The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Drotten or Druids were ancient Germanic initiates. In England, [the Druid lodges] existed until the time of Queen Elizabeth. Everything we read in the Edda and can find in the ancient Germanic world of legends goes back to the temples of the drotters or Druids. The poet [of these legends] is always a Druid priest. The legends do not just represent some symbol or allegory – this too, but something else as well.

Let us take an example: we know the saga of Baldur, we know that Baldur is the hope of the gods, that he is killed by the god Loki with the mistletoe; the god of light is killed. This whole story has a deep sense of mystery, which everyone who was initiated not only learned but had to experience.

In the initiation into the mysteries of the Druids and Drotts, the first act was called “seeking out the corpse of Baldur”. It was thought that Baldur is always alive. The quest consisted of a complete enlightenment about the nature of man; Baldur was man as he was lost. Once upon a time, it was not the man of today who lived, but another who was not differentiated, who was not suppressed to the point of experiencing passions, who [still] lived in a finer, more volatile matter - Baldur, the radiant man. When truly understood, the things that appear to us as symbols are to be taken in a higher sense. This human being, who has not submerged into what we today call matter, is Baldur. He dwells in each one of us. The Druid priest had to seek this higher human being within himself. It was made clear to him wherein this differentiation consists, from the high to the low [levels of humanity]. The secret of all initiation is to give birth to the higher man within oneself. What the priest undergoes more quickly, ordinary people will undergo in a long series of developments. In order for these druids to be guides to the rest of humanity, they had to receive this initiation. The man who has risen lower must now overcome matter and reach that higher state again. This birth of the higher man takes place in all mysteries in a certain, same way. The man who had been lost in matter had to be resurrected; one had to go through a series of experiences - real experiences that can be like no sensual experience on this plane. The stages [of initiation]: the first [stage] was that one was led before the so-called Throne of Necessity. One stood before the abyss; one really experienced in one's own body how it is lived in the lower natural kingdoms. Man is mineral and plant, but the present man cannot experience this, he cannot experience what the elementary substances experience, and yet the iron, compelling in the world comes from the fact that we are also minerals, plants.

The next stage led man to see everything that lives in the animal kingdom. All the passions and desires that live in us had to be seen, swirling and tossing. Man had to look at this because the purpose of initiation is to look behind the scenes of the world's existence. Man does not know that his physical shell only covers what swirls through the astral space. The veil of Maya is a real covering, and those who are initiated must see behind it – the veils fall, man becomes clear [in his vision]. This is a special moment: the priest realized that they, [the veils], had contained instincts that would be terrible if released.

The third stage led to the contemplation of the great nature. This is a stage that man without preparation still finds very difficult to comprehend. That there are mighty occult powers resting there and that the world passions express themselves in these natural forces is something that makes man aware that there are forces that he does not even experience in the same way as his own suffering.

The next test is called the “handing over of the snake” by the hierophant. The effects that emanate from it are explained to us by the Tantalus saga. The favor of sitting in the council of the gods [like Tantalus] can be abused. It signifies a reality that certainly elevates man above himself, but binds him to dangers that are not exaggerated in the curse of Tantalus. As a rule, man says he can do nothing against the laws of nature. These are [creative] thoughts. With that thought, which is only a shadowy brain thought, you can't do anything; with the creative thought, which builds and constructs the world, we have, instead of the passive one, the one that is imbued with spiritual, mental power. A caterpillar, blown out, is [merely] the shell of the caterpillar; imbued with the [productive] thought, it is the living caterpillar. In the shell-thoughts, active, creative power is poured in, so that the priest is able not only to look at the world, but to work in it as a magician. The danger is to abuse. At this level, the occultist acquires a certain power by which he is able to deceive even higher beings. He must not only repeat truths, but experience them; decide whether something is true or false. This is the handing over of the serpent by the hierophant.

In the spiritual, there is also a backbone [as in the physical], where it is decided whether one gets a spiritual brain. Man undergoes this process on the [third] level of initiation, [the “path into the labyrinth”]. He is lifted out of Kama and provided with the spiritual backbone to be lifted into the vortices of the spiritual brain. The convolutions of the labyrinth are the same on the spiritual plane as the convolutions of the brain are on the physical plane. Man gains admittance to the labyrinth, to the convolutions within the higher planes.

Then he had to swear to secrecy; a shining sword lay before him, and he had to swear the strongest oath. This meant that from now on man would remain silent about his experiences to anyone who was not initiated like him. These secrets could not possibly be communicated without further ado. But he [the initiate] had the opportunity to shape the legends in such a way that they were the expression of the eternal. If one could express oneself in this way, one naturally had great power over one's fellow human beings. He who forms such a saga imprints something in the human spirit. What is spoken [normally] is forgotten again, and only the very least survives death. Eternal truths survive death longest. Very little of the lower science survives death. The eternal, yes, [that endures], and it reappears in a new incarnation. The Druid priest spoke from a higher plan. If his stories were the expression of higher truths, albeit simple, they penetrated deeply into souls. He had simple people before him, but the truths penetrated into their souls, and they had absorbed something that would be reborn in new incarnations. At that time, people experienced fairy-tale truths. Today, we have a prepared spiritual body, and when we understand higher truths today, it is because we are prepared. Thus, this period, which ended in 61 AD, prepared the spiritual life of Europe, prepared the ground on which Christianity was able to build itself. The teachings [of the Druids] have been preserved, and those who seek can still find access to what was taught in these lodges.

After he, [the Druid priest], had taken his oath on the sword, he had to drink a certain drink, and from a human skull. This had the meaning that man had grown out of the human. The Druid priest must have this feeling towards the lower body. He must feel so objectively and coldly towards what lived in the body that he regarded it only as a vessel. Then he was initiated into the higher secrets and, as he ascended again into the higher worlds, he encountered the living Baldur. He was led into a giant palace covered with sparkling swords. A man approached him, who threw up seven flowers - [the seven planets]. [The initiate beheld three seats; on them were enthroned]: celestial space, cherubim, demiurge. Thus he became a true priest of the sun.

Many read the Edda and do not know that it is a narrative of what really happened in the ancient Druidic mysteries. An immense power lay in the hands of the old Druid priests, a power over life and death. It is a truth that everything is corrupted over time. Druidism was once the highest, most sacred. In the times when Christianity spread, much had degenerated, and there were many black magicians, so that Christianity was like a salvation.

Simply studying these ancient truths illustrates almost all of occultism. No stone was laid on top of the other in the Druid temple as it is today, but precisely according to astronomical measurements; doors were built according to celestial measurements. The Druid priests were builders of humanity. A faint image of this has been preserved in the beliefs of Freemasons. When one learns to see through astral matter, one sees the sun at midnight: 1st initiation.

Handing over the snake: 2nd initiation.

Walking in the labyrinth: 3rd initiation.

You will have come to realise from many of my lectures that a deep significance underlies the world of saga, that myths are the expression of esoteric truths. Today I should like to speak of one of the most interesting of these sagas, one that has a bearing on the evolution of our fifth root-race.¹ At the same time I shall be able to show you that the esotericist can pass through three stages in the understanding of saga. First, the sagas live in one or other of the peoples and are understood exoterically in their literal meaning. Then disbelief in their literal interpretation begins, and educated people search for their symbolic meaning. Behind these two interpretations are hidden five others, for every saga, has seven interpretations. The third stage is the one in which they can, in a way, be taken literally again. Of course, you have first to come to understand the language in which they are expressed. To-day I want to speak of one that is not very easy to understand, I want to speak of the Prometheus saga.

In a chapter in the second volume of her Secret Doctrine² Madame Blavatsky refers to this saga, and what she writes will enable you to see what a profound meaning is hidden in it. Nevertheless, it is not always possible to say the last word in published works. To-day we can go a little beyond the explanations given by Blavatsky.

Prometheus belongs to the world of Greek saga. He and his brother Epimetheus are the sons of a Titan, Japetus. The Titans are themselves sons of the ancient Greek god Uranus and his wife Gaia. Uranus means ‘heaven’, and Gaia ‘earth’. And let me draw your attention to the fact that Uranus is to the Greeks the same as Varuna to the Indians. Thus Prometheus is a Titan and one of the sons of Uranus, as is also his brother Epimetheus. Chronos (Time) usurped the throne of his father Uranus and obtained the rulership for himself. For this he was in his turn dethroned by his own sons and, with all the other Titans, cast into the underworld. Only Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus remained loyal to Zeus during these events. They fought side by side with Zeus against the other Titans.

Now Zeus had created the human race. But humanity had become rebellious, hence he wanted to exterminate it. Then Prometheus made himself humanity's representative. He devised a plan to give men the means whereby they could save themselves and be no longer entirely dependent upon the help of Zeus. Thus we are told that Prometheus taught men the use of writing and of the arts, but above all the use of fire. Because of Zeus's anger Prometheus was chained to the Caucasus, and was forced to endure there much suffering over a long period.

Further, we are told that the gods, with Zeus at their head, then caused Hephaestus, the god of the smiths, to make a statue of a woman. This female statue was provided with all those external attributes which adorn human beings of the fifth root-race. This woman was Pandora. She was sent to bring gifts to mankind, first to Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus. Prometheus warned his brother not to accept the gifts, but the latter allowed himself to be persuaded. All these gifts of the gods, except one, were showered upon humanity. They constitute for the most part human miseries and sufferings. Only the gift of hope was withheld in Pandora's box.

Thus Prometheus was chained to the Caucasus and a vulture gnawed continuously at his liver. But he knows something which will ensure his rescue. He knows a secret of which even Zeus is ignorant, a secret which Zeus is trying to discover. But Prometheus does not betray the secret, although Zeus sends to him Hermes, the messenger of the gods.

Now in the course of the story we are told of a remarkable release. Prometheus can only be freed through the intervention of an initiate. Such a one “was Hercules, who performed the twelve labours. The execution of these twelve labours was the achievement of an initiate. They symbolise the twelve tasks of initiation. Moreover it is said of Hercules that he had undergone initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Nevertheless someone had to be sacrificed, and so Chiron the centaur was sacrificed for Prometheus Chiron was already suffering from an incurable malady. He was half animal and half man. That is how Prometheus was rescued.

This is the exoteric saga of Prometheus. In it lies the whole history of the fifth root-race, and in it real Mystery-truth is hidden. The story was told in Greece as genuine saga; but it was also represented in the Mysteries, so pupils in the Mysteries had a knowledge of the destiny of Prometheus before them. And in Prometheus and his destiny they were meant to see the past and the future of the whole of the fifth root-race. You will only be able to understand this if you bear in mind one thing.

In the middle of Lemuria there came about for the first time what we call incarnation, incarnation in the sense in which we have human beings to-day. Mankind was guided by great leaders and teachers whom we call ‘the sons of the fire mist’. To-day the fifth root-race is also guided by great initiates, but our initiate are different from the leaders of mankind at that time. You must now come to understand what this difference was. There is a great difference between the leaders of the two preceding root-races and those of our fifth race. The leaders of those races too were united in a White Lodge. But they did not undergo their earlier evolution on our earth planet, but in another environment. They descended to earth already mature, descended as human beings of higher development, in order to instruct men who were still in their infancy, in order to teach them the first arts which they needed. This period of instruction lasted through the third, fourth, and right into the fifth root-race.

This fifth root-race originated in a little band of men who were singled out from the previous root-race. They were led into the Desert of Gobi and later dispersed over the earth. Their first leader, the leader who gave the impulse for this evolution of mankind, was one of those whom we call the Manus, he was the Manu³ of the fifth root-race. This Manu is still one of those leaders of the humanity who descended at the time of the third root-race, one of the leaders who had not gone through their evolution only on the earth but who brought maturity to earth with them.

It was not until the fifth root-race that the development of men such as we are ourselves began, the development of men who, like us, have undergone their evolution on the earth alone, men who have evolved from their lowest stages entirely on the earth.

Thus we have some human beings who are already exalted Leaders and Masters, and others who strive to become such Leaders. Within the fifth root-race, therefore, we have Chelas and Masters⁴ who have passed through all that our earth has passed through. One of the Masters who has the guidance of the fifth root-race is destined to undertake the guidance of the sixth. The sixth root-race will be the first to be guided by an earthly Brother as its Manu. The earlier Masters surrender the leadership to mankind.

With the dawn of our fifth root-race we have the beginning of all that we call the development of the arts, the development of skill and dexterity. The Atlanteans still led quite a different life. They had no inventions and discoveries. They worked in an entirely different way. Their technique and their skill were quite different. It was only with our fifth root-race that what we call engineering and craftsmanship in our sense developed. The most important discovery was that of fire. You must be quite clear about this, you must be quite clear how much of our widespread engineering, industry and craftsmanship depends upon fire. I think that the engineer will agree with me when I say that without fire nothing of modern engineering would be possible, so that we may say that the discovery of fire was the fundamental discovery, the discovery that gave the impulse to all others. And you must also understand that at the time when the Prometheus saga arose, the term ‘fire’ comprised everything in any way connected with warmth. Fire was also understood to be the cause of lightning. Fire was the comprehensive expression for the causes of all phenomena of warmth.

The consciousness that humanity of the fifth root-race stands under the sign of fire is what is primarily expressed in the Prometheus saga. And Prometheus is none other than the representative of the entire root-race. His brother is Epimetheus. Prometheus means ‘thinking in advance’, Epimetheus means ‘thinking afterwards, reflecting’. There you have the two activities of human thought, clearly contrasted in the man of reflection and the man of forethought The reflecting man is the man who allows the things of this world to work upon him, and then thinks; such thought is the Kama-Manas⁵ thinking. To-day the man of the fifth root-race still thinks predominantly like Epimetheus. However in so far as he does not merely allow what is already there to work upon him, but becomes an inventor or a discoverer, to that extent he is a Prometheus. Inventions could never be made if all men were like Epimetheus. An invention occurs when a human being creates something that was not there before. It is first there in thought and then the thought is converted into reality. That is Prometheus-thinking. This Prometheus-thinking in the fifth root-race is Manas-thinking.⁶ Kama-Manas and Manas run like two streams side by side in the fifth root-race. The Manas-thinking will gradually become more and more widespread.

This Manas-thinking of the fifth root-race has yet another peculiar characteristic, which we understand if we look back to the Atlantean root-race. In Atlantis there was more of an instinctive thinking which was still bound up with the life-force. The Atlantean root-race was still able to make motor-power from the force in seeds. Just as to-day we have in our railway coal-yards a kind of reservoir of power for the movement of engines and freight, in the same way the Atlanteans had stores of plant-seed containing power, which they were still able to convert into power to drive those air-ships which are described in Scott Elliott's book on Atlantis.⁷ The spirit of the Atlantean man was still able to subjugate living nature; the spirit of the fifth root-race can only control lifeless nature, the latent forces that lie in stone, in minerals. Thus the Manas of the fifth root-race is chained to the mineral forces, as the Atlantean race was bound up with the life forces. All Promethean force is chained to the rock, to the earth. Hence, too, Peter is the rock upon which the Christ built. It is the same as the rock of the Caucasus. The man of the fifth race has to seek his evolution on the physical plane. He is chained to the inorganic forces.

Try to acquire an idea of what we mean when we speak of this engineering, this technology, of the fifth root-race. What is its purpose? Viewing the matter generally, you will see that when intelligence, the power of Manas is applied to the inorganic, to the mineral world, the results of all these powers of invention and discovery, however prodigious, are by and large in the service of human egotism, of men's personal interests. Starting from the earliest inventions and going on right up to the telephone, one of our latest inventions, you will see what mighty forces have been made serviceable to us. But what ends do they serve, what is it that we transport by rail and steamer from foreign lands? Foodstuffs. We order food by telephone. It is really human karma that begins with these inventions and discoveries in the fifth root-race. This is what an objective study of the matter must make clear to us. Then we shall understand that the higher man, that higher man who has been plunged into matter, is in fact, during the fifth root-race, chained to it. Therefore it is in matter that his karma will reach its fulfilment.

If you enter into esoteric realms, you will find that man's principles have a specific relationship with his organs. Sometime I will explain this more fully. To-day I will mention only that our seven principles have a specific relationship with the organs of the human body.

First we have what we call the physical. This has an occult connection with the upper part of the face, with the root of the nose. When the physical structure of man took its start (man was formerly purely astral, and then built himself into the physical), it began with this part; the physical structure began at the root of the nose and built itself up from that point, so that the esotericist recognises the root of the nose as belonging to what is essentially physical-mineral.

The second principle is Prana, the etheric body; with this we associate the liver. The liver has a specific occult connection with the etheric body.

Then comes Nama, the astral body. This has developed its activity in the structure of the digestive organs, represented by the stomach. If the astral body did not have the specific stamp in man which in fact it has, then the human digestive organs, including the stomach, would not have the specific form which they have to-day. If you study firstly the physical basis of the human being, secondly his etheric body, and thirdly his astral body, you have what in the fifth root-race is fettered to the mineral element.

Through his higher bodies man wrests himself from his fetters again, and mounts up to something higher. Kama-Manas works its way up again, in Kama-Manas man frees himself again from the pure nature-basis. Therefore there is an occult connection between Kama-Manas and the organ through which man is severed from his nature-basis. There is an occult connection between the lower Manas and the umbilical cord. If there were no Kama-Manas in man, then the embryo would not be severed from the mother in this manner.

If we pass on to the higher Manas, we find that it has a similar occult connection with the human heart and with the blood.

Buddhi (Life-Spirit) has an occult connection with the larynx, and Atma (Spirit-Man) with what fills out the entire man, with the Akasha contained in man.

These are the seven occult, relationships. In considering them we have to stress the importance for our fifth root-race of the relationships with the etheric and the astral bodies. And if you bear in mind what I said earlier of the control by the Atlanteans over Prana (the life-force permeating the etheric body) you will see that in one way the Atlantean stood at a still lower stage. His etheric body still had the original relationship with the external ethers and because of this he controlled the Prana of the outer world. Because man has risen to one stage higher, his work has become one stage lower. That is a law. If there is an ascent on the one hand, there must be a descent on the other. Whereas formerly man worked on Kama from Prana, now he has to work with Kama on the physical plane.

You will see how profoundly the Prometheus saga symbolises these occult connections. A vulture gnaws at Prometheus's liver. The vulture symbolises Kama, which really destroys the forces of the fifth race. The vulture gnaws at the human liver, the basis of life; so does this force of the fifth root-race gnaw at the essential life-forces of man, because man is chained to mineral nature, to Peter, to the rock, the Caucasus.

During the fifth root-race only human initiates are able to bring release to fettered man. Hercules, a human initiate, has to go all the way to the Caucasus in order to set Prometheus free. It is thus that the initiates will wrest men from their bondage.

The human being who still has a connection with the animal nature—the centaur Chiron—must make a sacrifice. The man of earlier times must be sacrificed. The sacrifice of the centaur is as important for the development of the fifth root-race as man's release by initiates.

It is said that in the Greek Mysteries the future was foretold to men. This does not mean that people were given a vague abstract account of what was to happen in the future, but they were given indications as to the paths that are to lead over into the future. The great Mystery-drama of Prometheus is an expression of what is to evolve as human capacity.

