The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] To-day we have reached a point in our description of the higher Beings and their relations to our world and solar system, which, to the men of the present day who have received their ideas about the world from ordinary popular science, would seem the most impossible of all; for we shall have to touch on things of which the modern scientist can have no idea. This is naturally not the result of any feeing of opposition; but if one is firmly grounded in Occultism one can survey from this standpoint the facts of modern science. In what has been said in these lectures you will nowhere find anything which contradicts the facts of modern science, but naturally the harmony is not always easy to establish. But if you have the patience to follow it all, you will gradually see how all the separate facts combine to form one stupendous and harmonious whole.

[ 2 ] Much that has been mentioned in these lectures has been also demonstrated from different standpoints, in lectures held in Stuttgart, and in Leipzig; and if you take those lectures and compare them superficially with each other, you may indeed find some contradiction between this or that expression. This happens only because it is my task to speak in these lectures not of speculative theories, but about the facts of clairvoyant consciousness, and because facts appear in a different way when they are considered from one side or from another. To use a comparison — a tree you are painting from one side will appear different when you paint it from the other side, yet it will still be the same tree. It is the same with descriptions of spiritual facts, when the light is turned on them from different sides. Certainly, if one starts with one or two ideas only, and builds a whole system upon them, it is easy to form an abstract system; but we are working from below upwards, and the unity of the whole will first be revealed in the crown. With each statement you must reflect in what sense, and in what direction it has been made.

[ 1 ] When it is said, for instance, in a popular work, that the air and gas on Jupiter are as thick as tar or honey, and that from the point of view of spiritual science this is a grotesque idea — the turn of phrase which I used was intended to convey its grotesqueness — one can from the standpoint of the science of the present day certainly answer: do you not know that modern physics can produce air of such thick condition that it will be as thick as tar or honey? Certainly, this is a self-understood fact in science; but this is not the point, for these studies do not move along these lines. That which science calls air can certainly be thickened to that extent; but for the observations of spiritual science it is nothing more nor less than that other fact, that water can be made to become as hard as a stone — to become ice. Ice is certainly water, but the point is whether one considers the things in their living functions or in the lifeless, inanimate sense of modern science. It is self-understood that ice is water; but if someone who is accustomed to have his mill turned by water throughout the whole year was advised to move it by the means of ice, what would he say? Thus, we have not to do with the abstract idea that ice is water, but what we have to do is to comprehend the universe in its activity. Here quite different standpoints have to govern as to what one entertains in the abstract about purely material metamorphoses in relation to density. Just as one cannot move a mill by means of ice, one also cannot inhale air which is as thick as honey. This is what we have to consider in the study of spiritual science. For we do not look on the world globes in the way they are considered to-day as lumps of matter of different sizes moving about out there in universal space; and in which the modern astronomical ‘mythology’ sees only material globes. We consider them in their living soul and spirit existence, in other words, we consider them in their completeness. Thus in this completeness we have to consider that which we call, in the spiritual scientific sense, the origin of each single globe.

As an example of the origin of a heavenly body, we shall choose that ancient Saturn from which, we know, our evolution started. I have already told you that ancient Saturn was, fundamentally speaking, as large as the whole of our solar system. We must imagine ancient Saturn not merely as a material globe, for we know that it had nothing as yet of the three conditions of matter which are called to-day solid, liquid and gaseous, but that it consisted only of warmth or fire. And now let us imagine that this primeval globe of warmth is the circle a, b, c, d.

You remember that we said: when the Saturn globe had evolved to the Sun globe, there distinctly appear encircling it, those Beings, who form the Animal circle or Zodiac, but I indicated at the time, that, even though they did not surround it so compactly as they did in the Sun existence, that they were already there on ancient Saturn. Thus, around ancient Saturn we must think of the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim wielding their power, and they are to us, in the spiritual sense, the Zodiacal circle. Thus the line A-B-C-D represents for us the Zodiacal circle, in a spiritual sense.

You will ask how this agrees with the modern definition of the Zodiac. We shall see that it agrees with it completely. But you must represent it to yourselves as follows. Imagine that you could place yourself on some definite spot of that ancient Saturn globe. If you now lift your hand and point upwards with your finger, over that place is the region of certain Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. If you move on, and point to some other place, it will be another region of other Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim; for these three groups of Beings form a circle around the ancient Saturn. Suppose that you wanted to indicate the direction in which certain Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim are to be found. They are not all alike; but each one is very distinctly different from the other, they are all individualised, so that one indicates different Beings when one points with the finger to different places. And to be able to indicate the right Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim, one marks the spot by a certain constellation of stars. This is then a mark or sign. In this direction one would say are the Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim, called Gemini, in another those called Leo, and so on. These are signs to show the direction in which certain Beings are. We must consider those separate constellations as such signs. They are something more, but we must first be clear, that when we speak of the ‘animal circle’ or Zodiac, we have to do with spiritual Beings

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[ 3 ] The Thrones were the first to exercise their activity upon that fire formation which was ancient Saturn. The Thrones had progressed so far in their development, that they could let their own substance stream out. They let their warmth substance percolate, as it were, into that Saturn mass. Through this, those forms originated around it which we have called, somewhat grotesquely, eggs — but they really had that shape.

[ 4 ] You may now ask: How is it really with that substance? Did warm sub-stance exist from the beginning? What was there already, we can only describe as a kind of neutral universal fire, which is, fundamentally speaking, one with universal space, so that I might as well say: formerly there was only the space which had been separated off, and then on to its surface percolated that which can be called the warmth substance of ancient Saturn. In the moment when this warmth substance was infused into Saturn, the Beings with which we are concerned, came into action on both sides. We have shown that, in the interior of Saturn, we find the Exusiai, or Powers, or Spirits of Form; the Dynamis or Spirits of Motion or Mights; and the Dominions or Spirits of Wisdom. These are active in the interior; from outside, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones are active; and the result is a conjoint action of the Beings inside, and outside Saturn. [ 5 ] It was said in an earlier lecture that we can distinguish the inner soul's fire, which is felt as an inner comfortable warmth, from the outwardly perceptible fire. This neutral warmth is really within the Egg forms. Opposed to it we find the soul warmth, spread around it, radiating into it from outside, but as if holding itself back. It is as if the soul's warmth radiated from outside, but held itself back from the neutral fire within. The really perceptible warmth is pushed back from within. So that the egg of warmth which is drawn in Diagram I is really shut in between two currents; an external (x) stream of soul-warmth, and a stream of inner (y) warmth, which could be perceived by external senses. Only that which is in the interior, is warmth, physically perceptible. And now through the action of the inner and outer warmth, each of these Saturn eggs begins to rotate. Each of them circles round, and comes in turn under the influence of each of the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim, which are out in space. And now something very strange happens.

Each egg in its wanderings, comes back to the point where it was first formed. When it reaches this point it remains stationary, it cannot go any further. Each egg has been formed on some definite spot, then wanders round the circle and is stopped when it returns to the place where it has been created.

The production of those eggs of warmth lasts, however, only up to a certain time; it then ceases and no more eggs are formed. Now when all those eggs are stopped at a certain place, they fall over each other. When they have covered each other up, they form, so to speak, one single egg. Thus on the point where the eggs were originally created, they come to rest. And, naturally, from the moment when no new ones are formed any more, they all meet and in the end, cover each other. Thus a globe is formed. This globe is naturally formed only by degrees. It is the densest part of the fire substance, and that which in a narrower sense is now called Saturn, (for it stands on the spot where the Saturn of to-day is). And as in a certain sense everything is a reflection, the whole process has been repeated in the origin of our own earth. Even the Saturn of to-day originated in such a way that it was actually stopped at a certain place — not exactly at the spot where the ancient Saturn was stopped, because for certain reasons things always shift a little, but the process of formation of the present day Saturn is the same. Thus a small Saturn-globe is born from the large all-embracing one, through the joint action of the universal powers who belong to the Hierarchies.

[ 6 ] Now let us consider that point at which all those globes came to a stand-still on primeval Saturn. About this the sages of primeval wisdom taught the following: On ancient Saturn the first foundation of the human physical body was formed. That first foundation was really formed of warmth, but in that body of warmth were already contained the germs of all the future organs. At the point where the first movements which had been produced were brought to a stop, was formed the germ of that organ of the human body which, when its movements were one adjusted, later changed the whole mechanism of the human body from rest to movement — this is the heart. Here, from the first stimulation to movement, arose the beginning of the heart; but this could only originate because at that same point the movement was brought to a standstill. Through this, the heart is that organ by which, when it ceases to beat, the whole physical body and its functions are brought to rest.

[ 7 ] Each member of the human body was given a distinct name in ancient speech. The heart was called the Lion within the body. Primeval wisdom said: to which direction of the Zodiac must one point, if one wishes to indicate the region out of which were laid the first foundations of the human heart? They pointed upwards, and named the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim who acted from the region of Leo (Lion). Man received the first outline of his physical body projected from out [of] universal space, and the region of his body, which he was accustomed to call inwardly, Leo, was also called the region of Leo out in the Zodiac Thus are these things connected.

[ 8 ] Thus also have all the other foundations or germs of the human organs been formed by the Animal Circle or Zodiac. The heart was formed by Leo the Lion. Near the heart, the cage of the ribs, which is necessary for the protection of the heart, was called the breastplate. In the beginning a region had naturally to be formed before the inclusion of the heart. Another name for the breastplate arose, which was taken from an animal who had received such a breastplate from nature — Cancer, the Crab; that which is out in space is really called ‘breastplate,’ a protection which the Crab has from nature, hence that region was called ‘the Crab.’ It lies on one side of the Lion. [ 9 ] The other regions of the Zodiac were named according to the same principle. In fact, it is man projected outwards into universal space who has given these designations to the Zodiacal circle. But it is not always so easy to discover the original intention, in the transformed names, as for example, with the Crab. The name has not always been transmitted in a direct line, so that one has to return to the original sense if the meaning is to be made clear.

[ 10 ] We shall pass over the disappearance or dissolving of Saturn; we shall now describe how its evolution progressed after it had passed through the Pralaya. After the Saturn formation had dissolved, a new evolution, or new formation, began. What first took place was exactly the same as that which had formerly taken place on Saturn. When the whole formation of Saturn had been repeated in this way, a second formation began, after the centre had been reached. We are now advancing towards that stage of development which we generally designate as that of the primeval Sun. Just as, formerly, the Thrones sacrificed themselves, so now, another grade of the Hierarchies are making the sacrifice, namely, those Beings whom we call Spirits of Wisdom. The Thrones are Beings of greater power; they could let their own physical substance stream from them, their warmth substance. They could pour out the substance of Saturn from their own bodies — as has been described. The spirits of Wisdom were only able to give an etheric body, which is not so dense. Man already had the foundation of the physical body; the Spirits of Wisdom gave him now his etheric body. This happened, as it were, in a second circle. I shall now draw this in Diagram III. This represents the original size of the ancient Sun. It has shrunk in comparison to the former larger circumference. Because it has shrunk it has grown denser; inside the Sun there is not only warmth-substance, but also condensed warmth-substance, gaseous-air substance. Now, from the surrounding circumference, along with the previously mentioned Beings, the Spirits of Wisdom are working upon the Sun: together and within the globe of the Sun the Spirits of Form, and the Spirits of Motion are carrying on their activity. The following now happens, which is similar to what happened on Saturn. Certain currents are created by the surrounding spirits — the Spirits of Wisdom and the Thrones. These currents are somewhat denser than those which were produced by the Thrones alone. Inside, the mass contracts, and a ball of mist is now compressed between those two streams.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[ 11 ] This globe is different from the Saturn globe, because in reality Saturn with all its beings consisted only of warmth, but this globe is now interpenetrated by ether, by a body of ether. Although it is as dense as gas, it is interpenetrated by an ether-like body. Therefore, the whole of this globe is alive; it is a Being inwardly alive. Whilst Saturn was a being which was in motion inwardly, which was full of mobility, until its motion was brought to a standstill by the Lion, Jupiter, (one can also call it Jupiter, for the planet seen in the heavens as Jupiter is a reproduction of that which was formed at that time as part of the Sun) Jupiter is inwardly living. Such was the ancient Sun. The balls which now begin to circle round it, are living balls, living creatures.

[ 12 ] Now, instead of the Lion, imagine another region of the Zodiac where those balls were originally stimulated and called into being; I called this region that of the Eagle. In this region occurred the first stimulation into life of the Sun-globe, of that living being within cosmic space. Now, when this living globe had once completed its circle and returned to its starting point, to the region of the Eagle, something else comes into operation. Whilst the globe had first begun to be inwardly alive at this point, when it reaches the same point again it is killed through the same influence which originally called it to life. One ball after another was killed. When they all had been killed, and no new ones were produced, the life of the ancient Sun also came to an end. Its life consisted in the production of new balls, which, after circling round, covered each other at the point they started from and were killed by forces entering from universal spaces.

