiritual content the absolute necessity of the form, the ritual, the symbolism.

‘Our higher degrees themselves provide the brother with certain proof of the immortality of man.’

This they would do if they were worked.

‘That is and has been the great longing of mankind ever since human beings who could reason existed. Mankind needs to have this assurance of a life after death in order to be truly happy in this present life. Therefore all the mysteries contained in the religions and centres of hidden wisdom have occupied themselves with this question as their highest and principal task. The Church has naturally also occupied itself with this question of the “Lost Word”; the “Lost Immortality”, but it directs the candidate along the path of grace and portrays it as a gift from above and not as something to be achieved by personal effort. Our Order, however, places it within the power of each individual seeker, by practical means, to unite himself consciously and voluntarily with the World Consciousness, with the ultimate forces of Creation.’

That means, therefore, to provide insight into and union with that world which otherwise is only accessible through the portal of death.

From all this you may draw the conclusion that what belongs to the world's profundities was once found in Freemasonry, but is no longer there in the empty husk which it presents today. You must ask yourselves why. Now, the meaning of the Temple Legend, the meaning of operative masonry, like all intuitive knowledge, had to be lost to humanity, because the fifth cultural epoch is actually the epoch of understanding. Intuition had for a time to lie dormant in the world and Freemasonry is intuitive in its whole attitude and manner. I would like to draw your attention to Vitruvius¹⁸ and to the true symbolical building instructions which he gave. Only those, however, who have the right intuition for it can follow these instructions. Today these symbolical instructions have been replaced by intellectual, rational ones. Reason had to become the keynote of man's development for a while, because everything which has meanwhile come to us through great conquests of nature must be incorporated in the whole organism of human activity.

Understand what it means: the whole of the mineral kingdom will be included in the progress of the world during the present Round of evolution. It will be included in such a way that man will gradually transform the whole of nature through his own spirituality. That is the meaning of the Molten Sea, that the whole of mineral nature will effectively be transformed.

Man works in industry, so as to weave Organisation [his own spirituality?] into mineral nature. If you consider a machine ... [Gap]

In this way man thus works the whole mineral kingdom back and forth with his own spirit. This re-casting of Nature, this re-casting of what is mineral, will be perfected when our present Round of evolution has come to an end. The whole of mineral nature will then have been changed. Man will have put his stamp on it, just as he imprints his stamp on a quantity of metal when, for example, he fashions a watch. Thus, when a new Round of evolution begins, the mineral kingdom can be sucked in, absorbed.

In order completely to finish the development in this sphere, the whole way of thinking which has gripped man since the sixteenth century, must be carried right into the atom. Thus, only when reasoned thinking can grasp the atom can Freemasonry again revive. In the first stage, the outer form will be grasped. The next step will be when man has learned to think right into the mineral atom, when he has an understanding of how to make use of what lives in the atom and place it in the service of the whole. It is true that only now—and perhaps only during the last five years—human thinking has turned to tracing natural forces as far as the atom, and indeed, he who would understand this precisely must follow the latest phase of the various developments in electricity. The speech which the English Prime Minister Balfour has made¹⁹ on the subject of our contemporary world outlook is interesting in this connection, albeit only in its outward implications. What he said there [about new electrical theory] is something of enormous importance. He hints at the critical turning point in the development of man's thinking. He is to a certain extent conscious of this and mentions it in one part of his speech. Thus we see how something is dawning in the consciousness of natural science which plays into the future. This has been known to occultists since 1879. I emphasise this, although I cannot prove it.²⁰ The occultist knows that this will come about: a new point of departure from the atom into the mineral-physical world. That will be what will enter into the world in the sixth cultural epoch, and through this Freemasonry will also be regenerated. In Freemasonry the occultist has something very remarkable, something unprecedented, for it has something primeval in its foundation. It belongs to the most ancient of traditions, which has preserved almost a hundred degrees,in a precisely specialised structure, in spite of the fact that it has lost nearly all of its content, and that none of those belonging to it in Europe are able to form an adequate conception of it. But still: the thing is there and one will only need to fill the whole outer husk with new content. The thing is there, waiting to be brought to life again.

Points from the subsequent discussion.

Rites of Memphis, Oriental Rites and Grand Orient Rites. A conference of occultists discussed whether the occult doctrine could be made public or not. From that it became clear that there are two tendencies, a left and a right tendency,²¹ one which is free-thinking and one which is conservative.

• 1 . Rudolf Steiner entered later (1906) into a purely formal relationship with the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry, cf. The Course of My Life,Chapter 36.
• 2 . According to a work by Friedrich Heldmann, contained in Rudolf Steiner's private library: Die drei ältesten geschichtlichen Denkmäler der teutschen Freymaurerbrüderschaft, (‘The three oldest historical documents of the German Freemasonry Brotherhood’). The Charter of Cologne of 1535, together with the oldest statutes of the Strasbourg Lodge of 1459 and its revision of 1563, form the oldest documents of German Freemasonry, Heckethorn, however, among others, holds it to be apocryphal, otherwise spurious. (See also note 11 of this lecture).
• 3 . Goethe became a member of the ‘Amalia’ Lodge in Weimar. See also the commentary on Goethe's relationship to Rosicrucianism at the end of this volume.
• 4 . The last two verses of his Freemasonry poem, Symbolum.
• 5 . In his description of this degree Rudolf Steiner is again basing himself on Heckethorn: Secret Societies, Book 8, Chapter 7.
• 6 . According to Heckethorn, p. 180, the name Zerubbabel is ‘a compound word, meaning: “the bright Lord, the Sun”. He rebuilds the temple and therefore represents the sun, risen again.’ It supposedly is connected with the Zerubbabel of the Old Testament, a noble from the family of David, who, on return from captivity in Babylon, completed the building of the Temple of Jerusalem.
• 7 . At the end of this sentence a very unclear statement follows, which could be rendered as follows: ‘Only a kind of memory is there, an indication of a memory of it, but the effect is missing.’
• 8 . According to Heckethorn, p. 180: ‘The next officer is Jeshua, the high priest; the third, Haggai, the prophet. These three compose the grand council. Principals and senior and junior sojourners form the base; Ezra and Nehemiah, senior and junior scribes, one on each side; janitor or tyler without the door.’
• 9 . According to Heckethorn, p. 260: ‘The Lodge must have a vaulted ceiling, painted blue and covered with golden stars, to represent the heavens.’ ‘... the brethren take their places according to their rank; the grandmaster in the Last, the master in the south, and the novices at the north.’
• 10. According to Heckethorn, p. 281: ‘Nine companions must be present at the opening of a Royal Arch Chapter; not more nor less than these three are permitted to take this degree at the same time, the two numbers making up the twelve, the number of zodiacal signs. The candidates are prepared by tying a bandage over their eyes, and coiling a rope seven times round the body of each, which unites them together, with three feet of slack rope between them.’
• 11. According to Heckethorn, p. 265: ‘Without the Royal Arch Degree Blue Masonry is incomplete.’ The ‘Blue Masonry’ of Heckethorn is what Rudolf Steiner calls ‘Johannesmaurerei’ (St. John Masonry) and is usually known simply as Craft Masonry in this country. This Order got its name ‘St. John Masonry’ from the Charter of Cologne, 1535 (see note 2). Heckethorn, Book 8, Chapter 2 (end), says: ‘The Freemasons have also frequently been said to be descended from the Knights Templars, and thus to have for their object to avenge the destruction of that Order, and so to be dangerous to Church and State; yet this assertion was repudiated as early as 1535 in the “Charter of Cologne”, wherein the Masons call themselves the Brethren of St. John, because St. John the Baptist was the forerunner of the Light.’ To continue the quotation from Heckethorn regarding ‘Blue Masonry:’ ‘Without the Royal Arch Degree Blue Masonry is incomplete, for we have seen in the Legend of the Temple that, through the murder of Hiram, the Master's word was lost; that word is not recovered in the Master's Degree, its substitute only being given; hence the lost word is recovered in the Royal Arch Degree. Blue Masonry, in fact, answers to the lesser mysteries of the ancients wherein, in reality nothing but the exoteric doctrines were revealed: whilst “spurious Masonry”, or all subsequent degrees—for no one can be initiated into them who has not passed through the first three degrees—answers to the greater mysteries.’
• 12. According to Heckethorn, p. 248, Freemasons claim to be not contemporary with the creation of man, but with that of the world; because light was before man, and prepared for him a suitable habitation, and light is the scope and symbol of Freemasonry.’ Edward Spratt, an Irish author, described Adam as the first Freemason, who, even after his expulsion from Paradise, possessed great knowledge, especially in the field of geometry. Edward Spratt: Konstitutionenbuch für irländische Logen, (1751).
• 13. John Theophilus Desaguliers, 1683–1744. From 1719 he was the Grand Master of the first English Grand Lodge. Desaguliers passes for the strongest personality of the so-called ‘Revival’ movement in Freemasonry. As a renowned scientist (pupil of Isaac Newton) he is numbered among those who prepared the way for the founding of the theory of electricity.
• 14. See note 1 to next lecture (lecture 9, 16th December).
• 15. Rudolf Steiner bases his statement here on an assertion in the Historische Ausgabe der Oriflamme. Der Schottische, Memphisund Misraim-Ritus der Freimaurerei, A.D. 1904, Berlin, according to which, at that time, friendly relationships existed between the twelve Grand Orients and Supreme Grand Councils of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and the Sovereign Sanctuaries of America, Egypt, Rumania, Spain, Cuba, Naples and Palermo. In Germany, however, the Memphis and Misraim Freemasonry was at that time considered ‘irregular’ and was not recognised.
• 16. In the last Article of 1st December 1813, it is stated that: ‘It is explained and expressed that the pure and ancient, Freemasonry shall consist of only three Degrees and no more, namely, the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craftsman and Master Mason, with the addition of the High Grades of the Holy Royal Arch. But this Article shall not bind any Lodge or any Chapter to hold a gathering in accordance with the constitution of the said Order.’ (History of Freemasonry, by Heinrich Boos. From Rudolf Steiner's own library).
• 17. Rudolf Steiner read out the whole of the manifesto in the present lecture.
• 18. See note 7 to lecture 7 (2nd December 1904).
• 19. The speech made by Balfour to the British Association on 17th August 1904, appeared the same year in translation under the title: Unsere heutige Weltanschauung (‘Our present outlook’), Leipzig 1904. At the time of the present lecture this speech had already been discussed in the November issue of Luzifer-Gnosis, under the heading: ‘Present-day culture as reflected in Theosophy,’ in which the relevant passages from Balfour and Blavatsky are set over against one another. This discussion has been published in German in the complete edition of Rudolf Steiner's works as Volume 34, Luzifer-Gnosis. (For text of Balfour's speech, see note 22 to the next lecture, 16th December 1904).
• 20. At a later date Rudolf Steiner has often spoken in greater detail about the decisive importance of the year 1879, as, for instance in: ‘Fall of the Spirits of Darkness’ (typescript translation).
• 21. See in this connection Rudolf Steiner's detailed description in: The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century. For this statement Rudolf Steiner apparently made use of the publication by the Englishman, C.G. Harrison: The Transcendental Universe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few more reflections on the lost temple. We must regard Solomon's temple as the greatest symbol. Now the point is to understand this symbol. You know the course of events from the Bible, how it began. In this case, we are not dealing with mere symbols, but in fact with outward realities, in which, however, a profound world-historic symbolism finds its expression at the same time. And those who built the temple were aware what it was meant to express.

Let us consider why the temple was built. And you will see that each word in the Bible's account of it¹ is a deeply significant symbol. In this you need only consider in what period the building was erected. Let us particularly recall the Biblical explanation for what the temple was to be. Yahveh addressed this explanation to David: ‘A house for My Name’—that is, a house for the name Yahveh. And now let us make clear what the name Yahveh signifies.

Ancient Judaism became quite clear, at a particular time, about the holiness of the name Yahveh. What does it mean? A child learns, at a certain moment in its life, to use the word ‘I’. Before that, it regards itself as a thing. Just as it gives names to other things, so it even calls itself by an objective name. Only later does it learn to use the word ‘I’. The moment in the lives of great personalities when they first experience their own ‘I’, when they first become aware of themselves, is charged with significance. Jean Paul recounts the following incident:² as a small boy he was once standing in a barn in a farmyard: at that moment he first experienced his own ‘I.’ And so serene and solemn was this instant for him, that he said of it: ‘I then looked into my innermost soul as into the Holy of Holies.’