By the three generations of gods—Uranus, Chronos and Zeus—we have to understand three Beings who were leaders of men one after another. Uranus means heaven, Gaia the earth. If we go back beyond the middle of the third race, the Lemurian, we find no men as we now know them, but one man, who is called in the secret doctrine Adam Cadmon⁸—the man who is still without sex, who does not yet belong to the earth, who has not yet evolved the organs for earthly sight, who still belongs to the Uranus-nature, to heaven. By the marriage of Uranus with Gaia there arose the man who descended into matter, and thereby stepped into Time. Chronos (Time) becomes the ruler of the second generation of gods from the middle of Lemuria right up to the beginning of Atlantis. The Greeks symbolised these leading Beings as, first of all Uranus, later Chronos, and after that they went over to Zeus. But Zeus is still one of the leaders who did not undergo their training on earth, he is still one of the immortals, as in fact were all the Greek gods.

During the fifth root-race mortal man is expected to stand on his own feet. This humanity of the fifth root-race is represented by Prometheus. The fifth race was the first to acquire human skill and the primeval art of fire-making. Zeus is jealous of this race, the race in which men come to have their own initiates, initiates who in the sixth race will take the lead into their own hands. But humanity has to pay the price for this. Hence its primordial initiate must first of all take upon himself the sum of all suffering. Prometheus is the archetype of the initiate of the fifth root-race, one initiated not only into wisdom but into deed. He runs through the whole gamut of suffering, and is released by the man who makes himself mature enough to free humanity little by little and to lift it above the mineral realm.

The saga thus expresses great cosmic truths. That is why I said at the outset that anyone who reaches the third interpretation may take it literally once more. Every saga undergoes change. It is derived from primordial times and transforms itself at a certain point There is a point in every saga at which it is to be taken literally again. In the Prometheus saga you have the vulture gnawing at the liver. That can be taken quite literally. The vulture gnaws at the liver of the fifth root-race. This Promethean struggle with suffering is repeated in the fifth root-race in every single man. What is here expressed in the saga is to be taken quite literally. Without this struggle the destiny of the fifth race would be quite different.

Thus sagas can be interpreted in three ways. First there is the exoteric meaning, secondly the allegoric—the human struggle—thirdly, the occult significance, where again a literal interpretation enters in. From this you will see that so far as these sagas can be interpreted in this way, they originate in the Mystery Schools, and are no less than the record of what has been revealed in those schools as the great destiny of man. Just as I was able to show you that Odin represents what took place in the Druid Mysteries, so in Prometheus we have what the pupil of the Greek Mysteries experienced to give him energy for life in the future.⁹

• 1. Root-races. The root-races are the main periods of earth-evolution The fifth root-race is the fifth main period.
• 2. The Secret Doctrine. Vol. 2, Part 2, Section 6. (pp. 546 – 556 in the third edition.)
• 3. The Manu of the fifth root-race. In the English version of An Outline of Occult Science, this Being is called ‘the leader of the Christ-initiates’ or ‘the leader of the Christ-oracle’. (p. 177 in the 1949 edition).
• 4. Chela means pupil of the Mysteries; Master means teacher in the Mysteries.
• 5. Kama is the astral body, Kama-Manas the intellectual or Mind-soul, the lower Manas.
• 6. Manas. Here is meant the higher Manas. In the book Theosophy Rudolf Steiner calls it ‘the spirit-filled Consciousness-soul’ or ‘Spirit-Self’. (p. 57, revised English edition, 1954).
• 7. The Story of Atlantis, by W. Scott-Elliott, published by the Theosophical Publishing Co., London, 1896. See also Rudolf Steiner's Atlantis and Lemuria.
• 8. Adam Cadmon. See also Rudolf Steiner's lecture given at Oxford, 22nd August, 1922, which appears in English in the book Man's Life on Earth and in the Spiritual World.
• 9. Unfortunately no report exists of the lectures to which Dr. Steiner here refers, but reference can be made to his lectures given in Berlin, 29th, April, 1st and 6th May, 1909, published in Dornach, 1955, under the title “Isis and Madonna, Altearopaische Mysterien, Die eurapaischen Mysterien und ihre Eingeweihten. (Not yet published In English)

To-day I should like to speak about a very important myth, also Greek, one which, like all myths, can be interpreted at many different levels. We will endeavour to uncover its real kernel. But before going on I should like to preface what I have to say by a few more theoretic observations.

In the last number of Lucifer-Gnosis¹ I stressed that the last three culture-periods of Atlantis saw the beginning of a particular influence on the human race which still endures even to-day. It has to do with the fact that men then became mature enough to work in what we call our intellect. Before that time man was more a being of memory. Up to the fourth Atlantean culture-period man's memory was especially developed. The faculty of intellectual combination, the calculating faculty, in short, all that makes up our present-day culture, began in the fifth Atlantean period with the Ur-Semites. And it was this that made the Ur-Semites capable of originating the whole of the fifth, the Aryan, root-race. The Aryan root-race had as its primary task the development of the intelligence which is active on the physical plane. When such a new phase of human evolution occurs, it becomes possible for new Beings, Beings who up to that time had led hidden lives, to gain an influence on evolution. And in fact, since the fifth culture-epoch of Atlantis, a particular host of Beings have participated in human evolution, the activity of whom had not hitherto been noticeable. You must think of these Beings as very highly evolved, far more highly evolved than man at the stage he then was. But in a certain way they had lagged in their development behind the Beings who in the middle of the Lemurian time had intervened in the affairs of the human race. It was a fresh setback which took place at that time. The Beings of whom I am now speaking belonged in their whole nature to what we call the Moon evolution. They went through their development on the Old Moon, but they were not so far advanced as the Beings who were able to intervene in the middle of the Lemurian time. They had remained behind the normal development on the Moon. They had advanced to the point of recognising that the faculties which man had now attained were analogous to their own, to the point of recognising that they could obtain control over those human faculties. Up to this time men had not been Beings of intelligence, now they acquired the intellect. And these new Beings made use of this human intellect for their own further development. Thus it came about that a phase of human evolution now set in which we call the phase of cold, objective science. Prior to this time there was no such thing, and one day there will again be no such thing. All wisdom hitherto attained in human evolution has been fundamentally associated with love. Cold, calculating science is under the influence of these backward Beings. Thus the influence of these Beings, who are still active, will come to an end only when our whole intellectual activity, everything which we are capable of knowing, is again permeated with love. When intelligence and love are once more united in the higher wisdom, the influence of those Beings, who are not visible on the physical plane, will disappear. To make clear their influence, in the first place to the pupils of the Mysteries, and then to mankind, was the task of the Greek Mysteries

About the eighth century B.C., a very important epoch sets in as regards these Beings. If you think of the culture-epochs of our fifth root-race—of the ancient Veda culture, then of the ancient Persian culture, of the Chaldean-Egyptian culture, if you think even of the time of the Druid culture, you will find that an objective, dispassionate science of knowledge did not exist. It first emerged at the dawn of the fourth culture-epoch, which one can place in about the eighth century B.C. With it there dawned an objective knowledge, completely detached from all the rest of the contents of the human mind. A Chaldean priest who cultivated astronomy still sought to fathom the purposes of the rulership of the world; and this can also be said of the Egyptian and Druid priests; they sought to acquire insight into the purposes of the world-ruler. A purely intellectual knowledge first dawned in Greece. This intellectual knowledge had been prepared step by step, and emerged, bound up with the rest of human activity, under the influence of the Beings I have mentioned; it was fully released in the fourth culture-epoch of the fifth root-race. Those who were initiated in the Mysteries of that time, confronted by the external wisdom, looked upon the ancient wisdom, which had formerly been at the disposal of mankind, as something lost, something which men must seek to regain.

Now there was a particular way of describing the point of time in which this dispassionate, dry wisdom separated itself from the all-embracing primeval wisdom. In the eighth century B.C., the passage of the sun through the sign of the Ram, which then took place, was experienced as the repetition of an earlier passage through the same sign thousands of years previously. It is well known that the sun moves forward through the whole of the zodiac, through the Ram, the Bull, the Twins, through Cancer, the Lion, the Virgin and so on, so that it has already passed through the Ram many times. The last time it had passed through the Ram, man was in possession of a knowledge united with love, and thereby of the primeval wisdom. This primeval wisdom had now been lost, and had given place to a culture of external wisdom. The priests of the Greek. Mysteries expressed this whole process in its occult significance through the profound symbol of the Argonaut saga, in which the ram is the symbol of the union of love and knowledge.

Let us first call to mind the whole of the myth. We are told that Phrixos and Helle had to suffer many things at the hand of their bad stepmother. Therefore their dead mother appeared to Phrixos and advised him to run away and to take his sister with him. She gave him a large ram with a golden fleece, upon the back of which they were to cross the sea. Helle fell off and was drowned in the Hellespont, but Phrixos reached Colchis with the ram. There he is said to have sacrificed it and to have given its fleece to King Petus, who hung it on an oak in front of a cavern. Later, the Greek hero Jason, together with the most important of the Greek initiates of the time, Orpheus, Theseus, Hercules and others, set to work to recover the fleece from the alien people of Colchis. Through winning the hand of the king's youngest daughter, Medea, he was enabled to bring it back to Greece. First he had to overcome two fire-breathing bulls. Then he had to sow a dragon's teeth. From the dragon's teeth grew armed men, who began to fight. With Medea's help he was able to bring this conflict to a successful conclusion. It was she too who enabled him to capture the fleece and to set out, together with it and her, on the homeward journey to Greece. In order to deceive her father Medea had taken her brother with her, had slain him and had thrown his dismembered body into the sea. While the lamenting father was collecting his son's limbs she was able to continue her flight with Jason into Greece.

In the eighth and ninth centuries B.C., the pupils of the Greek Mysteries were taught the occult meaning of this saga. They were taught that the Beings who made use of the dry, dispassionate human intelligence had now attained a special importance. The longing awoke in them for the ancient culture which had obtained when the sun had passed through the sign of the Ram on the occasion before the last. That the twins Phrixos and Helle were carried by the ram to Colchis means simply that an earlier race—the Persian-Iranian, with its twofold nature (it stood under the sign of the gods Ormuzd and Ahriman)—had regained the union of knowledge and love. This race had borne the fleece to hidden realms. Still earlier, in Atlantis, this fleece, this wisdom, had been the common possession of human culture; then it had been carried into distant Mystery-schools. It had to be brought back again. Thus the Argonaut saga is an expression of the founding of the Greek Mystery-schools.

Thus we are told that a primeval wisdom existed among the people of Atlantis. It was then the common possession of humanity. It had been lost and was now only to be found in the caves and crypts of the pupils of the Mysteries. But the Greeks established the Mysteries anew; by bringing the primeval wisdom back again to Greece, Theseus, Orpheus, Hercules and others became the founders of this Greek Mystery-wisdom.

A dispassionate, cold intelligence, which is objective, is introduced by Thales, Anaximenes, Socrates and other philosophers. The Mystery-wisdom is united with love. It is a wisdom which cannot be attained without purification of the passions, the forces of Kama.² The other kind of knowledge can be obtained without purification of Kama.

Thus the very important Argonaut saga puts before us the transition from the third to the fourth culture-epoch of our present root-race. Human culture, which formerly was one stream, now separates into two—into mystery-wisdom and external knowledge. The one stream was hidden—it was the recovery of the golden fleece but it was nevertheless effective. It had an influence on Greek art and culture. Only on external knowledge was it henceforth to have no influence. This is the saga of the voyage of the Argonauts.

The Odyssey too is concerned with the transition from one race to another. The Odyssey has been given the most varied explanations To-day I only want to indicate the bare framework of the saga. In my book Christianity as Mystical Fact I tried to make use of its second stage of interpretation; to-day we will look at the third.

Odysseus, who took part in the siege of Troy, by his cunning and his cleverness, helped the Greeks to conquer Troy. He made lone voyages, voyages in which he went astray—voyages on the water, be it noted. He came to the land of the Cyclops and overcame their one-eyed leader; then he went further, to Circe, who, we are told, turned his companions into swine. Then he descended into the underworld, and made the acquaintance of the dead heroes of Troy. Then he came under the influence of the sirens, who lead men astray by their magic songs. We are further told that most of his companions succumbed to the temptation, but that Odysseus caused himself to be bound to his ship, and thus saved himself; we are told how he then came to a place between Scylla and Charybdis where his ships were in danger of being wrecked. To save himself he had to pass through a whirlpool. Then he comes to the island of Calypso, sojourns there seven years and is enabled to leave by the intervention of Zeus, who orders Calypso to let him go, and at last he reaches his home country.

He is led by the goddess Pallas Athene into his house and to his wife, who has had to withstand many dangers because of the suitors who beset her. So she unravels by night the weaving she accomplishes by day, because she has promised her hand to one of her suitors when the work is finished.

Now let us go through this outline of the Odyssey as it is known to us from Greek occult wisdom. The schools of initiation, in which was actually enacted what I have just recounted, led the pupils on to the astral and the mental planes³ in such a way as to enable them to survey a stretch of human evolution, to survey the period from the middle of Lemuria to the time when in Greece, in the school of initiation which had been founded by Jason together with Orpheus, Theseus, Hercules and others, man was again able to find the primeval wisdom. Thus the pupil was led on to the astral and the mental planes and was shown the events which humanity had to pass through between the middle of Lemuria and the point of time when the Trojan war took place. The Argonaut saga is a picture of the primeval wisdom. It shows us that it existed at that time side by side with external knowledge.

What was it that was shown to the pupils of the Mysteries in the Odyssey? Odysseus himself is its expression. Let us turn back for a moment to the middle of the Lemurian time. Man was then in a state of transition from the hermaphroditic to the condition of sexuality, in a state of transition from the condition of being able to see without an external physical sense-organ to that of seeing with the physical eye. Up to the middle of Lemuria every man had one eye, which was then replaced by two external physical eyes. It was into this phase of evolution that the pupil of the early Greek Mysteries was transplanted. He had to experience the transition from the first half of Lemuria into the second half of Lemuria, into the time after the middle of Lemuria up to the emergence of the second eye. The Cyclopes were the men of the early Lemurian time. Odysseus came to know these men upon the astral plane. After this time, human astral bodies were plunged into matter which was becoming denser, more solid. We then come—so were the initiates instructed—to the first periods of Atlantis. The Atlantean acquires more and more the capacity to make use of the forces of life, to apply these forces for his own ends. They were fully developed astral forces which the Atlantean possessed, and it was only on the astral plane that a Greek could be transported into them. This was the time, so often spoken of in occult writings, when the Atlantean races lapsed into the wildest arts of black magic. This epoch was brought before the pupils of the Greek Mysteries in these shifting scenes. This was the age when. human passions became so distorted under the influence of the forces of black magic that their astral bodies resembled those of the lowest animals. This was the picture which the Turanians presented when they lapsed into these wild magic arts. The astral body was so changed under the influence of these black arts that it could only be expressed symbolically as the changing of the comrades of Odysseus into swine. This was the moment of human evolution which the Greek initiates of that time experienced. Then Odysseus descended into the underworld. In the world of Greek mythology this always signified an initiation. Whenever it is said of a hero that he descended into the underworld, the narrator wants to express the fact that the hero concerned has been initiated, made acquainted with things that lie beyond death. Odysseus was an initiate and the Odyssey itself is the description of his initiation.

Now we go on to a point when, after the Atlantean flood, men became acquainted with the first operations of those Beings of whom I have spoken, acquainted with the effects of external culture, science and art, with forces which influenced intellectual life after the flood. The first periods of purely external physical culture were brought before the initiates as the temptations of purely worldly arts, worldly culture. These are the siren songs of the young fifth root-race. It was of these siren songs of the young fifth root-race that so much is said in occult writings. For on the one hand we have the great wisdom teaching of Manu⁴ who, in the sub-race which was the originator of the fifth root-race, draws men's attention to the fact that their intellect has to lift itself up to the divine. This found its expression in the Vedas, and in what the Persian Zarathustra left to his co-religionists. But then we have the pure culture of the intelligence, which diverts men from what was developing in them under the influence of Manu. In all occult writings you find described the events which then took place. Manu chose a small band and went with them into the Desert of Gobi or Sebamo. There it was only a handful that remained true to him, whilst the others were unfaithful and dispersed in all directions. This important event was shown to the candidates for initiation—that is to say, they were shown how the Manu had chosen some of the Ur-Semites, but that of those chosen only a small number followed him, whereas the others ran into destruction through following the siren-song of external culture.

Then a still more important moment of human evolution was represented by the passage between Scylla and Charybdis. What is it which now really begins in mankind? The essential Kama—Manas culture now first begins. It had gradually been prepared up to this point; it is only now that it really begins. Our fifth root-race possesses preeminently this Kama-Manas culture. Kama is in the astral, and even to-day is still active in the astral body. But Manas is what is active in the physical brain. The man of the fifth root-race thinks with the physical brain. It is only in a future phase of evolution that Kama, the astral body, will be so advanced that it will be able to think. To-day Manas has taken hold of the physical brain. We have to pass between the hindrances on either side—Scylla-Manas and Charybdis-Kama. The passage of Odysseus is a picture of this. There is on the one hand the astral whirlpool of the instincts, appetites and passions into which man can fall; on the other hand there is the physical intellect chained to the rock. The rock occurs also in the Prometheus saga, where we meet the rock again. The human intellect is exposed to all the dangers of the physical, of the rock. Man sails between the physical intelligence and the whirlpool of the astral life. If he has accomplished that successfully, if he has recognized the dangers of the passage, and has nevertheless kept his footing, then he comes to Calypso, to the hidden wisdom. Then he can take a look into the future of humanity, then he can undergo the testing time, which lasts seven years. That is why Odysseus remains with the nymph Calypso seven years. Every man who seeks initiation goes through a seven-year testing period, and this is represented by the sojourn with Calypso. Only then can he reach the point to which the soul aspires. Read Homer's Odyssey! He means that man is in search of his own soul. He who really wishes to understand the Odyssey cannot accept the view of a modern investigator who asserts that Polyphemus and the Cyclopes only mean that Etna had erupted and that the scene of the conflagration seemed to Odysseus like the eye of a giant.

At last Odysseus returns home as a beggar, without any external property. This means that the man who had recognized the unimportance of the external world and of worldly goods, seeks his soul's home not in Maya, but behind Maya, thus in a mystical sense he returns home as a beggar. That he is truly wise is shown by his being led into his house by Pallas Athene. In all esotericism the soul is represented as feminine, it is always the feminine nature that is chosen as the symbol for the striving of the individual soul. Goethe calls it the ‘Eternal Feminine’. In Medea in the Argonaut saga, in Penelope, we have to understand the real soul, to which Odysseus seeks the way again. The Virgin Mary too, in the Christian religion, is the striving human soul, only there the significance is infinitely deeper. Strictly speaking, Penelope is the human soul in the fifth root-race. The fifth root-race has to cultivate human intelligence. Human intelligence is utterly unfruitful when it is only turned upon itself. When it has something that one can call a content, then the intelligence can be applied to it. Intelligence is a network which is spun around things we have from some other place. When external experience teaches you something, you can weave around it with your intelligence. When the higher occult wisdom teaches you something, you can also weave around it. Men say that occult wisdom contradicts reason. Nothing contradicts reason! When something new dawns on their horizon men have always said that it is contrary to reason. But the intellect is only there for purposes of combining. Out of itself it can win nothing. This barrenness of the intellect, which is nevertheless the real soul of the fifth root-race, is expressed in the perpetual weaving and unraveling of Penelope's cloth. Odysseus is led by wisdom. The initiate must find the way to the soul of the fifth root-race, but he will only unite himself with this soul in the right way if he is guided by Pallas Athene. Pallas Athene too is a feminine deity, another soul-force, wisdom, the real guide. But man has to reach intelligence through many by-paths, in so far as they are paths of development—for there were many by-paths in the Lemurian epoch. And in this journey Pallas Athene must be his guide. This was brought before the pupils of the Mysteries in Greece and this is what Homer wanted to express in his profound saga.