This ‘sting of death,’ which the life of the ancient Sun received from universal space, was felt as the sting of the scorpion. Therefore that region where they were killed is called the ‘region of the Scorpion.’ At this point the constellation can be seen which rouses dead matter to life: the Eagle and also that wherein work the forces which kill: the constellation of the Scorpion

[ 13 ] We can therefore say: in the region of the Lion are those forces of the Zodiac, which brought the original life of the germinal physical human body to rest; in the region of the Scorpion are these forces which had the power to kill life as such. We shall get to know the correspondence to modern conditions, which are differently constituted, but this can only be explained gradually. A thick veil or Maya has been drawn over the original conditions.

[ 14 ] Let us proceed. We need not describe the next conditions so much in detail, for the meaning of these designations and the whole procedure has now grown clearer. But one thing must yet be recalled to your mind which is the following.

When you consider Saturn, you would be quite mistaken if you imagined it to be a globe such as could be compared with any other world's globe, with Jupiter or Mars, for instance. What is there is nothing more than a space of warmth. And you can see it in the way you do only because you are looking at it through an illuminated space of light. Just think, how would a thing that is unilluminated appear if you looked at it through a space full of light? It would appear bluish to you. You can observe this with common candle-light; it looks blue in the middle and around it there is a kind of radiance. I say this, being conscious that I run the danger of appearing to be talking nonsense in the opinion of the whole school of mechanical optics of modern times. But it is a fact. Modern physics does not know why the whole space of heaven appears blue. It seems blue, because in reality it is dark, is black, and is seen through illuminated space. All that is dark, seen through light, appears blue. Therefore, Saturn seems a blue globe when you look at it. All that has been said agrees completely with the facts of science, but not with the fanciful theories which are imagined. It would lead us too far if I explained to you why the ring formations of Saturn also arise because of this, because with each Saturn we have to do with a neutral space of warmth, a stratum of soul's warmth, and with one of physically cognisable warmth. Thus the illusion arises, when one observes those different strata through illuminated space; it is as if one saw a globe of gas with a sort of ring of dust around it; it is but an optical delusion, for Saturn is to-day but a body made of the substance of warmth.

[ 15 ] These things can naturally only be said, when speaking to Anthroposophists, elsewhere they would be incomprehensible. Each Saturn must be regarded. as a being consisting of warmth substance, and everything connected with it is to be explained from that standpoint. Each Jupiter, which is nothing else than a Solar stage of development, is a form consisting of gas and warmth. So it is with the Jupiter of to-day which is a repetition of the former Jupiter, the ancient Sun. Certainly the conditions of space and motion do somewhat change. For the Jupiter of to-day is not on the same spot as the former one was, but essentially it is the same.

Now we go further and must explain Mars in the same way. We must explain it as a large globe cooled down to the density of waters, and we must also see in it a point, where a ball of compressed water has formed, and become differentiated from the surrounding much thinner water. It is formed by the same process, as Jupiter, all the single balls of water which are produced on its circumference are at a certain point again brought to a standstill. Just as the movement is hindered on Saturn by the Lion, on Jupiter or the Sun by the Scorpion, which brings death, so on Mars these balls of water are also stopped; only the details are a little different on Mars. The Mars of to-day is a repetition of the ancient Moon. It stands on the same place to which the boundary of the ancient Moon extended. It is the other part of the ancient Moon; one part is our own Moon, which is but a shell; but the living part of it, which represents its other pole is Mars. When speaking of Mars as the third condition of our planetary development, this condition corresponds to that of the ancient Moon. Mars was essentially a body of water. On Mars, or the ancient Moon — call it as you will — the astral body was organised into man, so that he received his first consciousness. The body of that man consisted of the moon substance or moon-water. Just as the body of the man of to-day is formed out of the substance of the Earth, so was the body of the man of that day formed of fire, air, and water. According to the densest substance in him, you might have called that man the water-man. He became this especially, because the astral body was infused into him. He was not yet a man with an Ego, but a man with astral endowments. This entrance of the astral took place because, at a certain place, the stimulus was again given. Then what was on the circumference moved round and returned to the place where it had started from. This was the region of the Zodiac which is designated as the Waterman. So that you have to see in the Waterman that sign of the Zodiac which gave consciousness to man on the ancient Moon or ancient Mars after he had circled once around its circumference..

[ 16 ] And now we pass on to the earth, this is the fourth evolutionary condition. The first three are a repetition one of the other; a Saturn is formed, then a Sun is formed, and leaves behind it a Jupiter; a Moon is formed, and leaves behind it a Mars; and last the earth appears, and all those things I have described; the departure from it of the Sun, and of that dross-like part which is our present Moon. You know that the first foundation for the Ego was prepared in old Lemuria, when the present Moon separated from the earth. This was only possible because once again from the surrounding circumference the impulse to rotation was given. Then, that which had received the stimulus, after having rotated once, was ripe to receive the earliest beginnings of the Ego germ. This happened in Lemurian times, and we here point to that part of the Zodiac which is called the Bull, the reason for this being, that man, during the time these names were given, had very concrete and very clear feelings. This name originated in the Mystery teachings of Egypt and Chaldea. It is there that the origin of this designation is to be found, and it is only in real Occultism that the consciousness of the true significance of the Word exists at the present day. The first stirring of ‘I am’ finds expression in speech, in tone; but all tone-formation is related in a certain way which cannot be touched on here, but which every Occultist knows, and which may be explained some time in more intimate lectures; all tone formation has a very definite relation to the processes of propagation, which you can perceive in the fact that the voice of the male changes when sex maturity is reached. There is here a hidden correspondence. All that is associated with these faculties and processes of the human being, was comprised, for ancient consciousness, in the bull nature of man. And. the name given to that particular constellation has its origin in the fact that it has now the same importance for the earth which Lion had for Saturn, Scorpion for the Sun, and Waterman for the Moon. With the Egyptian age, came the third post-Atlantean period of civilisation. The first was the old Indian, the second the old Persian, the third the Egyptian. These periods of civilisation are the corresponding repetitions — as we have often repeated — of the whole processes of development of the earth. The Lemurian epoch was the third epoch of the earth. Therefore Egyptian Occultism repeats in a spiritual reflection the essential parts of the occurrences of Lemurian times. That which happened in Lemurian tunes was best known by the Egyptian mystery priests, for it is reflected in the special features of the Egyptian civilisation. Therefore the culture of Egypt was closely related to the constellation of the Bull, and to the cult of the Bull generally.

[ 17 ] Thus you see, that it is not all so easy to indicate the real events which happened during the origin of our heavenly bodies, and all connected with them. For how do celestial bodies originate? Our Saturn, our Jupiter, our Mars have in fact originated thus, that at first spheres were formed on them. One after the other of these is killed, and when nothing more is called into life, all the spherical forms, which previously constituted the shells, finally mass together into a body, and this becomes the visible Planet. In fact, any such celestial body as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, originated thus, that at first a kind of shell was formed. This shell, through the agglomeration of the special forms, was condensed to that formation which then is revealed visibly in space. You have here no mechanical process taken from the dreary Kant-Laplace theory about the world's creation, but you have the living origins of those formations springing from the spiritual interaction of the Hierarchies, as we see them to-day in the heavenly bodies, in Saturn, Jupiter and Mars.

[ 1 ] It is only natural that after such an exposition as that of yesterday, numerous questions should arise, and that with regard to representation of such universal all-embracing truths about the Cosmos, heard for the first time, some things should remain incomprehensible. I beg you always to remember that — I have already said that here things explained are not the result of any speculation, or of any sort of artificial scheme, but are derived from real facts, which are called the facts of the Akashic Record; and it is only later that these facts can be gathered together into a sort of system. But one question which may arise in many minds must be answered to-day: the question as to the planets which have accomplished their task. In a certain way we traced yesterday the origin of the life of a planet up to its end, up to the time when it became a separate, visible, planet. Now someone might affirm that some of these planets we see in the heavens did not originate from the time described yesterday, or are not now coming into being. [ 2 ] We must clearly realise that a new epoch begins for a planet when it has reached that point which we described yesterday. Let us suppose we wished to follow the origin of a planet, not as it was with ancient Saturn when it alone was there, but as it was when the formation of our Earth took place. Ancient Saturn was then formed again, as a repetition; so that after the evolution of ancient Saturn, when ancient Sun and ancient Moon were all three finished, the evolution of the earth first began in the form of a huge warmth or fire-body, on which was repeated all that had happened during the ancient Saturn evolution. Then came a time when, under the influence of the Zodiacal region called the Lion, the single planet Saturn (that which we call Saturn to-day) detached itself from that mighty self-revolving globe of fire, thus reaching its highest point. It was in this manner that the single planet Saturn originated.

[ 3 ] Now, you must not picture to yourselves that the pacifying influence of the Lion brought the forward motion of Saturn to an end when that point of time was reached. No, only the inner movements which existed formerly were then stopped. Saturn had grown into a being which drew into it all that was formerly distributed in the circumference, and united it all within itself. All this happened though the influence of the Lion; but the large globe, from which this Saturn was detached, contracted, and became a smaller globe. Whilst this whole globe contracted inwardly and after the influence (from the Lion) had been able to work and the inward motions been brought to rest, Saturn retained to a certain degree the movement which it had originally received. Formerly Saturn used its own impulse for its movements; for it was necessary for it to continue the movement; to move on further as by a swimming motion. When that globe had withdrawn, it continued to move by itself, although the inward motion was stopped. And that self-movement, after it had received the first impulse, is the movement according to which Saturn is revolving to-day.

[ 4 ] It happened in a similar way with Jupiter. For what had just been described happened when the earth began its formation. Then differentiation in the globe took place when it began to contract, inwardly. Then also occurred the killing of the single globes under the constellation of the Scorpion. They crowded on top of one another. Through this began for each their own inner life. After Jupiter, as a mighty living being, had been, so to speak, killed; there began within him the life of the single being belonging to him, and the whole globe having contracted, now moved on, after having found by this means the impulse for movement within itself.

That which we have been considering to-day as the movements of Saturn, of Jupiter, etc. was a result, a consequence, which arose after the formative process. — which I described yesterday — had come to an end.

[ 5 ] Another difficulty seems to have arisen because I said that the second planet which detached itself from our earth in the course of its evolution was Jupiter, the third Mars, whereas the sequence in time which I described was that the Saturn development came first, then the Sun development, and then the Moon's. But, this is completely justified; for, with the planets of the present day, we have to do with what took place as a repetition, during the fourth evolution of the earth. When the first Saturn was formed, Saturn was there alone; during the Sun development (the second globe), the conditions were such that we have to speak of a Sun. But when after the Saturn development, the Sun developments continued, the whole process of Saturn came to an end with the Sun, so that when we look backwards at those first planetary developments of our earth, the ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon, we must realise that they were finished with once and for all. [ 6 ] But when we speak of the Earth's development it is not so. Saturn first arises, then, by way of repetition — the Sun; but everything progresses further inwardly, it is not yet finished. Jupiter is left behind as a relic of the repetition of the Sun-development. Then the earth is a repetition of the Moon development, which — if we regard the whole of evolution — was then at an end. But as regards earthly evolution the Moon is not finished. Mars remains behind after this repetition.

[ 7 ] Thus we see, that the planets of the present day which are visible to us in the heavens must be thought of as having originated during the time which we call the fourth period of the evolution of the earth. These are the things over which we must ponder. It is impossible to touch on everything, when one speaks of the whole world.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[ 8 ] In speaking of Saturn, I spoke of a globe of fire or of a large fiery egg, and then of a revolving motion. And it was in fact originally a sort of ball or egg. Whilst that globe, which corresponds to the very first Saturn condition, is revolving, the following is gradually formed; it acquires a sort of girdle, which does not surround the whole egg, but which is there as a sort of broad band. And within that belt these single forms collect which are being formed all around. (see Diagram) This belt formation is a general Cosmic law. This law — which rests on an accumulation in the form of an equator or belt — you can see exemplified in the Cosmos, as far as your sight can reach, in the Milky Way, which owes its existence to that law. When you look at the Milky Way, stretching like an external belt around the heavens, with the stars shining sparsely in between, you must think of its being the result of that law which causes things to draw together into a belt as soon as a rotatory process begins. Our world system, as we have it, has really the form of a bean; it is not round, as is usually accepted, and the belt is drawn around as a distant equator.

You must also think of such a belt when a planet originates.

If — trivially speaking — one took an egg desiring to make a diagram on it of these various conditions, one would have first to paint such a belt around it, with red if you like. One would not paint the whole egg red, but only just a belt. Along this belt assemble those bodies which were selected to form later a heavenly body. One would have to draw on it a point where all these were gathered together.