Mankind has developed through many epochs and everyone conceived themselves in this objective way up to Atlantean times; only during the Atlantean epoch did man develop to the stage where he could say ‘I’ to himself. The ancient Hebrews included this in their doctrines.

Man has passed through the kingdoms of Nature. Ego consciousness rose in him last of all. The astral, etheric and physical bodies and the ego together form the Pythagorean square. And Judaism added thereto the divine ego which descends from above, in contrast with the ego from below. Thus, a pentagon has been made out of the square. This was how Judaism experienced the Lord God of its people, and it was therefore a sacred thing to utter the ‘Name’. Whereas other names, such as ‘Elohim’ or ‘Adonai’, came increasingly into use, only the anointed priest in the Holy of Holies was allowed to utter the name ‘Yahveh.’³ It was in the time of Solomon that ancient Judaism came to the holiness of the name Yahveh, to this ‘I’ which can dwell in man. We must take Jehovah's challenge to man as something that sought to have man himself made into a temple of the most holy God. Now we have gained a new conception of the Godhead, namely this: the God which is hidden in man's breast, in the deepest holiness of man's self, must be changed into a moral God. The human body is thus turned into a great symbol of the Inner Sanctuary.

And now an outward symbol had to be erected, as man is God's temple. The temple had to be a symbol,illustrating man's own body. Therefore, builders were sent for—Hiram-Abiff—who understood the practical arts that could transform man himself into a god. Two images in the Bible relate to this: one is Noah's Ark, and the other is the Temple of Solomon.⁴ In one way both are the same, yet they also have to be distinguished.

Noah's Ark was built to preserve mankind for the present stage of human existence. Before Noah, man lived in the Atlantean and Lemurian epochs. At that time he had not built the ship which was to carry him across the waters of the astral world into earthly existence. Man came by the waters of the astral world, and Noah's Ark carried him over. The Ark represents the construction built by unconscious divine forces. From the measurements given, its proportions correspond to those of the human body, and also with those of Solomon's Temple.⁵

Man has developed beyond Noah's Ark, and now he has to surround his higher self with a house created by his own spirit, by his own wisdom, by the wisdom of Solomon.

We enter the Temple of Solomon. The door itself is characteristic. The square used to function as an old. symbol. Mankind has now progressed from the stage of four-foldness to that of five-foldness, as five-membered man who has become conscious of his own higher self. The inner divine Temple is so formed as to enclose the five-fold human being. The square is holy. The door, the roof and the side pillars together form a pentagon.^{6, 7} When man awakens from his fourfold state, that is, when he enters his inner being—the inner sanctuary is the most important part of the temple—he sees a kind of altar; we perceive two cherubim which hover, like two guardian spirits, over the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy of Holies; for the fifth principle [of man's being], which has not yet descended to earth, must be guarded by the two higher beings—Buddhi and Manas. Thus man enters the stage of Manas development.

The whole inner sanctuary is covered in gold, because gold has always been the symbol of wisdom. Now wisdom enters the Manas stage. We find palm leaves as the symbol of peace. That represents a particular epoch of humanity, and is inserted here as something which only came to expression later, in Christianity. The temple leaders guarded this for itself, in this way suggesting something to do with later developments.

Later, in the Middle Ages, the idea of Solomon's Temple was revived again in the Knights Templars,⁸ who sought to introduce the Temple thinking in the West. But the Knights Templars were misunderstood at that time (e.g. trial of Jacques Molay, their Grand Master). If we wish to understand the Templars, we must look deeply into human history. What the Templars were reproached with in their trial rests entirely on a major misunderstanding. The Knights Templars said at the time: ‘Everything we have experienced so far is a preparation for what the Redeemer has wished for. For,’ they continued, ‘Christianity has a future, a new task. And we have the task of preparing the various sects of the Middle Ages, and humanity generally, for a future in which Christianity will emerge into a new clarity, as the Redeemer actually intended that it should. We saw Christianity rise in the fourth cultural epoch; it will develop further in the fifth, but only in the sixth is it to celebrate the Glory of its resurrection. We have to prepare for that. We must guide human souls in such a way that a genuine, true and pure Christianity may come to expression, in which the Name of the Most High may find its dwelling place.’

Jerusalem was to be the centre and from there the secret concerning the relationship of man to the Christ should stream out all over the world. What was represented symbolically by the temple should become a living reality. It was said of the Templars, and this was a reproach to them, that they had instituted a kind of star-worship, or, similarly, a sun-worship . However, a great mystery lies behind this. The sacrifice of the Mass was originally nothing else but a great mystery. Mass fell into two parts; the so-called Minor Mass, in which all were allowed to take part; and, when that had ended, and the main body [of the congregation] had gone away, there followed the High Mass, which was intended only for those who wished to undergo occult training, to embark on the ‘Path’. In this High Mass the reciting of the Apostolic Creed took place first; then was expounded the development of Christianity throughout the world, and how it was connected with the great march of world evolution.

The conditions on earth were not always the same as today. The earth was once joined to the sun and the moon. The sun separated itself, as it were, and then shone upon the earth from outside. Later, the moon split away. Thus, in earlier times, the earth was quite a different kind of dwelling place for man. Man was quite different physically, at that time. But when the sun and the moon split off from the earth, the whole of man's life underwent a change. Birth and death took place for the first time, man reincarnated for the first time, and for the first time the ego of man, the individuality, descended into the physical body, to reincarnate itself in continuous succession. One day that will cease again. The earth will again become joined to the sun, and then man will be able to pass through his further evolution on the sun. Thus we have a specific series of steps, according to which the sun and man move together. Such things are connected with the progress of the sun across the vault of heaven.

Now everything that happens in the world is briefly recapitulated in the following stages. Everything has been repeated, including the evolution of the global stages in the first, second and third Great Epochs. *See scheme at the end of the notes to lecture 10. It came about, then, that man descended into reincarnation. The sun split away [from the earth] during the time of transition from the second to the third Great Epoch, the moon during the third epoch [Lemuria]. Now the earth develops from the third to the sixth epoch, when the sun will again be joined to the earth. Then a new epoch will start in which man will have attained a much higher stage and will no longer incarnate.

This teaching concerning the course of evolution came into the world through religion in the shape of the story of Noah's Ark. In this teaching, what was to happen in the future was foreshadowed. The union of the sun with the earth is foreshadowed in the appearance of Christ on earth. It is always so with such teachings. For a time what happens is a repetition of the past, then the teaching begins to be a prefiguring of the future. Each individual cultural epoch, as it relates to the evolution of consciousness for each nation, is connected with the progression of the sun through the zodiac.

You know that the time of transition from the third to the fourth cultural epoch was represented by the sign of the Ram or Lamb. The Babylonian-Assyrian epoch gathered together in the sign of the Bull all that was important for its time. The previous Persian age was designated in the constellation by the sign of the Twins. And if we go still further into the past we would come to the sign of the Crab for the Sanskrit culture. This epoch, in which the sun was in Cancer at the time of the spring equinox, was a turning point for humanity. Atlantis had been submerged and the first Sub-Race [cultural epoch] of the fifth Great Epoch had begun. This turning point was denoted by the Crab. The next cultural epoch similarly begins with the transition of the sun into the sign of the Twins. A further stage of history leads us over into the culture of Asia Minor and Egypt, as the sun passes into the sign of the Bull. And as the sun continues its course through the zodiac, the fourth cultural epoch begins, which is connected in Greek legend with the Ram or Lamb (the saga of Jason and the search for the Golden Fleece). And Christ Himself was, later on in early Christian times, represented by the Lamb. He called Himself the Lamb.

We have traced the time from the first to the fourth-cultural epoch.⁹ The sun proceeds through the heavens, and now we enter the sign of the Fishes, where we are ourselves at a critical point. Then, [in the future], in the time of the sixth epoch, the time will arrive when man will have become so inwardly purified that he himself becomes a temple for the divine. At that time the sun will enter the sign of the Water Carrier. Thus the sun, which is really only the external expression of our spiritual life, progresses in heavenly space. When the sun enters the sign of the Water Carrier at the spring equinox, it will then be understood completely clearly for the first time.

Thus proceeded the High Mass, from which all the uninitiated were excluded. It was made clear to those who remained that Christianity, which began as a seed, would in the future bear something quite different as fruit, and that by the name Water Carrier was meant John [the Baptist] who scatters Christianity as a seed, as if with a grain of mustard seed. Aquarius or the Water Carrier means the same person as John who baptised with water in order to prepare mankind to receive the Christian baptism of fire. The coming of a ‘John/Aquarius’ who would first confirm the old John and announce a Christ who would renew the Temple, once the great point of time should have arrived when Christ will again speak to humanity—this was taught in the depths of the Templar Mysteries, so that the event should be understood.

Moreover, the Templars said: Today we live at a point in time when men are not yet ripe for understanding the great teachings; we still have to prepare them for the Baptist, John, who baptises with water. The Cross was held up before the would-be Templar and he was told: You must deny the Cross now, so as to understand it later; first become a Peter, first deny the scriptures, like Peter the Rock who denied the Lord. That was imparted to the aspirant Templar as a preliminary training.

People generally understand so little of all this that even the letters on the Cross are not interpreted aright. Plato said of it that the world soul would be crucified on the world body.¹⁰ The Cross symbolises the four elements. The plant, animal and human kingdoms are built out of these four elements. On the Cross stands: JAM= water = James; NOUR = fire, which refers to Jesus himself; RUACH = air, the symbol for John; and the fourth JABESCHAH = earth or rock, for Peter.

Thus there stands on the Cross what is expressed in the names of the [three] Apostles [and Jesus]. While the one name J.N.R.I. denotes Christ himself. ‘Earth’ is the place where Christianity itself must at first be brought, to that Temple to which man himself has brought himself so as to be a sheath for what is higher. But this Temple [Gap in text]¹¹

The cock, which is the symbol for both man's higher and lower selves, ‘crows twice’ [Mark 14:30]. The cock crows for the first time when man descends [to earth] and materialises himself in physical substance; it crows for the second time when man rises again, when he has learnt to understand Christ, when the Water Carrier appears. That will be in the sixth cultural epoch. Then man will understand spiritually what he should become. The ego will have attained a certain stage then, when what Solomon's Temple stands for will be reality in the highest sense, when man himself is a temple for Yahveh.

Before that, however, man still has to undergo three stages of purification. The ego is in a threefold sheath: firstly, in the astral body, secondly, in the etheric body, thirdly in the physical body.

As we are in the astral body, we deny the divine ego for the first time, for the second time in the etheric body, and for the third time in the physical body. The first crow of the cock is threefold denial through the threefold sheath of man. And when he has then passed through the three bodies, when the ego discovers in Christ its greatest symbolical realisation, then the cock crows for the second time.

This struggle to raise oneself up to a proper understanding of Christ, first passing through the stage of Peter none of the Templars found it possible, under torture, to make clear to the judges.

At the outset, the Templars put themselves in a position, as if they had abjured the Cross. After all of this had been made clear to the Templar, he was shown a symbolical figure of the Divine Being in the form of a venerable man with a long beard (symbolising the Father). When men have developed themselves, and have come to receive in the Master a leader from amongst themselves, when those are there who are able to lead humanity, then, as the Word of the guiding Father, there will stand before men the Master who leads men to the comprehension of Christ.

And then it was said to the Templars: When you have understood all this, you will be ripe for joining in building the great Temple of the Earth; you must so co-operate, so arrange everything, that this great building becomes a dwelling place for our true deeper selves, for our inner Ark of the Covenant.

If we survey all this, we find images having great significance. And he in whose soul these images come alive, will become more and more fit to become a disciple of those great Masters who are preparing the building of the Temple of Mankind. For such great concepts work powerfully in our souls, so that we thereby undergo purification, so that we are led to abounding life in the spirit.

We find the same medieval tendency as manifested in the Knights Templars, in two Round Tables as well, that of King Arthur, and that of the Holy Grail. In King Arthur's Round Table can be found the ancient universality, whereas the spirituality proper to Christian knighthood had to be prepared in those who guarded the Mystery of the Holy Grail. It is remarkable how calmly and tranquilly medieval people contemplated the developing power (fruit) and outward form of Christianity.