What is described in the Odyssey is initiation as it was carried out in Greece at that time—an initiation which was a repetition on the astral and mental planes of experiences from Lemurian times right down to the time of the Mysteries themselves. Odysseus is the clever man, the cunning man, and Troy was overthrown through his ability. The clever, intellectual man is the man of the fifth root-race. But to be able to find his way rightly in the fifth root-race, he must again on his devious path seek his home country, his Penelope. The man who is merely cunning and clever would never find the right way. He must first come out of himself, broaden his view, by looking back on the long journey of the human race. Odysseus is the representative of the cunning Kama-Manas man, who has to wander through many byways, in order to be led back again to the soul of the fifth root-race.

• 1. The article here mentioned, which first appeared in the periodical Lucifer-Gnosis was later published and forms chapter 1 of Atlantis and Lemuria.
• 2. Forces of Kama. The forces of the astral body.
• 3. Astral plane and Mental plane. These are the “soul-world” and “spirit-land” in Rudolf Steiner's Theosophy.
• 4. Manu. Described in An Outline of Occult Science as “the Christ-initiate” or “the leader of the Christ-oracle”.

In order to acquire a right understanding of the Siegfried saga we must first find its place in the great cosmic happenings in the world. Before our present root-race there were four others; we are in the fifth. The first sub-race of the present race consists of the Indian folk; we call this the Spirit-race, because the import of the fifth race was first given by the Manu in its spiritual form to this sub-race. The second sub-race we call the Flame-race, the race to which Zarathustra gave a religion. The third sub-race was the star-race, the race of the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Assyrians, from which later sprang the Israelite tradition. The race of the Greek and Roman peoples, whose first representatives are mainly to be found in Greece and Rome, became the fourth sub-race. It is the one in which Christianity first took root, in Asia Minor, Greece and Rome. But it is our fifth sub-race which was to be the most strongly influenced by Christianity and was to carry it over into the sixth. Christianity came to our fifth sub-race as a tradition, after the beginning of the Christian era. But before this, for some centuries before Christianity was introduced into these regions, and even earlier, ancient Druid initiations were in existence. These were maintained until it became quite obvious that the evening of these preparatory Celtic races had come.

You must understand that all the streams I have named do not reach the northern world. None of the currents which passed over the Flame-race, the Star-race, the Greco-Roman race, got as far as the northern regions. In the north there still remained something from the culture of Atlantis which had been brought over by Atlantean initiates. Wotan was an initiate of the northern peoples. He is none other than the bearer of the elements of Atlantean culture into these parts. Everywhere in these northern regions the Druid initiation was still practised. I have already said that one of its founders, one can say its chief founder, was named Sieg. And in these northern parts something happened rather like what happened later in Palestine at the Foundation of Christianity. Sieg renounced his body and placed it at the disposal of a higher individuality. Hence later the transformed Sieg was named Odin. Odin is the highest initiate of the northern Mysteries. He is the bearer of the spiritual culture of that time. Sieg therefore was the Chela of the north who placed his body at the disposal of the higher, more spiritual Odin. He himself lived later as an initiate Master. Sieg is a quite special case. He is not able to introduce a movement as the Master Jesus¹ did after the foundation of Christianity. Sieg had to lead this northern culture to its downfall. He is called upon to guide the northern peoples until the fifth sub-race of the fifth root-race reached them from the south. The ancient Chela Sieg is the one who had to lead the northern peoples into tragedy. Hence he is also called Sieg-urt, which means, “he who leads into the past.” ‘Fried’ is the same word; it means, “that which leads to death, to destruction.” It is still found in the word ‘Friedhof,’ (graveyard). The very same Chela who had paved the way for the great initiate who is to lead the northern culture to its downfall. Its spiritual content declines and is replaced by the rising Christianity. What I am now saying is a prophetic augury which found expression everywhere in the later northern Mysteries. “We have to be a race that is led to its death”. That is the note which sounds forth in the various Mysteries of these northern peoples. The whole of the future event, which had been indicated in the scriptures since primeval times, and which was to take place in the future, was predicted in the northern Mysteries, and through this prediction arose what later became the content of the Nibelungenlied. The second part of the Nibelungenlied gives us the fulfilment of the Nibelungs' karma.

I must draw attention to one feature which we always find in such a situation in human evolution. Before a new phase takes root the earlier phases of evolution have to undergo a brief repetition. This repetition is plainly to be seen in the north. We are shown how all that has been experienced here in the north since the time of Lemuria and Atlantis has to be overcome before these northern nations will become mature, will really develop up to the level of the Christianised fifth sub-race. He in whom all that lives is the initiate Siegfried. Let us briefly run through the salient points of the Siegfried saga.

To begin with, life at the Court in Worms revolves round three heroes: Gunther, Magen and Giselher. We are further told that the hero Siegfried is wooing Brunhild. At the same time we are told that Siegfried is acknowledged to be a personality out of the ordinary. This he certainly is, for he has slain the possessor of the Nibelung treasure; in the fight with the dragon he has made his body hard as horn; he has won the cloak of invisibility. Thus he has two qualities that are always shown by the initiates of pre-Christian times; they are invulnerable and they are unrecognisable. They are made invulnerable by something that has preceded Christianity, has preceded the spirit. In the Gospel it says: “And there are three that bear witness ... the Spirit, and the water, and the blood.”²

It is the blood which must be conquered, and it is the blood which made the heroes invulnerable in the times preceding Christianity. But these invulnerable initiates are always vulnerable in one spot. Achilles is an example of an initiate of these early times. He was plunged into the Styx and was vulnerable in his heel. Siegfried is bathed in the blood of the dragon and is vulnerable in the shoulder. The initiate can make himself unrecognisable to his own people. He can do that through the possession of the cloak of invisibility. It is this that makes the possessor of these higher occult faculties invisible to the outer world. The possessors of the Nibelung treasure had these faculties. They originated in Atlantis, Atlantean initiates in particular had them. But they were also retained by the initiates of the fifth race and hence by Siegfried. He came into possession of the Nibelung treasure. What is this treasure?

It expresses the fact that the northern peoples supplied the basis upon which the fifth sub-race could arise. We also call the race the race of the great discoveries and inventions, the race that has conquered the entire physical plane and that waxes great amid the harsh difficulties of the external world. It has both to possess things, and to develop its possessions. We shall see that ‘Nibelungenhort’ (the treasure of the Nibelungs) is merely a modification of the old word ‘Nifelheim, Nebelheim’ (land of mist). This it is what in the north is recognized as the physical earth, the earth in the moment of becoming physical. It is a firmer hold on the physical that this race of forerunners propagated and opposed to Christianity. Nibelung treasure represents earthly property. It is something that the forerunner possesses, which it is permissible for him to possess, because he can guard it in a suitable way.

Now you all know how the Siegfried saga goes on in this old form. It is not the oldest form, but it is the one that concerns us. You know that Gunther woos Brunhild of Iceland. Twice Siegfried overcomes Brunhild, who believes that it is her suitor Gunther who has conquered her. Gunther woos her, but Siegfried in the cloak of invisibility fights at his side, and is glad that she becomes Gunther's wife. Now Kriemhild later in a weak moment betrays to Brunhild that in reality it was not Gunther who had vanquished her, but that Siegfried was there invisibly. Brunhild is incensed by this and plots to kill Siegfried. But she has yet to learn how she can do it. She wins to her side Hagen of Trony, who dwells at the court. We can recognise the figure of Hagen as deriving from the ancient Druid Mysteries. Hagen is a significant name among the ancient Druid initiates. Not only is he an initiate who represents the highest streams of spiritual life, but, what is more important here, he illustrates the fact that the predecessor always comes into conflict with his successor. Siegfried is the immediate predecessor of Christianity. Hagen belongs to an earlier Druid stream. Hagen therefore is sent for to bring about Siegfried's ruin. To this end Kriemhild must betray that he is vulnerable in one place. Here the significance of this place is revealed. Kriemhild betrays that he is vulnerable between the shoulders, in the very place where the Cross will have to be borne. He has not yet got the Cross. These early peoples have not yet got Christianity. To this spot the Christian initiate will have to come—so says the Siegfried saga—because it still lacks Christianity, because the place where the Cross has to rest is still vacant. Hence Siegfried is still vulnerable in this spot. Siegfried, who brings the Sieg-initiate to ‘Fried’, to rest, is vulnerable in the spot which Christianity will later render invulnerable. There Siegfried too is overcome by the powers which have remained over from earlier stages of northern culture. Hagen kills him and thus illustrates the supercession of the preceding northern races by the fifth sub-race. The import of this transition finds expression in the Siegfried saga.

What are these northern races, the forerunners of Christianity, fighting against? They are fighting against all the old that has remained behind from Atlantis. They have continually to be on their guard against it. Thus in the northern races there still lives something against which the soul of the northern peoples has to protect itself, something that still forces its way in from the remnants of Atlantean culture. An earlier stage of culture has been preserved into the fifth sub-race. But those who have remained behind in the Atlantean culture are a hindrance to further development, they have to be overcome. Hence the struggles that followed are represented by Gudrun. This Gudrun is the soul of the northern peoples. In an older version she wages war against the great initiates who continually come over from Asia from the remnants of old Atlantis. The initiates, the remnants of the Turanians, come over from Asia in a series of incarnations. This is why we also meet there the famous Attila, identical with Etzel, who was initiated in the Atlantean culture. In. fact the historic Attila, who was called ‘the scourge of God’ by his own people as well as by the Europeans, was an initiate who fought at the head of his people with quite outstanding occult forces. Hence a battle with the Huns was quite rightly described as a fight in the air. To anyone who knows these things it is quite clear what is meant. Attila shrank from nothing that he encountered in Europe; from the Pope alone, of his own free-will, he drew back. The races of northern Europe knew that they had to beware of the influence from the East. Christianity knew that this influence could do it no harm.

Now in the later saga we are told that Kriemhild plotted to take revenge on those who had killed Siegfried. She achieves this by throwing in her lot with these Atlantean elements and succeeds in wooing Attila's following to her cause. She becomes Attila's wife. Before that she had lived for a while at the Burgundian court. She came into possession of the Nibelung treasure and had been a great benefactress in her use of it. But the inevitable enemies, who belonged to an earlier culture, and who were represented by Hagen, had sunk the treasure in the Rhine. Now how wonderfully the events which followed are described; Kriemhild clung to her plan to destroy her enemies, her old northern enemies, with the help of Attila. They were enticed to Attila's court and on their way there they met the very spiritual power by which they were to be superseded. On the Danube, in Rudeger of Bechlaren and his wife Gotelind, they encounter Christianity. It is Christianity that is to supplant the northern European culture. Here we have an indication of the dawn of Christianity. Those who have paved the way for it go to meet their downfall. They are murdered at the court of the Huns. Kriemhild had her revenge but she herself must perish. How is this brought about? Kriemhild is really a metamorphosis of Gudrun, with the difference that in the earlier time the tragic outcome had not taken hold of men's hearts. It is Gudrun herself, the folk-soul who slays Attila. In the later version she unites herself with Attila. The soul of the earlier culture avenges itself on the culture which has brought about its downfall. Kriemhild herself perishes.

If you are studying the matter from the literary point of view, you will naturally ask how it comes about that, right at the end, at the court of the Huns, Dietrich of Bern, Hildebrand and all the Germanic heroes are introduced, for they belong to a period that has already gone over to Christianity. They are Christian heroes. Christianity brings death to the ancient folk-soul. First we have the dawn of Christianity in Rudeger of Bechlaren, and then Christianity reaches the essential element of the ancient folk-soul. This is not something told after the event, but something experienced as prophecy within the Mysteries long before the emergence of Christianity. These events were the subject of Mystery-initiation. Initiation into the Mysteries includes not only initiation into truths of the present, but also into truths of the past and of the future. Apocalypse always forms part of it. The Siegfried saga had long been the apocalypse of the northern peoples.

It is not a saga that has arisen somehow or other out of separate fragments, as philology supposes. ‘The folk’ does not make literature in this way. Only someone who has no clue to what goes on in a folk-soul could say this. The sagas are nothing but an account, a rendering of what had taken place in the crypts of the Mysteries. Just as in the south we have the word Mystery, so in the north a similar mystery event is called a ‘Mahr’, from which we get the word ‘Marchen’ (fairy tale). “Viele Wunderdinge melden die Mahren alter Beiten”.³) The ‘Wunder’ (wonder or miracle) is just a sign. There are things that must be regarded as events on a higher plane. The northern saga-world is so interesting because it expresses something that is not to be found in the entire range of southern saga. The sagas of the southern peoples express a step up; in them the people have always received something which leads them upwards. Of course, the Indian, Persian, Babylonian, Chaldean peoples and those who succeeded them at later stages also had their tragic figures. We need only remind you of the Chronos saga. But here in the north we have the thing in its most developed form, for these people had so long to wait, so long to live in a state of expectancy. Theirs was a culture of preparation, which lasted until a higher initiation evolved. And that is the important point. It was a culture that descended so low, that its initiate is human, is man. The Indian initiate is the Bodhisattva, then come the Rishis, later in Greece we get ‘the sons of the sun’, such as Hercules and Achilles, Only when the initiate had descended to the lowest rung of the ladder do we get, here in the north the initiated man who lacks only one thing, what is comprehended in the Christ. The Christ he has not got. Thus this culture has come so far that it has human initiates and the man-become-god. In the north we encounter the divine man—the divine Man who for us is the Christ—in an attitude of expectation, with the vulnerable spot which Christianity will have to cover.

Thus you have four levels which come one after another. First you have Wotan, who comes over from Atlantean times; then Odin. Wotan corresponds with what develops during the second sub-race of the fifth root-race. The last before Siegfried is Balder, the sun-hero. He corresponds with what develops in the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian epoch. But whereas what developed in the south is an ascending, a progressive culture, here in the north we find a mood of suspense, of expectancy, of waiting for something to happen Then we come down from god to man; and while the southern sub-race developed further, Siegfried became the initiator of this culture of suspense. It is steeped in tragedy. Because this northern culture is coming to an end you have the tragic deaths of Baldur, of Siegfried.

• 1. The Master Jesus is described by Rudolf Steiner as a being who sees through history as the guide of the Christian spiritual stream, with relatively short intervals between each death and rebirth. He is not to be confused with Jesus of Nazareth. See also Lecture 7 of Rudolf Steiner's Course on the Luke Gospel.
• 2. I John, V. 8.
• 3. This is the first line of the Nibelungenlied. Rudolf Steiner has spoken of the Nibelungen on various occasions, in lecture 8 of the Course entitled “The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature”, given at Helsingfors in April, 1912, and in “Das innere Verhältnis der Sprache zu den Cedanken. Das Nibelungenlied and Wilhelm Jordan” given in Dornach, 28th March, 1915, and not yet translated.

Since there are some newcomers present to-day, I should like briefly to explain that in the course of these lectures I have tried to show how the various myths and sagas are expressions of an esoteric content, and that one only needs to know how to interpret their language to find on occasions deep esoteric truths in them. To-day I should like to speak of one in particular of those sagas which are remarkable in that, while on the one hand they are sagas, yet at the same time they have an external meaning on the physical plane, that is to say, they record quite specific external events.

Before I begin to speak about this saga, I should like to refer to something else that most of you already know, but it is a thing which one has to stress again and again. In the course of our fifth root-race, thus, in the time lying between the end of Atlantis and the beginning of the next, the sixth, root-race, an advance in human evolution of the highest importance will be made; the leaders of mankind, their Manus, will arise in mankind itself. None of the great leaders who brought men forward, the leaders who gave them their important impulses during the earlier root-races, went through their own evolution entirely on earth; they underwent it in part on other planets, and thus they brought from other worlds what they had to give to the earth as great impulses. The Manus of Lemuria and Atlantis, as well as the chief Manu of our fifth root-race, are super-sensible individualities, who underwent the sublime schooling which enabled them to become the leaders of mankind, on other planets. But during the fifth root-race highly developed human individualities have trained themselves so that from the sixth root-race onwards they will be capable of becoming the leaders of mankind. The leader of the sixth root-race, in particular, will be a man as we are, only one of the most advanced, indeed the most advanced among men. He will be a being who began his development when incarnation started, approximately in the middle of Lemuria, one who has always been a man among men, only that he was able to advance more rapidly, and one who has gone through every stage of human evolution. This will be the fundamental characteristic of the Manus of the sixth root-race. Such beings have to undergo all kinds of initiation, they have to be initiated again and again. Hence the fifth root-race from its outset has always had initiates, men who were so initiated as to enable them to walk their own freely-willed path. This was not the case during the Lemurian period, nor even in Atlantis. Both in Lemuria and Atlantis those who helped mankind forward, those who ruled and guided mankind, those who were political leaders and leaders of great religious communities, were under the influence of higher beings. They were directly dependent upon higher Beings, Beings who had gone through their own development on other planets. It is not until the fifth root-race that mankind is left free. Then we have initiates who have a connection with higher Beings, but to whom such comprehensive guidance is not given; more and more freedom is allowed to the initiates of the fifth root-race in matters of detail. Guidance is given on general lines, not only to the initiates, but to those who are stimulated by them. Impulses are given to them, but yet in such a way that it is out of their own spirituality that they have to carry things out.

The five sub-races that we know are: first, the sub-race of Spirituality; this is the sub-race from which the Indian cultural community arose. Then we have the sub-race of the Flame, that is the Persian cultural community. Then we have what we call the ancient Chaldean sub-race, the sub-race of the Stars, of which the Israelite people forms a branch, indeed the most important branch. The fourth cultural community is the one which produced Greece and Rome, the sub-race of Personality. The fifth sub-race is that of the World, the culture within which we ourselves live, the culture of the present stage of evolution, which will be replaced by a cultural community coming from Asia.

Last time I discussed the great initiates of the northern region. On that occasion I pointed to the fact that the initiate, or anyone who is in any way connected with initiation, has a distinguishing mark, and that to be invulnerable is one of these symbolic distinctions. This invulnerability, which we find in Siegfried, is also to be found in Achilles. In fact in the myth with which Achilles is associated, a deep esoteric meaning is hidden. You must realise that what I put before you comes about gradually in the fifth root-race. The Manus so arranged the guidance of the race that the entire leadership of mankind was in the hands of the priesthood, which received its inspiration direct from higher spiritual beings, from super-men. This priesthood could be entrusted with the classification of mankind. It would have been impossible to carry out a division into castes rightly, except in cultural communities guided by priestly rulers. Hence caste is only to be found in the authentic priestly cultures, in ancient India and in Egypt, where initiated priests were at the head of affairs, initiates who followed no impulses derived from kama but only intuitions from above, and they could be trusted to bring about that important classification which in its origin in the Egyptian and the Indian castes was fully justified. When you study these castes, you find that they are an expression of the whole plan of development of the fifth root-race.