Thus you see that the configuration and the distribution of the stars as we see them in space, is a result of the action of the spiritual Beings or Hierarchies. For when we speak of the contraction of large masses, we must realise that this does not happen of itself, but that it is brought about by the action of those Beings of the higher Hierarchies which we have described. And when we take a general view of all that has been described, we may say: When ancient Saturn was in formation, when all that mighty mass of fire out of which all our solar system has arisen organised itself into ancient Saturn, the Spirits of Personality were passing through their human stage of existence; during the Sun formation the Archangels or Spirits of Fire were passing through their human stage; during the Moon evolution the Angels, and on the earth Man, is passing through his human existence. But it must be realised that this Man had also taken part in all that happened before. What is called the physical body to-day had its first foundations during the very earliest Saturn formation. That physical body was not as yet interpenetrated by an etheric body, or by an astral body; but it was already so organised that after passing through all the transformations it experienced later, it could become the bearer of the spiritual earth-man of to-day. Very slowly and gradually was this physical body organised during the ancient Saturn evolution, and, whilst ancient Saturn itself was being formed, the different signs of the Zodiac slowly revolved, and the human body member by member, took on its earliest form. When Saturn stood under the sign of the Lion the beginning of the heart was formed; the ribs or the thoracic cage were started while Saturn was under the sign of the Crab; the foundation of the symmetrical shape of man, that is the reason for his being symmetrically built on two sides, arose while Saturn was under the constellation of Gemini. Thus we follow piece by piece the formation of the human body, and when we look up to that part of the Zodiac, where Aries the Ram is, we can say: The upper part of our head originated when ancient Saturn stood under the sign of Aries; the foundation of our organ of speech, when Saturn stood under the sign of the Bull. And when you think of man distributed thus, you can see in the Zodiacal circle the creative forces for each of the human organs.

[ 9 ] This was represented pictorially in the old Mysteries, and the Zodiac was drawn as you see it here on the ceiling of this hall. By chance — but there is no such thing as chance — we have met in a hall which is adorned above by the signs of the Zodiac. Formerly the Zodiac was not designed by depicting the animal form corresponding to each sign, but the different human members were drawn in the corresponding region of the heavens: for instance, for Aries a head; further on, for the Bull, the region of the throat; that which most of all expresses symmetry — the arms, for Gemini; the thoracic cage, for the Crab; the heart, for the Lion; and thus they came to the lower parts of the legs, for the Waterman; and to the feet, for Pisces. Think of such a Zodiacal circle as a man designed out there in the Cosmos, then you have that which corresponds to the powers of the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim who created the first beginnings of the physical human body. This is the great Cosmic Man, the Man who is found in all the World Myths, and all the national legends or sagas, out of whom single individuals of the earth are composed in the most varied forms. Think of the giant YMIR who is spread out in the great Cosmos; microcosmic man is formed out of this giant. Up above is the macrocosmic man who is a Creator, who, out there, comprises all that man has within him. Profound truth lies in the depths of such representations, truth which comes to light more or less imperfectly, according to the degrees of the clairvoyant power of the nations. It also shines through that wisdom which finds its outward expression in the old Testament. It shines in that wisdom which, as the old Hebrew mystery-teaching, leads back to that Mystery teaching which was the foundation of the Old Testament — to Adam Cadmon of the Kabbala. The macrocosmic Man is none other than the one we have now designed in the Cosmos; only we must form our conceptions of him in the right way.

[ 10 ] What I have now explained to you, and which culminated in the teaching of the macrocosmic man, is a teaching which in fact includes the deepest cosmic mysteries, and which in the future will gradually flow into the general education of humanity at large.

To-day we are still far from understanding this teaching; and if anyone who is merely a scientist had listened to these lectures, he would have surely held this audience for something other than an intelligent company of people. We are very far from understanding these things to-day. But we are now at the beginning of an epoch, when the facts which are discovered in accordance with the fantastic theories of modern science, will compel men to seek these truths of the great primeval wisdom. The mystery for instance, of the process of conception, about which people speculate so erroneously to-day, will never be known until the teaching of the macrocosmic man regarding that same process is understood. Precisely that into which true Mystery enters, and as a real Mystery eludes the instruments of modern research, will receive illumination to the minutest detail. For how small, in relation to the Cosmos, is the cell wherein fructification takes place! The mysteries of the great Cosmos will alone solve that which takes place in the smallest cells; nothing else can solve the problems they contain. The investigations of external science in relation to this problem are not without use, they have a certain merit, but they are childish in comparison with the great mystery which is contained there, and which will only be solved when people realise that the answer to the happenings in a centre is to be found in the great circumference. Hence, all teachers of the Mysteries said: If you want to understand the centre, investigate the circumference, for it contains the key.

[ 11 ] When you remember that each world globe retains its movement, after it has, so to speak, come to a conclusion, when it is complete; you will also understand what must be called the Karma of each of these globes.

From the moment when each of these planets has come of itself to an end, the beings which belong to it have to take part in its dissolution, in its disappearance from all connection with the world. Thus if we follow up the ancient Saturn evolution, we have an advancing process up to the fusion of the whole globe of warmth; or you might consider it a descending one for it is a process of condensation. In the moment when Saturn begins to revolve — we are speaking of the first Saturn development — the Saturn globe is completed, all the conditions are accomplished with which it is concerned. The spirits who are assigned to it have to consider at this moment of its dissolution, what has been built up during its formation, and that is Karma. This cannot be escaped; things have to be dissolved again in the same way in which they were put together. The Karma of the first half of evolution, fulfills itself in the second half. The formation of worlds is the preparation of Karma; the passing away of worlds, in the broadest sense of the word, is nothing else than pain under the action of Karma, and again the wiping out of that same Karma. As in big things, so it is also in small things, with every planet. For each planet mirrors faithfully the conditions of the great world. You can see the same process in a nation. Think of a nation rising in its youth, full of strength, of activity, of energy; think of this nation as producing epoch after epoch the most varied elements of civilisation and of culture. This has all to reach its highest point; but whilst all this is accumulating, the Karma of the nation is also accumulating. Just as Karma accrued during the Saturn development, and we have to take into consideration what had been brought about, so Karma accrues to a nation during the time its civilisation is being built up. This Karma is at its highest point, at its strongest, when the nation has given birth to all the primeval, elemental forces.

[ 12 ] Now we have seen that guiding Beings are everywhere. We have seen with the earth, how the higher spiritual Beings — Angels, Archangels, Archai — descended, and at a time when humanity could not as yet help itself, they guided it until it reached a certain height. These are the spiritual beings of the Hierarchies who had reached their maturity in earlier times; but when this height is reached, when those Beings who had descended from the heights reach their goal, then other Beings have to become the leaders and guides of the said nations. When nations have to rise in a certain way still higher than their highest point, leading personalities have to give themselves up of their own free will to become the bearers of higher spiritual Beings; only then does it become possible to lead the nation a few stages beyond that which was originally planned for it. But in such cases one thing must happen; those who descend into the beings who have to lead the nation to a still higher point of civilisation, must take upon themselves all the Karma which the nation has been accumulating. This is the important law as regards taking upon oneself the Karma of nations and of races. From a definite point of time the guiding personalities have themselves to bear all the Karma of those nations and races. That was the essential reason that such individualities as Hermes, for instance, had to take upon them — their nations Karma, which had accumulated up to then. On each planet, such things are the reflected images of great Cosmic processes.

[ 13 ] But we have reflected images which go further still. We have seen that the Thrones became Thrones, only because from created beings they themselves became Creators, that they were enabled to pass from a condition of taking to one of giving. The Thrones had once upon a time passed through their development in other world systems, and had progressed so far that they were able to let their own Substance stream out from them.

It is a higher grade of development to be able to give, to bring sacrifices, than merely to store up for oneself all that the Cosmos gives. This is again mirrored in human life. What is this human development? Look backwards in spirit to the Atlantean and Lemurian times, and then look forwards! Man receives the physical body, the etheric and astral bodies and the Ego, and then again the Ego works back on the other members, transforming the astral body, the etheric and physical bodies, into Manas, Budhi, and Atma, into Spirit self, spirit-Life and Spirit-man. Primeval wisdom has always taught that man transforms his astral body in such a way that this astral body consists at first partly of Manas and partly of the old astrality, but that later it becomes completely transformed, completely penetrated by the work and action of the Ego. Let us take a man who has not yet reached that grade of development when the astral body is completely penetrated by the work of the Ego; almost all men, with very few exceptions, are in that condition. That which man has already transformed goes with him through all eternity; that which he has not yet changed in which his Ego has had no part, must leave him, as a sort of astral shell, after he has passed through Kama-Loka; that shell dissolves in the astral world, not without its having brought about considerable mischief if as an astral body, it had bad desires and evil passions. Thus we can say that the development of man consists in. his leaving always less and less behind him in the astral world. [ 14 ] Let us follow the process; the man dies. Soon after death the etheric body is dissolved; and the extract of it remains. The man passes through. Kama-Loka, and the untransformed shell detaches itself; that which has been re-worked goes with man through all eternity, it is brought back into each new incarnation. The more perfect the man is, the less there will be of those remnants left in the astral world; till at last he will have progressed so far that he leaves nothing of his astral body in Kama-Loka, so far — that he can injure no living being on earth through the remnants he leaves in Kama-Loka. Such. a man has then the possibility of seeing into spiritual worlds. For it is not possible to reach this condition without having reached a certain degree of clairvoyance in the Astral. The whole astral body has then been spiritualised, it has become Spirit-Self, and the whole of it is taken with him by the man to the spiritual world. Formerly that which was bad was left behind, now the whole astral body can be taken with him into all futurity. And in the moment when the astral body is so far advanced that it is completely transformed, in that moment the whole of this new astral shape is impressed upon the etheric body, so that the etheric body becomes a counterpart of the astral body. The etheric body does not need to be as yet quite transformed, but that is impressed upon it which has been refashioned in the astral body. You see, that we have here described a particularly exalted being, one who is eminently far advanced, because he has developed the whole of the Spirit-self. This Being is called Nirmana-Kaya in Eastern Science; for his astral body, his astral Kaya, has reached the stage when it leaves no remnants in the astral world.

[ 15 ] Let us now go further. Man can always develop further and further; at last he influences or transforms his etheric body, then his physical body. What happens when the etheric and the physical body are transformed so that they are ruled by the man? When the etheric body is thus changed, when man has not only ‘Spirit Self’ in the astral body, but Budhi or ‘Life Spirit’ has also been gradually developed in his etheric body, and when this Life-Spirit or Budhi impresses itself upon the physical body — then yet a further stage of development is reached.

Man then reaches the point when his etheric body also leaves nothing behind it, so that he retains this etheric body in the same shape through all time, the etheric body in which he has formed the Life-Spirit or Budhi.

[ 16 ] Through such transmutations man becomes more and more ruler over his astral and his etheric bodies. Such control enables him also to direct in a certain way his astral and etheric bodies. One who has not yet brought his astral body under the rule of his Ego must certainly wait until he has come thus far; but the man who already is lord of his astral and etheric bodies, has them at his free disposal. He can say: ‘Because with my “I,” I have passed through so many incarnations which have taught me to transform my astral and etheric bodies, I am now enabled, when I have to return to earth again, to form for myself out of astral and etheric substances, an astral and an etheric body which will be equally perfect.’ He is also enabled to sacrifice his own astral and etheric bodies, to pass them on to others. You now see, that there are individualities who, because they have become rulers of their astral and etheric bodies, are able to sacrifice these bodies, because they have learnt how to build them. If they wish to return to earth again, they will themselves form them anew out of the existing material. The perfection to which they have attained, they pass on to other personalities who have to perform certain tasks in the world. Thus personalities of later days have woven into them, organised into them, the astral and etheric bodies of these who lived in times of yore. You see that when this happens the personality of olden times did not only influence the time in which he lived, but that his influence works on also into the future.

Thus, for instance, Zarathustra who was capable of governing his astral body, and who later passed it over to Hermes, could say to himself: ‘I live, but in the future I will not only work as I do now, as a person in the outer world, but, I will penetrate the astral body of the Egyptian Hermes, he in whom the Egyptian epoch of civilisation has its beginning.’ Such a personality has a body, a Kaya, which does not only operate in the place and time when it lives, but which acts into the future, and gives law unto the future. Law for the future is called Dharma. Such a body is called Dharmakaya. These are names, expressions which one often meets with in Eastern science. You have here the true explanation as it is always given in primeval wisdom.