When you follow the teaching of the Templars, there at the heart of it is a kind of reverence for something of a feminine nature. This femininity was known as the Divine Sophia, the Heavenly Wisdom. Manas is the fifth principle. the spiritual self of man, that must be developed, for which a temple must be built. And, just as the pentagon at the entrance to Solomon's Temple characterises the fivefold human being, this female principle similarly typifies the wisdom of the Middle Ages, This wisdom is exactly what Dante sought to personify in his Beatrice. Only from this viewpoint can Dante's Divine Comedy be understood. Hence you find Dante, too, using the same symbols as those which find expression in the Templars, the Christian knights, the Knights of the Grail, and so on. Everything which is to happen [in the future] was indeed long since prepared for by the great initiates, who foretell future events, in the same way as in the Apocalypse, so that souls will be prepared for these events.

According to legend we have two different currents when humanity came to the Earth: the children of Cain, whom one of the Elohim begat through Eve, the children of the Earth, in whom we find the great arts and external sciences. That is one of the currents; it was banished, but is however to be sanctified by Christianity, when the fifth principle comes into the world. The other current is that of the children of God, who have led man towards an understanding of the fifth principle. They are the ones that Adam created. Now the sons of Cain were called upon to create an outer sheath, to contain what the sons of God, the Abel-Seth children, created.

In the Ark of the Covenant lies concealed the Holy Name of Yahveh. However, what is needed to transform the world, to create the sheath for the Holy of Holies, must be accomplished again through the sons of Cain. God created man's physical body, into which man's ego works, at first destroying this temple. Man can only rescue himself if he first builds the house to carry him across the waters of the emotions, if he builds Noah's Ark for himself. This house must set man on his feet again. Now those who came into the world as the children of Cain are building the outward part, and what the children of God have given is building the inner part.

These two streams were already current when our race began ... [Gap]¹²

So we shall only understand theosophy when we look upon it as a testament laying the ground for what the Temple of Solomon denotes, and for what the, future holds in store. We have to prepare for the New Covenant, in place of the Old Covenant. The old one is the Covenant of the creating God, in which God is at work on the Temple of Mankind. The New Covenant is the one in which man himself surrounds the divine with the Temple of Wisdom, when he restores it, so that this ‘I’ will find a sanctuary on this earth when it is resurrected out of matter, set free.

So profound are the symbols, and so was the instruction, that the Templars wanted to be allowed to confer upon mankind. The Rosicrucians are none other than the successors to the Order of the Templars, wanting nothing else than the Templars did, which is also what theosophy desires: they are all at work on the great Temple of Humanity.

• 1 . First Book of Kings, Chapters 5–7. Second Book of Chronicles, Chapters 3–4. Ezekiel, Chapters 40–42.
• 2 . Jean Paul (pseudonym for Jean Paul Friedrich Richter) 1763–1825, poet, writer of novels, and thinker. The episode here related was recorded in his childhood reminiscences.
• 3 . This took place once a year on the Day of Atonement. Leviticus, Chapter 16, verses 29–34: ‘And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of Israel, for all their sins, once a year.’
• 4 . According to notes of a lecture by Rudolf Steiner given in Cologne on 28th December 1907 (not yet published in German, but intended for inclusion in Volume 101 of the complete edition) he there states:
  
  ‘Were we to take millennia into account rather than centuries, we would observe how the form of the human body undergoes change according to the thoughts, feelings, and conceptual criteria of previous millennia; and the mighty leading powers of evolution give to man the right concepts at the right time, so that even the human form becomes transformed ...
  
  ‘How did the whole length, breadth and height of the physical body of today actually evolve? It is a result of what was at first contained in the astral and etheric bodies. That was where the thoughts, pictures, feelings, etc., at first resided. You will better be able to understand what I have to say if you call to mind a process which takes place immediately after physical death. It happens then that the physical body is at first forsaken by the etheric and astral bodies. Sleep consists in the fact that the astral body and ego withdraw leaving the physical body and ether body lying in bed. Death is differentiated from sleep through the fact that in the former state the physical body alone remains behind on the bed and the ether body withdraws along with the other two members of man's being. A strange phenomenon then takes place which could be described as a sensation, but which is connected with a kind of concept: the person feels as if he were expanding and then the memory-tableau occurs; but before that happens he feels himself expanding in all directions—he gains dimension on all sides.
  
  ‘This viewing of his ether body in huge dimensions is a very important concept; for it had to be induced into Atlantean man at a time when his etheric body was not so closely knit up with his physical body as it was to be in post-Atlantean times. This concept which occurs in man at death today had first to be aroused in him at that time. If a person were to visualise the approximate dimensions which are experienced by man today when he expands at death, then he has built up the motive, the thought form, which is able to bring his physical body into approximately its present form. If, therefore, the true measurements were held up in front of a person whose etheric body was at times separated from his physical body, they would take on the form that the physical body has today. And this form would have been induced into man primarily by those who are leaders of mankind's development. The exact account of this is contained in the various stories of the flood, particularly the Biblical account. If you were to visualise man more or less surrounded by those forms which the etheric body must have in order that the physical body can be built up according to its proper dimensions, then you would have the same dimensions as Noah's Ark.
  
  ‘Why are the exact measurements of Noah's Ark given in the Bible? So that man, who was to be the bridge from Atlantean times to post-Atlantean times, would have a structure—300 cubits long, 50 cubits broad, 30 cubits high—which he must have around him in order to build up the proper thought form, to develop the right motive, out of length, breadth and height, to build up the post-Atlantean body in the right way. There you have a symbol from which the dimensions of your present-day body have been taken and which are the result of the thought form which Noah experienced in the Ark. It is not for nothing that Noah was placed in the Ark and that the Ark was described in this way. The Ark was built thus so that the human body could be properly formed in post-Atlantean times. The whole of mankind was reared in the use of effective symbols. Man carries with him at the present day the measurements of Noah's Ark. When man stretches his hands upwards the measurements of the Ark come to expression in the measurements of man's present-day body. Now man has evolved from Atlantis to post-Atlantis. In the epoch which will follow ours, the sixth epoch, man's body will again be quite differently formed; and today, too, man must experience those thought forms which will enable him to create for the next epoch the motives to provide the proper measurements for the bodies. That must be presented to man. Today the measurements of man's body are in the proportion 300 to 50 to 30. In the future his body will be built up quite differently. What will supply present-day man with the thought form for building up his future body? That is also told us. It is the measurements of the Salomonic Temple. And these measurements of the Salonionic Temple, when realised in physical form, represent, with profound symbolical significance, the whole physical Organisation of the man of the next epoch, the sixth great epoch.
  
  ‘Everything which is effective in mankind takes its start from inside the human being, not from outside. What appears as thought and feeling at one period is outward form in the next. And the individualities who guide mankind must implant the thought forms into him many thousands of years in advance, if they are to become outward reality later. There you have the working of the thought forms which are activated by such symbolical figures. They have a very real meaning.’
• 5 . It has not been possible to identify the literary source to which Rudolf Steiner here refers.
  
  In the Cabbala of Agrippa von Nettesheim (Scheible edition, Stuttgart, 1855), it is stated in the chapter concerning ‘The Measurement, Relationship and Harmony of the Human Body:’
  
  Yes, God himself instructed Noah in the building of the Ark according to the measurements of the human body, just as he himself incorporated into the whole world-mechanism the symmetry of man; and therefore the latter is called the macrocosm, the former the microcosm. With reference to the above some microcosmologists determine the measurements of the human body as being six foot, the foot being ten degrees and the degree being five minutes; this amounts to sixty degrees or 300 minutes, the same number of geometrical cubits as, according to the description of Moses, were contained in the length of the Ark. just as the human body, however, has a length of 300 minutes, a breadth of 50 and a thickness of 30, so had the Ark of Noah not only a length of 300 cubits, but also a width of 50 and a depth (or height) of 30, from which it will be seen that there is a relationship of 6 to 1 of the length to the breadth, 10 to 1 of the length to the depth and 5 to 3 of the breadth to the depth.’
  
  Further to this, Franz Coci in his work: Detailed Calculation of the Three Dimensions of Noah's Ark from the Standpoint of Geometry and Mechanics, (translated from Polish into German by Wenzel Bauernopl, Bilin, 1899), demonstrated mathematically that: ‘The only fitting and possible relationship of width to height of a four-sided hollow body, which combines the use of the least amount of material with the greatest stability, would be to take 5 (more exactly 5.322232) for the width and for the height 3 (more exactly 2.967768) equal parts. And this is the ratio in which the Ark actually was built.’
• 6, . The version here translated is the version from the notes of Berta Reebstein-Lehmann. Walter Vegelahn's version is only fragmentary. It is rendered thus: ‘The ... Temple is so formed that it encloses the fivefold human being. That ... is the most important thing about the Temple. The square is holy, the roof, the roof-covering and the side pillars together form ... In front of the altar stood two cherubim.’
• 7. First Book of Kings, Chapter 6, verse 31: ‘And for the entering of the oracle he made doors of olive tree: the lintel and side posts were a fifth part of the wall.’ The gloss referring to ‘fifth part’ gives the alternative ‘five-square.’
  
  Emil Bock in his Old Testament History, Volume 3, in speaking about the Temple of Solomon says:
  
  ‘The third, inmost chamber in the west, the Holy of Holies (Debir), was screened by a wooden partition containing a pentagonal doorway and covered by a curtain of four colours.’
• 8 . See in this connection Rudolf Steiner's later and more detailed accounts of the Templars, e.g., lecture of 2nd October 1916 in Dornach (‘The Templars,’ copy Z 156), also: lecture of 25th September 1916, (sixth lecture of the series R. 45): Inner Impulses working in the Evolution of Mankind.
• 9 . The text is quite plainly only preserved in an incomplete form. In connection with the cultural epochs and the course of the sun through the zodiac see Rudolf Steiner's lecture given in Dornach, 8th January 1918, in the lecture course entitled: ‘Ancient Myths,’ (RSE 564).
• 10. Rudolf Steiner often quotes this passage from Timaeus, but he gives it in the formulation which Vincenz Knauer uses, a Viennese philosopher personally known to him, whose book: Die Hauptprobleme der Philosophic ... etc: (‘The Development and Partial Solution to the Main Philosophical Problems from The time of Thales to Robert Hamerling’), formed part of his personal library. In this particular version the passage here quoted has the following wording: ‘God laid this soul in cross-formation through the universe and spread out over it the world body.’ In the English translation of this passage (Penguin Classics, 1971, p. 48) it reads as follows: ‘He then took the whole fabric and cut it down the middle into two strips, which he placed crosswise at their middle points to form a shape like the letter X; he then bent the ends round in a circle and fastened them to each other opposite the point at which the strips crossed, to make two circles, one inner and one outer.’
  
  In the opinion of the Ancients there were two circles of greatest significance in the universe: the heavenly equator and the ecliptic. The translator of the copy which was in the possession of Rudolf Steiner, (Vincenz Knauer), makes a comment on the passage in question which reads as follows: ‘And so, in the arguments of Plato it is the soul itself which, as a result of a mysterious process, spreads itself out in the spatial image of the ecliptic and the equator. If the position of these two largest circles to one another is visualised in the form of the Greek letter X (Chi—thought of as lying horizontally) then that would be a very appropriate comparison. For these two circles cut one another at an angle of 23 1/2 degrees. The motion of the equator is in the direction from east to west (when the observer faces north), but the motion of the ecliptic is from west to east.’ In addition to this it may be said that the Church Father Justin the Martyr, C 100—C 165, in the first of his Apologies, points to the fact that the source of Plato's teaching regarding—world creation was, in all probability, the account of the raising of the brazen serpent in the wilderness by Moses (Chapter 21, verses 4–9).
• 11. This passage is very incomplete. In the Vegelahn text there are only the words as given above. In the text given by Reebstein it continues: ‘But the Temple is not yet understood by man,’ perhaps the correct rendering should be: ‘But the building of the Temple is not yet understood by man.’
• 12. In the Vegelahn text this sentence finds an incomplete continuation: ‘These two streams already made themselves felt at the beginning of our race—the old stream which entered evolution at a time when the gods were still engaged in creating the world, and the second ... which must always continue to build in this Temple of Wisdom ...’