According to this plan, the guidance of this fifth root-race should pass over gradually from the priestly outlook to that of the world. A worldly king, a king who was not a priest, would, in the early stages of the fifth root-race, have been quite impossible. It was impossible in Atlantis, when the leader still worked with other forces, when the impulse did not yet pass through the thinking mind. But in the fifth root-race there had to come a halt, guidance had to be entirely withdrawn from cosmic powers and handed over to those who receive divine inspiration. Hence in the Indian and Egyptian cultures we have priestly rulerships. The priest is the Regent, it is from him that everything emanates. The priest belongs to the first caste, the warrior to the second. After that come the castes which follow purely worldly occupations. We come down in stages to those who are concerned with agriculture. Little by little these castes are to attain independence.

Thus the first caste was the priestly one, the second the warrior caste. We never find that the temporal relationships which emerge in the course of evolution are the same as those which show themselves externally in space. I beg you to note that if a spatial relationship is to become a temporal one, it occurs in the ratio of four to seven, occurs in such a way that the fourfold expands to sevenfold. Thus during the fifth root-race the four castes find their outward expression in time in the gradual training to independence of the seven sub-races. The ratio of four to seven comes from a quite specific law. To-day I will merely say that evolution takes place in such a way that in the first sub-race, in all essential matters, guidance is entirely in the hands of the priests In the second sub-race we have one led by the priest-kings. Zarathustra, the true magician, is the counselor of priest-kings. During the third sub-race the rulership is able to pass over to worldly kings, who however still follow the guidance of the priests or the priest-kings. It is only during the fourth sub-race that we find purely worldly kings, kings who are no longer associated with priestly power. This fourth sub-race has its first beginning in the Greek folk. It is in Greece that we first see worldly kings, and, as the Greek colonies become established, in them too we find worldly kings.

The saga of the Trojan War is a representation of the spread of Hellenism; it is the mythical presentation of an esoteric truth, the efflorescence of the fourth sub-race of the fifth root-race, and the replacement of the priestly rulership, now in its last stage, by the purely worldly rulership.

That is very subtly indicated at the beginning of the Trojan saga. You probably know that matter is always represented by water I need only call attention to the familiar Nicene Creed, which says “suffered under Pontius Pilate”. As the esotericist knows, this is an incorrect rendering. What it really says is “suffered in pontoi pilatoi”, which means merely “in compressed water”, and signifies “descended in order to suffer in matter”. This sentence in the Creed which is said all over Christendom has come about through the word “pontoi” having become “Pontius”. When Thales states that everything has originated from water, he is referring to the comprehensive physical matter of which alone we can treat when we would speak of physical things. He is using the term ‘water’ for physical matter. Physical matter is to be the all-important thing for those who now take over guidance. The predominance of physical matter then led to there being worldly kings. Previously there had only been kings who stood in relationship with the Divine. Peleus is the king who is to rule on the physical plane, deriving his strength from the physical plane. This is represented by his marriage with the goddess Thetis—the marriage of the leader of mankind with the matter of the physical plane, with the goddess of water, the goddess of the sea.

And from this union sprang Achilles. He is the first initiate of this kind. Hence he is invulnerable except in the heel. All those who were initiated in the fourth sub-race were vulnerable in some spot. It is only in the fifth sub-race that there will be initiates so advanced as not to be vulnerable anywhere. Achilles is plunged into the Styx. That means to be dead to the earthly and withdrawn to a higher plane of vision.

There we have an important transition. Spiritual life descends for the first time in the middle of the fourth sub-race. For the first time we have to do with physical struggle. Thereby something remarkable comes about. The earlier leaders of the world were free from kama, for they had had to divest themselves of everything connected with kama during their previous initiation stages up to their spiritual initiation. So long as there were priests in the old sense, it was not possible for any trace of kama to enter into the guidance of the world. Kama caused separation, caused beings to turn against one another. Earlier, too, men who were opposed to one another were to be found, but that was not due to kama-manas, but happened because men were not advanced enough to distinguish between good and evil. At that time men could not measure the fight by the standard of good and evil. They could not say “war is good” or “war is bad” any more than they could Say a lion was good or bad; good and evil first began in the moment when kama-manas descended, so that kama worked together with manas, and man became his own master and turned consciously towards or against his fellow man. It was then that conscious war arose. This is indicated in the saga, where we are told that all the gods were present at the marriage of Peleus with the sea-goddess Thetis—except one, a goddess who hitherto had had no influence on the earth, because the stage had not yet been reached when the union of manas with kama occurred. Now on the physical plane the goddess Eris, the goddess of discord, begins to be active. She tosses an apple, discord, into human nature. By so doing she was the sole cause of the first war in the fifth root-race which took place with full human responsibility. In the Trojan war the mythical comes to expression. Before that, strife was determined by instinct.

All that followed, according to the myth, is only a further elaboration of a tendency that was already there. The most beautiful apple is said to be the Eris apple. The three goddesses, Hera, Pallas Athene and Aphrodite—that is to Say, all that earlier was divine soul—disagree among themselves, for the three goddesses signify different stages of soul-life on the higher, spiritual plane. Now things are no longer decided on the higher level, but Paris is called upon to make the decision from the stand-point of the physical plane. Everything descends to the physical plane. The decision too descends to the level of the physical. But something comes about through this. Here lies the crux of the matter, this is where it becomes clear what is at stake. What is it that we have to face because the decision is made from the standpoint of the physical plane? The union of manas with kama. Hitherto man had had a certain relationship with kama, single beings had turned against one another, but this had not yet the significance of good and evil. But now kama unites itself with manas, and the deed becomes conscious. You know that the densest kama fell away from the earth and accompanies it as a satellite which is our moon. Hence in the language of esotericism we might call all that accompanies us to-day in the moon the ‘leitmotif’ of the lower nature; it is what draws us downwards, the great signpost showing us what we can come to if we succumb to our lower nature.

Thus, what is momentous in the union between manas and kama during the fourth sub-race is that the man who has to make the decision unites himself directly with the kama of the moon, with Selene. Selene is none other than Helen. The union of Paris with Helen in the fourth sub-race of the fifth root-race is a symbolical expression of the marriage between kama and manas. The man endowed with manas, finding himself on the physical plane, seizes hold of the moon principle. You meet this everywhere in writings of an esoteric nature. It is also a Helen who drags down Simon Magus and unites him with the element of kama.

Thereby is brought about the full union between the principles of manas and of kama on the fully conscious physical plane. It corresponds not only with what the Trojan War stands for symbolically but also with what really happened. The Trojan War did actually take place. Although it was a series of physical events, these events have a symbolic meaning as well, they are mystical facts. The concept of mystical fact comprehends not merely mystical content, but a mystical content which runs its course outwardly on the physical plane.

Please try to understand this. At the beginning of the sixth root-race an influence will have developed, not in higher spheres, but in the sphere of the present-day conscious mind; in the fifth sub-race this influence is still in its infancy, but it is nevertheless already developing. It is something which emanates from the musical element. For the fifth root-race music will be not merely art, but the means of expression for quite other things than the purely artistic. Here is something that points to the influence of a specific principle on the physical plane. The most significant impulse by those directly initiated in the fifth sub-race will, to begin with, be given solely in the sphere of music. What has to flow in is not astral, but it is something of great significance in the sphere of the mental life of the fifth root-race. It is something that the human intelligence will come to recognise as important, something which has been called the Kundalini fire.¹ It is a force which to-day still slumbers in man, but which will gradually gain more and more importance. To-day it already has a great importance, it has a great influence upon what we perceive through the sense of hearing. During the further development in the sixth sub-race of the fifth root-race the Kundalini fire will acquire great influence on what lives in the human heart. The human heart will really have this fire. At first this seems to be mere symbolism but man will then really be permeated by a force which will live in his heart, so that during the sixth root-race he will no longer make a distinction between his own well-being and the well-being of the whole. So deeply will man be permeated by the Kundalini fire! He will follow the principle of love as his own innermost nature.

In the seventh sub-race of the fifth root-race the whole of mankind will be in a real chaos, for the root-race will then be near to its collapse. But a small number of the seventh sub-race of the fifth root-race will become the true sons of the Kundalini fire. They will be permeated with its full power. They will provide the material, they will pass it on to the leaders of those who will develop: man further. Thus is the fifth root-race directed to the heights which kindle the divine fire; thus is kindled out of inmost depths with holy fervour the divine principle which no longer separates man from man, but evokes brotherliness as far as the human understanding reaches. And thus far shall brotherliness be quickened in our own root-race and in the next. This fire will live in single individuals; and in those who are initiated in the course of the fifth root-race there already lives a spark of this divine fire which is the capacity for brotherliness and will put an end to separation.

But it is only in its beginning, it is still hidden, veiled by the existing life of separation. The power of kama still conceals the Kundalini fire. And because it emerges in veiled form as premonition, as foreboding, in the immediate future it will assume another character. On the plane of illusion the divine fire is the divine wrath. When the whole of mankind is permeated by this brotherliness it will become the divine love. But so long as it makes itself felt in individuals as zeal, it is the divine wrath. It asserts itself by working with great power in individuals and since the others are not yet ripe enough, it manifests itself as the divine wrath.

The poet, the initiate, who speaks of such things, always expresses this at the outset of his poem. As I pointed out to you in the case of the Odyssey, its main theme is announced in the first lines. And in the Iliad too you will find that the blind poet indicates his theme at the very beginning. “Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of the divine hero Achilles.” It is of the Kundalini fire that the poet speaks when he says this. Only in the fifth race can it be thus spoken of. At the very outset, when the priest Calchas takes the side of the priest-king of Apollo, you see the wrath flare up between Agamemnon and Achilles. And what is it that is overthrown? A priest-king state. Troy is a state in which the king is under the influence of the ancient priestly rulership. The rulership is replaced by the purely worldly principle. There you have a perfect illustration of the fact that what is victorious is nothing else but worldly cleverness. The initiate of the fourth sub-race is Odysseus, the cunning one, who receives initiation in the course of his wanderings. He was not previously an initiate, he became one only as a result of the experiences he went through. In the strangling of the priest of Apollo by the snake you see the same thing symbolised. The snake is the purely worldly cleverness, it ensnares Laocoon, the priest, the representative of the old Trojan priesthood.

If you understand all this you see that the Trojan saga, like so many others, is simply adhering to a true world-historic continuity. This is the secret that the Mysteries have guarded. They have shown the great events in the history of the world to the initiates from this lofty standpoint. In the Mysteries themselves such events were plainly taught, and in the old Greek Mysteries—the ancient ones that long preceded the Eleusinian Mysteries—this important moment, the beginning of the fourth sub-race of the fifth root-race and its whole significance, was among other things brought before the pupils.

To those who are not conversant with theosophical teachings this sounds fantastic. But it is a fact. The Trojan War was shown in the Mysteries before it took place. This is the essential principle of the Mysteries, and it is this which makes it necessary to keep them secret, because they reveal not only the great events of the past, but also events to come. These were not revealed to satisfy curiosity or the undue thirst for knowledge. Those who are initiated into the Mysteries are called upon to take a part in the fashioning of world-history. They have to derive from the Mysteries the forces to enable them to do this. That is the significance of the Mysteries. Hence their betrayal would mean the public announcement by someone of what is to happen in the future Anyone doing this causes utter confusion among his fellow men. Suppose something important is to happen in five hundred years time. In order for this to come about mankind needs to be prepared.

Individuals receive impulses enabling them to bring mankind to the point at which they will live under other conditions, to the point at which they will become ripe enough to adapt themselves to the transformation and to bear it. The initiates are in a position to endure these conditions and to further them. Suppose that one were to bring about an event straightway, years before it was due. Then mankind would not be mature enough for it. Every Mystery will one day under quite different conditions become common property, but it must be under other conditions. To-day there are still Mysteries which will not be revealed until the sixth root-race. The next root-race will live in quite other conditions. Universal brotherhood will then be something quite different. Suppose that to-day someone were to be told a secret that is only suitable for a being with the quality of brotherliness. He would misuse it. There are no absolute Mysteries, there are only things which under certain conditions cannot yet be borne, and men who cannot yet bear them.

That is the essence of the Mystery. It translates itself into the external course of world-history. Those who understand something of this are terribly afraid lest the initiates should in some way, through lack of foresight, betray something too soon. It was always the case that the betrayal of the Mysteries bore the severest penalties. In ancient times the penalty was death. It was not the priests who exacted this, for they knew that a betrayal cannot actually happen. But those who knew something about the matter from the outside, and were not themselves initiated, feared the betrayal of the Mysteries. Socrates himself was a victim of such an attitude.

• 1. The expression ‘Kundalini fire’ is used by Dr. Steiner in the first edition of his book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. In later editions he replaced the term by another which is translated in the 1937 English edition as “the spiritual perceptive force in the organ of the heart”, (see p.185).

It was to be expected¹ that only a small company would gather here today. I have nevertheless decided to hold our meeting this evening to talk to those of you who are present about something connected with Whitsuntide.

Before I start I would like to report to you one result of my latest visit to London, which is that in all likelihood Mrs. Besant will be visiting us here² in the autumn. We shall have the opportunity then of hearing again one of the personalities belonging to the most powerful spiritual influences of our time. The next two public lectures³ will be held in the Architektenhaus—on spiritualism a week hence, and on somnambulism and hypnotism, the following week. Then the usual Monday arrangements will take place again regularly. On the coming Thursdays⁴ I shall speak about theosophical cosmology, about theosophical ideas concerning the creation of the universe. Those of you who are interested in such things may hear much which is not already known from the usual theosophical literature. I wish to hold over till a later date the lectures on the rudiments of theosophy.⁵ What I wish to talk about today comes from an old occult tradition. The subject cannot, of course, be dealt with exhaustively today. Some of it may appear incredible.

I would request, therefore, that today's lecture be treated as an episode in which nothing is to be proved, but only things related.

People celebrate their festivals today without having an inkling of what is signified by them. In the newspapers, which constitute the main source of the education and enlightenment of most of our contemporaries, one can read many and various articles dealing with such festivals, the writers of which have not the slightest idea of the meaning of such a festival. But for theosophists it is necessary to look again at their inner meaning. And so I want today to direct your attention to the origin of such an age-old festival: the source of the Whitsuntide Festival.

Whitsuntide is one of the most important festivals and one of the most difficult to understand. For Christian consciousness it commemorates the coming of the Holy Ghost. This event is described as a miracle: the Holy Spirit was poured out over the Apostles so that they started to speak in all manner of tongues. This means that they could enter into every heart and speak according to each one's understanding. That is one of the interpretations of Whitsuntide. If we wish to reach a more fundamental understanding of it, we must go still deeper into the matter. Whitsuntide—as symbolical festival—is connected with the most profound mysteries, with the holiest spiritual qualities of humanity—that is why it is so difficult to talk about it. Today I should like at least to touch on just a few things.

What the Whitsuntide Festival symbolises, the underlying principle from which it receives its deep inner meaning, is preserved in a single manuscript copy⁶ which is to be found in the Vatican Library, where it is guarded with the greatest care. To be sure, no mention is made of Whitsuntide in this manuscript, but it certainly tells of that for which Whitsuntide is only the outer symbol. Hardly anyone has seen this manuscript, unless he has been initiated into the deepest secrets of the Catholic Church, or has been able to read it in the Astral Light.⁷ One copy is possessed by a personality who has been very much misunderstood in the world, but who is beginning to interest today's historians. I could equally well have said ‘was possessed’ instead of ‘is possessed’, but it would thereby cause a lack of clarity. Therefore I say again: a copy is in the possession of the Count of St. Germain,⁸ who is the only existing source of information about it.

I should like to give a few hints about this from a theosophical point of view. We shall be led thereby to something intimately connected with the evolution of mankind during the fifth Root Race. Man assumed his present-day form during the third Root Race, the time of ancient Lemuria, developed it further during the fourth Root Race, the time of ancient Atlantis, and then progressed to the fifth Root Race with what he had thus acquired. Whoever heard my Atlantis lectures⁹ will remember that a vivid memory of those times still existed among the Greeks.

To find our bearings,¹⁰ we must get a little insight into two currents belonging to our fifth Root Race, which are active as hidden powers in the souls of men and are often in conflict with one another. The one current is most clearly and best represented by what we call the Egyptian, Indian and South European outlook on life. Everything belonging later to Judaism and even to Christianity contains a little of that. But in our European culture, on the other hand, this has been intermingled with that other current which is to be found in ancient Persia and—if we disregard what the anthropologists and etymologists say and go deeper into the matter—we find it again stretching westwards from Persia to the regions of the Teutons.

Of these two currents¹¹ I would maintain that two mighty and important spiritual intuitions underlie them. The one was best understood by the ancient Rishis. To them was revealed the intuition of beings of a higher order, the so-called Devas.¹² He who has undergone occult training and can carry out investigations into these matters will know what Devas are. These purely spiritual beings, of the Astral or Mental Plane, have a twofold inner nature, whereas man's nature is threefold. For man consists of body, soul and spirit, but the Deva nature—as far as can be investigated—consists only of soul and spirit. It may possess other members, but we are unable to find them, even by occult means. The Deva is an ensouled spirit. The impulses, emotions, desires and wishes which live invisibly within man, but are seen as light effects by the seer, these soul powers, this soul body, which constitutes man's inner being, supported by the physical body, is the lowest body which the Devas possess. We can regard it as their body. The intuitive faculty of the Indian was concerned mainly with the worshipping of these Devas. The man of India sees these Devas all around. He sees them as creating powers when he penetrates the veil of outward appearance. This intuition is fundamental to the outlook on life of the peoples of the Southern Zone! It is expressed most powerfully in the Egyptians' conception of the world.

The other intuition was the basis upon which the ancient Persian mysticism was founded, and this led to the veneration of beings who were also only twofold in their nature: the Asuras. They, too, possessed what we call soul, but the soul organ was enclosed within a physical body developed in sublime and titanic fashion. The Indian view of the world, which clung to the Deva worship, looked upon the Asuras as something inferior; whereas those who inclined to the viewpoint of the Northern peoples adhered to the Asuras,¹³ to physical nature. Thus there developed in the Northern Zone more especially the impulse towards controlling the things of the sense world in a material way, towards an ordering of the world of realities by means of the highest technical advancement, through physical arts and so on. Nowadays there is nobody who still persists in Asura worship, but there are many among us who still have something of this within them. Thence comes the tendency towards the materialistic side of life and that is the basic tendency of the Northern peoples. Whoever acknowledges purely materialistic principles can be sure that he has something of the Asuras in his nature.

Among the Asura adherents there then developed a strange undertone of feeling. It first made its appearance in the spiritual life of Persia. The Persians developed a kind of fear of the Deva nature. They experienced fear, apprehension and dread in face of what was of a purely soul-spirit nature. That was the reason for the great contrast which we now observe between the Persian and the Indian attitude. In the Persian attitude those things were often venerated which to the Indians were bad and inferior, and just those things were avoided by the Persians which the Indians held in veneration. The Persian experience of the world was steeped in a mood of soul which feared and avoided a being of the nature of a Deva. In short, it was the picture of Satan which arose in this view of the world. Lucifer, the being of Spirit and Soul, became an object of fear and dread. That is where we have to look for the origin of the belief in the Devil. This mood of soul has also been absorbed into the modern view of the world; Lucifer became a much feared and avoided figure in the Middle Ages. Lucifer was definitely shunned.

We learn particulars about it¹⁴ in the manuscript already mentioned. If we follow in it the course of earth evolution we shall find that in the middle of the third Root Race, the Lemurian Epoch, mankind was clothed in physical matter. It is a wrong conception when theosophists believe that reincarnation had no beginning and will have no ending. Reincarnation started in the Lemurian Age and will cease again at the beginning of the sixth Root Race or Age. It is only a certain period of time in earth evolution during which mankind reincarnates. It was preceded by a most spiritual condition which precluded any necessity for reincarnation and there will follow again a spiritual state which will likewise obviate the necessity for reincarnation.