Now if we look back at the many things which have passed before our minds during these days, our souls might well put the question: What is that, which, up to now, we have really called man? Man is a name given to a certain stage of development. We have found that the Spirits of Personality were men on Saturn; that even the Thrones must have been men once upon a time; we have learnt that man progresses further, and rises to higher Beings; we have learnt to know the first stages of the ascent in the Angels, Archangels, etc.; we have learnt to know in them Beings, who are sacrificing something; we have seen the beginning of the sacrifice which is found at its highest point in the Thrones. The first gleam of creative activity we have seen in those who are the leaders of nations and races, who know how to influence their own bodies in such a way that they can let some of their influence stream out. As the Thrones let their essence flow out, so in another way the Nirmana-Kayas let their own bodies flow out into the future, for the sake of future individualities, who could not have reached such a far point in their evolution, if they had not received embodied into them, what the former Beings gave out for them.

[ 17 ] Thus we build up our idea of evolution from the point when it begins, up to the time when one can give out, can create. The idea of the creator rises before our spiritual sight, and we say to ourselves, each separate being develops from the creature to the creator. The Archangels developed to the human stage on ancient Sun, the Spirits of Personality on ancient Saturn, the Angels on the ancient Moon, we men, upon the earth; and so it will continue always, in all times, Beings will be developing into men. Does all that continue endlessly? Is it really only a succession of circles, in which is repeated on the Sun that which previously took place on Saturn, only that a number of beings are added to the former ones with each circle? Is it really all, that out of originally helpless creatures beings should ever be developing into those who can sacrifice themselves? This is not at all the case! But the great question arises: Is the humanity which was experienced on Saturn by the Spirits of Personality, the humanity experienced on the Sun by the Archangels, and that experienced by the Angels on Mars, are these all the same kind of humanity as that which we are now experiencing upon earth? When we consider the nature of the Angels, for instance, do we see in them the image of what we shall be in our next Jupiter epoch? Do we see in the spirits of fire only the image of those beings we shall ourselves be in Venus? Can it really be said with reason that, in reaching to higher stages in the evolution of the world, and rising even into the Hierarchies, we shall develop only into Beings which exist already? Has our path of evolution been trod already by others? These are the great questions which each of you may ask who has let these lectures act impartially upon his soul. [ 18 ] Have we only to do with a humanity which is externally repeated in the same way, so that we are now as the Spirits of Personality were on the Saturn, the Fire Spirits or Archangels on the Sun, the Angels on the Moon? For us this might be important, but for the higher Gods it would only be a multiplication of their own creations, and they would not have achieved any special progress. But there is another question: Will men, just because they have become men upon the earth, be enabled some day, perhaps, to develop into beings capable of something of which the Angels are incapable, something of which also the Archangels and the Spirits of Personality are incapable? Has the whole of Creation learnt something through having produced men after the Archangels, and after the Angels? Has Creation made progress through that? Is it possible that man, because he was fitted to descend deeper, will, therefore, have gained the possibility, the right, to rise still higher? We ask ourselves this as a sort of consequential question. The remainder of our considerations must be dedicated to this question: What is the whole significance and importance of man in the Cosmos and his relation to the Hierarchies? What will Man become in the succeeding stages of the Hierarchies?

[ 1 ] Apart from the question put at the end of yesterday's lecture, it would be within the scope of this course of lectures to explain much more; but it is impossible to exhaust in ten lectures all there is to be said about our worlds. Therefore, I beg you to allow me to make yet a few observations before I touch on our question, especially as these observations are connected with it.

The first observation I have to make is difficult, perhaps even almost impossible of comprehension by the consciousness of the present day; but it is good to know that something of the sort exists. It is the question: in what way do these planetary formations really disappear again? It is clear to you how development spiritually proceeds: Beings arise to higher stages, and whilst they are rising they have to forsake the old place of habitation which afforded them for a time the possibility for developing certain capacities which they otherwise could not have achieved. When, in the course of evolution, that time approached which we call the Lemurian, man had reached so far in his general development that he had already repeated all that there was to be gained out of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. He now appeared on the dwelling-place destined for our earth-evolution, which had only just been formed. He developed through the Lemurian and Atlantean times on into our times, and he will continue to develop on into the future as we know — from one incarnation to the other. But after a certain time that human being will have to leave the earth, to forsake it, because it will not have anything more to give him, and will afford him no more possibilities of development. Now you might perhaps imagine that our earth would become a sort of deserted rubbish-heap when man had left it; you might compare it to a town which had been deserted by its entire population. You know what such a town looks like after a short time; it gradually turns into a mound of earth. We get an adequate idea of this in seeing towns which have been given over to nature. But it will not be so in the future of the earth. The following consideration will give you an idea of what that future will be like: what does such a genius, for instance, as Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael, signify for the earthly development of men? What importance for the earth's development, have those wonderful works of Michelangelo or Raphael which are still to-day enjoyed by thousands and thousands of people? Perhaps some of you have felt a certain sadness looking at the ‘Last Supper’ by Leonardo da Vinci, when you have asked yourselves, standing in front of that wonderful work in Milan, how long it would still last? For one must not forget that Goethe, in his first journey to Italy, still saw that work of art in all its beauty and freshness as we cannot see it any more. But, from the time of Goethe's youth to our time, this work of art has so far perished as regards the external, material world, that it calls forth in us feelings of sadness.* For people who will live as late after us as we are now after Goethe, that picture will not exist any more. So it is with everything men create upon earth, with everything which is incarnated into physical matter upon earth. In reality it is so also with the earth itself, and with the creations of human thought. Put yourselves now in thought into that time when the spiritualised men will have risen into higher spheres. Thoughts in the sense of to-day — I do not mean scientific thoughts, for these will entirely lose their importance in three or four hundred years — but thoughts of men in general, as they come forth from a human mind, have naturally no importance for the higher worlds, but have it only for the earth. But when man shall have left the earth, what will have happened to all his past creations on earth, through all the hundreds and thousands of years that are past?

[ 2 ] The evolution of the individual is naturally the thing to be first spiritually considered. Leonardo da Vinci has risen higher through what he has achieved; that is his ascent. But we ask ourselves whether the great thoughts, the great impulses, which great men have imprinted on the substance of the earth, do not have any importance for the future of the Earth? Will the future break and grind the Earth into dust, and will all that man has made out of the earth disappear together with its existence? You admire the Cathedral of Cologne! † In a comparatively short time there will certainly not be one stone of it lying on the other; but the fact that man once expressed his thoughts in stone in this cathedral, will that have no significance for the whole earth? We are now disregarding that which man takes with him away from the earth, we are considering the earth itself. We see that, in fact, a planet grows always smaller in the course of its development. It contracts. That is the destiny of the substance of planets; but it is not all, that is only something which the physical eye and physical instruments can observe in the planets. There is a further development of the material substance — beyond that point.

[ 3 ] Let us now consider this further development of matter, and with this I am touching on what I said will perhaps be impossible for you to understand with the comprehension of the present day. It is a fact that the earth is continually contracting, hence matter tends towards the centre from all sides. And now I say — be it understood consciously, not only fully conscious of the law of the conservation of force, but also fully conscious of facts known to every occultist — I say: Matter draws together more and more towards a centre, and the strange thing is that in that centre matter disappears.

[ 4 ] Imagine that you have a piece of something which contracts more and more towards its centre. In its centre it disappears. It does not get pushed over to its other side, it absolutely disappears into nothing in its own central point! So that you can imagine to yourselves that, as the material parts contract towards the centre, the whole of the earth will some day disappear in that central point. But this is not all: in the same measure in which it disappears in the central point, it reappears again in the circumference. Out there in space it is coming back again. At one point in space matter disappears and emerges again at another. Out there it is coming forth anew. The substance disappears in one place and from outside it returns again. But it returns in such a way that it brings back with it all that the beings who have worked on the planets have imprinted on its substance; naturally not in its present form, but in a form which this transformation has given to it. In this way you see the Cathedral of Cologne returning from the other side, its material particles having disappeared in the centre. Nothing, absolutely nothing, of that which has been accomplished on a planet is ever lost, it all comes back again from the other side.

[ 5 ] That which happened in the beginnings of our evolution, before the Saturn development, we must place outside, beyond the Zodiac. Primeval wisdom called it the Crystal Heaven, and in that crystal heaven were deposed all the deeds of the Beings of a former evolution. They formed, so to speak, the foundation on which the new Beings began to create.

[ 6 ] As we said before, all this is extremely difficult for the modern mind to understand, because it is in the habit of considering matter only, and because it is not in the habit of conceiving that outside of three dimensional space matter can disappear and re-appear at another place after it has passed through other dimensions. You cannot grasp this so long as your ideas remain in the space of three dimensions; for this goes beyond the three dimensions. Therefore, it cannot be seen until it returns again from the other side into the space of three dimensions. In the meantime, it is in other dimensions.

It is a thing which we have to grasp; for the conditions of our world's origin have manifold connections, and something which is to be found in some one place may often have a complicated connection with something else which is in quite a different place outside three dimensional space.

[ 7 ] We have said that our planetary formation began with the ancient Saturn, and it really did begin then. It then advanced to Jupiter. When the whole creation of Jupiter began, all the Beings in the surrounding space also took part in it as you know. But just as all the Beings who are active within the whole expanse of our planetary system are developing further, so also are the Beings outside our system, those who are sending in their influence from surrounding spaces. As some of the surrounding Beings withdrew, so did also some of the Beings who were outside in universal spaces; some of these also withdrew; and as Jupiter contracted, something was also withdrawn by the Beings who retired, something which had nothing to do with our evolution at all, but which along with the withdrawing Beings formed first Uranus, and then Neptune during the Mars development. The names of Uranus and Neptune were, of course, not chosen to suit the subjects in the way the Ancients chose names; although in the name Uranus some meaning still is left; it was given when people still had some feeling for the meaning of names; therefore, all that lies outside our circle was generically called Uranus.

[ 8 ] Thus we see that the two planets which our astronomers of the present day consider as having the same significance as the other planets stand on a totally different footing, and fundamentally speaking have nothing to do with the creation of our world; they represent those worlds which have come into existence because Beings who, during the Saturn period, still had something to do with us, have withdrawn and have found their places of habitation outside our world. We shall gather other facts from this, for instance, that those planets have retrograding moons, and so on.

[ 9 ] Thus we have sketched the origin of our solar system and have asked ourselves: What position has man towards those Beings of the higher Hierarchies who, fundamentally speaking, were his human forefathers? We can begin with the highest, the Seraphim, the Cherubim, the Thrones, and in describing them, get a good idea of man. If we could rise beyond the Seraphim, we should get into the realm of the Divine Trinity. What is it then that the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones have in particular, that is different from all the other beings in the world? They have what is called ‘the direct sight of GOD.’ That which man has to seek for slowly and gradually, throughout his development, is theirs from the beginning of all time. We men say, that we must start from our modern standpoint to acquire ever greater powers of knowledge, of will, etc.; thus we shall rise ever nearer and nearer to the Godhead, Divinity will become ever more present to us. We say to ourselves: We are developing upwards, towards something which is still veiled from us, towards the Godhead. This is the difference between the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones and men, that since the beginning of our development these highest Beings have enjoyed the direct sight of the Godhead, have been in the near presence of the Divine Trinity. That whereunto men have to evolve has been theirs from the very beginning.

Thus it is immensely important for us to know that these Beings came into existence seeing God; that as they live, so also they are in the sight of God.

All they do, all they achieve, they do through the vision they have of God, God does it through them. They could not do otherwise, it would be impossible for them to act otherwise than they do; for the sight of God has such power, such an influence upon them, that with a direct certainty, with immediate impulse they put into action, all that they receive from the Godhead. Anything like deliberation, judgment, consideration, does not exist in the sphere of those Beings. For them, there only exists the sight of the commands of the Godhead, the reception of the immediate impulse to put into action that which they have seen. And they also behold the Godhead in its original true form, they see the Godhead as it is. But they only see themselves as those who fulfil the will and the wisdom of God. These are the conditions of the highest Hierarchies.

[ 10 ] When we descend to the next Hierarchy, to those Beings whom we call the Spirits of Wisdom, of Motion, and of Form, we have to say that they have not such direct vision of the Godhead, they do not see God in His immediate aspect as He is, but in His revelations in the way He — if I may express it so — reveals Himself through His countenance. Certainly it is unmistakable for them that it is the Godhead, they feel the immediate impulse to follow the revelations of the Godhead, just as with the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. The impulse is not so strong, but it still is a direct one. It would be impossible for the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones to say that they would not put into action that which they see prescribed for them, so to speak, by the Godhead; that would be unthinkable because of their nearness to the Godhead. But it would also be in a certain way quite impossible for those Spirits of Wisdom, of Motion, and of Form to undertake that which the Godhead Itself did not want them to undertake.