May I speak to you today about something which is subject to many misunderstandings and about which many extraordinary errors are spread abroad. Most of you know that I have already spoken¹ on the same subject on the occasion of our General Meeting this year, and that, at that time, following an ancient occult practice, I spoke separately to men and to women. For specific reasons which could probably become still clearer from the lecture itself, I have departed today from this ancient custom, and, indeed, because the very thing that motivated me both then and now to discuss this matter is connected with the [prospect] that sooner or later—hopefully sooner—this ancient custom will be abandoned altogether.

I said: many misunderstandings have circulated about the subject. I need only mention one fact out of my own life to show you that it really is not exactly easy today to get beyond what are bluntly the bizarre and superstitious notions in existence about it. On the other hand, I need only say how easily, how unbelievably, one can put one's foot in it, when dealing with these extraordinary facts.

May I simply recall an incident in my life. Perhaps you will scarcely credit it, and yet it is true. It is now some seventeen or eighteen years ago² that I was in company with university professors, and some particularly gifted poets. Among the professors, there were also some theologians, from the theological faculty of the university in question. They were Catholics. Now, in this company, the following was said, not without foundation, and in all seriousness, that one of these theologians, a very erudite man, would not go out at night any more, because he believed that the Freemasons would be on the loose. The man in question represented a major department; but he did not tell the story, a colleague did. He went on to relate that while he was in Rome, a number of monks of a particular order—there would have been eleven, twelve or thirteen of them—had vouched on oath for the [truth of the] following event.

In Paris an eminent bishop had preached a sermon in which he had spoken of the terrible danger to the world of the Order of Freemasons. After the sermon a man came to him in the sacristy and said that he was a Freemason and could give the bishop a chance to witness a meeting of the Lodge. The bishop assented, saying to himself: I will, however, take some holy relics with me, so that I am protected.—Then a meeting place was arranged. The man in question led the bishop into the Lodge, where a hiding place was pointed out to him, from which he could observe all that took place. He placed himself in position, held the Holy Relics in front of him and waited for whatever would befall. What he then saw, was related in the following way. I emphasise that some of those in the company thought it all rather doubtful at the time.

The Lodge was then opened. (It bore in reality the name ‘Satan's Lodge’—though it had quite a different name in the outside world.) Then a remarkable figure appeared. By ancient custom—how he knew this custom, he did not relate—the figure did not walk. (It is indeed well known that spirits do not walk, but glide, so many believe.) This remarkable figure opened the session. The bishop would on no account divulge what happened next—it became too terrible—but he called upon the whole power of the relics and there was a rumbling like thunder through all the rows [of seats], the call resounding: We are betrayed!—and the one who had opened the session disappeared. Briefly, a brilliant victory of episcopal powers over what was to be done, one supposes.

This was discussed as a completely serious matter³ [in the company]. You can see from that, that there arc people today, perhaps gentlemen more erudite than many others, well-known people, who nevertheless take the view that this sort of thing can happen in Freemasonry.

Now what happened was⁴ that in the mid-eighties a French book appeared, which represented the secrets of the Freemasons in a most gruesome way, making them certainly more gruesome than secret. This book particularly revealed how the Freemasons celebrated Black Mass. This book was a ploy by a French journalist called Leo Taxil. He stirred up a lot of dust by bringing in a Miss Vaughan as a witness. The result of all this was that the Church found the Freemasons and their nocturnal intrigues so dangerous that they felt it necessary to found a world society against Freemasonry. A kind of council was held in Trent; although it was not a real council, it was dubbed ‘The Second Council of Trent. It was attended by many bishops and hundreds of priests; a cardinal presided. [The Congress became a major coup for Taxil.] But afterwards rebuttals were published, after which Mr Taxil revealed that the entire contents of his books, including the people mentioned in them, were his own invention.

You see, there are plenty of opportunities for incurring censure over such things. This was one of the worst cases of a body with a world-wide reputation doing so. From it you have to draw at least one conclusion; that hardly anything is really known about the Freemasons. For if something was known about them it would be easy to become informed, and then such rubbish could not gain currency.

Indeed, this or that opinion about Freemasonry predominates in large sections of the public. Today, to be sure, it is not all that difficult to form an opinion, as there is already a tolerably abundant literature, written partly by those who have studied many documents, but in part also containing things which the Freemasons would say had been brought into the open by turncoats. Anyone who concerns himself to any extent with this literature will draw some sort of conclusion from what it deals with. However, one can rule out coming to a correct conclusion from it, since it is still pre-eminently true what Lessing, who was himself a Freemason, said.⁵ When he was accepted, the Worshipful Master asked him: ‘Now you see, don't you, that you have not been initiated into anything particularly subversive or anti-religious?’ To which Lessing replied: ‘Yes, I must admit that I haven't learnt any such thing. I would in fact have been glad to do so, for then, at least, I would have learned something.’

That is the statement of a man who was able to consider the matter with the right understanding, and who admitted that he had learned precisely nothing from what took place there. You can at least draw the conclusion from that, that those who are not Freemasons know nothing [about it], since even those who are Freemasons know nothing of any importance. They generally get the impression that they have gained nothing in particular from it. And yet it would be quite wrong to make such an inference.

Now there is still another opinion, which has little to do with real Freemasonry. In a text appearing in 1875,⁶ the author claims that Adam became the first Freemason. One can hardly go further back than the first man in searching for the founder of an association.

Others claim that Freemasonry is an old Egyptian art; in short, that it is what has always been known as the ‘Royal Art,’ and this is indeed placed by some back in primeval times. Finally, many rites—for thus the symbolic ways and manners of the Freemasons are designated—bear Egyptian names, and so from these names you may infer that something deriving from ancient Egyptian culture is involved. At least the opinion is widely held, both in and out of Freemasonry, that it is something very ancient.

Now Freemasonry is something which can indeed provide people with scope for reflection. The name itself connects with two perceptions differing totally from each other. Some claim—and they are no very great party within Freemasonry—that all Freemasonry originated in the work done by masons, in the craft of erecting buildings; while the other opinion considers this to be a childish and naive conception and claims that Freemasonry was in reality always an art to do with the soul; and that the symbols taken from the work of masons—such as, for example, apron, hammer, trowel, chisel, compass, rule, square, plumb-line, spirit-level, etc.—are to be seen as symbolic of soul development. Thus, by the expression ‘Masonry’ is to be understood nothing else than the building of the inner person, the work on the perfection of self. If you talk with a Freemason today, you can then experience him telling you that it is a childish and naive outlook that believes that Freemasonry has ever had anything to do with the work that masons do. On the contrary, it has never concerned itself with anything else than these things: the building of the Wonder Temple, which is the theatre of the human soul, the work on the human soul itself, which has to be perfected, and the art which one must apply to all this. Now all this is expressed in these symbols, so as not to expose it to profane eyes.

Looked at from our contemporary standpoint, both of these views are wholly and utterly wrong, and are so for the following reasons. As regards the first opinion, present day man—in talking about the Freemasons having derived from the work of building—no longer conceives himself to be as significant as he properly should; as for the second opinion, that the symbols are only there to serve as metaphors for the work on the soul, this opinion—even though it is regarded by most Freemasons as something quite irrefutable—is, when properly conceived, a nonsense. It is much more correct to link Freemasonry with the work of building, not, indeed, as architecture or construction are thought of today, but in a fundamentally deeper sense.

Today there are broadly two trends in Freemasonry. The one is represented by far the larger number of those calling themselves masons today. And this majority trend claims now that all masonry is comprised in what it terms the so-called Symbolic or Craft Masonry. Its principal outward characteristic is that it is divided into three degrees, the apprentice, journeyman and master degrees; as for the inward characteristics, we will have something to say presently. Apart from these Craft Masons, there are still quite a number of masons who maintain that Craft Masonry is only a product of the decline of the great universal masonic idea. [They consider] it would be a falling away from this great masonic idea, if it is claimed that masonry comprises only these three Symbolic or Craft degrees; whereas in fact the essence, the fundamental meaning of Freemasonry lies in the so-called Higher Degrees, which are best preserved in the so-called Scottish or Accepted Rite, which, in a particular respect, still conserves [a relic of] what is called the Egyptian, the Misraim or the Memphis Rite.⁷

Thus we have two tendencies confronting each other: the Craft Masonry, and the Higher Degree masonry. The Craft- Masons claim that the Higher Degrees are nothing but a frippery based in human vanity, that takes pleasure in having something special, something spiritually aristocratic, with its ascent from degree to degree, and its pride in the possession of the eighteenth or twentieth or still higher degree.

Now you have already become acquainted with quite a bundle of things likely to lead to misunderstandings.

The Higher Degree Freemasonry traces itself back to the old Mysteries, to the procedures which to the extent possible we have described and will describe, in our theosophy; procedures which have been in existence since primordial times and still exist today, and which have preserved the higher super-sensible knowledge for mankind. This super-sensible knowledge, accessible to men, would be transmitted [by] those who could attain entry to these Mystery centres; for certain super-sensible powers were developed in them, enabling them to see into the super-sensible world. These primordial Mysteries—they have become something else nowadays, and we do not want to speak of that now—contained the original seed for all later spiritual culture. For what was enacted in these primordial mysteries was not what constitutes human culture today.

If you wish to understand present-day culture and immerse yourself in it, you will find that it divides into three realms—the realm of wisdom, the realm of beauty and the realm of strength. The whole extent of spiritual culture is in fact contained in these three words. Therefore they are known as the three pillars of human culture. They are the same as the three Kings in Goethe's fairy story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily⁸ —the Gold King, the Silver King and the Brass King. This is connected with Freemasonry being called ‘the Royal Art.’ Today these three realms are separated from each other. Wisdom is essentially contained in what we call science; beauty is essentially embodied in what we call art; and what, in Freemasonry terms, is known as Strength is contained in the regulated and organised living together of humanity in the State. The Freemason subsumes all this in the relation of the will to these three principles, wisdom, beauty and strength.

What they [these three principles] were to give to humanity was in primeval times bestowed on the candidate for initiation by the revelation of the Mystery secrets. We arc now looking back to a time when religion, science and art had not yet become separated, but when they were still combined. In fact, to anyone who can see supersensibly, astrally, these three principles are not for him separate; wisdom, beauty and the domain of the will impulses are for him one unity—On the higher realms of vision there is no abstract science; only a science which exists in pictures, in that which has only a shadowy existence in the [external] world, and finds a shadowy expression in the imagination. What can [now] be read in books, in this or that record of the Creation [about the origin of the world and of humanity I, was not described; instead it was brought before the eyes of the pupil in living pictures, in magnificent harmonious colour. And what the pupil would perceive as wisdom was art and beauty at the same time, was something which stirred his feelings to greater heights than we experience in front of an exquisite work of art. The yearning for truth and beauty, wisdom and art, and the religious impulse as well, [all] developed themselves simultaneously. The artist's eye looked at what was enacted [in the Mysteries]⁹ and he who sought piety found the object of his religious ardour in these high events that were enacted before his eyes. Religion, art and science were one.

Then came the time when this unity split itself up into three cultural provinces; the time when the intellect went its own way. Science arose at the same time when the Mysteries which I have just described lost their importance. You know that Western philosophy and science, science proper, began with Thales. That is the time when it first developed out of the former fullness of the life of the Mysteries. Then also began what in the Western sense is conceived of as art; for Greek dramatic art developed itself out of the Mysteries. Whereas in India, up to the time of the Egyptian cult,¹⁰ one was concerned with the suffering and death of gods, with the great Greek tragedian-poets, such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, etc., we are dealing with individual human beings, who are images of the great Godhead. Through these human beings, the pupils of the Mysteries reconstructed the suffering, struggling and needy Godhead, thus displaying God to the human audience through their human imagery.

Whoever wants to understand what Aristotle meant by purification, catharsis,¹¹ must interpret the concept by means of the astral, by means of the secrets of the Mysteries. The expressions which he employs for tragedy [by way of explaining it] are a dim reflection of what the pupils learnt in the Mystery [schools]. Remember how Lessing investigated the soul forces of fear and compassion that are to be aroused through tragedy. That has furnished the material for many a great and learned discussion since the days of Lessing. [For the Mystery pupil] these emotions would be aroused in reality, when God was portrayed to him in his passage through the world. The passions present [deep] in the human soul were thereby straightforwardly stirred up and drawn out, just as one induces a fever and brings it to its culmination. This led to purification so as to be able to proceed to rebirth. All this appeared in shadow images in the ancient Greek tragedies. Just as with science, so has art, too, developed out of these ancient Mysteries.