Simultaneously with its first incarnation in the Lemurian Age the untarnished human spirit, consisting of Atma-Buddhi-Manas, sought its primal physical incarnation. The physical development of the earth with its animal-like creatures had not evolved so far at that time, the whole, of this animal-human organism was not so far advanced then that it could have incorporated the human spirit. But a part of it, a certain group of animal-like beings had evolved so far that the seed of the human spirit could descend into it to give form to the human body.

Some of the individualities who incarnated at that time formed the small nucleus of those who later spread over the whole earth as the so-called Adepts. They were the original Adepts, not those whom we call initiated today. Those whom we call initiates today did not go through incarnation at that time . Not all incarnated at that time who would have been able to find human-animal bodies, only some of them. Some others were opposed to the process of incarnation for a particular reason. They delayed that until the time of the Fourth Age. The Bible hints at that in a concealed and profound way: ‘The Sons of God saw the daughters of men¹⁵ that they were fair and they took them wives of all which they chose.’

That is to say, the incarnation of those who had waited began at a later time. We call this group the ‘Sons of Wisdom’, and it almost appears as if there were a kind of arrogance, a sort of pride about them. We shall make an exception of the small group of Adepts. Had these other ones also incarnated at the earlier period, mankind would never have been able to acquire the clarity of consciousness which he possesses today. He would have been held fast in a dull trance-like state of consciousness. He would have developed that kind of consciousness which is to be found in people who have been hypnotised, sleepwalkers and the like. In short, man would have remained in a kind of dreamlike state. But one thing would have been lacking then—one thing of great importance, if not of the utmost importance—he would have lacked a feeling of freedom, a capacity to exercise his individual discrimination with regard to good and evil by means of his own consciousness, his own human ego.

This postponement of incarnation—in the form it assumed in consequence of that feeling of dread of the Devas which I characterised—this is called in the Book of Genesis ‘the Fall of Man’. The Devas delayed their incarnation and only descended to the earth to take possession of physical bodies when humanity had reached a further Stage in its development. Through this they were able to evolve a more mature form of consciousness than would have been the case earlier.

Thus, you see, the cost of man's freedom was the deterioration of his nature, by waiting for his incarnation till he could descend into denser physical conditions. A deep understanding of this has been preserved in Greek mythology. Had man descended earlier into incarnation—so says the Greek myth—then that would have happened which Zeus wanted when man was still living in Paradise. He wished to make man happy—but as an unconscious being. Clear consciousness would have been possessed solely by the gods and man would have been without a feeling of freedom. The rebellion of the Lucifer Spirit, the Deva Spirit within humanity, who wished to descend in order to rise up again out of his own freedom, is symbolised by the saga of Prometheus!¹⁶ But Prometheus had to suffer for his endeavours by having an eagle—symbol of inordinate desire—gnawing at his liver and causing him the most deadly pain.

Man had thus descended more deeply and now had to achieve through his own free conscious activity what he would have attained by magical arts and powers. But because he had descended deeper he must suffer pains and torment. This is also indicated in the Bible with the words: ‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.¹⁷ In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread’, etc. That is no less than to say: mankind must raise itself again with the help of culture.

Through the figure of Prometheus, Greek mythology has symbolised free humanity struggling towards culture. He is the representative of suffering mankind, but at the same time the giver of freedom. The one who sets Prometheus free is Heracles, of whom it is said that he underwent initiation in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Whoever descended to the underworld was an initiate, for the descent into the underworld is a technical term denoting initiation. This journey to the underworld is attributed to Heracles, Odysseus and to all who are initiates who wish to lead man of his epoch to the source of primeval wisdom, to a life of the spirit.

Had mankind retained the attitude of Lemurian times we would have been dreamers today. Through his Deva nature, mankind fructified his lower nature. Out of his self-awareness, out of his awareness of freedom, man now has to reawaken that spark of awareness which he brought down from heaven in justified presumption; he has to reawaken that spiritual knowledge which he had received without his own striving when he was still unfree. There lies in human nature itself that satanic rebelliousness which, however, in the form of luciferic aspiration is the only safeguard of our freedom. And out of this freedom we shall again wrest spiritual life. It will be reawakened in the man of the fifth Root Race, our present epoch. This form of consciousness will again be conveyed through initiates. It will not be a dreamy, but a clear consciousness. It is the Heraclean spirits, the initiated ones, who will help mankind forward and reveal to him his Deva nature, his knowledge of the spirit. That was also the endeavour of all the great founders of religion, that they should restore to mankind the knowledge of the spirit which had been lost in physiological existence. The fifth epoch still contains much of the material life within it. This materialistic culture of the present time shows us how far man has become embedded in purely physical-physiological nature, as Prometheus was enmeshed in his chains. But it is equally certain that the vulture, the symbol of lust and craving, gnawing at our liver, will be thrust aside by spiritual men. That is the goal to which the initiates would lead mankind through consciousness of self, by means of such movements as the theosophical movement, so that it can raise itself up in full freedom.

The moment which we have to regard as the one in which spiritual life poured into the self-conscious human being is indicated precisely in the New Testament. It is alluded to in the profoundest of the Gospels the one which is misunderstood by today's theologians, the St. John's Gospel, when it speaks of the Feast of the Tabernacles which was attended by Jesus. The founder of Christianity there speaks of the outpouring of spiritual life with which humanity was to be endowed. It is a remarkable passage. For the Feast of the Tabernacles, the people had to visit a spring from which water flowed. There followed a festival which intimated to man that he should call to mind again his spiritual nature, his Deva and spiritual strivings. The water which flowed there was to remind him of the soul and spirit world. After repeated refusals Jesus finally went up to the feast. The following happened on the last day of the feast John 7, 37): ‘In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.’ Those who drank celebrated a feast in which the spiritual life was brought to recollection. But Jesus connected something else with it, as can be seen in the following words of St. John's Gospel: ‘He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified)’.

Here the Whitsuntide mystery is indicated. It is intimated that man has to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. When the moment arrives in which man is able to kindle the spark of spiritual life within him, when the physiological nature of man is able to attempt the ascent by means of its own forces, then will the Holy Spirit descend upon him and the time of spiritual awakening will be at hand.

Man descended as far as the physical body and so, in contrast to the nature of the Devas, he is built up out of three principles: Spirit, Soul and Body. The Devas are at a higher stage than man, but they do not have to surmount physical nature as man does. This physical nature has to be transfigured so that it can absorb the life of the spirit. Man's consciousness in the body, his physiological consciousness of today, will itself be able to enkindle the spark of spiritual existence in freedom.

Christ's sacrifice is an example which shows that man will be able to unfold a higher form of consciousness out of his life in the physical plane. His lower individuality lives in the physical body, but it must be enkindled so that the higher personality can develop. Only then can the ‘rivers of living water’ flow from man's ‘belly’. Then can the Holy Spirit appear and be poured forth upon humanity. Man, as an ego being, must be as though dead to physiological existence.

Herein lies what is truly Christian, and it also embodies the deeper mystery contained in the Whitsuntide Festival. Man lives primarily in his lower organism, in his consciousness imbued with desires. It is right that this is so, because it is only this consciousness which can provide him with awareness of his true goal, to attain freedom. He should not remain there, however, but must raise his ego to the nature of a Deva. He must develop the Deva within him, bring it to birth so that it becomes a spirit of healing—a Holy Spirit. To that end he must consciously sacrifice his earthly body, he must experience that ‘dying and becoming’ so that he does not remain a ‘gloomy guest’¹⁸ on this dark earth.

Thus the Easter mystery is only revealed in its fullness when taken together with the Whitsuntide mystery. We see the human ego, exemplified in its Divine Representative, divesting itself of the lower ego and dying in order to be completely transfigured in its physical nature and offered up again to the Godhead. Ascension is the symbol of this. When man has become transfigured in the physical body. has offered it up again to the Spirit, he will be ripe to receive the outpouring of spiritual life, to experience what is called the ‘coming of the Holy Spirit’ according to the explanation of One, who is mankind's greatest Representative. Therefore it is also said: ‘And there are three that bear witness in earth,¹⁹ the Spirit, the water and the blood.’ Whitsuntide is the outpouring of the Spirit into man.

The highest goal of humanity is symbolically expressed by means of the Whitsuntide festival; that is, that mankind must progress once more from an intellectual to a spiritual life just as Prometheus was set free from his suffering by Heracles, so will mankind be set free by the power of the Spirit. By descending into matter, mankind has attained self-consciousness. Through the fact that he ascends again. he will become a self-aware Deva. Those who worshipped the Asuras and regarded the Devas as beings of a satanic nature, who did not wish to descend into the innermost depths, regarded this descent as something devilish.

That, too, is referred to in Greek mythology. The one whose state of consciousness is not free—the contemplator—the one who does not wish to win redemption in complete freedom and therefore is the opponent of Prometheus—is Epimetheus. Zeus gives him Pandora's box, the contents of which—sufferings and plagues—fall on mankind when it is opened. The only gift which is left behind is hope; the hope that one day, in a future state he will also progress to this higher, clear consciousness. He is left with the hope that he will be set free. Prometheus advises him against accepting this doubtful gift from the god Zeus. Epimetheus does not listen to his brother, but accepts the gift. The gift which Epimetheus receives is not worth as much as the one belonging to his brother Prometheus.

Thus we see that there are two ways of life open to men. Some of them cling to a feeling of freedom and—although it is dangerous to develop spirituality—they search for it in freedom nevertheless. The others are the ones who find their satisfaction in the dull round of life and in blind faith, and who suspect danger in the luciferic endeavours of their fellow men. The founders of the Church's outward doctrine have distorted the deeper meaning of luciferic striving. The ancient teachings on the subject are contained in hidden manuscripts²⁰ in undisclosed places, where they have hardly been seen by anyone. They are available to a few people who are able to see them in the Astral Light, and otherwise only to a few initiates. The path is fraught with danger, but it is the only one which leads to the sublime goal of spiritual freedom.

The spirit of man should be free and not dull. That is also the aim of Christianity. Health and healing are connected with holy. A spirit which is holy is able to heal, it sets men free from sufferings and torments. Healthy and free is the human being who is released from the bondage of his physiological state. For only the free spirit is the healthy one, whose body is no longer gnawed by an eagle.

Thus Whitsuntide can be looked upon as the symbol of the freeing of the human spirit, as the great symbol of mankind's struggle for freedom, for consciousness of his own freedom.

If the Easter Festival is the festival of resurrection in nature, then the Whitsuntide Festival is the symbol of the becoming conscious of the human spirit, the festival of those who know and understand and—penetrated through and through by this—go in search of freedom.

Those spiritual movements of modern times which lead to a perception of the spiritual world in clear day consciousness—not in trance or under hypnosis—are the ones which lead to an understanding of such important symbols as this. The clear consciousness, which only the spirit can set free, is what unites us in the Theosophical Society. Not the word alone, but the spirit gives it its meaning. The spirit which emanates from the great Masters, which flows through a few people only who are able to say: ‘I know they are there, the great Adepts, who are the founders of our spiritual movement—not our society’²¹—this spirit flows into our present civilisation and bestows on it the impulse for the future.

Let a spark of understanding of this Holy Spirit flow again into the misunderstood Whitsuntide Festival, then it will be revivified and gain meaning once more. We want to live in a world that makes sense. Whoever celebrates festivals without sparing them a thought is a follower of Epimetheus. Man must see what binds him to his surroundings and also to what is invisible in nature. We have to know where we stand. For we humans are not confined to a dull, dreamy, semi-existence, we are destined to develop a free, fully conscious unfolding of our whole being.

• 1. The lecture had probably been announced at short notice, as Rudolf Steiner had only just returned from a visit to London.
• 2. Annie Besant, 1847–1933, President of the Theosophical Society from 1907, spoke once before in Berlin on the occasion of the founding of the German Section in October 1902. In September 1904, she went on a lecture tour of several German cities at the invitation of Rudolf Steiner. Her lectures, which were held in English, were reported by him in German.
• 3. These two public lectures of 30th May and 6th June 1904: ‘History of Spiritism, Hypnotism and Somnabulism,’ were only exceptionally held on Mondays, otherwise Monday evenings were regularly taken up with Members' lectures.
• 4. Three lectures, 26th May, 2nd and 9th June 1904 (not translated).
• 5. These lectures had been announced for April, but were not held until the autumn of 1904 (not translated).
• 6. This was made public in H.P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, (1888) Book 2, page 239. There it says: ‘Now the Vatican MSS. of the Kabala—a single copy of which (in Europe) is said to have been in the possession of Count St. Germain, contains the most complete exposition of the doctrine ...’
• 7. Dr. Steiner here refers to Blavatsky's ability, known to his audience, whereby she was able to read rare manuscripts in the Astral Light, as is described by Constance Wachtmeister, among others, in Reminiscences of H.P. Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine, 1893.
• 8. One of the most enigmatic and controversial personalities of the eighteenth century. His birth date and the date of his death, as well as his true name cannot be established with any certainty. According to a lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Neuchatel on 27th September 1911 (translated in Anthroposophical Quarterly, winter, 1960), the name does not only refer to one personality, but to others too. In the true bearer of this name lives the individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz. See also lecture 5 given on 4th November 1904, which is included in this volume and the notes thereto.
• 9. This refers to lectures given in January 1904, of which, however, there are no notes.
• 10. The notes of Vegelahn express this in the following way: ‘To find our bearings, we must get a little insight into two currents of the present day which are hidden in the souls of men of the fifth Root Race and are often in conflict with one another. The one current is best represented in the Indian and South European confessions and also in the outlook on life of the Jewish peoples and the Babylonians—and the other is contained in the confessions and outlook of the Persians, westward of Persia to the regions of the Teutons.’
• 11. See: The East in the Light of the West, fifth lecture, Munich, 27th August 1909.
• 12. The Indian name for the gods of Devachan, the heavenly world.
• 13. Indian—Suras = gods (from Asu = breath) became non-gods = A-suras. In the old Oriental religions and also later by Rudolf Steiner used as the name for satanic beings. In connection with this lecture, however, it is used in the sense of Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, (‘On the Myth of the Fallen Angel, in its various aspects’) p.500. ‘Esoterically, the Asuras, transformed subsequently into evil spirits and lower gods, who are eternally at war with the great deities—are the gods of the Secret Wisdom. In the oldest portions of the Rig Veda, they are the spiritual and the divine, the term Asura being used for the Supreme Spirit and being the same as the great Ahura of the Zoroastrians. There was a time when the gods Indra, Angi, and Varuna themselves belonged to the Asuras.’ Only in Atlantean times, at the transition from Lemuria to Atlantis, were these originally high gods transformed into non-gods.
  
  In the notes of a hitherto unpublished lecture by Rudolf Steiner, given in Berlin, 17th October 1904, the following is said: ‘If we wish to understand the point of view of spiritual evolution we must be clear about an important event of the Atlantean epoch. Those beings which had originally been spiritual, now appeared as revolutionaries striving for independence. Suras now became Asuras. Until this time they had taken no part in evolution. They are those powers which, just as in our day, represent the intellectual and spiritual side of human nature. This side of Lucifer's nature is that which also stood for Christianity during the first centuries. There are two documents referring to that, one is in the Vatican and a copy of it is in the possession of the most thoroughly initiated Christian of the western world: The Count of St. Germain.’
• 14. It is to be noted that the text of the paragraph beginning with these words is defective. See in this respect Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, ‘The History of the Fourth Race,’ also lecture by Dr. Steiner, Dornach, 18th January 1920 in which the date of the cessation of physical incarnation is given as 6th. Millenium, A.D.
• 15. Genesis 6, 1–2. See also Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, Part 2, ‘On the Myth of the Fallen Angel, in its various aspects.’ In the story of Noah from The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine it says of this event: ‘... this time men began to multiply on the earth, and the children of God, that is to say, of Seth ... saw the daughters of men, that is to say, of Cain, and were overcome by concupiscence and took them to their wives.’
• 16. This is also linked by Rudolf Steiner to Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Book 2.
• 17. Genesis 3:16.
• 18. ‘Und so lang du das nicht hast,
  Dieses: Stirb und werde!
  Bist du nur ein triiber Gast
  Auf der dunklen Erde.
  
  Concluding verse of a poem by Goethe called Selige Sehnsucht (‘Holy Longing’).
• 19. First Epistle of John, v. 7. Rudolf Steiner had already explained this passage from the Epistle in detail in his lecture on 29th April 1904. According to that, the present-day materialistic concepts of blood and water must not be applied here. When it is said: ‘There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.’
  
  This means in theosophical terminology: Atma, Buddhi, Manas, the three higher principles. And when it is said later on: ‘And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood,’ it means the three lower principles, the three soul attributes. The astral body, as well as the blood, (not our physical blood), are the lowest parts of the soul. Jewish esotericism believes that movement of the blood is caused by the astral body and that is correct. All influences which do not directly pass through the soul, but still have an effect on the body are called the ‘blood’ in Jewish esoteric teaching. It is the active principle, the motivator. We call only the red liquid which flows through the body ‘blood.’ By water is signified ‘Kama’ in every occult language—feelings, emotions, passions, etc: ‘And now I shall tell you why this is called water. You must get acquainted with the concept that humanity today has grown accustomed to visualising everything in a much more materialistic way than he did formerly. If you picture to yourself an old cabbalist, he did not regard water as just a flowing element, but as an image and he arrived at that in the following way. He said to himself; the water is inhabited by those animals which we reckon as the most primitive. Animals evolved originally out of the liquid element: sea animals, jellyfish, amphibians. These then came out of the water onto the land. It was only out of water that emotions and feelings came about ... We distinguish the lower part of the soul, which stirs the blood and makes it pulsate and causes pleasure and dislike and all such other painful experiences. And that he calls water because from water is derived that element of soul. And then we have the thinking part of the soul which is Spirit.’
• 20. See note 6.
• 21. Rudolf Steiner expressed himself in a similar way on the 2nd January 1905, in a letter to a Member who was about to be accepted into the Esoteric School: ‘You know that behind the whole theosophical movement there are highly evolved beings whom we call “Masters” or “Mahatmas”. These sublime beings have already completed the path which the rest of humanity still has to tread. They are now active as the great “Teachers of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Human Perception”. They are already engaged in work on higher planes to which the rest of mankind will evolve during the course of the next periods of development (so-called “Rounds”). They do their work on the physical plane through their “messengers”, the first of whom was H.P. Blavatsky—I mean the first as regards the theosophical movement. The Masters never found an outer Organisation of society, nor would they administer one. The Theosophical Society was formed by its founder Members. (H.P. Blavatsky, Olcott and others) in order to promote the work of the Masters on the physical plane, but these Masters themselves have never exerted any influence on the Society as such. It is in its whole character and leadership purely and simply the work of men living on the earth.’ See in this context also lecture 16, given on 22nd October 1905 (contained in this volume).

I mentioned already¹ last time that a great number of occult secrets lie hidden in the story of Cain and Abel. I wish to point out certain things today, but right at the beginning I would stress that the relationship between Cain and Abel—with regard to its deeper aspect, of course—is an allegory for very profound mysteries² which we will only be able to reveal in part on the basis of the conceptions we hold.