[ 11 ] Therefore, if development was to progress, something quite particular had to come into action. We now touch on a point which is always difficult for men to understand, even for those who have advanced to a certain degree of the Mystery-Wisdom. In the ancient Mysteries they tried to make it comprehensible in the following way: At a certain stage of initiation into the ancient Mysteries, the neophyte was led by hostile powers, who had a cruel and horrible appearance, and who also enacted cruel and horrible deeds in the sight of the neophyte. Those who performed these deeds were no other than masked priests, masked sages. To bring about the necessary temptations and ordeals, Priests had to disguise themselves in devilish shapes, as terrible beings who performed the most terrific and the most abominable deeds which the mind of man could ever imagine. What did this mean? To show to the neophyte how far development could err from the right path, the priest himself, under the guise of the evil-doer, had to represent that evil before his eyes. He had to have the illusion that evil itself stood before him, and only when the evil was unmasked did he see the truth; then the illusion was taken away, and he knew he had had to do with a trial. To make him strong, to arm him against evil, it was represented to him in its most terrific aspect, represented by the wise Priests themselves who certainly did not err in truth. It was only a reflection of that which had really taken place within the Cosmic development.

[ 12 ] In the time between the Jupiter and the Mars development — if I dare express myself in trivial words — a number of Beings from the sphere of the Mights or Spirits of Motion were detached; they were placed in such a manner within the course of evolution that, instead of helping it onwards, they had to put hindrance in its way. Thus the deeds of — if I may coin the word — ‘adversely-commanded’ Mights were thrown athwart the course of evolution. For the ruling world-powers of the Hierarchies said to themselves: ‘Never could that arise which has to arise if the way were always smooth. Greater things must take place.’ [ 13 ] Imagine that you have a car to push. You develop your strength by pushing it. If heavy ballast is put into the car it will be heavier to push, but you would develop greater strength. Suppose the Godhead had let the world's evolution remain as it was, up to the time just after the Jupiter evolution, men could have certainly developed very well; but humanity could have become still stronger if hindrance had been in its way. For the good of humanity, certain Mights or Spirits of Motion had to receive adverse commands. These were not evil at first, one need not consider them as evil Powers, one might even say they sacrificed themselves by putting obstacles into the way of development. Therefore, these Mights may be called the gods of hindrance, of impediment, in the widest sense of the word. They are the gods of the impediments and hindrances placed in the way, on the high-road of development. And from that moment, the possibility was given for all that was achieved in the future. These ‘adversely-commanded’ Mights were not yet evil in themselves; on the contrary, they were the great promoters of development, promoting it through the storms they produced, but they were the breeders of evil; for, out of the storms they produced, evil gradually arose.

Naturally, the path of development of these ‘adversely-commanded’ Mights shaped itself quite differently from that of their brothers; their action was quite different, and the result was that, during the Moon-development, they became the tempters, the seducers, of those beings we call Angels. The Angels were passing through their human stage during the Moon development. There were Angel-men on the Moon who, so to speak, looked at the way the hindrances acted on development, and who said to themselves: ‘We can now put ourselves in the way of conquering the hindrances, we can plunge into the whole stream of the Moon's evolution; but we prefer to pass it by, we do not want to plunge into it, we want to remain above with the good Gods.’ These Angels tore themselves away, at a certain moment of the Moon's development, from the Mights who were throwing hindering influence down into the Moon-evolution. But there were other Angels who said to themselves: ‘We will not follow our brothers, for if we follow them, development would turn back, nothing new would be embodied in it.’ Just because of the existence of these hindering influences, something new was infused into evolution, from the time of the Moon onwards. Those Beings who said to themselves: ‘I shall have nothing to do with that which is going on down there, I shall stay with the Mights who do not wish to be tainted by anything low,’ these withdrew from the mass of the Moon and became part of the followers of all that is connected with the Sun. They would not have anything to do with what was proceeding on the forsaken Moon, when all the hindering powers held sway. But the other Beings who plunged down into it, had now to take into their bodily nature; (which they received on the Moon) all the hindering influences that existed there. They had to harden themselves more, as it were, than would otherwise have been the case. Their bodily sheaths became denser than they would otherwise have been. In their bodies were implanted the consequences of the deeds of the Mights, but these deeds were well rooted in the divine plan of the world — we must keep that well in mind. A further result of this was, that as the Moon development passed on into that of the Earth, the whole process was repeated, and those Beings who had plunged into the full tide of the Moon's development, remained behind those who would have nothing to do with it, and others remained still further back, and were attracted by the retrograding development. The result of all this was, that during the earth evolution Angel-men existed, who were advanced, and others who were retrograde.

The advanced Angel-men approached the men of the earth during the time, when, in Lemuria, they were ripe to receive the germ of the human ‘I,’ and gave them the choice, as it were, to rise into the spiritual worlds, then, and not to have anything further to do with that which since the time of the Moon, had mingled with the course of the world's development. The Beings who had stayed behind, whom we call the Luciferic beings, came into touch with the human astral body — they could not approach the ‘I’ — and grafted into that astral body all the results of the fight in heaven. While to the Mights was assigned the fight in heaven, for they were created Gods of Hindrance; the consequences of their deeds now slipped into the human astral body, and there signified something else; they signified the possibility of error and the possibility of evil. Man had now been given the possibility of error and of evil with the object that he should also have the possibility of rising above evil and error, through his own strength.

[ 14 ] Now consider that such Beings as the Mights, belonging to the second threefold Hierarchy, could not have had the power to become evil of their own free will; they had to be ‘adversely-commanded;’ and it was the Beings of the third threefold Hierarchy, and only those who stand nearest to man, the Angels, who first had it in their power to follow, or not to follow, the hindering Powers. Those who did not follow we always find represented in the pictures which illustrate the victories fought out in heaven. They express what happened during the Moon development, when Man had progressed as far as the organisation of his astral body, that is to the human-animal stage. Then those Angel beings who, so to speak, remained good, tore themselves away from the course of the Moon development, they escaped from what was going on down there, on the Moon. And this picture is represented to the Soul of man in different ways. It was originally represented in the fight of Michael with the dragon. You see it also in the symbol of the Bull of Mithra, where it is specially clearly expressed. It is, of course, not meant that in doing this these Angel Beings avoided their duty, but they were put forth as an ideal for the future. ‘These beings’ — it was said — ‘preferred to rise into the spiritual worlds, whereas you have descended. Other beings came down with you, those who followed the Powers of Hindrance. You must now work upon that which you have absorbed in this descent, and carry it up again into the spiritual world; when you rise again you must become a Michael, a conqueror of the Bull.’ For every symbol of this kind is used in a twofold sense.

[ 15 ] Thus we see that, because those ‘Mights’ were given certain orders, men first received the possibility of reaching their goal by their own strength, a thing which even the highest Seraphim cannot do of themselves. This is very essential. The Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones cannot do otherwise than follow the immediate impulses given them by the Godhead. The Dominions of the second threefold hierarchy, too, cannot do otherwise. A certain number of the Mights were ordered to oppose, so that those Mights also, who, as it were, threw themselves into the way of development, could not do otherwise than follow the orders of the Godhead. In what is called the ‘origin of evil’ they could but perform the will of the Godhead who, by means of evil, wishes to develop more powerful good. Now let us descend to those Beings we call the Powers or Spirits of Form. They also could not have come to this of themselves. They could not have grown wicked of themselves, nor could the Spirits of Personality, nor could the Spirits of Fire. For, when these were men on the Sun, the Mights had not yet been ordered to oppose, there was as yet no possibility of becoming wicked. The first who had the possibility of becoming evil were the Angels, for this could only happen after the development of the Moon. There, from the Sun to the Moon, the Fight in Heaven took place. A part of the Angels avoided this possibility, they would not be seduced by the forces which had to introduce hindrances, they held to the way of the old Nature. Thus, as far down as the Angels, or part of them, we have Beings who are absolutely unable to do otherwise than follow the divine Will. It is essential to remember this.

[ 16 ] We now come to two categories of Beings. First those Angels who fling themselves into that which the Mights produced during the Fight in Heaven; these are Beings who on account of their later deeds we call Luciferic. These Beings became united to the human astral bodies during the Earth-evolution and gave to men the possibility of evil, and also the possibility of developing through their own free power; so that in the whole sequence of Hierarchies we have only men; and some of the Angels, who have the possibility of freedom. In the midst of the ranks of the Angels the possibility of freedom begins, but it is first fully developed in men. When man entered the earth, he had at the beginning to be assailed by the power of the Luciferic Spirits; they penetrated the human astral body with their force. The ‘I’ was therefore attracted towards those forces, so that during the Lemurian and Atlantean evolutions, and even later we have the ‘I’ as in a cloud, as sheathed in a cloud, which was produced by the assaults of Lucifer. Man was saved from being overpowered by these forces which penetrated him, only because he was overshadowed by earlier Beings, because Angels who had remained above, and also Archangels, came down from the spirit world, incarnated into special individuals and guided men. And this continued up to the time when something quite particular took place; when a Being, whose existence up to then had always been united to the existence of the Sun, when a Being had progressed so far as to be able to penetrate, not only the physical, etheric and astral bodies of men, as former exalted Beings had done, but to penetrate into man even as far as his Ego.

[ 17 ] You remember how I described that in former times higher Beings descended and ensouled the human physical, etheric and astral bodies. Now at a special time, an individual arose who was chosen to receive into him the highest Being — a Being who was at first united to our Sun existence, but who now entered into, and worked inspiringly in all the powers of this individuals Ego.

[ 18 ] The ‘I’ expresses itself through the blood. Just as the material substance of blood is the expression of the ‘I’, so the warmth or fire of the blood, which is the remnant of the Saturn fire, is the expression of the Ego in the elements. This Being had to find expression physically in a twofold way; first through fire. It proclaimed itself to Moses through fire in the burning bush and in the thunder and lightning on Sinai. For it is the same Being who later was able to penetrate into the human ‘I’, who spoke to Moses in the burning bush and in the thunder and lightning on Sinai. This Being prepared its advent, and appeared in a body in which blood flowed — in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Through this, a Sun-Being entered into an earthly individuality. Because the human ‘Ego’ will be filled ever more and more by the force which then entered into it, it will become ever more and more capable of overcoming by its own power the influences which can pull it down. For the Being who could penetrate into the Ego of man, is of a different nature from those other Beings who formerly descended to earth and ensouled physical, etheric and astral bodies. [ 19 ] Let us take the ancient holy Rishis. In their etheric body there was, as we have seen, the spirit of a high Being; they had inherited that etheric body from great Atlantean forefathers in whom that exalted Being had lived. It was passed over to them. They could not follow at all with their Ego and their astral body, the things which their etheric body expressed in the moments of inspiration. And so it happened from epoch to epoch. Men were inspired; it was always as if a power was in them, something that took strong possession of them. From what man was capable of in himself — he was withdrawn, in order to become better. He was inspired by a better Being. This was the case with all founders of religions. They were ensouled by a Being who was still high above the Fight in Heaven, so that they were not left completely to themselves. In the Christ there appeared a Being of a quite different nature, who did nothing, nothing at all, to force people to come to Him. And this is essential! [ 20 ] If you take the whole manner in which Christianity was propagated, you will find a living proof that the Christ during His life did nothing of what was done later for the propagation of Christianity. Look at the founders of religion of the ancient times! They are the great Teachers of humanity, they taught from a certain period in our development, and their teaching acted on men in an overwhelming way. Look at the Christ! Does He, fundamentally speaking, work through His teaching? The man who thinks that His teaching is the most important part, does not understand the Christ. The Christ did not in the first place act at all through His teaching, but through that which He did. And the greatest deed of the Christ was that which ended with death, was His Death. This is the essential point, that the Christ acted though a deed, and when this deed spread through the world, He was not any more physically present. This is the great difference between the Christ and the other great founders of religions. This difference is not at all understood as yet, but is essential. You can follow all the teachings of Christianity, all that is preached as Christianity, and you can find it all in other religious systems. This cannot be denied. You can say: ‘All the essential part of Christian teaching is included in other teachings.’ But has Christianity been operative in the contents of its teaching? He who at first did what was most essential towards spreading the essence of Christianity, did he rely on its teaching? Look at the Apostle Paul! Was he transformed from a Saul to a Paul by what is written in the Gospels? He persecuted the followers of Christ Jesus. He persecuted them until He who died on the Cross appeared to him from the clouds, until he, Paul, had his own personal occult experience of the fact that Christ lived. It was the effect of that death, the result of that deed, which gave the impulse to Paul, this was the cause of it all. Other religious systems act through their teachings, and their teachings are the same as in Christianity, but the essential thing in Christianity is not the teaching, but what happened, the deed. And this deed is such that it does not act upon man except when man makes up his mind to let it act upon him, that is, when it can be joined to the absolutely free character of his ‘Ego.’ For it is not sufficient that the Christ should be present in the man's astral body, He must be present in his ‘EGO,’ if He is to be really understood. And the Ego must decide in complete freedom, voluntarily, to receive the Christ. This it is with which we are concerned, this is the point. Just because of this, the human Ego, when it unites with the Christ, receives into itself a reality, a divine force which is not a mere teaching. Therefore it can be asserted a hundred times that the teachings of Christianity are to be found in other religions, but this is not the question; the fact is that the essential thing in Christianity is the deed which can become one's own possession only through free will, through a voluntary ascent into the higher worlds. Man takes the Christ-force into himself, because he voluntarily receives it, and no one can receive it who does not do so voluntarily. This has only been made possible for man because he has become human upon earth, because he was called to grow into man on earth.