It is to these ancient Mysteries that the Higher Degree Freemasons trace back their origin. In their higher degrees they have nothing else than an imitation of the higher degrees of the Mysteries, into which the Mystery candidate was gradually initiated. Now we can also understand why the Craft Freemasons insist so much that there should be no more such higher degrees. Actually, the higher degrees have more or less lost their meaning in Freemasonry in recent centuries. What has taken place in culture during recent centuries has been largely uninfluenced from this quarter. But there was a time when the great cultural impulses issued precisely from what Freemasonry should be. in order to understand this, we must look a little deeper into an age to which I have often referred already here, but now wish to mention in a masonic context, that is, the twelfth century of our European cultural development.

At that time occultism, appearing under a variety of names, played a much greater role in the contemporary culture than anyone could ever imagine today. But all these different names are no longer relevant today, and I will indeed explain why. By an example from Freemasonry itself, I will show you why these names contribute nothing essential to understanding the matter.

What I am now about to relate, anyone can experience if they become an apprentice Freemason; and, since these things are known, at least by name, I am able to speak about them.

A customary practice is what is known as ‘tyling.’ When the Lodge is opened and the Worshipful Master has taken his seat and the Outer Guard is at his post, the first question of the Worshipful Master is: Has the Lodge been tyled? The number of Freemasons who understand what this expression means are probably very few. Since the matter is simple, I can indeed give you an explanation of the term. At the time of which I am speaking, to be a Freemason meant to stand in vehement opposition to everything that commanded outward, official power. Therefore it was necessary to conduct the affairs of the Freemasons, with exceptionally great caution. Precisely for this reason, it was at that time necessary for Freemasonry to appear under various names which sounded harmless. Among other names they called each other ‘Brethren of the Craft’ and so on. Today Freemasonry has accomplished a large part of what it then set out to do. Today it is itself officially a power in the world.

If you ask me what Freemasonry is really about, I must answer with abstract words; it consists in this, that its members aim to anticipate in thought by several centuries the events that are to occur in the world; and to perfect the high ideals of humanity in a fully conscious way, so that these ideals are not just abstract ideas.

Today, when a Freemason talks about ideals and one asks him what he means by the highest ideals, he will say that the highest ideals are wisdom, beauty and strength; which, however, on further consideration, is usually nothing but a form of words. If at that time—or now indeed—the discussion about these ideals is with someone who actually understands something about this, then the discussion will be about something quite specific—about something so specific that it relates to the course of events in the coming centuries, in the same way as the thoughts of an architect building a factory relate to the factory when finished.

At that time [in the twelfth century] it was dangerous to know [in advance] what was to happen later. Hence it was necessary to make use of harmless sounding words, as a cover. And that is also where the expression originated, ‘Is the Lodge tyled?’, which means, in effect, ‘Are only those present who know the meaning of the things which have to be implanted in the future development of mankind by Freemasonry?’ For each had to reflect that they must never let themselves be recognised as Freemasons when they appeared in public. This precautionary rule, then essential, has been maintained until our time. Whether many Freemasons know what is meant thereby, is questionable. Most think it is some sort of verbal formality, or they interpret more or less astutely. I could give you countless more such examples that would show you how outer circumstances have led to the adoption of practical rules for which people now try to discover some deep symbolic explanation.

But now for the very heart of what was attempted in the twelfth century. That is expressed in the deeply significant Saga of the Holy Grail,¹² of that enchanted vessel which is said to have come from the distant East, and to have the power to rejuvenate people, to bring the dead back to life, and so on.

Now what is the Holy Grail—in Freemasonry terms—and what is it that lies at the bottom of the whole saga? We shall best be able to understand what it is all about if we call to mind a symbol of certain Freemasonry associations, a symbol misunderstood today in the coarsest way imaginable. It is a symbol taken from sexual life. It is absolutely true that precisely one of the deepest secrets of Freemasonry has a symbol taken from sexual life; and that many people who try to explain such symbols today are only following their own sordid fantasies when they understand these symbols in an impure sense. It is very likely that the interpretation of these sexual symbols will play no small role in times to come, that it is precisely this which will then reveal the parlous state into which the great ancient secrets of Freemasonry have fallen today; and on the other hand, how necessary it is in the present time for the pure, noble and profound basis of the Freemasonry, symbols to be kept sacred and unblemished.

Those of you who heard my recent lecture¹³ at the General Meeting will know that the true original significance of these symbols is connected with the reason for not allowing women to become Freemasons until a short while ago, and the reason for addressing men and women separately on these matters until [just] recently. On the other hand you also know that these symbols are linked—and I particularly stress this—with the two great streams running through the whole world, and rising to the highest spiritual realm; which streams we also encounter as the law of polarity in the forces of male and female.¹⁴ Within that culture which we now have to consider, the priestly principle is expressed in masonic terminology as the female principle in the spiritual realm—in that spiritual realm which is most closely related to cultural evolution. The rule of the priests is expressed by the female [principle]. On the other hand, the male principle is everything which is opposed to this priestly rule; however, in such a way that this opponent has to be considered as the holiest, the noblest, the greatest and the most spiritual [principle] in the world, no less. There are thus two streams with which we have to deal: a female and a male stream. The Freemasons see Abel as representing the female current, Cain, the male.

Here we come to the fundamental concept of Freemasonry, which to be sure is old, very old. Freemasonry developed in ancient times as the opponent of the priestly culture. We must now, however, make clear, in the right way, what is to be understood by priestly culture.

What is involved here has nothing to do with Petty opposition to churches or creeds. Priestliness can show itself in the most completely secular [people]; even what manifests itself today as science, that holds sway in many cultural groups, is nothing else than what is known in Freemasonry terms as the priestly element, though [there are?] other [such groups?] which are profoundly masonic. We must conceive such things, then, in their entire profundity, if we want to appraise them correctly. May I explain by an example how what manifests as science can often be what is denoted in Freemasonry as the priestly element.

Who today among doctors would not scoff if told about the healing properties of the spring at Lourdes? On the other hand, what doctor would not accept as a matter of course that it is wholly reasonable for certain people to go to Wiesbaden or Karlsbad? I know I am saying something fearfully heretical, but then I represent neither the priesthood nor even medicine; however a time is already coming when an unbiased judgment will be pronounced on both. Were there an effective medicine today, faith in the power of healing would be among the things a doctor would prescribe. One patient would be sent to Karlsbad and another to Lourdes, but both for the same reason. Whether you call it great piety on the one hand, or blatant superstition on the other, in the last analysis it is the same thing.

Understood in this way, we can characterise what underlies the priestly principle as refraining from investigating fundamentals, as accepting things as they present themselves from whatever aspect of the world, as being satisfied with what is thus given. The symbol of that for which man does nothing, the proper symbol for what is, in the truest sense of the word, donated to man, that symbol is taken from sexual life. The human being is [indeed] productive there, but what manifests itself in this productive force has nothing to do with human art, with human science or with human ability; from it is excluded everything which causes itself to be expressed in the three pillars of the ‘Royal Art.’ So when some present these sexual symbols to humanity, they want to say: In this symbol, human nature expresses itself, not as man has made it, but as it has been given by the gods. This finds its expression in Abel, the hunter and herdsman, who offers the sacrificial animal, the sacrificial lamb, thereby offering what he himself has done nothing to produce, which came into existence independently of him.

What did Cain, on the other hand, offer? He sacrificed what he had obtained by his own labour, what he had won from the fruits of the earth by tilling the soil. What he sacrificed needed human skill, knowledge and wisdom: that which demands comprehension of what one has done, which is based in a spiritual sense on the freedom of man to decide things for himself. That has to be paid for with guilt, by killing, first of all, the living things which had been,given by Nature or by Divine Powers, just as Cain killed Abel.

Through guilt lies the path to freedom. Everything which is born into the world—upon which man can, at best, act only in a secondary way—everything given to man by Divine Powers, everything which is there without him needing to work at it incessantly; all this is given to us first of all in the Kingdoms of Nature over which we have no control—in those Kingdoms (the Plant, Animal and Human Kingdoms) whose forces are isolated from any human contribution, because in these Kingdoms it is physical reproduction that is involved. All the reproductory forces in these Kingdoms are given to us by Nature. Inasmuch as we take what is living for our use—because we make the world our dwelling place, which developed itself out of what is living—we thereby offer the sacrifice given to us, just as Abel offered the sacrifice given to him.

The symbol for these three Kingdoms is the Cross. The lower beam symbolises the Plant Kingdom, the middle or cross beam, the Animal Kingdom, and the upper beam, the Human Kingdom.

The plant has its roots buried in the earth and directs upwards, in the blossom, those parts which, in man, are directed downwards. It is the reproductive organs of the plant that appear in the blossom. The downward-turned part, the root, is the plant's head, buried in the earth. The animal is the plant turned half way and carries its backbone horizontally, in relation to the earth. Man is the plant turned completely round, so that the lower part is directed upwards.

This view lies at the basis of all the mysteries of the Cross. And when theosophy shows us how man has to pass, In the course of his evolution, through the various Kingdoms of Nature, through the Plant, Animal and Human Kingdoms, then that is the same thing expressed by Plato in the beautiful words, ‘The World Soul is nailed to the Cross of the World Body.’¹⁵ The human soul is a spark struck from the World Soul, and the human being, as physical human being, is plant, animal and physical man at the same time. Inasmuch as the World Soul has divided itself up into the individual sparks of human souls, it is, as it were, nailed to the World Cross, nailed to what is expressed in the three Kingdoms, the Animal, Plant and Human Kingdoms. Powers which man has not mastered are at work in these Kingdoms. If he wants to control them, then he must create a new Kingdom of his very own, which is not expressed in the Cross.

When talking about this subject I am often asked: Where is the Mineral Kingdom in all this? The mineral kingdom is not symbolised in the Cross; because it is that Kingdom which man can already express himself in clear and blinding clarity, where he has learnt to apply the techniques of weighing and calculating, of geometry and arithmetic; in short, everything pertaining to inorganic nature, to the inorganic Mineral Kingdom.

If you contemplate a temple, you know that man has erected it with ruler, compasses, square, plumb-line and spirit level, and finally with the thinking that inorganic nature has transmitted to the architect in geometry and mechanics. And as you continue your contemplation of the whole temple, you will find it to be an inanimate object born out of human freedom and brainwork. You cannot say that, however, if you subject a plant or an animal to human observation.

So you see that what man has mastered, what he is able to master, is, up to now, the realm of the inanimate. And everything which the human being has converted to harmony and order out of the inanimate world is the symbol of his Royal Art on earth. What he has implanted into the Mineral Kingdom with his Royal Art started as an outflow, an incarnation of Divine wisdom. Go back to the time of the ancient Chaldeans and Egyptians, when it was not only the intellect that was used in building, but when heightened perceptions permeated everything; the controlling of inorganic nature was then seen as the ‘Royal Art,’ which is why the control of nature was denoted as ‘Free masonry.’ At first this may seem to be fantasy, but it is more than that.

Picture to yourselves that instant, that point in time in our earth's development, when no one had yet applied his hand to the shaping of inorganic Nature, when the whole planet was presented to man just as it came from Nature! And what happened then? Look back to the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, in which stone was fitted to stone through human agency. Nature's creation was given a new shape as a result of human thought. Human wisdom has thus transformed the earth. That was perceived as the proper mission of free constructing man on earth. Using a wide variety of tools, guided by human wisdom, human powers have brought about in the mineral world a transformation that has unfolded between primordial times and the present day, when human powers can influence far distances without mechanical means. And that is the first pillar, the pillar of wisdom.