If we take the five books of the Pentateuch, we shall find therein many things which indicate the development of mankind since the Lemurian Epoch. The story of Adam and Eve and their descendants is not simply to be taken literally, in a naive fashion. I would ask you to take into account that in the Pentateuch, in Enoch,³ in the Psalms and some important chapters in the Gospels, in the Epistle to the Hebrews and some Epistles of Paul and in the Apocalypse, we are dealing wholly with the work of initiates, so that in these writings it behoves us to search for an occult meaning. If the Bible is not just read thoughtlessly—thoughtlessly in a higher sense—many things will become apparent. And I should like to draw your attention to something which may easily be overlooked, but must be taken quite literally if we are to see that nothing is without a meaning in the Bible and that it is quite easy for this meaning to escape us.

Take the first sentence from the fifth chapter of Genesis:⁴ ‘This is the book of the generations of man. In the days that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; male-female created he him; and blessed him, and called his name Adam, in the day when he was created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:’

One must take the literal rendering. Adam himself was simply called a man. Male-female created he him; not yet sexually defined, asexual. And how was he created? In the likeness of God.

And moreover, in the second sentence, ‘In so and so many years’—that indicates a long span of time—‘Adam begat a son Seth, after his likeness’. In the beginning of the time of Adam we have men in the likeness of God; at the end of Adam's time after the likeness of Adam, after a human likeness. Earlier, man was made in the likeness of God: later, in Adam's likeness.

We thus have, to start with, human beings who are all similar in appearance and all created after the image of God. They were propagated by asexual means. We must be clear about the fact that they all retained the same form which they had at the beginning, so that father looked like son and grandson also looked like son. What first caused mankind to change, to become differentiated? In what way did it change? Through the fact that two were engaged in propagation. The son or daughter looked like the father on the one hand, like the mother on the other.

Now just imagine you have a race of people which were originally similar to God in appearance and they were propagated not by sexual means, but asexually: the descendants are all similar in appearance to their forebears. There is no mixing of the race. The differentiation first came about in the Seth period. But between the times of Adam and Seth something else occurred. Namely, before the transition from Adam to Seth two others were born, who were important representatives: Cain and Abel. They came between and represent a transitional stage. They were not born at a time when propagation had already taken on a strongly marked character of sexuality. We can infer this from the meaning of the names Cain and Abel. Abel is the same as ‘pneuma’ in Greek,⁵ which means ‘spirit’, and if we look at that from the point of view of sexuality, it denotes a decidedly female character. Cain, on the other hand, means almost literally ‘the masculine,’ so that in Cain and Abel the masculine and feminine principles confront one another. Not yet on an organic level: they tend to differentiate on a spiritual level.

Now I would ask you to hold that fast in your minds. Originally mankind was male-female. Later on it was divided into a male and a female gender. The male, the more material race, was represented in Cain, the female, the more spiritual, in Abel-Seth. A differentiation has occurred. That is symbolised in the words: ‘Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.’ (Genesis 4:2)

‘Ground’ (Boden) has the significance of the ‘physical plane’ in all ancient languages and the three aggregate conditions of the physical plane are: the solid earth, the water and the air. ‘Cain was a tiller of the ground’ in its original sense means: he learnt to live on the physical plane, he became a man on the physical plane. That was the male characteristic. It consisted of being strong and robust in order to cultivate the soil and then retire again from the physical to the higher planes.

‘Abel was a keeper of sheep.’ As a shepherd one accepts life as the Creator has presented it. One does not cultivate the herds, one tends them. Therefore Abel is the representative of the sex which does not reach spirituality through its own individual effort of understanding, but only receives it as a revelation of the Godhead and then merely tends it. The keeper of flocks, the guardian of that which has been placed on the earth, that is Abel. The one who creates things for himself, that is Cain. Cain lays the foundation of zither playing and other arts (Genesis 4:21–22).

Now comes a contrast in their attitude towards the Godhead. Abel receives from the spirit and offers up the best, the highest fruits of the spirit. God regards the offering of Abel with satisfaction—of course, because it is what He Himself has bestowed on the earth. Cain makes a different claim. He turns to God with the products of his own intelligence. That is something quite foreign to the nature of God, because it is something which man has achieved out of his own freedom.

Cain is the type of man who aspires to the arts and sciences. That has nothing to do with the deity to begin with. A profound truth is expressed here. He who has occult experience knows that the arts and sciences, in spite of having made man free, do not lead him to the spirit. Rather are they the things which lead him away from what is truly spiritual. The arts have sprung up from man's inner being, which have their roots in the earthly plane. That has no immediate appeal for the deity. It produces the conflict which arises when the smoke of Abel's offering, the spirit implanted in the earth by God himself, is accepted by the divine worlds, but the smoke from Cain's offering is rejected and remains on the earth. What is independently produced remains on the earth, like the offering of Cain.

That, too, is the same as the contrast between male and female. Female is inspired by what is received directly from God. ‘Pneuma’ is achieved through conception. What Cain has to offer is human work on the physical plane itself. That is the contrast between female and male spirit. Here these two are fundamentally opposed to one another.

Man is not only a physical being but is spiritually both male and female at the same time: he is both the one who receives and allows himself to be inspired and the one who works upon the inspirations and combines them through his intellect. These two functions were now separated—we can regard male and female simply as a symbol from now on—from now on the principle of inspiration was transferred to those who were like Abel, who remained shepherds and priests. It was not transferred to the others. They dedicated themselves to the worldly things of science and the arts and confined themselves purely to earthly activities.

That could not have taken place without a change occurring in the human being. While man was still male-female, it was impossible for him to separate spiritual wisdom and scientific knowledge. Only through a definite separation into the two sexes could man's brain be brought to the pitch where it could function. The brain became male,⁶ the deeper nature became female. Mankind can only be productive through his physical nature. Through that he produces something—namely, descendants. But a spirit, inasmuch as it is connected with the brain, is male and confined to productivity on the physical plane. Therefore Cain and Abel are the representative types of these two kinds of thinking.

Through this separation, it came about that in the propagation of the human species the offspring ceased to be merely identical copies of their parents and became differentiated. I would ask you to visualise the following. The greater the importance attached to sex, the more the differentiation that resulted. If we were dealing with purely asexual propagation then the new generation would look just like the one that had gone before. A variation would not occur in the sequence of the generations. Variation only comes about when a mixture occurs. And how was this mixture made possible? Through the fact that the masculine element committed itself to the earth. Cain was the one who became a tiller of the soil and transformed it. This outward difference in the generations would not have come about in man if a part of humanity had not descended onto the physical plane. It was no longer as it had been before when propagation had descended on mankind from the higher planes. Something was now introduced into man's make-up because he had extracted something from the physical earth. Now man takes on the likeness of what he has won for himself on the physical plane and he carries it up with him to higher planes. The physical is the mark of Cain. The physical plane and the effect it has on man is the mark set upon Cain.

Now man is fully united with the earth so that there is a contrast between Cain and Abel, a contrast between the Sons of God and the sons of the physical plane, between the Abel-Seth generation who are the Sons of God and the Cain generation, the sons of the physical plane.

You will now understand how it is that the episode of Cain and Abel falls into the period between Adam and Seth. A new principle entered into mankind, the principle of heredity, the original sin consisting of being dissimilar to the generation which had gone before.

But there still remain some Sons of God. Not all of those belonging to the Abel line were eradicated. And now we see what took place when to the question: ‘Where is Abel, thy brother?’ Cain answered: ‘Am I my brother's keeper?’ No man would have said that previously. That can only be said by an understanding which reacts as though acoustically [?] to the spiritual. Now the principle of struggle, of opposition, is added to the principle of love; now egoism is born: “Am I my brother's keeper?”

Those who still remained of the Abel line were Sons of God, they remained akin to the divine. But they now had to guard themselves against entering the earthly sphere. And from this resulted what was to become the principle of asceticism among those who dedicated their lives to the service of God. It became a sin for such a dedicated one to have anything to do with those who had committed themselves to the affairs of earth. It was a sin when ‘The Sons of God⁷ saw the daughters of men that they were fair’ and took them wives; they took them wives from the daughters of Cain.

From this union resulted a race of men⁸ which is hardly even mentioned in the published books of the Old Testament, but is only hinted at; it is a race that is not perceptible to physical eyes. It is called ‘Rakshasas’ in occult language⁹ and is similar to the ‘Asuras’ of the Indians. It consists of demonic beings who really did exist at one time and who acted seductively upon the human race and caused its downfall. This flirtation of the Sons of God with the daughters of men produced a race which worked particularly seductively upon the Turanians, the members of the fourth sub-race of the Atlanteans, and led to the destruction of humanity. Some things were preserved and carried over into the new world. The Deluge is the flood which destroyed Atlantis. Men who were seduced by the Rakshasas disappeared by degrees.

And now I have to tell you something which will in any case appear extraordinary to you, which is particularly important. It has been an occult mystery for the outside world for many centuries and will seem incredible to most people, but is nevertheless true. I can assure you that every occultist has often convinced himself of its truth through what is called the Akashic Record. But so it is.

These Rakshasas were real beings, they really existed—actively and effectively—as seducers of mankind. They continued to influence human desires until the time when Christ incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddhi principle itself became present on the earth in a human body. Now you may believe it or not: this is something of cosmic significance, of significance which reaches beyond the earthly plane. It is not for nothing that the Bible expresses it thus:¹⁰ ‘Christ descended into the forecourts of Hell.’ It was not human beings He met there, He was confronted by spiritual beings. The Rakshasa beings were brought thereby into a state of paralysis and lethargy!¹¹ They were at the same time kept in check so that they became unable to move. They could only be lamed in this manner because they were being opposed from two sides. That would not have been possible if there had not been two natures combined together in Jesus of Nazareth: on the one hand the old Chela nature, deeply connected with the physical plane, which could also work effectively on the physical plane and through its power could hold it in balance: on the other hand there was Christ Himself who was a purely spiritual being. That is the cosmic problem which is fundamental to Christianity. Something occurred at that time in occult spheres; it was the banishment of the enemies of mankind which has its echo in the Saga of the Antichrist, who was put in chains but will make his appearance again, if not opposed once more by the Christian principle in its primal force.

The whole occult striving of the Middle Ages was directed towards nullifying the effect of the Rakshasas. Those whose vision extends to the higher planes have long foreseen that the moment when this could happen might be at the end of the nineteenth century, at the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Nostradamus,¹² who worked from a tower which was open to the heavens, who brought succour during the Great Plague, was able to foretell the future. He wrote a number of prophetic verses in which you can read about the war of 1870 and several prophecies about Marie-Antoinette¹³ which have already been fulfilled. In these ‘Centuries’ by Nostradamus (Century 10, 75) the following prophecy can be found: At the close of the nineteenth century a Hermes Brother will come from Asia and bring unity to mankind. The Theosophical Society is nothing less than a fulfillment of this prophecy of Nostradamus. The annulment of the Rakshasas and the reestablishment of the primal mysteries is an aim of the Theosophical Society.

You know that Jesus Christ remained on the earth for ten years after His death.¹⁴ The Pistis Sophia¹⁵ contains the profoundest theosophical teachings, it is much more profound than Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism.¹⁶ Jesus incarnated again and again. His task was to renew the mystery wisdom. This is no mere fact of cultural or historical interest, but it is the fact I have described to you, which is well known to all occultists, namely, the struggle against the Rakshasas. You see there is a deep and important occult secret lying hidden therein.

You might ask: Why is that said in allegorical form and not stated openly? I must here remind you that the great teachers of humanity such as Moses, the Indian Rishis, Hermes, Christ, the first Christian teachers, all adhered to reincarnation. And this allegorical way of communicating wisdom had a good reason. When, for instance, the Druid Priest spoke of ‘Nifelheim’ or ‘Ymir the Giant’¹⁷ and so on, that was, of course, no mere piece of poetic folk lore. Rather, it was because he knew that what he was then conveying to his pupil in the form of a fairy story would, when that spirit reincarnated, have prepared it to understand the truth in a more complete form. It is not faith, but knowledge, which inspired these fairy stories, that is, the experience of reincarnation. Even the denial of the reality of reincarnation—from the third century A.D. onwards—was made on the premises of reincarnation, because it was the intention to involve¹⁸ so that practically all his spiritual life was taken up into incarnation. For that reason Christianity had no knowledge of reincarnation for 1,500 years. If we were to deny man a knowledge of reincarnation any longer we would be denying him this knowledge for a second time. That, however, would be a great sin, a sin against mankind. But to deny him this knowledge on the first occasion was necessary, for the value of the single life between birth and death had to be acknowledged.

• 1 . At the end of his lecture given on 27th May 1904 with the words: ‘Next time I shall deal with one of the most important legends, which is one you have often heard, but whose inner meaning is so profound that there is hardly anything to match it: the legend of Cain and Abel.’
• 2 . See in this connection: Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, ‘The Divine Hermaphrodite.’ p.124, but also Rudolf Steiner's later cycle: The Effects of Occult Development Upon the Sheaths of Man, ten lectures given in the Hague, 20th–29th March 1913 (London and New York, 1945).
• 3 . Apocryphal Book of the Old Testament.
• 4 . This is a free rendering by Rudolf Steiner of the words of the Old Testament. Instead of ‘male and female created he them,’ Rudolf Steiner substituted: ‘male-female created he him,’ with subsequent corrections of ‘them,’ ‘their,’ etc., into ‘him,’ ‘his,’ etc. On later occasions, Rudolf Steiner often stressed the fact that this first creation of man was a male-female creation. Compare also: Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, eighth lecture and Genesis, Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation, eleventh lecture.
• 5 . See in this connection Rudolf Steiner's The Gospel of St. Matthew, lecture 5.
• 6 . This passage appears to have been imperfectly preserved. One can compare it with passages from lectures 17, 18, 19 and 20, given on 23rd October 1905, and 2nd January 1906, in the present volume.
• 7 . See note 15 of the previous lecture.
• 8 . Genesis 6, 4. ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the Sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men, which were of old, men of renown.’
• 9 . According to H.P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, there are many explanations for this race of the Rakshasas in Oriental esoteric philosophy. See, for instance: The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, p. 288, where it speaks of ‘Rakshasas’ (giant demons) and Daityas (Titans).
  
  A German translation of C.G. Harrison's The Transcendental Universe, which was among the books in Rudolf Steiner's library, may have been used by him in preparing this lecture. In the fifth lecture of the above it speaks of: ‘These semi-human creatures, the progeny of the fallen angels, are known in the Hindu Scriptures as the “Asuras” and are sometimes called “Rakshasas” or demons.’ This makes it plain that, in lecture 2 held on 10th June 1904, Rudolf Steiner conferred a different meaning on the term ‘Asuras’ to the one he had in mind when he lectured on 23rd May 1904 (lecture 1).
• 10. An account of Christ's entry into Hell can be read in the Apocryphal Book of ‘The Acts of Pilate.’
• 11. This passage appears in the notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers in the following form: ‘The Rakshasas were brought into a state of paralysis because they were being opposed from two sides: by the old Chela, who was deeply connected with the physical plane and by a purely spiritual being, the Christ. Their power was thus paralysed from two sides. Something cosmic was effected. This tension, this bottled-up energy, had to be prevented from becoming effective energy. That is the Christ principle in action against the Antichrist.’
  
  C.G. Harrison has the following to say on this subject in the aforementioned book: ‘The Asuras are igneous, or dynamic, in their nature, and their power for evil was terrific. It was destroyed for ever by the advent of Jesus Christ, and they are now, as St. Jude puts it, “reserved in everlasting chains until the judgment of the great day.” (St. Jude evidently derived his knowledge of the subject from the “Book of Enoch”.) Stated in scientific terms, they are held in check, unable to move backwards or forwards, between the earth and the Eighth Sphere at the point of latency, where the attraction of both is equal on all planes, until the “great day” or axidal coincidence, when they will be drawn irresistibly into the vortex of the latter. This text in St. Jude has been unfortunately misunderstood, and supposed to apply to Lucifer and the first fall of the angels; hence the Miltonic and medieval myths.’
• 12. Actually Michel de Notre Dame (1503–1566). French astronomer and medical doctor. Famous on account of his Prophesies, written in French verse.
• 13. 1755–1793: daughter of the Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa; became Queen of France in 1774 and ended her life on the scaffold, not heeding the warning of the Count of St. Germain.
• 14. Rudolf Steiner assumed that his audience was familiar with the work of the English theosophist, G.R.S. Mead Pistis Sophia, A Gnostic Gospel, London, 1896, which begins with the words: ‘It came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years speaking with his disciples ...’
• 15. The title of a work assumed to be the same as The Apocalypse of Sophia, composed by Velentius, the most learned doctor of the Gnosis who lived for thirty years in Egypt in the latter half of the second century.
  
  The only MS of the Pistis Sophia known to exist is the Askew manuscript, bought by the British Museum from the heirs of Dr. Askew at the end of the eighteenth century.
• 16. Published in 1883. See also, The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century and its Relation to Modern Culture.
• 17. Refer to notes for lecture 3 given on 30th September 1904, (included in this volume) and also the first and thirty-first lectures in Foundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982.
• 18. See twenty-third lecture in Foundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982.

All of our medieval stories—Parsifal, the Round Table, Hartmann von Aue—reveal mystical truths in esoteric form, even though they are usually only understood in their outward aspect. Where do we search for their origin? We must look to a time before the spread of Christianity. Into Christianity was blended what had lived in Ireland, Scotland ... [Gap in the notes.] We are led to a particular centre whence this spiritual life was disseminated. The spiritual life [of Europe] emanated from a mother lodge in Scandinavia, ‘Drottes’ Lodge. Druids = Oak. For this reason the Germanic peoples were said to receive their instructions beneath oak trees.

‘Drottes’, or Druids, were ancient Germanic initiates. They still existed in England till Elizabethan times. All that we read in the Edda or can find in the ancient German sagas refers back to the temples of the ‘Drottes’ or Druids. The author of these tales was always an initiate. The sagas not only have a symbolical or allegorical meaning, but something else as well.

Example: We know the saga of Baldur. We know that he is the hope of the gods, that he is killed by the god Loki with a branch of mistletoe. The God of Light is killed. This whole story has a deep mystery content which all who underwent initiation not only had to learn, but had to experience.

The Mysteries. Initiation: the first deed was called the search for the body of Baldur. It was supposed that Baldur was always alive. The search consisted of a complete enlightenment about the nature of man. For Baldur was the human being who has gone astray. Once upon a time the human being was not as he is today, he was undifferentiated, not bowed down by passionate experiences, but composed of finer ephemeral substance. Baldur, the radiant human being. When truly understood, all things which appear to us in the form of symbols must be understood in a higher sense. This human being who has not descended into what today we call matter, is Baldur. He lives in each one of us. The Druid priest had to search for the higher self within him. He had to become clear about where this differentiation took place, between the higher and the lower ... [Gap]

The secret of all initiation is to give birth to the higher human being within oneself. What the priest accomplishes more quickly, the rest of mankind must undergo in long stages of development. To become leaders of the rest of mankind, the Druids had to receive this initiation.

Man who had descended deeper now had to overcome matter and regain his former higher level. This birth of the higher human being takes place in all the Mysteries in a similar sort of way. The man who had become submerged in matter had to be reawakened. One had to make a series of experiences—real experiences—which were unlike any sense experiences one can have on the physical plane.

The stages. The first step was that one was led before the ‘Throne of Necessity’. One stood in front of the abyss: really experienced through one's own body what lived in the lower kingdoms of nature. Man is both mineral and plant, but the man of today is unable to experience what is undergone by the elementary substances and yet the enduring, the constraining things in the world are due to the fact that we are also mineral and plant in our nature.