[ 21 ] The fallen Angels who have spread over the earth as Lucifer, are in a different position. These ought really to have become men on the Moon; they have remained behind in their development, hence they can enter the astral body but not the Ego. They are in a peculiar position, a position which we can only describe graphically, even if it appears somewhat pedantic. Let us suppose, leaving aside the physical and etheric body, that the astral body of man during the Lemurian development was represented by the circle A-B-C, and the Ego was the circle enclosed (a) in that astral body. [ 22 ] The Ego gradually entered the astral body. What happens now? During the Lemurian development the Luciferic forces slip on all sides into the man's astral body and penetrate him with their activities, which find expression in his lower passions. That through which he succumbs to error and evil is rooted in his astral body; the Luciferic spirits have implanted this into him. (If they had not done this he would never have had the possibility of error and evil, he would have been lifted up to the place from whence he receives his ‘Ego’, untouched by all hindering influences.) So it goes on, but the great leaders protect humanity as far as it is necessary so that it should not sink too low.

[ 23 ] Now comes the Advent of the Christ. Let us take a man who has voluntarily received the Christ. Christianity is only at its beginning. But let us take the Ideal; the man's ‘Ego’ has voluntarily, with complete free will, allowed the Christ's force to flow into him. When the Ego has progressed so far that it has filled itself with the Christ, then this Christ force irradiates the astral body also. In that same astral body, into which the Luciferic powers had formerly implanted their deeds, the Christ power is now radiating from within outwards. What happens in the future? Because we have overcome with the help of Christ, and only with His help, all those human qualities which come from Lucifer, we also, as men, gradually release the Luciferic powers; and a time will come, when the Luciferic powers who, during the Moon development, had to sink downwards into a certain lower evolution for the sake of human freedom, and who had not themselves the opportunity of experiencing the Christ force upon earth, these Luciferic powers will experience the Christ force through man, and through Him they will be released. Man will save Lucifer, when he takes the Christ force into himself in the necessary way. And because of this, man will again grow stronger than he otherwise would have been. For imagine: if man had not received the Luciferic powers, then the Christ force irradiating him, would not have encountered the hindrances of the Luciferic forces, and it would have been impossible for man to progress so far in wisdom, goodness and in truth as he may do, when he has to overcome these opposing forces.

[ 24 ] Thus in Man, we have a member of the Hierarchies who, as we see, is very distinct from the other members. We see that man's position is different from that of the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, the Spirits of Wisdom, of Motion and of Form, and different too from the Spirits of Personality, from the Fire Spirits the Archangels and from some of the Angels. He can say to himself, looking into the future: ‘I am called on to search in my own inmost depths, for that which gives me the impulse for my actions — I do not receive it from gazing on the Godhead like the Seraphim, but from the innermost depth of my own being.’

The Christ is a God whose action is such that one is not absolutely forced to follow His Impulse, one follows it only when one understands it, and in freedom. He is, therefore, the God who never seeks to hinder the free development of the Ego in this or that direction. The Christ says in the very highest sense: ‘You will know the Truth and the Truth will make you free.’

And those beings of the next Hierarchy who had the possibility of doing evil, the Luciferic beings, these will again be released, liberated by the power of man.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[ 25 ] We therefore see, my dear friends, how in fact the World development does not simply repeat itself, but that new things enter. For a human stage such as is lived by men at present was never met with before, not with the Angels, nor the Archangels, nor the Spirit of Personality. Man had a completely new mission to fulfil in the world, the mission we have just characterised. For the sake of this mission he has descended into the world of the earth. And the Christ came into the world as a free Helper for him, not as a God acting from above, but as a first-born among many.

[ 26 ] Thus at last, we understand all the dignity and all the importance of Man as a member of our Hierarchies, and when we glance upwards to all the nobility and the glory of the higher Hierarchies we say to ourselves: Be they ever so great, so wise, so good that they never err from the right path, yet the great mission of man is to bring Freedom into the world, and with Freedom firstly that which one calls Love in the true sense of the word. For Love without Freedom is impossible. A Being who blindly follows an impulse, just follows it; but for a Being who can also act otherwise, there exists but one force which he could follow, and that is Love. Freedom and Love are two poles which belong to each other. If Love is to enter into our Cosmos, it can happen only through Freedom, that means, only through Lucifer and those who conquer him; and at the same time through the Saviour of men, through the Christ. Therefore, the earth is the Cosmos of Freedom and Love, and therefore, the essential thing is, that we, without tempting man away from humility, must learn to reckon the Hierarchies as they ever have been reckoned in Western esotericism: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; these follow the direct impulse of the Godhead, having the sight of God. The Spirits of Wisdom, of Motion, and of Form, (Dominions, Mights, and Powers), these are as yet so bound to the higher powers that they have to be given ‘adverse-commands’ in order that evolution should have the possibility of proceeding further. The Archangels and the Spirits of Personality also cannot fail, cannot, through their own free will, sink into evil. Therefore, the spirits of the Hierarchies next above man were called Messengers and Arch-Messengers to show that they did not fulfil their own tasks but the tasks of those who stand immediately above them. But in men a Hierarchy is maturing which will fulfil its own tasks.

Through the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan developments man will be always maturing towards accomplishment from out his own Impulses. Even if to-day he is not yet so far advanced he will attain to it in time.

[ 27 ] Which are the Hierarchies? We begin: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; the Spirits of Wisdom, who exercise their dominion only so far as they act in the direction of the impulses they receive from the gods; then the Mights or Spirits of Motion, who have their power only because they receive it from above; it is the same with Spirits of Form. Were they to become evil, they could. become so only according to the decision of Divinity. We come then to the Spirits of Personality, to the Arch-messengers and messengers and have now descended almost as far as to men. And what can be said of Man if we place him in the ranks of the Hierarchies? After the Archangels and Angels, the Arch-messengers and messengers, we will have to rank the Spirits of Freedom or Spirits of Love; for this, beginning from above, is the tenth of the Hierarchies, which although in process of development, yet belongs to the Hierarchies.

[ 28 ] In the universe we have not to do with repetitions, each time that a cycle is passed, something new is added to the world's evolution. And to introduce the new element, is always the mission of that Hierarchy, which is at its human stage of development.

[ 29 ] In these lectures we have endeavoured to prove the significance of Man through the significance of our Cosmos; we have, to a certain degree at least, questioned ourselves to-day as to the spiritual significance of man, and we have endeavoured to explain man — this point in the centre of the universe — in accordance with the teaching of the Mysteries, by explaining him — the point, from the circumference!

In doing this our knowledge gains reality; for it is most essential that all true spiritual knowledge should be a concrete true knowledge. This means that the knowledge gained through spiritual science should itself give a direct presentation of the Cosmos and of the Spiritual Hierarchies.

[ 30 ] We stand at the central point of the world. Everything around us loses significance for us, because we have to say: The external world of sense cannot solve the riddle for us. It is, as if everything were to draw together to a centre, and when this is done — then from the circumference, the solution of this world problem comes back to us in actual reality, just as is the case with matter itself which is a reflection and symbol of the spiritual. It draws together in the centre, disappears there, and then emerges again out of the circumference. This is a reality. And our knowledge is real when it thus stands before our eyes like the construction and the process of the whole cosmos. Then it is no speculation, no fancy, it is born out of the Cosmos itself. And we must develop the feeling within us: Wisdom must be an ideal for us, which is born out of the circumference of the Cosmos, and which fills us with the strongest force, with force to carry out our own intentions, our own great world-Ideal, and with this, force also for our ideal for future humanity.

[ 1 ] Do we have to imagine the spiritual hierarchies with the concept of spatiality, since they are spoken of as domains?

[ 2 ] We can say of man that the being of this man lives out within space. But space itself, in occult terms, must also be imagined as something created. This creation lies before the works and effects of the highest hierarchies; we may therefore assume the existence of space. But we may not imagine the highest Trinity spatially, for Space is its product. We must imagine the spiritual entities without Space; Space is something created. But the effects of the hierarchies in our world are spatially limited, like those of man. The other hierarchies are what moves within Space.

[ 3 ] Is time applicable to spiritual processes?

[ 4 ] Certainly; but the highest spiritual processes in man lead to the concept that they take place timelessly. The activities of the hierarchies are timeless. It is difficult to speak of the arising of time: the word “arise” already contains the concept of time; one would have to say rather: the essence of time, and that is not so easy to speak about. There would be no time if all beings were at the same stage of development. Time comes into being through the interaction of a sum of lower and a sum of higher beings. Different degrees of development are possible in the timeless; through their interaction, time becomes possible.

[ 5 ] On the concept of development.

[ 6 ] The concept of evolution extends to all worlds; but for the Godhead it is another.

[ 7 ] What is the difference between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic or Mephistophelian entities?

[ 8 ] The latter have a stronger, more powerful will to evil. The two types of entities come from different hierarchies. At the beginning of evolution, beings were more on the same level; then we have remaining beings. The stages of development overlap. The Ahrimanic entities are lower in the region of evil and are recruited from the most diverse hierarchies; for example, some remained behind on the sun, others on the moon; those left behind on the sun can catch up on their development on the moon, those left behind on the moon on the earth, and so on. Mephistophelian or Ahrimanic entities are those that stand higher or lower in the hierarchy of evil than the luciferic ones; they recruit themselves from the archangels to the powers.

[ 9 ] Can elemental beings become human?

[ 10 ] There are entities that came into being because higher entities did not develop their limbs; these became detached and became elemental beings. There are whole armies, whole hosts of them. The lifespan of such entities varies greatly. As a rule, they undergo a downward development and disappear completely from existence; for example, there can be no question of the elemental spirits developing to the level of humanity.

[ 11 ] The Indian teaching is so little emphasized in your discussion of the etheric body; why?

[ 12 ] What Dr. Steiner said is the property of all secret teachings. The Secret Doctrine is not an Indian doctrine, just as there is no such thing as an “Indian Theosophy”. Dr. Steiner used the common terminology of all secret teachings in his remarks.

[ 13 ] Are the Elohim still above the nine Hierarchies?

[ 14 ] The Elohim are those beings who remained connected to the sun when the sun separated from the moon and earth; they belong to the hierarchy called the powers, spirits of form, and from there upwards to the hierarchies. They are still within our evolution. Elohim is the collective name for the sun beings; at that time they had chosen the sun as their dwelling place - not as their sphere of activity. Christ, the highest of the Elohim, is their ruler. However, he does not belong to the hierarchies, but to the Trinity. In Christ we have an entity before us that is so powerful that it has influence over all the members of our solar system.

[ 15 ] The Second Coming of Christ.

[ 16 ] The return of Christ will be very real, and it will take place when a large part of humanity has reached the point that they will be able to recognize Christ in the form in which he will appear, and this experience can then be something for people. Because what matters is that as many people as possible will also be able to recognize him.

[ 17 ] Concerning the Asuras.

[ 18 ] The asuras – the evil ones – are entities that are one degree higher in their will to evil than the ahrimanic entities and two degrees higher than the luciferic ones.

[ 19 ] What protection is there from black magicians?

[ 20 ] The best defense is to try to maintain your freedom, to use your sound judgment and to employ your reason. If you are always mindful of this, you will not expose yourself to any danger, and you will not have to deal with anything from this side. Of course, where the belief in authority plays such a large role today and the addiction to recognize all kinds of things in a hazy state of consciousness is so great, it is easily possible for black magic forces to flow in. Protection against them is only necessary when one enters a certain level of occult development. In a properly conducted occult training course, which aims at harmonizing the soul forces, one already acquires protective powers against such attacks. There are no general rules.

[ 21 ] Is there a difference between the group souls of bees, ants and corals?