Somewhat later we see the second pillar established, the pillar of beauty, of art. Art is likewise a means of pouring the human spirit into lifeless matter, and again the result is an ensoulment (conquest)¹⁶ of the inanimate to be found in Nature. Try for a moment to picture in your mind how the wisdom in art gradually overcomes and masters lifeless Nature, and you will see how what is there without man's participation is reshaped piece by piece by man himself. Visualise—as a fantasy, if you must—the effect of the whole earth having been transformed by the hand of man, the effect of the whole earth becoming a work of art, full of wisdom and radiating beauty, built by man's hand, conceived by man's wisdom! It may seem fantastic but it is more than that. For it is humanity's mission on earth, to transform the planet artistically. You find this expressed in the second pillar, the pillar of beauty.

To which you can add, as the third pillar, the reshaping of the human race in national and state life, and you have the propagation of the human spirit in the world; you have this right here in the realm of what is lifeless.

Hence the medieval people of the twelfth century reflected, in looking back to the ancient wisdom, that the wisdom of times past was preserved in marble monuments, while contemporary wisdom is to be found in the human heart. For it is manifested through the artist, becoming a work of art through the labour of his hands. What he feels he impresses into matter that is unformed, he chisels out of the dead stone; while the inner soul of man does not of course live in this dead stone, it does manifest itself there. All art is dedicated to this purpose; there is always this mastering of unliving, inorganic nature, regardless of whether it is a sculptor chiseling marble or a painter arranging colour, light and shade. And even the statesman gives structure to Nature [?]¹⁷ ... always,—apart from when plant, animal, or human forces come into it—you are dealing with man's own spirit.

Thus, the medieval thinker of the twelfth century looked back at the occult wisdom of the ancient Chaldeans, at Greek art and beauty, and at the strength in the concept of the state in the Roman Empire. These are the three great pillars of world history—wisdom, beauty and strength. Goethe portrayed them in his ‘Fairy Story’ as the Three Kings—occult wisdom in the Gold King, beauty as in Greece in the Silver King, and, in the Brass King, strength as it found its world historical expression in the Roman concept of the State, and as then adopted in the organisation of the Christian Church. And the Middle Ages; with its chaos¹⁸ resulting from the impact of the migrating nations, and with its mixed styles, is expressed in the misshapen Mixed King made of gold, silver and brass; what was kept separate in the various ancient cultures, is mixed together in him. Later, the separate forces must once more develop themselves out of this chaos, to a higher level.

All those who, in the Middle Ages, took the Holy Grail as their symbol, set themselves the task of using human powers to bring these separate forces to a higher stage [of development]. The Holy Grail was to have been something essentially new, even though it is closely related in its own symbolism to the symbols of a very ancient mystical tradition.

What then is the Holy Grail? For those who understand this legend correctly, it signifies—as can even be proved by literary means¹⁹—the following:

Till now, man has only mastered the inanimate in Nature -the transformation of the living forces, the transformation of what sprouts and grows in the plants, and of what manifests itself in animal [and human] reproduction that is beyond his power. Man has to leave these mysterious powers of Nature untouched. There he cannot encroach. What results from these forces cannot be fully comprehended by him. An artist can certainly create a strangely beautiful Zeus, but he cannot fully comprehend this Zeus; in the future, man will reach a level where he can do that as well. Just as it is so, that man has achieved control over Inanimate nature, has mastered gravity with spirit level and plumb-line, and the directional forces of Nature with the aid of geometry and mechanics; so it is the case that in future man will himself control what he only receives as a gift from Nature or the Divine powers—namely, the living.

When in the past Abel sacrificed what he had been given by Divine hand, he was thus sacrificing, in the realm of the living, only what he had received from nature. Cain, by contrast, had offered something which he had himself won from the earth by his own labour, as the fruits of effort.²⁰ Hence, at this time [in the Middle Ages], a radically new impulse was introduced into Freemasonry. And this impulse is that denoted by the symbol of the Holy Grail, the power of self-sacrifice. I have often said, harmony in human relationships is not brought about by preaching it, but by creating it. Once the necessary forces have been awakened in human nature, there is no more unbrotherliness. [The concepts of] majority and minority are meaningless in what the masonic symbols express; in it there can be no contention, for it is only a matter of ‘can’ or ‘cannot.’

No majority can decide whether one should use a plumb-line or a spirit level; the facts must decide that. In that all men are brothers, there they find themselves to be one. On that there can be no contention, if everyone treads the path of objectivity, the path which entails the acquisition of higher powers. Thus, the bond [of the Freemasons] is without doubt a bond of brotherhood which in the broadest sense depends on what men have in common in inanimate Nature.

However, not every power is still available there. Some things which were once there have disappeared again, because in the cycle of Nature in which we now find ourselves, and which we call earth, it is material perception which is to the fore, while intuitive perception has been lost. May I indicate just one case; in architecture, the ability to design a really acoustic building has been completely lost. Yet, in the past, this art was understood. Whoever puts a building together by outward [concepts] alone, will never create an acoustic; but anyone who thinks intuitively, with his thoughts rooted in higher realms will be enabled to accomplish an acoustic building. Those who know that also know that, in the future, those forces of outward nature over which we have no control at present must be conquered, just as man has already conquered gravity, light and electricity in inanimate nature.

Although our age is not yet so advanced as to be able to control outwardly living Nature, although that cultural epoch has not yet come in which living and life-giving forces come to be mastered, nevertheless, there is already the preparatory school for this, which was founded by the movement called the Lodge of the Holy Grail. The time will however come—and it will be quite a specific point in time—when humanity, deviating from its present tendency, will see that deep inward soul forces cannot be decided by majority resolutions; that no vote can settle questions involving the limitless realm of love, involving what one feels or senses. That force which is common to all mankind, which expresses itself in the intellectual as an all-embracing unity about which there can be no conflict, is called Manas. And when men have progressed so far that they are not only at one in their intellect, but also in their perceptions and feelings, and are in harmony in their inmost souls, so far that they find themselves in what is noble and good, so far that they lovingly join together in the objective, in what they have in common, in the same way that they agree that two times two makes four and three times three equals nine; then the time will have arrived when men will be able to control the living as well. Unanimity—objective unanimity in perception and feeling—with all humanity really embracing in love: such is the pre-condition for gaining control over the living.

Those who founded the movement of the Holy Grail in the twelfth century said that this control over living [nature] was at one time available, available to the gods who created the Cosmos and descended [to earth] in order to give mankind the germ of the capacity for the same divine forces that they already possessed themselves; so that man is now on the way to becoming a god, having something in his inner being which strives upwards towards where the gods once stood. Today, the understanding, the intellect, is the predominant force; in the future it will be love [Buddhi], and in a still more distant future, man will attain the stage of Atma.

This joint force (communal force)²¹ which gives man power over what is symbolised by the cross,

is expressed as far as the gods' use of the force is concerned—by a symbol, namely by a triangle with its apex pointing downwards. And when it is a matter of this force expressing itself in man's nature, as it germinally strives upwards towards the Divine force, then it is symbolised by a triangle with its apex pointing upwards. The gods have lifted themselves out from man's nature and have withdrawn from him; but they have left the triangle behind with him, which will develop further within him. This triangle is also the symbol of the Holy Grail.^†

The medieval occultist expressed the symbol of the Grail—the symbol for awakening perfection in the living—in the form of a triangle. That does not need a communal church, entwining itself around the planet in a rigid organisation, though this can well give something to the individual soul; but if all souls are to strike the same note, then the power of the Holy Grail must be awakened in each individual. Whoever wants to awaken the power of the Grail in himself will gain nothing by asking the powers of the official church whether they can perhaps tell him something; rather, he should awaken this power in himself, and should not question all that much. Man starts from dullness [of mind] and progresses through doubt to strength. This pilgrimage of the soul is expressed in the person of Parsifal, who seeks the Holy Grail. This is one of the manifold deeper meanings of the figure of Parsifal.

Does it further my knowledge if a corporate body, be they ever so great, proclaims mathematical truth through their official spokesmen? If I want to learn mathematics, I must occupy myself with it, and gain an understanding of it .or myself. And of what use is it if a corporate body possesses the power of the Cross?²² If I want to make use of the power of the Cross, the control of what is living, then I must achieve this myself. No one else can tell it to me, or communicate it through words; at best they can show it to me in the symbol, give me the shining symbol of the Grail, but it cannot be told in an intellectual formula.

The first accomplishment of this medieval occultism would have been, consequently, what appeared in so many different movements in Europe: the striving for individuality in religion, the escape from the rigid uniformity of the organised church. You can barely grasp to what extent this tendency underlies Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival.²³ What manifested itself for the first time in the Reformation was already inherent in the symbol of the Holy Grail. Whoever has a feeling for the great meaning of what can confront us in this symbolism, will understand its great and deep cultural value. The great things of the world are not born in noise and tumult, but in intimacy and stillness. Mankind is not brought forward in its development by the thunder of cannons, but through the strength of what is born in the intimacy of such secret brotherhoods, through the strength of what is expressed in such world-embracing symbols, which inspire mankind.

Since that time, through innumerable channels, the hearts of men have received as an inflow, what was conceived by those who were initiated into the mysteries of the Holy Grail in the middle of the twelfth century; who had to hide themselves from the world under pseudonyms, but who were really the leaven preparing the culture of the last four hundred years,

The guardians of great secrets, of those forces which continually influence human developments live in the occult brotherhoods. I can only hint at what is really involved, because the matter itself goes very deeply into the occult realm.

For those who really gain access to such mysteries, one practical result is a clearer perspective of world happenings [in the future].

Slowly but surely the organic, the living forces intervene in the present-day cycle of humanity's development. There will come a time—however fantastic this might seem to contemporary people—when man will no longer paint only pictures, will no longer make only lifeless sculptures, but will be in a position to breathe life into what he now merely paints, merely forms with colours or with a chisel.

However, what will appear less fantastic is the fact that today the first dawn is already beginning, for the use of these living forces in the affairs of social life- that is the real secret surrounding the Grail. The last event brought about in the social sphere by the old Freemasonry was the French Revolution, in which the basic idea of the old Freemasonry came into the open in the social sphere with the ideas of equality, liberty and fraternity as its corollaries. Whoever knows this also knows that the ideas which emanated from the Grail were propagated through innumerable channels, and constituted the really active force in the French Revolution.

What is today called socialism exists only as an abortive and impossible experiment, as a final, I may say desperate, struggle in a receding wave of humanity's [development]. It cannot bring about any really positive result. What it sets out to achieve, can only be achieved through living activity; the pillar of strength is not enough. Socialism can no longer be controlled with inanimate forces. The ideas of the French Revolution—liberty, equality, fraternity were the last ideas to flow out of the inanimate. Everything that still runs on that track is fruitless and doomed to die. For the great evil existing in the world today, the dreadful misery that expresses itself with such frightful force, that is called the social question, can no longer be controlled by the inanimate. A Royal Art is needed for that; and it is this Royal Art which was inaugurated in the symbol of the Holy Grail.

Through this Royal Art, man must acquire control of something similar to the force which sprouts in the plant, the same force that the occultist uses when he accelerates the growth of a plant in front of him. In a similar way, a part of this force must be used for social salvation. This power, which is described by those who know something of the Rosicrucian mysteries—as for example did Bulwer Lytton in his futuristic novel Vril²⁴ is at present still in an elementary, germinal, stage. In the Freemasonry of the future, it will be the real content of the higher degrees. The Royal Art will in the future be a social art.

Again, I have to tell you something which will seem fantastic to the uninitiated, on account, I may say, of the comprehensive, all-embracing range of the idea. What man prints as a form deriving from his soul on the matter of this earth Round is eternal, it will not pass away. Even though the matter thus given form outwardly decays, what the Royal Art has given form to, in pyramids, temples and churches, is imperishable. What the human spirit has given shape to, in matter, will remain present in the world as a continuing force. That is completely clear to those who are initiated in such matters. Cologne's Gothic cathedral will, for example, pass away; but it is of far reaching significance that the atoms were once in this form. This form itself is the imperishable thing that will henceforth participate in the ongoing evolutionary process of humanity, just as the living force that is in the plant participates in the evolution of Nature! The painter, who paints a picture today, who prints dead matter with his soul's blood, is also creating something which will sooner or later be disposed in thousands of atoms. What has imperishable and continuing value, what is eternal, is that he has created, that something from his soul has flowed into matter.

States and all other human communities come and go before our eyes. But what men have formed out of their souls, as such communities, constitute humanly-conceived ideas of eternal value, with an eternally enduring significance. And when this human race once again appears on the earth in a new form, then it will see the fruits of these elements of eternal value.