The next step led the human being to all that lived in the animal kingdom. Everything which existed in the form of passions and desires was beheld in swirling and interweaving movement- All this had to be observed by the candidate for initiation so that his eyes would be opened to what lay behind the veil of the senses. Man is not aware that what swirls around in astral space is hidden behind the physical sheath. The veil of maya is really a sheath which must be penetrated by him who is to be initiated—the sheaths drop away, the human being sees clearly. That is a very special moment: the priest becomes aware that the sheaths had dammed back the impulses which would have been frightful if they had been let loose.

The third step led to a vision of the elemental nature forces. That is a step which man finds difficult to comprehend without previous preparation. That powerful occult forces are residing in these nature forces and through them express elemental passions, is something which makes man aware that there are powers quite outside the scope of anything he can experience as his own suffering.

The next trial is called the ‘Handing over of the Serpent’ by the hierophant. One can only explain it by means of the effects which it brings about. It is elucidated in the Tantalus saga. The privilege of being allowed to sit in the Council of the Gods can be abused. It signifies a reality which certainly raises man above himself, but dangers accompany it which are not exaggerated in the story of the Tantalus curse. As a rule man says he is powerless in face of the laws of nature. These are thoughts. With that kind of thinking, which is only a shadowy brain-thinking, nothing can be achieved. In creative thinking, which builds and constructs things of the world, which is productive and fruitful, the passive kind of thinking is replaced by a thinking permeated by spiritual force. The blown skin of a caterpillar is the empty sheath of the caterpillar; when filled with [productive] thinking it is the living caterpillar. Into the sheath-thoughts, living active power is poured so that the priest is enabled, not only to see the world in vision, but to work in it through magic. The danger is that this power can be abused. He can ... [Gap]

At this stage the occultist acquires a certain power, whereby he is enabled to deceive even the higher beings. He must not only repeat truths but experience them and decide whether a thing is true or false. That is what is called ‘The Handing over of the Serpent by the Hierophant’. [it denotes the same thing on a spiritual level that the rudimentary stages in the formation of the spinal cord signify on the physical level. In the animal kingdom we pass through the fishes, amphibians and so on till we reach the brain of the vertebrates and man. See notes.] We have a spiritual backbone, too, which determines whether we are to develop a spiritual brain. Man goes through this process at this stage of his development. He is lifted out of Kama (feelings, passions, desires) and endowed with a spiritual backbone so that he can be raised up into the spiraling of the spiritual brain. On a spiritual level, the windings of the labyrinth are the same as the convolutions of the brain on the physical level. Man gains access to the labyrinth, to the windings within the spiritual realm.

Then he had to take the oath of silence. A naked sword was presented to him and he was obliged to swear the most binding oath. This was that he would henceforth keep silence about his experiences where it concerned people who had not been initiated as he had. It is quite impossible to reveal the true content of these secrets without preparation. He, [the initiate] however, could create these sagas so that they became the expression of the eternal. One who could give utterance to things in this way of course had great power over his fellow men. The creator of a saga of this kind imprinted something into the human spirit. What is thus spoken is then forgotten and only the merest vestige of it survives death. Eternal truths remain longest after death. Of less elevated scientific thought hardly anything remains. The eternal does so and appears again in a new incarnation.

The Druid priest spoke out of the higher plane. His words, though simple, being the expression of higher truths, sank into the souls of his hearers. He spoke to simple folk but the truth sank into their souls and something was incorporated into them which would be reborn in a new incarnation. At that time men experienced the truth through fairy stories; thus today our spirit bodies have been prepared and if we are able to grasp higher truths today it is because we have been prepared.

Thus this time, which came to an end in 60 A.D., had prepared the spiritual life of Europe, had provided the soil on which Christianity could build. These teachings have been preserved and whoever searches will be able to find access to what was taught in these Lodges.

After he [the Druid] had given his oath on the sword he had to drink a certain draught—and this he did from a human skull. The meaning of this was that he had transcended what was human. That was the feeling which the Druid priest had to develop concerning his lower bodily nature. He had to look upon all that lived within his body with the same objective, cool attitude as he felt towards a containing vessel. Then he was initiated into the higher secrets and shown the path to higher worlds. Baldur ... [Gap] He was led into an immense palace which was roofed by flashing shields. He encountered a man who cast forth seven flowers. Cosmic Space, Cherubim, Demi-urge [Maker of the World]. Thus he became truly a Priest of the Sun.

Many people read the Edda and are unaware that it is an account of what really took place in the ancient ‘Drottes’ mysteries. An immense power lay at the disposal of the ancient ‘Drottes’ priests, a power over life and death. It is true that everything becomes corrupt in time. It was once the highest, the holiest of things. At the time when Christianity was spreading, much had degenerated and there were many black magicians, so that Christianity came as a redemption.

The study of these old truths alone is able to give an almost complete survey of the whole of occultism.

Unlike our present practice, not one stone was laid upon another in the building of a Druid temple without the use of exact astronomical measurement. Doorways were built according to astronomical measurement. The Druid priests were the builders of humanity. A faint reflection of this is preserved today in the views which the Freemasons hold.

Learning to penetrate astral substance, viewing the sun at midnight: First initiation.

Handing over of the Serpent by the Hierophant: Second Initiation.

The journey into the Labyrinth: Third Initiation.

Note on Lecture III

The only source for this lecture was the short notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers. Sentences enclosed in square brackets are the amendments of the editor, where the text seemed insufficiently clear.

Further source material has been appended below, gleaned from the writings of Charles William Heckethorn on the subject of the Druids and the Scandinavian Mysteries. A copy of Heckethorn's book in German translation was in Rudolf Steiner's private library, and from marginal notes in Rudolf Steiner's handwriting it appears to have been used by him in connection with this lecture and other lectures included in this volume. (Charles William Heckethorn Geheime Gesellschaften, Geheimbünde und Geheimlehren, Leipzig, 1900. Original English edition: The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries, London,1875.)

From Charles William Heckethorn
The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries
Chapter VIII. The Druids.

The Druids, the Magi of the West.
The secret doctrines of the Druids were much the same as those of the Gymnosophists and Brahmins of India, the Magi of Persia, the priests of Egypt, and of all other priests of antiquity. Like them they had two sets of religious doctrines, exoteric and esoteric. Their rites were practised in Britain and Gaul, though they were brought to a much greater perfection in the former country, where the Isle of Anglesey was considered their chief seat. The word Druid is generally supposed to be derived from “an oak,” which tree was particularly sacred among them, though its etymology may also be found in the Gaelic word Druidh, “a wise man” or “magician.”

Temples.
Their temples, wherein the sacred fire was preserved, were generally situate on eminences and in dense groves of oaks, and assumed various forms—circular, because a circle was an emblem of the universe; oval, in allusion to the mundane egg, from which, according to the traditions of many nations, the universe, or according to others, our first parents, issued; serpentine, because a serpent was the symbol of Hu, the Druidic Osiris; cruciform, because a cross is an emblem of regeneration; or winged, to represent the motion of the divine spirit. Their only canopy was the sky, and they were constructed of unhewn stones, their numbers having reference to astronomical calculations. In the centre was placed a stone of larger dimensions than the others, and worshipped as the representative of the Deity. The three principal temples of this description in Britain were undoubtedly those of Stonehenge and Avebury in the south, and that of Shap in Cumbria. Where stone was scarce, rude banks of earth were substituted, and the temple was formed of a high vallum and ditch. The most Herculean labours were performed in their construction; Stukeley says that it would cost, at the present time, £20,000 to throw up such a mound as Silbury Hill.

Places of Initiation.
The adytum or ark of the mysteries was called a cromlech, and was used as the sacred pastos, or place of regeneration. It consisted of three upright stones, as supporters of a broad, flat stone laid across them on the top, so as to form a small cell. Kit Cotey's House, in Kent, was such a pastos. Considerable space, however, was necessary for the machinery of initiation in its largest and most comprehensive scale. Therefore, the Coer Sidi, where the mysteries of Druidism were performed, consisted of a range of buildings, adjoining the temple, containing apartments of all sizes, cells, vaults, baths, and long and artfully contrived passages, with all the apparatus of terror used on these occasions. Most frequently these places were subterranean; and many of the caverns in this country were the scenes of Druidical initiation. The stupendous grotto at Castleton, in Derbyshire [Peak Cavern], called by Stukeley the Stygian Cave, as well as the “Giants Caves” between Luckington and Badminton [in Wilts.], certainly were used for this purpose.

Rites.
The system of Druidism embraced every religious and philosophical pursuit then known in these islands. The rites bore an undoubted reference to astronomical facts. Their chief deities are reducible to two,—a male and a female, the great father and mother, Hu and Ceridwen, distinguished by the same characteristics as belonged to Osiris and Isis, Bacchus and Ceres, or any other supreme god and goddess representing the two principles of all being. The grand periods of initiation were quarterly, and determined by the course of the sun, and his arrival at the equinoctial and solstitial points. But the time of annual celebration was May-eve, when fires were kindled on all the cairns and cromlechs throughout the island, which burned all night to introduce the sports of May-day, whence all the national sports formerly or still practised date their origin. Round these fires choral dances were performed in honour of the sun, who, at this season was figuratively said to rise from his tomb. The festival was licentious, and continued till the luminary had attained his meridian height, when priests and attendants retired to the woods, where the most disgraceful orgies were perpetrated. But the solemn initiations were performed at midnight, and contained three degrees, the first or lowest being the Eubates, the second the Bards, and the third the Druids. The candidate was first placed in the pastos bed, or coffin, where his symbolical death represented the death of Hu, or the sun; and his restoration in the third degree symbolized the resurrection of the sun. He had to undergo trials and tests of courage similar to those practised in the mysteries of other countries, and which therefore need not be detailed here.

The festival of the 25th of December was celebrated with great fires lighted on the tops of the hills, to announce the birth-day of the god Sol. This was the moment when, after the supposed winter solstice, he began to increase, and gradually to ascend. This festival indeed was kept not by the Druids only, but throughout the ancient world, from India to Ultima Thule. The fires, of course, were typical of the power and ardour of the sun, whilst the evergreens used on the occasion foreshadowed the results of the sun's renewed action on vegetation. The festival of the summer solstice was kept on the 24th of June. Both days are still kept as festivals in the Christian church, the former as Christmas, the latter as St. John's Day; because the early Christians judiciously adopted not only the festival days of the pagans, but also, so far as this could be done with propriety, their mode of keeping them; substituting, however, a theological meaning for astronomical allusions. The use of evergreens in churches at Christmas time is the Christian perpetuation of an ancient Druidic custom.

Doctrines.
The Druids taught the doctrine of one supreme being, a future state of rewards and punishments, the immortality of the soul and a metempsychosis. It was a maxim with them that water was the first principle of all things, and existed before the creation in unsullied purity, which seems a contradiction to their other doctrine that day was the offspring of night, because night or chaos was in existence before day was created. They taught that time was only an intercepted fragment of eternity, and that there was an endless succession of worlds. In fact, their doctrines were chiefly those of Pythagoras. They entertained great veneration for the numbers three, seven, nineteen (the Metonic cycle), and one hundred and forty-seven, produced by multiplying the square of seven by three. They also practised vaticination [prophecy], pretending to predict future events from the flights of birds, human sacrifices, by white horses, the agitation of water, and lots. They seem, however, to have possessed considerable scientific knowledge.

Political and Judicial Power.
Their authority in many cases exceeded that of the monarch. They were, of course, the sole interpreters of religion, and consequently superintended all sacrifices; for no private person was allowed to offer a sacrifice without their sanction. They possessed the power of excommunication, which was the most horrible punishment that could be inflicted next to that of death, and from the effects of which the highest magistrate was not exempt. The great council of the realm was not competent to declare war or conclude peace without their concurrence. They determined all disputes by a final and unalterable decision, and had the power of inflicting the punishment of death. And, indeed, their altars streamed with the blood of human victims. Holocausts of men, women, and children, inclosed in large towers of wicker-work, were sometimes sacrificed as a burnt offering to their superstitions, which were, at the same time, intended to enhance the consideration of the priests, who were an ambitious race delighting in blood. The Druids, it is said, preferred such as had been guilty of theft, robbery, or other crimes, as most acceptable to their gods; but when there was a scarcity of criminals, they made no scruple to supply their place with innocent persons. These dreadful sacrifices were offered by the Druids, for the public, on the eve of a dangerous war, or in the time of any national calamity; and also for particular persons of high rank, when they were afflicted with any dangerous disease.

Priestesses.
The priestesses, clothed in white, and wearing a metal girdle, foretold the future from the observation of natural phenomena, but more especially from human sacrifices. For them was reserved the frightful task of putting to death the prisoners taken in war, and individuals condemned by the Druids; and their auguries were drawn from the manner in which the blood issued from the many wounds inflicted, and also from the smoking entrails. Many of these priestesses maintained a perpetual virginity, others gave themselves up to the most luxurious excesses. They dwelt on lonely rocks, beaten by the waves of the ocean which the mariners looked upon as temples surrounded with unspeakable prodigies. Thus the island of Sena or Liambis, The Saints, near Ushant, was the residence of certain of these priestesses, who delivered oracles to sailors; and there was no power that was not attributed to them. Others, living near the mouth of the Loire, once a year destroyed their temple, scattered its materials, and, having collected others, built a new one—of course a symbolical ceremony; and if one of the priestesses dropped any of the sacred materials, the others fell upon her with fierce yells, tore her to pieces, and scattered her bleeding limbs.

Abolition.
As the Romans gained ground in these islands the power of the Druids gradually declined; and the were finally assailed by Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain under Nero, A.D. 61, in their stronghold, the Isle of Anglesey, and entirely defeated, the conqueror consuming many of them in the fires which they had kindled for burning the Roman prisoners they had expected to make—a very just retaliation upon these sanguinary priests. But though their dominion was thus destroyed, many of their religious practices continued much longer; and so late as the eleventh century, in the reign of Canute, it was necessary to forbid the people to worship the sun, moon, fires, etc. Certainly many of the practices of the Druids are still adhered to in Freemasonry; and some writers on this Order endeavour to show that it was established soon after the edict of Canute, and that as thereby the Druidical worship was prohibited in toto, the strongest oaths were required to bind the initiated to secrecy.

Chapter IX. Scandinavian Mysteries

Drottes.
The priests of Scandinavia were named Drottes, and instituted by Sigge, a Scythian prince, who is said afterwards to have assumed the name of Odin. Their number was twelve, who were alike priests and judges; and from this order proceeded the establishment of British juries. Their power was extended to its utmost limits, by being allowed a discretionary privilege of determining on the choice of human victims for sacrifice, from which even the monarch was not exempt—hence arose the necessity of cultivating the goodwill of these sovereign pontiffs; and as this order, like the Israelitish priesthood, was restricted to one family, they became possessed of unbounded wealth, and at last became so tyrannical as to be objects of terror to the whole community. Christianity, promising to relieve it from this yoke, was hailed with enthusiasm; and the inhabitants of Scandinavia, inspired with a thirst for vengeance on account of accumulated and long-continued suffering, retaliated with dreadful severity on their persecutors, overthrowing the palaces and temples, the statues of their gods, and all the paraphernalia of Gothic superstition. Of this nothing remains but a few cromlechs; some stupendous monuments of rough stone, which human fury could not destroy; certain ranges of caverns hewn out of the solid rock; and some natural grottos used for the purpose of initiation.

Rituals.
The whole ritual had an astronomical bearing. The places of initiation, as in other mysteries, were in caverns, natural or artificial, and the candidate had to undergo trials as frightful as the priests could render them. But instead of having to pass through seven caves or passages, as in the Mithraic and other mysteries, he descended through nine—the square of the mystic number three—subterranean passages, and he was instructed to search for the body of Baldur, the Scandinavian Osiris, slain by Loki, the principle of darkness, and to use his utmost endeavours to raise him to life. To enter into particulars of the process of initiation would involve the repetition of what has been said before; it may therefore suffice to observe that the candidate on arriving at the sacellum had a solemn oath administered to him on a naked sword, and ratified it by drinking mead out of a human skull. The sacred sign of the cross was impressed upon him, and a ring of magic virtues, the gift of Baldur the Good, delivered to him.

Astronomical Meaning Demonstrated.
The first canto of the Edda, which apparently contains a description of the ceremonies performed on the initiation of an aspirant, says that he seeks to know the sciences possessed by the Aesas or gods. He discovers a palace, whose roof of boundless dimensions is covered with golden shields. He encounters a man engaged in launching upwards seven flowers. Here we easily discover the astronomical meaning: the palace is the world, the roof the sky; the golden shields are the stars, the seven flowers the seven planets. The candidate is asked what is his name, and replies Gangler, that is, the wanderer, he that performs a revolution, distributing necessaries to mankind; for the candidate personates the sun. The palace is that of the king, the epithet the ancient Mystagogues gave to the head of the planetary system. Then he discovers three seats; on the lowest is the king called Har, sublime; on the central one, Jafuhar, the equal of the sublime; on the highest Tredie, the number three. These personages are those the neophyte beheld in the Eleusinian initiation, the hierophant, the daduchus or torchbearer, and the epibomite or attendant on the altar; those he sees in Freemasonry, the master, and the senior and junior wardens, symbolical personifications of the sun, moon, and Demiurgus, or grand architect of the universe. But the Scandinavian triad is usually represented by Odin, the chief deity; Thor, his first-born, the reputed mediator between god and man, possessing unlimited power over the universe, wherefore his head was surrounded by a circle of twelve stars; and Freya, a hermaphrodite, adorned with a variety of symbols significant of dominion over love and marriage. In the instructions given to the neophyte, he is told that the greatest and most ancient of gods is called Alfader (the father of all), and has twelve epithets, which recall the twelve attributes of the sun, the twelve constellations, the twelve superior gods of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Among the gods of the Scandinavian theogony there is Baldur the Good, whose story, as already hinted above, formed the object of the initiatory ceremonies. Baldur is Mithras, the sun's love. He foresees the danger that threatens him; he dreams of it at night. The other gods of Valhalla, the Scandinavian Olympus, to whom he reveals his sad fore-bodings, reassure him, and to guard against any harm befalling him, exact an oath from every thing in nature on his behalf, except from the mistletoe, which was omitted on account of its apparently inoffensive qualities. For an experiment, and in sport, the gods cast at Baldur all kinds of missiles, without wounding him. Hoder the blind [that is, Fate], takes no part in the diversion; but Loki [the principle of evil, darkness, the season of winter] places a sprig in the hands of Hoder, and persuades him to cast it at the devoted victim, who falls pierced with mortal wounds. For this reason it was that this plant was gathered at the winter solstice by the Druids of Scandinavia, Gaul, and Britain, with a curved knife, whose form symbolised the segment of the zodiacal circle during which the murder of Baldur took place. In the Edda of Snorro we have another legend of Odin and Freya, the Scandinavian Isis or Venus, giving an account of the wanderings of the latter in search of the former, which, of course, have the same astronomical meaning as the search of Isis for Osiris, of Ceres for Proserpine, etc. One of the chief festivals in the year, as with the Druids, was the winter solstice; and this being the longest night in the year, the Scandinavians assigned to it the formation of the world from primeval darkness, and called it “Mother Night.” This festival was denominated “Yule,” and was a season of universal festivity.