[ 22 ] Certainly; there are many degrees of difference. The group soul of the beehive is a very high entity, higher than that of the ants; it is so high that one could say: it is cosmically precocious. It has reached a state of development that man will only reach on Venus. We must look at it like a precocious child; it stands out from the normal development. It is similar with the group soul of ants, only it is lower. The coral group soul is an even higher being, but also a precocious being; it is higher than, for example, the group soul of cattle. However, the level does not always fit into the time; some later degree of development is anticipated. This exposes the beings to various dangers that they are not yet able to cope with. Occult zoology is very complicated and the level of development of group souls varies greatly.

[ 23 ] What hierarchies are the Greek and Germanic gods related to?

[ 24 ] With the Angels. Here we are dealing with beings who developed their activity in the Atlantean period. At first, man lived together with these beings; he lived together with gods, for these beings only withdrew later and only became “gods” in the late Atlantean period. In Atlantis itself, men and gods still lived side by side. The human line of development went downward, that of the gods upward. Every hierarchy has innumerable degrees and gradations.

[ 25 ] What will become of the animal world in the future? Is it destined for a higher development?

[ 26 ] The group soul of the animals develops upward; it will be a different being on Jupiter. They will not, of course, become human in the modern sense, but on Jupiter these group souls will achieve a kind of humanity. There is no upward development for the individual animal, because the individual animal relates to the group soul as the bark of a tree relates to the sprouting shoot: it falls away, just as the bark of a tree falls away; but the group soul rises up.

[ 27 ] How high is the value of so-called prenatal education?

[ 28 ] The mother has a lot to consider during the pregnancy. In today's world, where the mother knows nothing of all this, very important measures are being neglected. The first ten (lunar) months of life on earth can be the time when something very good is snatched away from man. Today the task of preventing this falls to the gods; later, when people have matured, it will fall to people. The gods, in their supreme wisdom, have withdrawn the first ten (lunar) months of human development from human influence. Men should be glad that they cannot interfere with prenatal development. If the life of the mother is so ordered that it corresponds to a certain ideal in thinking, feeling, sensing and willing, then that is certainly also best for the child.

[ 29 ] On Vulcan Evolution.

[ 30 ] What can be mentioned about this is that this development is not a conclusion; but we want to be satisfied if we know what is happening there, once it is the time for us. In the course of development, even the concept of development develops.

[ 31 ] On the relation of spiritual science to modern science.

[ 32 ] In the facts of modern science you will find evidence for spiritual science; only the theories nowhere lead into the field of spiritual science, but lead away from it. Today's science is not attacked, but what has been achieved is recognized; but we must clearly and sharply show the boundary as to how one enters spiritual science or is led away from it.

[ 33 ] Is there a connection between blood relationship and Karma?

[ 34 ] It is karmically conditioned that a person is born into a particular family; it may be the fulfillment of past karma. But a person can also create new karmic connections for himself. We create them for ourselves through what we do today. People who are truly connected to each other meet again and again. The fact that we were born into a certain environment is an expression of previous karma. But one does not always have to remain connected to those with whom one is related by blood. Spiritual ties, formed out of family ties, lead to each other again. But such things change with the different cycles of humanity; consanguinity is beginning to have less significance than before, and it will lose this significance more and more. In the development of humanity,

[ 35 ] the binding force of blood ties becomes weaker and weaker.

[ 36 ] Concerning the quarrel in heaven.

[ 37 ] In the conflict in heaven, not the worst and most incompetent powers were singled out and “detailed”. In the mystery play, initiates were also put in masks of the opposing forces to make this clear to the disciple. A person of wisdom should be rubbed off on a person of wisdom who is on the path of error.

[ 38 ] On the Negative and the Positive.

[ 39 ] Humanity will increasingly come to the realization that pettiness, folly, and so on, are only significant for the physical world and will die with the people; however, the good, as the positive, will remain forever. In his knowledge, the occultist is guided by great world laws, for example, by the one - that sounds trivial - by which herrings reproduce in the sea. The herring eggs perish en masse: the negative is a necessary part of becoming. This should not prevent us from doing positive things again and again. No matter how many opposing forces there may be, what needs to be done must be done.

[ 40 ] On the meaning of suffering.

[ 41 ] Suffering is a concomitant of higher development. It is indispensable to knowledge. Man will say to himself one day: “What the world gives me in the way of joy, I am grateful for. But if I am given the choice between keeping my joys or my sufferings, I will want to keep the sufferings; I cannot do without them for the sake of knowledge. After a certain time, every suffering presents itself in such a way that one cannot do without it, for we have to understand it as something contained in development. There is no development without suffering, just as there is no triangle without an angle. When the harmony of the Christ is attained, we shall recognize that all preceding suffering was a necessary condition for this harmony. For the harmony of the Christ to be there, suffering must be there; it is an absolute factor in evolution.

[ 42 ] By overcoming egotism, man rises above the feeling of being oppressed and paralyzed. In this phenomenon one can see something good: strength from inadequacy. Thank God that I am encouraged to continue acting through an inadequate act, that is, its failure! The human striving is not an uncertain lottery. Only he remains unredeemed whose free will turns away from the destiny of the human being. In the synthesis of the world process, suffering is a factor.

[ 43 ] What will the theosophical movement mean in the future?

[ 44 ] Something very useful, and it will be shown that those who use it as a battering ram for development are mistaken.

[ 1 ] On reincarnation.

[ 2 ] In reality, the doctrine of reincarnation is an ancient teaching in the secret schools. It has only relatively recently been included in the scriptures. It is one of the most elementary teachings in the world. The processes of reincarnation themselves are not so simple. (See Rudolf Steiner's explanations about the etheric bodies of the rishis and so on).

[3] The reappearance of the /ch was carefully guarded among the secrets. In the infancy of the theosophical movement, one could hear strange things about reincarnation; it happened that at the coffee house at one table, there were re-embodiments of Emperor Joseph, Seneca and so on! These things are very confusing. One should cultivate the feeling in relation to them: “I receive many ideas, but I cannot dig deep enough to understand them. I actually understand nothing at all!” It is the best impulse to be shy about forming a final judgment.

[ 4 ] On the expressions: death and dying.

[ 5 ] In the Book of Job, Job's wife advises him not to remain good. One expression occurs: “Deny God and die.” These words encapsulate a whole world. We can only understand them if we know what was understood by “union with God.” It is the possibility of a life that cannot be extinguished by death, once union has been attained.

[ 6 ] By dying, the material process is not meant; one must approach this word with other feelings. Paul once said, “Then came the law, and I died.” We must realize what the concept of the law means. By death is meant the separation of that which is unkillable.

[ 7 ] In certain ages, it was understood to mean the submerging of the soul's consciousness into a lower state: when the soul enters embodiment, it enters into obscuration of consciousness.

[ 8 ] The soul can lead such a life that she never has to enter darkness again. Darkness is death, which occurs at the birth of the body. Souls that do nothing for themselves enter this re-death, that is, re-embodiment.

[ 9 ] It is the will of the masters to show clearly how modern thinking is deficient and inflexible and so infinitely far removed from the true facts.

[ 10 ] Not only is that Christian love, which helps those who have fallen into error, but there is an active Christian love that protects others from misunderstandings. In oriental wisdom there is a theory of knowledge so profound that we cannot even begin to understand it with our Kantian materialism. When we penetrate to pure knowledge, we have to say: without the eye, there is no light – so the world is our imagination. But without light, there is no eye either! It perceives light not by chance, because light is the creator of the eye: the eye is born of light. The objectification of light is the sun. Occultly, the sun corresponds to the eye in the microcosm. Likewise, voice (microcosmic) and fire (macrocosmic) correspond. The formation of formed matter can be correctly compared with the formation of sound or tone figures. These are reproductions of the original processes. Form is sound that has become rigid in matter. The clay had to first break through the primal fire. The mineral and animal world, in short, everything is clay (that has broken through the fire). Microcosmically, the fire pulses in the warmth of the blood. As the fire finds expression in the blood, the sound of the microcosm resonates from within (the voice) and corresponds to the matter forming out of the Logos.

[ 11 ] The wisdom of the primeval world is wiser than the thinking that has arisen in the course of the world. The wisdom that is in the things around us was imprinted on them on the moon. The task of the earth is the development of love. On Jupiter, love will reach us from everything. Evolution on earth is necessary to find love from within on Jupiter. On the moon, we have as poles: wisdom - error; on earth: love - selfishness.

[ 12 ] Saturn – Fire Sun – Air (gas) Moon – Water Earth – Earth (solid).

[ 13 ] Water and air developed independently of each other during the formation of the earth. Everything is condensed from the four elements. Evaporated water is intimately related to plants. Today we can only use inorganic forces (e.g. coal and so on), while the Atlanteans worked with plant forces. He knew how to draw the forces out of the seed and used them to move his vehicles. The forces of the plant seed are born of air and water. But how a person uses these forces depends on his or her morality. Wind and weather were closely related to this. If the forces were used well, then wind and weather were also good. When the Atlanteans became evil, they themselves brought about the catastrophe of the flood.

[ 14 ] Similarly, fire and earth were in connection for a certain time (Lemuria). These elements can intertwine in many different ways.

[ 15 ] You can have an idea of three-dimensional space. In the Platonic school, an important tenet is: God geometrizes. Basic geometric concepts awaken clairvoyant abilities. In the geometry of the situation, it is proved that the same point is everywhere in the vicinity: the infinitely distant point on the right is the same as the starting point on the left. That means, ultimately, the world is a sphere, you come back to the starting point. When I take geometric theorems, they turn into borderline concepts. Three-dimensional space reaches its point again. That is why point a in the astral world acts on point b without any connection.

[ 16 ] One introduces materialism into theosophy when, in order to arrive at the spiritual, one assumes that matter becomes thinner and thinner. This does not lead to the spiritual. But through such ideas as point a = point b, one arrives at ideas of the fourth dimension.

[ 17 ] As an example, we can think of the gall wasp with the thin waist 0-0, if the connection in the middle were not there and the two parts moved together, connected only by effect. Expand the concept: many fields of action goJo in multidimensional space.

[ 18 ] About the Number 40. “One in the egg” — what does that mean? It is written like this: 10. The exoteric reads it as ten, the esoteric: “One in the egg”.

[ 19 ] Imagine we have completed some cycle of development, for instance Saturn, Sun and Moon, and we are at the point where the evolution of the Earth begins. What man has gained from Saturn has become egg O0, from the sun as well: 0 0, from the moon as well: 0 0 0. After three completed cycles, a new one begins: 1000. This one undergoes sub-cycles.

[ 20 ] Cycle 6.5.4.3.2.1.

[ 21 ] We can also write in occult writing: 4321000. When we speak of 1000 years in occult writing, we mean that 3 cycles have emerged from the egg.

[ 22 ] This is an occult arithmetic that reflects cosmic facts. Everything from the cosmos is reflected in the physical and spiritual life of the earth. In our present cycle, man is moving towards the contemplation of the external world, towards a reversal of all contemplation. Where Maja occurs for consciousness, is the 4th cycle. Therefore, the 4 is the number of Maja and the cosmos.

[ 23 ] In all instances where 4 occurs in the Bible, this or that is overcome by Maja: 40 days of fasting, 40 days of wandering mean a certain overcoming. 40 = 4 from the egg. Whoever fasts for 40 days must have gone through an occult cycle. The more primitive the states of consciousness are, the less one can speak of boredom. This fades the more we go back in states of consciousness.

[ 24 ] Evolution does not presuppose a beginning or an end. Development proceeds in cycles without repetition, with something new being added in cyclic progression. A finite beginning or end is a last-ditch attempt to explain away sensual processes.

[ 25 ] The development of the part __creature, the evolvement of the whole God, is a false premise. Example: Father - son.

[ 26 ] The planets Saturn, Jupiter and Mars remained behind before the separation of the sun. Mercury and Venus separated from the sun after the separation of the earth, to create dwelling places for higher beings.

[ 27 ] We can explain the canals of Mars through Germanic mythology: Germanic mythology reflects earlier conditions of the earth. In the earlier thinness of matter, regular processes took place that have now become irregular: for example, the twelve streams, the fire sparks and so on; these were developmental processes on earth. The same is true on Mars: the formation of canals is a still preserved, retained state that our earth also went through.

[ 28 ] Man has the task of attaining freedom; he can develop forces from all hierarchies, for example, from the angels Manas, from the archangels Budhi, and so on. Through his development, it becomes possible for higher hierarchies to take effect; it is precisely through this that he develops further. Man contains all hierarchies within himself as a microcosm.

[ 29 ] In the evolution on earth, everything repeats itself. Where Mars is today, the earth was in the state of the moon. Repeated on earth: the passage of Mars.

When we speak of human development in Christian mysticism, we have to consider that the way to higher development in the spirit was always strictly laid down in advance. For gnostic Christian development, the individual had to withdraw from outer civilization. The whole was so strict that it could not be done by someone who was involved in the outside working world. But anyone can achieve a great deal by even approximately taking this way. The Christian way demands a considerable level of development. It differs from all other ways in that those who follow it cannot gain insight into reincarnation and karma on their own.