Today, whoever turns his gaze upwards to the starry heavens sees a wonderful harmony. This harmony has evolved, it was not always there. When we build a cathedral we place stone upon stone, when we paint a picture we place colour next to colour, when we organise a community we make law upon law; in exactly the same way, creative beings once worked upon what confronts us today as the cosmos. Neither moon nor sun would shine, no animal, no plant, would reproduce itself, unless everything we face in the cosmos had been worked upon by beings, unless there were such beings who worked as we work today on the remodelling of the cosmos. Just as we work on the cosmos today through wisdom, beauty and strength, so too did beings who do not belong to our present human Kingdom once work on the cosmos.

Any harmony is always the outcome of the disharmony of an earlier time. Just as stones were given form for a Greek temple, just as they abounded in other forms, in a perplexing variety of forms, out of which they became a coordinated structure, just as the profusion of colours on the palette is meaningfully arrayed in a picture, so, in just the same way, all matter was in other chaotic relationships before the creating spirit transformed it into this cosmos. The same thing is recapitulating itself at a new level, and only he who sees the whole can work on the details correctly and clearly. Everything which has had real significance for humanity's progress in the world has been brought about with care and judgment and through initiation into the great laws of the world plan. What the day produces is ephemeral. What is created in the day through knowledge of the eternal laws is, however, imperishable. To create in the day through knowledge of the eternal laws is the same thing as Freemasonry.

Thus you see that what confronts us in art, science and religion, beyond what is given by the gods and expressed in the symbol of the Cross, is in fact brought about by Freemasonry, from which everything that has been properly built in the world derives. Freemasonry is thus intimately involved in everything that human hand has shaped in the world, with everything that culture has created out of raw, inanimate matter. Go back to the great things the cultural epochs have produced; consider, for example, the poems of Homer. What is contained in them? What the initiates have taught mankind in great world-embracing ideas. The great artists did not invent their topics, but rather gave form to what embraces all humanity. Is a Michaelangelo conceivable without the power of Christian concepts? Try in the same way to trace back to its origin whatever has achieved a really incisive cultural meaning, and you will in every case be led back to what has come from initiation [in the Mysteries].

Everything must in the end undergo a schooling. The last four hundred years were in fact a schooling for humanity—the school of godlessness, in which there was purely human experimentation, a return to chaos if seen from a particular point of view. Everyone is experimenting today, without being aware of the connection with higher worlds—apart from those who have once more sought and found that connection with spiritual realms. Nearly everyone lives entirely for himself today, without perceiving anything of the real and all-penetrating common design. That of course is the cause of the dreadful dissatisfaction everywhere.

What we need is a renewal of the Grail Chivalry in a modern form. Anyone who can approach this will thereby come to know the real forces which today are still lying hidden in the course of human evolution.

Today so many people take up the old symbols without understanding them; what is thus made out of the sexual symbols in an uncomprehending way comes nowhere near to a correct understanding of masonic concepts. Such understanding is to be sought in precisely those things which redeem mere natural forces; in penetrating and mastering what is living in the same way that the geometrician penetrates and masters the inanimate with his rule, compasses, spirit level and so forth; and in working upon the living in the same way those who build a temple put the unliving stones together. That is the great masonic concept of the future.

There is a very ancient symbol in Freemasonry, the so-called Tau:

This Tau sign plays a major role in Freemasonry. It is basically nothing else than a Cross from which the upper arm has been taken away. The Mineral Kingdom is excluded in order to obtain the Cross at all—man already controls that. If one lets the Plant Kingdom come into play [in Aktion treten] then one obtains the Cross directed upwards:²⁵

What unfolds itself from the earth, from the soul, as power over the earth, is the symbol of future Freemasonry.

Whoever heard my last lecture about Freemasonry²⁶ will remember my telling you about the Freemasonry legend of Hiram-Abiff, and how at a particular point he makes use of the Tau sign, when the Queen of Sheba wanted him to call together once more the workers engaged in building the Temple. Now the people working together in social partnership would never appear at Solomon's command; but at the signal of the Tau—which Hiram-Abiff raised aloft—they all appeared from all sides. The Tau sign symbolises a totally new power, based on freedom, and consisting in the awakening of a new natural force.

May I be allowed to resume at the remark with which I ended last time,²⁷ when I told you where such great control over inanimate Nature leads. Without much fantasy, one can show what is. involved by an example. Wireless telegraphy works across a distance from the transmitting station to the receiving station. The apparatus can be set to work at will, it is effective over great distances, and one can make oneself understood by it. A similar force to that by which wireless telegraphy works will be at man's disposal in a future age, without even any apparatus; this will make it possible to cause great devastation over long distances, without anyone being able to discover where the disturbance originated. Then, when the high point of this development has been reached, it will eventually come to the point where it falls back on itself.

What is expressed by the Tau is a driving force which can only be set in motion by the power of selfless love. It will be possible to use this power to drive machines, which will, however, cease to function if egoistical people make use of them.

It is perhaps known to you that Keely invented a motor²⁸ which would only go if he himself were present. He was not deceiving people about this; for he had in him that driving force originating in the soul, which can set machines in motion. A driving force which can only be moral, that is the idea of the future; a most important force, with which culture must be inoculated, if it is not to fall back on itself. The mechanical and the moral must interpenetrate each other, because the mechanical is nothing without the moral. Today we stand hard on this frontier. In the future machines will be driven not only by water and steam, but by spiritual force, by spiritual morality. This power is symbolised by the Tau sign and was indeed poetically symbolised by the image of the Holy Grail.²⁹ Man is no longer merely dependent on what Nature will freely give him to use; he can shape and transform Nature, he has become the master craftsman of the inanimate. In the same way he will become the master craftsman of what is living.

As something that must be conquered, the old sexual symbol stands at the turning point for Freemasonry. You could compare the old sexual symbol of the Freemasons with the new symbolism for future Freemasonry by the analogy of placing a rock struck from a cliff face and covered with rough grass next to a beautifully worked statue by a sculptor. Those who have been to some extent initiated into the Royal Art have been aware of this. Goethe, for instance, has expressed this marvelously in the Homunculus episode in the Second Part of Faust. There are still many mysteries³⁰ in that work, which remain to be revealed.

All this indicates that humanity faces a new epoch in the development of the occult Royal Art. Those who officially represent Freemasonry today know the least about what this future Freemasonry will be. They are the least aware that something quite new will replace the old symbols they have so often misinterpreted, and that this will have an entirely new significance.

Just as it is true that everything of real importance in the past stems from the Royal Art, so it is also true that everything of real importance in the future will derive from the cultivation of the same source. Certainly, every schoolboy today can demonstrate the theorem of Pythagoras; only Pythagoras could discover it, because he was a master in the Royal Art. It will be the same in the Royal Art of the future. Thus you see that the masonic Art stands at a turning point in its development, and has the closest links with the work of the Lodge of the Grail, with what can appear as salvation in the dreadful conflicts all around us.

These conflicts are only beginning. Humanity is unaware that it is dancing on a volcano. But it is so. The revolutions beginning on our earth make a new phase of the Royal Art necessary. Those people who do not drift thoughtlessly through life, will know what they have to do; that they have to participate in our earth's evolution. Therefore, from a certain point of view, this very ancient Royal Art must be represented in a new form to stand alongside of what is so ancient, in which there lies an inexhaustible force. Those who can grasp the new masonic ideas will strike new sparks from Freemasonry's ancient symbols. Then it will also become plain that contention between Craft and Higher Degree Freemasonry is meaningless set against the endeavours of real Freemasonry.

For this it is necessary to answer the question—and that brings us back to our starting point—‘What was the Royal Art up till now?’ The Royal Art was the soul of our culture. And this culture of ours has two basic ingredients. On the one hand, it is built up by those forces in the human soul which concern themselves with the inanimate; and on the other hand, by the forces of those people who make it their principal task to control the inanimate simply bv means of the forces summoned up by their organism; and they are the men, hence the Royal Art has hitherto been a male art. Women were therefore excluded and could not take part in it. The tasks carried on in the Lodges were set apart, kept separate—the details do not matter—from everything related to the family or to the reproduction of the purely natural basis of the human race.

In Freemasonry, a double life was led; the great ideas which came to expression in the Lodges were not to be mixed up with anything connected with the family. The work in the Lodges, being related to the inmost life of the soul, ran parallel to nurturing the social life of the family. The one current lay in conflict with the other. The women were excluded from Freemasonry. This ceased the instant that Freemasonry stopped looking backwards and turned its gaze forward. For it was precisely what flowed in from outside[?] which was seen as the female current; the Freemasons considered what came from Nature as something priestly. And hitherto Freemasonry had regarded that as hostile.

Man is by his nature the representative of the force that works on the inanimate, whereas the woman is seen as the representative of the living creative force that continually -develops the human race from the basis in Nature. This antithesis must be resolved.

What has to be achieved in the future can only be brought about by overcoming everything in the world that relies upon .he old symbols, that are expressed precisely in what is sexual. The Freemasonry that is obsolete today has these symbols, but is also aware of the fact that we must overcome them. However, these sexual [symbols] must be kept in existence outside in the institutions that relate to what is natural and only in this division can the matter be resolved.

Neither the architect nor the artist nor the statesman have anything to do—in their way of thinking, I ask you -o ponder that—with the basis of sexuality in Nature. They all labour to control inanimate forces with reason, with the intellect. That is expressed in the masonic symbols. Overcoming this basis in Nature in the far future, gaining control of the forces of life—as in the far-off times of the Lemurian race, man started to gain control of inanimate forces—that will be expressed in new symbols. Then the natural basis will have been conquered not only in the sphere of the inanimate, but also in the sphere of the animate.

When we reflect on this, then the old sexual symbols appear to us as precisely what has to be overcome, in the broadest sense; and then we discover what in the future must be the creative and truly effective principle, in the concept of uniting both male and female spiritual forces. The outward manifestation of this progress in Freemasonry is therefore the admission of the female sex.

There is a meaningful custom in Freemasonry which relates to this matter. Everyone inducted into the Lodge is given two pairs of gloves. He puts one pair on himself; the other pair is to, be put on the lady of his choice. By this is signified that the pair should only touch each other with gloves on, so that sensual impulses should have nothing to do with what applies to Freemasonry. This thought is also expressed in another symbol; the apron is the symbol for the overcoming of sexuality, which is covered by the apron. Those who do not know about this profound masonic idea will be unable to have any inkling of what the apron really means. One cannot bring the apron into line with Freemasonry in the narrow sense.

We thus have the conquest of the natural by the free creative spirit on the one hand, but the separation by means of the gloves, on the other. However, we could even take the gloves off in the end, once what is lower has been conquered by applying the immediate free spiritual forces of both sexes. Then only will what manifests itself today in sexuality be finally overcome. When human creation is free, completely free, when man and woman work together on the great structure of humanity, the gloves will no longer be distributed, for man and woman will be freely able to stretch out their hands to each other, because then spirit will be speaking to spirit, not sensuality to sensuality. That is the great idea of the future.

If anyone today wants to enter the ancient Freemasonry, then he will only be at the high point of masonic thinking about the future shape of mankind if he works in this spirit, and if he understands what the times demand of us, regardless of what the Order was in antiquity. If it becomes possible to discover an understanding of what is called the secret of the Royal Art, then the future will undoubtedly bring us the rebirth of the old good and splendid Freemasonry, however decadent it is today.

One of the ways in which occultism will permeate humanity will be through Freemasonry reborn. The very best things reveal themselves precisely through the faults of their own virtues. And although we can only look upon Freemasonry today as a caricature of the great Royal Art, we must nevertheless not lose heart in our endeavour to awaken its slumbering forces again, a task which is incumbent on us³¹ and which runs in a parallel direction to the theosophical movement. So long as we do not dabble in the question which weighs upon us, but really grapple with it out of the depths of our understanding of world events, make ourselves understand what is manifesting itself in the souls of the sexes, in the battle of the sexes, then we will see that it is out of these forces that the formative powers of the future must flow.

All today's chatter is nothing. These questions cannot be answered, unless the answer is drawn out of the depths. What exists in the world today as the social question or the question of woman, is nothing, unless it is understood out of the depths of world forces, and brought into harmony with them.