I tried to show you last time how initiation took place in the ancient Druid Lodges. Today I should like to speak about a related subject, but one which may appear a little remote. But we shall see how our understanding of human development will grow ever more profound.

You have certainly gathered from the Friday lectures¹ that the sagas of the different nations have a very deep content, and that myths are an expression of profound esoteric truths. I should like to speak today about one of the most interesting sagas, which has to do with the whole development of our fifth Great Epoch. At the same time you will see how a pupil of spiritual science passes through three stages in the understanding of sagas.

To begin with, sagas live in a particular nation, and are understood exoterically in an outer literal meaning. Next, disbelief sets in with regard to their interpretation, and an attempt is made by scholars to arrive at a symbolic meaning. Behind these two interpretations, however, five others can be found, for every saga can be interpreted in seven ways. The third is the one that can be taken literally again up to a point. But certainly one must learn to understand the language of sagas first. Today I wish to speak about a saga which is not easy to understand; it is the Prometheus saga.

You will find something about it in a chapter in the second volume of H.P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, and from this conclude what a profound meaning lies hidden in it. Nevertheless, it is not always possible to write about ultimate truths in something which is to be published. Today we are able to take the subject a little further than did H.P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine.

Prometheus belongs to the world of the Greek sagas. He and his brother, Epimetheus, are the sons of one of the Titans, called Iapetus. And the Titans themselves are the sons of the oldest of the Greek gods, of Uranus and his wife, Gaia. A translation of the word Uranus would be the ‘heavens ‘ and of Gaia, the ‘earth’. I would emphasise especially that the Uranus of the Greeks is the same as Varuna of India. Prometheus, therefore, is one of the Titans and a descendant of the sons of Uranus and Gaia, likewise his brother, Epimetheus. The youngest of the Titans, Chronos or ‘Time’, usurped the throne from his father Uranus, and was himself dethroned by his son Zeus and, along with the other Titans, was cast into Tartarus or Hades. Only the two brothers, Prometheus and Epimetheus, remained loyal to Zeus. They rallied round Zeus and fought against the other Titans.

Zeus, however, wished to destroy the race of man, which had become insolent. Prometheus became the protagonist of man. He pondered how he could give man something which would enable him to save himself and make himself independent of the help of Zeus. So, we are told, Prometheus gave man writing and the other arts and, more especially, he instructed him in the use of fire. Through this, however, he drew down the wrath of Zeus upon himself, and because of the wrath of Zeus he was chained to the Caucasus and made to languish there for a long time in great torment.

It is further recounted how the gods, with Zeus at their head, caused a female statue to be made by Hephaestus, the heavenly smith. This female statue was endowed with all the outward attributes of the man of the fifth great epoch. This female statue was Pandora. She was required to bring gifts to mankind, but in the first place to Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus. Indeed, Prometheus warned his brother about accepting the gifts, but Epimetheus let himself be persuaded and took the proffered presents. All the gifts were showered upon mankind; only one thing was retained: hope. The gifts consisted mostly of plagues and suffering for humanity; only hope was retained in Pandora's box.

Prometheus, therefore, was chained to the Caucasus and a vulture gnawed incessantly at his liver. Here he languished. He was aware, however, of something which was a pledge for his deliverance. He knew a secret which was unknown even to Zeus himself and which Zeus was anxious to learn. He would not disclose it, however, even though Zeus sent the messenger of the gods, Hermes, to him.

In the course of the tale his strange deliverance is recounted. We are told that Prometheus can only be set free through the intervention of an initiate. And such an initiate was the Greek Heracles; Heracles who performed the twelve labours. The enactment of these labours is the achievement of an initiate. They are the symbolic representation of the twelve tests which have to be performed by someone undergoing initiation. In addition, it is said that Heracles underwent initiation in the Eleusinian mysteries. He was able to rescue Prometheus. Someone else had to sacrifice himself, however, and the Centaur Chiron did this for Prometheus. He was suffering from an incurable illness. He was half beast and half man. He suffered death and thereby released Prometheus. That is the outer form of the Prometheus saga.

In this saga lies the whole history of the fifth Great Epoch and true mystery wisdom is revealed in it. This was actually recounted as a saga in Greece. But also in the mysteries it was so portrayed that the candidate for initiation was actually confronted by the destiny of Prometheus. And in this destiny he was enabled to visualise the whole of the past and the future of the fifth Great Epoch. An understanding of this is only possible when you take one thing into account.

It was only during the middle of the Lemurian epoch that what is described as human incarnation came about; incarnation in the sense in which people are born on earth today. Humanity of that time was under the leadership of great teachers and guides, whom we call the ‘Sons of Fire-Mist’. At present, humanity of the fifth Great Epoch is also led by great initiates, but our initiates today are of a different kind from the leaders of that time.

You must now become quite clear about what constitutes this difference. There is an enormous difference between the leaders of the two previous Root Races and the leaders of our present fifth Root Race. The leaders of those former Root Races were also united in a White Brotherhood. Its members, however, had not undergone their previous development on our Earth, but on other planets. They descended to Earth already in the state of more highly developed, mature human beings in order to instruct the rest of humanity, still in its infant stage, into the primal arts of which it had need. This time of instruction lasted throughout the third, fourth and even into the fifth epoch.

This fifth Great Epoch took its start from a handful of men, who had been sifted out from the previous Great Epoch. They were collected together and prepared in the Gobi Desert and from there radiated out over the whole of the world. The first of these leaders, who was the founder of this impulse in the development of mankind, was one of the so-called Manus—the Manu² of the fifth Root Race. This Manu was still one of that company of leaders who descended to earth at the time of the third Root Race—He was one of the leaders who underwent development not on the earth only, but who came to earth with fully developed maturity.

It is only during the fifth Root Race that the development is beginning to take place of such Manus as are akin to ourselves; who have risen, as it were, from the ranks of humanity. We have men, therefore, who are already great masters and advanced leaders of humanity, and we have those who are striving to become such. In the fifth Root Race we have Chelas and masters who have experienced all that can be undergone by human beings only since the middle of the Lemurian epoch. One of these great masters who are leaders of the fifth Root Race is predestined to take over the leadership of the sixth Root Race. The sixth Root Race will be the first great epoch to have as its Manu one who is a brother to earthly man. The earlier masters, the Manus from other worlds, are handing over their leadership to a fellow human being.

The development in the realm of the arts coincides with the dawn of the fifth Root Race. The man of Atlantean times had a quite different mode of life. He did not make inventions or discoveries as we do. He worked in quite a different way, It is only during the fifth Root Race that everything connected with technical science and the arts, in our sense of the term, has taken place. The most important discovery was the use of fire. Be clear on that point.

Just call to mind all the things in technology, industry and art which depend for their existence on the use of fire. I think that an engineer would be inclined to agree with me when I say that, without the use of fire, nothing of all our modern technology would be possible; so that we may say that the discovery of the use of fire was the main discovery which gave the impulse for all later discoveries.

To that you must add that at the time when the Prometheus saga arose, fire was comprehended as including everything which had to do with warmth. The causes of lightning and all other natural phenomena connected with heat were also included under that heading. The consciousness of the fact that man of the fifth Root Race himself stood under the Fire Sign³ came to expression in the saga of Prometheus. Prometheus himself is nothing else than a representative of the whole of the fifth Great Epoch.

The brother of Prometheus is Epimetheus. First let us translate these two words: Prometheus can be interpreted as being the one who thinks in advance, Epimetheus as the one who thinks about things after they have happened. Here you have expressed quite clearly the two activities of human thinking in the foresight and hindsight of these two human beings. The one with hindsight is the one who lets the things of this world work upon him and then thinks about them afterwards. A kind of thinking such as this is ‘Kama-manasic’ thinking (earthly consciousness, or intellectual soul activity). Considered from a certain point of view, this is what this kind of thinking is: letting the world work upon, one and thinking about it afterwards. The man of the fifth Root Race thinks chiefly in the manner of Epimetheus.

But in so far as a man does not merely let the things of his surroundings work upon him, but creates something for the future, is an inventor and discoverer, just so far is he a Prometheus, one who thinks ahead. There would never be any inventions made if men were all like Epimetheus. An invention comes about because man is able to create something which was not there previously. First of all the thought is there and then the thought is transformed into reality. This is Promethean thinking. Promethean thinking is the ‘Manas’ thinking of the fifth Root Race (the thinking of spiritual thoughts). Earthly thinking and spiritual thinking flow side by side in the fifth Root Race. Gradually the spiritual thinking will become more and more widespread.

This ‘Manas’ thinking of the fifth Root Race has one particular feature which we shall understand if we look back to the Atlantean epoch. At that time thinking was more instinctive and was still connected with the life forces. The people of Atlantean times were still able to transform the power inherent in seeds into a driving force. Just as man today has a kind of reservoir of power stored up in the coal seams, which can produce steam to drive locomotives and move loads, so Atlantean man had great storehouses of plant seeds containing a force which could be used to drive vehicles, as described by Scott-Elliot⁴ in his booklet about Atlantis. This art has been lost to mankind. The spiritual power of the Atlanteans could control living nature and make use of the latent power in seeds. The spiritual powers of the fifth Root Race are only sufficient to control the forces of the inorganic world of minerals. Thus the Manas of the fifth Great Epoch is bound up with the mineral forces in the same way as the man of Atlantean times was bound up with the life forces. All Promethean powers are chained to the rock, to the solid earth. For that reason, the apostle Peter is the ‘rock’ upon which Christ founded His Church. It is the same as the rock of the Caucasus. Man belonging to the fifth epoch has to seek his destiny on the physical plane alone. He is bound up with inorganic mineral forces.

Just try to imagine what is meant when one speaks about the technology of the fifth epoch. What is it there for? If you are able to form a comprehensive view of it you will see that, however great and impressive the result may be, when the forces of the intellect and Manas are applied to the inorganic mineral world, it is nevertheless, in the main, only self-interest and egoism which is the motive behind the application of all these forces of discovery and invention.

Start with the first discoveries and inventions and carry your thoughts through to the most modern inventions of the telephone and so on. You will see how great and mighty are the forces which have been put at our disposal, certainly—but to what end? What is it that is being conveyed to us from distant lands by means of railways and steamships? We transport foodstuffs; we order foodstuffs by telephone. Basically it is human greed and the substance of our wishes and desires which creates a demand for all these inventions and discoveries during the fifth epoch. It is this which must become dear to us in objective considerations. Then we will understand how it is that the higher human being, which has been placed into physical existence, is actually chained to matter during the fifth epoch, through the fact that man's astral body seeks its satisfaction within the realm of matter.

If you consider the principles of man's nature from an esoteric point of view, you will see that they stand in definite relationship to certain bodily organs. I shall elaborate on this theme still further, but today I will only indicate those specific organs with which our seven principles⁵ are connected.

First of all we have the so-called physical principle. This stands in occult relationship to the upper part of the human face, to the root of the nose. Man's physical frame—man was only astral at first and then incorporated into the physical—took its start from this point. The physical Organisation spread out and formed the base of the nose first of all, so that the occultist ascribes the mineral-physical to this part of the anatomy.

The second principle is Prana, the etheric parallel body. This is ascribed to the liver, with which it stands in occult relationship. Next comes the astral body, Kama, which has developed its activity in building up the digestive organs, having their seat in the stomach. If the astral body had not borne this particular character that it has in man, then the human digestive organs and stomach would not have had the special form which they have today.

If you behold the human being, first with regard to his physical body, next with regard to his etheric body, and thirdly with regard to his astral body, you there have the basis for what, as you see, is chained by the mineral fetters in the fifth Great Epoch.

Through his higher bodies, man frees himself again from these fetters and rises to higher worlds. Kama-Manas, in which the ego is active, works its way upwards again. Man frees himself again from the purely physical basis given by nature. For this reason there is an occult connection between this principle and that which raises man up again out of the physical, by which man is severed, so to speak, from the physical basis given by nature This occult connection is what exists between that principle in man and his umbilical cord. If this principle in man were not developed the embryo would never be severed from the body of its mother in the way it is.

It we, then proceed to Higher Manas, or Spirit Self, this is connected in a similar way with heart and blood circulation. Buddhi, or Life Spirit, has an occult connection with the larynx, with the larynx and the gullet. And Atma, or Spirit Man, has an occult connection with something which extends through man's whole being, namely the Akasha, or immortal part of man's being.

Those are the seven occult relationships. If you pay attention to these, then you will discover that the most important ones for our epoch are the relationships with the etheric and astral principles. And if you add to that what I said before about the Atlantean's control over the life forces—the life forces are those forces which weave in the etheric parallel body—then you will be able to understand that, in a certain way, Atlantean man was at a stage lower than we are. His etheric parallel body still retained its original connection with the etheric forces around him and he controlled with his own etheric body the Prana, or etheric forces of the outside world. Through the fact that man has progressed one stage higher, the field of his activities lies one stage lower. That is an occult law: that when, on the one hand, progress takes place, on the other hand, a retrograde step accompanies it. Whereas man previously worked upon the astral plane out of his etheric forces, he now has the task of working upon the physical plane out of his astral forces.

Now you will understand how profoundly these occult connections are symbolised in the Prometheus saga. A vulture is gnawing at the liver of Prometheus. Astrality is symbolised by the vulture, which truly devours the forces of the fifth epoch. The vulture gnaws at man's liver, at the foundation of his existence, and thus this energy belonging to the fifth Root Race really gnaws at the life forces of mankind, because man is chained to mineral nature, to the Petrine rock, the Caucasus. Through that, man has to pay for his affinity with Prometheus. And thereby man is obliged to become master over his own nature, so that he need no longer remain chained to the mineral world, to the Caucasus.

Only those who are initiated as human beings of the fifth epoch can bring release to fettered mankind. Heracles, who was a human initiate of this kind, had himself to press through to the Caucasus in order to free Prometheus. But this is how initiates raise up man from his fetters and all that is predestined to perish must sacrifice itself.

Man who still has an affinity with his animal nature, the Centaur Chiron, has to sacrifice himself. The man of previous epochs must be sacrificed. The sacrifice of the Centaur Chiron is just as important for the progress of the fifth epoch as the freeing through the initiate.

It is said that in the Greek mystery schools the future was foretold to the people. It was no vague, abstract account of what was to happen to man in the future, but instructions which would lead him along the pathway to the future, and he was shown what he had to do for his future development. And what still remained to be unfolded as human strength was portrayed in the mighty mystery drama of Prometheus.

One has to imagine the three races of the gods, Uranus, Chronos and Zeus, as three successive great leaders of humanity. Uranus denotes heaven, Gaia the earth. If we go back in time beyond the middle of the Lemurian epoch, we do not find man in the form we know him today, but one called Adam Cadmon⁶ by occult science, who is still asexual, and who had never belonged to the earth previously, who had not developed organs of sight for physical observation, but was still a part of Uranus, of the heavens. Through the union of Uranus with Gaia, man was born, man who descended to the earth and at the same time became involved in time. Chronos (Time) was the leader of the second divine race from the middle of Lemurian times until the beginning of Atlantis. These leading figures were symbolised by the Greeks, first under the name Uranus, then Chronos, and later Zeus. Zeus, however, is one of those leaders who underwent his training elsewhere than on the earth. He is one of the great immortals, as are all the rest of the Greek gods.

Mortal man has to learn to stand on his own feet during the fifth Great Epoch. He is represented by Prometheus. Man was the inaugurator of the arts and, above all, of the primal art of the use of fire. Zeus is jealous of him because he is predestined to produce his own initiates, who will take over the leadership in the sixth epoch. Mankind has first to pay for that, however. That is why the first great initiate of humanity must take upon himself the whole of life's suffering.

Prometheus is the archetypal initiate of the fifth epoch, who has undergone initiation, not only in knowledge, but also in deed. He it was who underwent the whole of suffering and will be released from his bondage by him who is becoming mature enough to set free the whole of humanity in gradual stages and to raise it up out of the mineral realm.

Great cosmic truths are thus portrayed to us in the sagas. That is why I said to you at the beginning: whoever reaches the third stage in their interpretation is able to take their meaning literally once more. ... [Here follow a few unclear sentences]⁷ In the case of the Prometheus saga one is confronted by the picture of the vulture gnawing at the liver. That is to be taken quite literally. The vulture really is gnawing at the liver of the people of the fifth epoch. It portrays the fight which is going on between the stomach and the liver. In every single human being of the fifth epoch, this Promethean struggle is being repeated. We can take what is here said in a completely literal sense. If this struggle were not present in the man of the fifth epoch, our destiny would be entirely different at the present day.

There are thus three ways of interpreting the sagas: firstly, the exoteric literal rendering; secondly, the allegorical one—the struggle within human nature; thirdly, the occult understanding, in which again the literal meaning can be taken. From this you can judge that all sagas—at least those which bear a significance of this kind—are derived from the mystery schools, and are no less than a representation of what was enacted therein as the great drama of human destiny. As I was able to show you in connection with the Druidic mysteries that [the saga of] Baldur was no less than a portrayal of what took place in the mysteries, so, in the saga of Prometheus, you have a portrayal of what was experienced by the pupil for initiation in the inner sanctuaries of the mystery schools of Greece to provide energy and new strength for life in the future.

• 1 . During 1904 Rudolf Steiner not only spoke at the regular Group Meetings, which took place on Mondays, but occasionally also on Fridays to a very small circle which gathered in the flat of Fraulein Klara Motzkus in the Schluterstrasse. The main subject dealt with was the myths and sagas. We do not have reports from all the lectures which were held there; at the most they are very fragmentary notes. These lectures of 1904, except for lecture 1 of 23rd May 1904, were all held for this small circle of friends. The May and June lectures of 1905 (lectures 11 to 14), and lecture 20 of 2nd January 1906, were held on the Mondays for the official Berlin Group. The October lectures of 1905 (lectures 15 to 19) were held for the General Meeting audience of the German Section.
• 2 . The name ‘Manu’ comes from the Sanskrit root ‘man’ = ‘thinking.’ In Indian theosophical terminology this denotes high spiritual beings, who have the task of forming new cultures or epochs. For further details concerning the Manu of the fifth epoch see Rudolf Steiner's Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1971; Occult Science, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1969, and a lecture given in Heidelberg on 21st January 1909; Some Aspects of Reincarnation and the Life After Death, typescript copy Z 360.
• 3 . This is expressed in H.P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Volume 3, ‘Esotericism,’ p. 330, in the following way: ‘Prometheus is a symbol and a personification of the whole of mankind in relation to an event which occurred during its childhood,—“Baptism by Fire”—which is a mystery within the great Promethean Mystery, one that may be at present mentioned only in its broad general features.’
• 4 . The Story of Atlantis, by W. Scott-Elliot, The Theosophical Publishing Society, London. See also: Cosmic Memory, Atlantis and Lemuria, by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Publications.
• 5 . These seven principles and the organs with which they are occultly connected are enumerated as follows:
  
  Physical body—base of the nose.
  Etheric body—liver.
  Kama or Kama-Rupa (astral body)—digestive system, stomach.
  Kama-Manas (astral-ego)—umbilical cord.
  Higher Manas (Spirit Self)—heart and blood circulation.
  Buddhi (Life Spirit)—larynx.
  Atma (Spirit Man)—the Akasha.
• 6 . Compare also: Man's Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds, second lecture, Oxford, 22nd August 1922.
• 7 . The unclear sentences are as follows: ‘Every saga undergoes change. It derives from the most ancient tradition and undergoes change at a certain definite point. It is the same in the case of every saga, even those which can again be taken literally.’

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.