Just as it is true that the great deeds of the past had their origin in Freemasonry, so is it also true that the great practical deeds of the future will be gained from the depths of future masonic ideas.

• 1 . In the two lectures 17 and 18 in this volume on 23rd October 1905, to men and women separately.
• 2 . Rudolf Steiner here refers to his association with the circle around Marie Eugenie della Grazie in Vienna during the eighties of the last century. See in this connection The Story of My Life.
• 3 . The occasion for this lay in the discussions prevailing at that time between the Church and Freemasonry concerning the sensational work by Leo Taxil on satanic practices of the Freemasons which had already appeared in 100,000 copies at the time of these discussions. Die Drei-Punkte-Brifder ∴—see following note.
• 4 . Rudolf Steiner refers here to the now famous Taxil-Vaughan swindle. Leo Taxil (pseudonym for Gabriel Jogand Pages), 1854–1907, brought up by Jesuits and known since the seventies as an anti-clerical writer and founder of several free-thinking societies, became a member of the Paris Lodge: ‘Le Temple de I'Honneur Francais’ in 1881, but was excluded from it soon afterwards because he was supposed to have forged letters of ∴ Brother Hugo and Louis Blanc. In 1885 he staged his repentant return to the Church. In obedience to the encyclical of Leo XIII of 20th April 1884, Humanum Genus in which the unmasking of Freemasons as confederates of the Devil was required, he commenced his main work, Les Freres Trois-Points (Paris, 1885, German: H. Gruber S.J., Die Drei-Punkte Bruder Paderborn 1886–87), started his unmasking campaign with other writings concerned with his fabricated Freemasonry system of ‘Palladism’ and was even called to a private audience with Leo XIII in 1887. The unparalleled success of Leo Taxil and his two other accomplices: the German, Karl Hacks (pseudonym, Dr. Bataille; brother-in-law of. the publisher of the ultramontane Kolnischen Volkszeitung) and the Italian Domenico Margiotta, in Catholic Church circles reached its climax when Taxil invented the witness Miss Diana Vaughan (Miss Diana Vaughan. Memoires d'une Expalladiste. Publication mensuelle). With the co-operation of the highest Church dignitaries, Taxil founded an Anti-Freemasonry Union which summoned a first Anti-Freemasonry Congress in Trient, September 1896. Thirty-six bishops, fifty episcopal delegates and over seven hundred opponents of the Lodges, most of them priests, took part in the Congress. The Sovereign Bishop Cardinal Haller of Salzburg and the leader of the Catholic nobility in Germany, Prinz Karl zu Lowenstein, chaired the meeting. The Congress was a public declaration of the revelations of Taxil and Miss Vaughan, only a few sceptics demanded proof. The first to start questioning the Taxil affair was the Freemason Gottfried Joseph Findel who published his Katholischer Schwindel as early as 1896. In general, however, H. Gruber S.J., who had long been a believer in Taxil, is credited with being the first to raise doubts about him with his three volume work: Leo Taxits Palladismus-Roman. This work only appeared in 1897, however. A.E. Waite, with his Devil-Worship in France or the Question of Luzifer (London, 1896) is also said to have this distinction.
  
  >By this time Taxil admitted in a great assembly in Paris, 19th April 1897, that everything was a deliberate swindle on his part and that the Devil Bixtru and his satanic Bride, Miss Vaughan, had never existed. According to the Allgemeines Handbuch der Freimaurerei, Taxil's confession came about earlier than was intended ‘because, according to his own admission, he could not carry the mystification any further after the appearance of Findel's work.’ Bibliographical references: Das Papsttum in seiner sozial-kulturellen Wirksamkeit, Graf von Hoensbroech, Leipzig, 1900; Entente-Freimaurerei und Weltkrieg, Karl Heise, Basle, 1920; Entlarvte Freimaurerei, Friedrich Hasselbacher, Berlin, 1939.
• 5 . According to Menckeberg, (G.E. Lessing als Freimaurer, Hamburg, 1880) Lessing, on his enrolment in the Hamburg Lodge on 15th October 1771, was asked by the Worshipful Master, von Rosenberg: ‘Now, you see indeed, I have told the truth! You have not discovered anything anti-religious or politically dangerous, have you?’ Lessing is said to have replied: ‘Ha, I wish I had discovered something of the sort. It would have pleased me better.’
• 6 . It cannot be determined what text Rudolf Steiner was referring to. However, according to Heckethorn, quoted previously, this notion already appeared in 1751 in the Konstitutionenbuch .ffir irlandische Logen.
• 7 . This is Seiler's shorthand version. In text (a) it is rendered: ‘so-called Scottish? or the same rite as that which corresponds, in a particular respect, to what is called the Egyptian, the Misraim, or the Memphis Rite.’ The Reebstein text (d) only has: ‘Scottish or Accepted Rite—Memphis Rite.’
• 8 . On this, see note 6 to the lecture given on 29th May 1905 (lecture 13).
• 9 . In text (a) ‘in the Mysteries’ is replaced by ‘in the spiritual world.’ In the shorthand version of Seiler these words are missing. For his fair copy he apparently made use of text (a).
• 10. This sentence is incomplete in all versions. It is given in the published version as corrected by Marie Steiner from text (a).
• 11. Compare also: ‘Aristotle on the Mystery Drama’ (NSL 420. Anthroposophical Monthly, Volume 4, No. 9) Speech and Drama,
  Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London, 1960.
• 12. Rudolf Steiner often spoke about the Grail Mysteries at the time of these lectures: for instance in Berlin, on 19th May 1905 (Anthroposophical News Sheet, Volume 5, No. 11), and in Landin (Mark), on 29th July 1906 (typescript copy: Z307).
• 13. The double lecture given on 23rd October 1905 to men and women separately (lectures 17 and 18 in the present volume).
• 14. This sentence is not word for word as transcribed. The various texts are different. Text (a) omits from this sentence the words ‘great streams’ and has in their place ‘forces of male and female,’ and ends at the word ‘realms,’ omitting the rest. Seiler's fair copy has the same wording, but the shorthand version has a gap here. In Reebstein's text (d) we find the following: ‘The symbols are connected with questions running through the whole world, which meaning ... basic forces of male and female.’ The notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers give the following: ‘The two sexes are only an expression of the two great currents, which confront us as the Law of Polarity.’ The printed version has been revised by the editor to give a meaningful rendering.
• 15. See note 10 to lecture given on 22nd May 1905 (lecture 12).
• 16. ‘Ensoulment’ (Beseelung), ‘conquest’ (Besiegung). Texts (a) and (b) have the former; text (d) the latter.
• 17. The questionable word ‘nature’ was given in texts (a) and (b) but was missing in the other texts.
• 18. This sentence was incomplete in texts (a) and (b) and was made up from texts (d) and (e).
• 19. Rudolf Steiner was obviously referring here to the saga of ‘Poor Henry’ composed by Hartmann von Aue (1165—C 1215), a contemporary of Wolfram von Eschenbach. (See also note 13). Rudolf Steiner often referred to this poem later in his lectures.
• 20. This sentence only occurs in text (a). Reebstein's text (d) on the other hand, is the only text to contain this sentence: ‘Abel is the one who in the future will have the power to create [what is] holy through [the forces of] his soul.’
• 21. Text (a) has ‘communal force’ (Gemeinsam keitskraft). In Seiler's fair copy it is ‘joint force’ (Gesamtkraft), but in Seiler's shorthand copy, Gemeinsamkeitskraft can be read. The whole text, ‘including the preceding paragraph, is rendered in Reebstein's text (d) in the following way: ‘Objective love was present in the gods who created the cosmos. Something superhuman stirs itself, which today is understanding, which later will be love. Manas, Buddhi, Atma is a joint force which gives power over the Cross.’
• †. See note following the lecture.
• 22. Text (a) has the word ‘Christ’ instead of the word ‘Cross,’ but on the other hand, Seiler's shorthand and fair copy, as well as Reebstein's text (d), give ‘Cross.’
• 23. Composed around 1200–1210. First printed 1477. Forgotten then for many years and only came to be known again about 1750. First critical edition by Lachmann (1833) followed by numerous others. English translations: J.L. Weston, A Knightly Epic, 2 volumes, London, 1894, in verse; Mustard and Passage, Parzival, Vintage Books, New York, 196 1; A.T. Hatto, Parzival, Penguin Classics, 1980.
• 24. The Right Hon. Lord Lytton, The Coming Race, George Routledge and Sons, London, 1870. Translated into German by Gunther Wachsmuth at Rudolf Steiner's instigation, Stuttgart, 1922, under the title: Vril oder eine Menschheit der Zukunft.
  
  In an answer to a question put to Rudolf Steiner at the end of a lecture held in Leipzig, 13th October 1906, regarding the meaning of Vril, he said the following:
  
• 25. the Cross directed upwards. The explanations of the Tau symbol are fragmentary and the texts differ in their wording.
  
  Text (a) has the following: ‘The Tau sign plays an important role in Freemasonry. It is basically nothing else than a Cross with the upper, arm taken away. In a figurative sense, therefore, the mineral realm has been omitted. But in order to arrive at the Cross at all, the plant kingdom must be brought into play, whereby one arrives at the upward pointing Cross.’
  
  Text and symbol of (a) both seem questionable. Marie Steiner, who once made some preparatory corrections of (a), left off the symbol in its original form and replaced it with the following: ‘In order to arrive at the Cross at all, the plant kingdom must be brought into play, whereby the upward pointing Cross is obtained.’
  
  In text (b) the following version is given: ‘This Tau sign plays an important role in Freemasonry. It is nothing else but the Cross. Only one of the beams is left off. The mineral kingdom has been left off in order to arrive at the Cross at all. If you allow the plant kingdom to come into play you get the upward pointing cross.’ In the shorthand version of this there is a gap after the words: ‘in order to arrive at the Cross at all.’ Instead, the symbol is inserted after ‘upwards pointing Cross,’ whereas it has been left out of the fair copy.
  
  The text (d) only has:
  ‘The Tau plays an important role τ
  It is nothing else than the Cross.
  If the productive forces of the plant ...’ It is significant that the Tau symbol has been drawn, but not the reverse form, in a text which otherwise provides the greatest number of diagrams.
  
  Text (f) has the following: ‘The Tau is the Cross, from which the upper beam has been removed. The mineral realm has been left off, man controls it already. For if one lets the plant realm come into play one arrives at (symbol). What develops out of the earth, out of the soul as power over the earth, is the symbol of future Freemasonry.’
  
  The other texts do not contain a reference to this.
• 26. Double lecture on 23rd October 1905, for men and women separately (lectures 17 and 18).
• 27. In the lecture of 28th December 1905 (unpublished as yet), Rudolf Steiner said: ‘Allow me to conclude my observations of the old year with an allusion I have made once before [in the lectures of December 1904, included in the present volume]. A major work of destruction is being carried out all around us, which could tell an observant person—even if he were not clairvoyant—that we stand at the beginning of a great work of destruction involving outer material [culture] as it has developed in recent centuries—for material development only goes up to a certain point.’
• 28. The American, John Worrell Keely (born 1837) caused much talk in the second half of the nineteenth century through the invention of the ‘self-motor,’ the so-called Keely Motor. A treatise on his experiments is to be found in H.P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Book III (X ‘The Coming Force,’ pp. 554–556). Among the lectures of Rudolf Steiner there are several references to this subject, notably in the lecture given during the Great War on 20th June 1916: ‘Cosmic Being and Egohood’ (cycle C 43), where he says: ‘It was a concept still. Thank God it was only a concept at that time for, if this Keely's concept had become reality then, what would this war have become!’ Compare also the lecture given in Dornach on 1st December 1918, in In the Changed Conditions of the Times, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company, 1941.
• 29. Texts (a) and (b) have: ‘the Tau’ of the Holy Grail. The other texts do not have this passage, the image of the Holy Grail is Marie Steiner's correction; perhaps, however, it rests on an error in copying and it should read: ‘the Taube’ (i.e., ‘dove’) of the Holy Grail.
• 30. See in this context Rudolf Steiner's later lectures: The Problem of Faust, twelve lectures, Dornach, between 13th September 1916 and 19th January 1919.
• 31. Rudolf Steiner is referring here to the Section dealing with cult and symbolism of his Esoteric School which he was about to found. See in this connection: The Course of My Life,Chapter XXXII