Reincarnation was accepted belief in esoteric Christianity, but did not form part of exoteric Christianity. There was a particular reason why it was not part of Christian teaching in the past.

You only need to go back a few thousand years to come to a time when the teaching of reincarnation and karma was more or less world-wide. It was only somewhat less well known among peoples of Semitic origin. Apart from this it would be found everywhere in those times. People oppressed by their destiny would say to themselves: ‘This is one of many lives. In this life I am preparing things that will have their reward in a later life.’ People were always looking up to higher worlds in those days. This was the same everywhere, and thus also among Chaldean wise men who were priests. The stars were to them a reflection of a soul and a spirit, they were the bodies of spirits. The whole of cosmic space was filled with living spiritual entities for them. They would speak of the laws that governed the movements of the stars as the will of the spirits embodied in the sun and the planets. Life in those days was a matter of continually turning to the spirit in your inner life. The work people did on earth then was primitive, but their penetration of the universe in the spirit had reached a high level. So one would see sublime spiritual views side by side with a primitive material civilization.

The age which followed was to pay increasingly more attention to outer material civilization, conquering the globe for material civilization, as it were. Human beings were meant to concentrate on physical life. The thinking of the Chaldean priests, the followers of Hermes and those of the holy Rishis was directed to the life of the spirit. Repeated earth lives were a factual reality to them. Then humanity had to let this go of this for a while. All human beings were meant to go through one incarnation when they did not know about repeated earth lives. This was in preparation as early as 800 years before Christianity came, and it is gradually dying down again now in our time. Today, those familiar with occult streams know that Christianity, too, must return to the teaching of reincarnation and karma.

This is evident from the Mount Tabor Mystery,¹ an event that took place ‘on the mountain’. ‘On the mountain’ is a key phrase signifying that the master was taking his disciples into the innermost sphere to teach them the most occult things. It says ‘the disciples were taken out of themselves’, which means that they were taken into higher worlds. Elijah, Moses and Jesus appeared to them. This means that space and time had been overcome. Moses and Elijah, who were no longer on earth, appeared to them in their devachanic condition. The name Elijah means ‘the way of God’, the goal. The word el, meaning ‘god’ is found in elohim, Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and also in Bel.² The name Moses signifies truth. Moses is the occult term for truth. Jesus means ‘life’ The Christ himself, standing in the middle, is life. This was written in the mental plan in letters of brass, as it were: ‘The way, the truth and the life’. The disciples said: ‘Let us put up tabernacles here.’ This means they were chelas of the second degree. The Lord also said: ‘Elijah is come already, and they knew him not. Tell this to no man until I am returned again.’ He was speaking of reincarnation. John the Baptist was Elijah. The return refers to the return of Christ Jesus.³ Understanding of this event can be prepared for with the anthroposophical view of the world.

When all human beings have been through an incarnation where they knew nothing of reincarnation and karma, reincarnation will be taught again. In the innermost circles of Christianity reincarnation was, however, always accepted as a truth. This can be seen wherever initiates taught by doing things. An example is the Trappist Order.⁴ Keeping an absolute vow of silence in one life they become excellent speakers in later incarnations. The opposite of what happens in one incarnation thus prepares for a very special gift in the next. Ardent speakers were to be created by withholding speech.

The external teaching in one age thus was that human beings should hold on to the feeling that life on earth was exhausted with this one life. They were to say to themselves: ‘A whole eternity will depend on what happens in this one life’. A radical form of this was the dogma of eternal punishment in hell. The earth would not have been conquered if the teachers of Christianity had not given this to humanity. The great teachers have never presented absolute truth but only what was right for humanity at the time. They never teach the ultimate truths but only what is right for a particular age. It would not have been right to teach reincarnation in that age. What the science of the spirit teaches is also not the ultimate truth. The anthroposophical view of the world must be taught now because it is right for this time. The people who now hear the teaching of spiritual science will hear the truth in a very different way in a later incarnation. Within three thousand years we shall learn something that belongs to a higher realm because we have previously gone through anthroposophy. This is the spiritual side of it. But all things of the spirit must also have a counter image in the physical world. The spirit who appeared in the Christ prepared the way for this several centuries beforehand.

To have people think one incarnation was the one and only one, it was necessary that something cut off the brain from the higher principles in man, from atma, buddhi, manas and from knowing about reincarnation. Humanity was given wine for this purpose. In earlier time, all temple rituals used water only. Then the use of wine was introduced, and a divine spirit—Bacchus, Dionysus—became the representative of wine. John, the most deeply initiated disciple, showed the significance of wine for inner development in his gospel. At the Wedding at Cana,⁵ water was changed into wine. Wine prepared human beings so that they no longer knew anything of reincarnation. At that time, the water for the offering was changed into wine and we are now again in the process of changing the wine into water. Anyone wishing to reach higher regions of existence must refrain from taking even a drop of alcohol now.

Every line in the gospel of John reflects a profound experience in the single individual and in the whole of humanity. Jesus said: ‘I have come to initiate this period in evolution.’ Paul, an initiate, called the Christ the inverse Adam.⁶ Adam was the first human being to appear in this form, and with this the spiritual human being was put into incarnation on earth. Two ways were open to him. He could take what the gods gave or gain something new for himself. That is the story of Cain and Abel.⁷ Abel took the animals that were there. Cain worked to produce his offering. Bread was produced through the work of Cain. Bread has always been something man has worked for himself. Working to produce bread, man has fallen into sin. Cain slew his brother. Doing his own work man fell into sin, he fell into matter.

The inverse Adam is Christ Jesus who ascends again. He has to pay for this with his blood. This had to be done once by a person. The bread and the wine have their representative in the person of the Christ, in his body and blood. The Lord had to take Cain's deed on himself: This is my body, this is my blood.⁸ Redemption has to be brought about by hallowing that which is on earth. The wine represented this at the last supper, and through this the blood was related to the wine.

The gospels exist not only to teach, they are also books of life. The stories told in them are not just external events but inner human experiences. Christian yoga consists in entering wholly into the gospels in a living way, making this the whole life of one's own soul.

Four things are absolutely necessary for Christian yoga to be at all possible. The first is simplicity. This is a Christian virtue. You have to understand that we have many experiences in life that make us lose our lack of bias. Almost every human being is biased. The only unbiased answers to questions come from children. But they are childish, because the children lack knowledge. We must learn to be wise and unbiased in the life of experience, as unbiased as children. This is called simplicity in Christian terms.

The second virtue we have to acquire is that as a Christian mystic we have to rid ourselves of something many people have, and that is inner satisfaction in religious exercises. We must devote ourselves to those exercises not for personal satisfaction but because the training we follow demands it. All pleasure in religious exercises must cease.

The third virtue is even more difficult. It calls for absolute refusal to ascribe anything whatsoever to our own skills and efficiency. Instead we must learn to ascribe it all to the divine power, the merit of God who works through us. Without this you cannot be a Christian mystic.

The fourth virtue to be achieved is patient acceptance of whatever may come upon us. All cares, all fear must be put aside, and we must be prepared to meet what comes, be it good or ill.

If we do not develop these virtues up to a certain level we cannot hope to be Christian mystics. This preparation then enables us to go through the seven stages on the road of the Christian mystic.⁹

The first stage is the washing of the feet. It is putting the words ‘to be lord you must be the servant of all’¹⁰ into practice. We must understand that we do not owe anything we are to our own self. We have to take account of everything other people and the world around us have made of us and reflect on this deeply. We are then able to see that we are connected with the whole of our environment. Having gained strength through the four virtues—simplicity, refusal to feel satisfaction at religious exercises, refusal to ascribe skills to ourselves and patient acceptance of whatever comes—we also gain strength to do the ‘washing of the feet’, as it is called, which is to look in gratitude on everything given to us from outside, everything that has raised us higher, and bow down before it. We must transform everything we feel into nothing but gratitude to those who have given it all to us. And so we must kneel before those because of whom we are, what we are. Christ Jesus knelt before his disciples for without them he could not have been what he had become. Christ Jesus had the disciples as a precondition just as a plant has the mineral world and an animal the plant world as a precondition. He, the Lord, became the servant of all. If we thus learn to lower ourselves and develop a feeling of profound gratitude, then much that exists by way of outer social form drops away and we can go through the next stage.

To do without strength from outside we must have strength inside. When we have come to be the last, we go to the father. This is called ‘the way to the father’, and we are then intimately bound up with this original strength and power. It can only be found through personal experience. We must learn to bear all pain. That is the second stage, the scourging, the second stage in Christian mysticism. The self then is sustained by itself.

To bear contempt is a yet higher stage, the third stage. One must learn to bear finding no regard among people at all. All the strength one needs must be found in the higher life. That is to wear the crown of thorns. We must learn to stand erect when the world despises us and casts derision on us. When a person has got to this point his own body has become alien to him. He has lowered himself has learned to bear pain, to bear contempt. Now the body is something he no longer lives in; his soul floats around it. This is the crucifixion, the fourth stage. It is followed by the stage where one's own body has become wholly object, as if one were tied to an alien piece of wood. Then being apart has ceased for us. It is the mystic death on the cross—the fifth stage.

The sixth stage is reached when the human being has become one with all that exists on earth, embracing it all with his feeling, experiencing the whole earth as his body. That is the entombment. The individual has then reached the point known as ‘being at one with the planet’ in initiation science. He then feels himself to be no longer apart. Man can only exist on this earth. A few hundred miles away from it and he must die, shrivel up as a hand shrivels up when it is cut off the body. The earth is then the body of the human being. We must be entombed in it. Through this condition man gains the conscious awareness of the earth. There follows the seventh stage, the resurrection. The individual has become one who is raised from the dead. This condition can only be understood by someone whose thinking no longer depends on the physical brain as its instrument.

Human beings can go through these seven stages by bringing the gospel of John, from the 13th chapter onwards, to life in themselves again and again—the washing of the feet, the path of wanting to serve, bowing down in humility before all; second stage the scourging; third stage the crown of thorns; fourth stage the crucifixion; fifth stage the mystic death on the cross; sixth stage the entombment; seventh stage the resurrection. These are the seven stages of the inner Christian mystery that have been outwardly presented on the plan of world history.

Christian monks lived through these experiences over and over again in the gospel of John, for the whole of their lives. This was the source of the strength they needed.

• 1. Tradition going back to Origines, and probably also 2 Peter 1,18, makes Mt Tabor the place where the transfiguration took place. See Rudolf Steiner's lectures given in Bern on 10 Sept. 1910 (The Gospel of St Matthew, GA 123, tr. D. Osmond, M. Kirkcaldy. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1985) and in Basel on 22 Sept. 1912 (The Gospel of St Mark, GA 139, tr. C. Mainzer, S. C. Easton. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1986). See also Matthew 17, 1-9; Mark 9, 2-9; Luke 9, 28-36.
• 2. Bel was another name for Marduk, the chief Babylonian god, meaning ‘god’, or simply ‘lord’.
• 3. See also Steiner R. Das Ereignis der Christuserscheinung in der ätherischen Welt. GA 118. Some of the lectures appear in The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric, tr. B. Betteridge, D. Tatum, R. Pusch, M. de Ris, A. Wulsin. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1983.
• 4. Cistercian monks with strict observance of the rule which requires absolute silence, hard work in the fields, a vegetarian diet. Established in 1664 at La Trappe Monastery in northwest France
• 5. John 2,1-11. See R. Steiner's lecture in Kassel on 2 July 1909 in The Gospel of St John in Relation to the Other Gospels (GA 112). Tr. S. & L. Lockwood. New York & London: Anthroposophic Press & Rudolf Steiner Press 1948. 2nd edition rev. by M. St Goar New York: Anthroposophic Press 1982.
• 6. 1 Cor 15, 5. See R. Steiner's lecture given in Karlsruhe on 19 Oct. 1911 From Jesus to Christ (GA 131). Tr. H. Collison and D. Davy. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1973.
• 7. See lectures given in Berlin on 10 June 1904, 22 May and 23 Oct, 1905 in The Temple Legend (GA 93). Tr. J. Wood. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1985. Also the lecture given in The Hague on 27 March 1913 in The Effects of Esoteric Development (GA 145), tr. A. H. Parker. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1978.
• 8. Matthew 26, 26 & 28.
• 9. See lectures given in Paris by Rudolf Steiner on 1 June 1906 (An Esoteric Cosmology, GA 94, Spring Valley: St George Publications 1978) and in Kassel on 7 July 1909 in The Gospel of St John in Relation to the Other Gospels (see Note 5).
• 10. John 13,16.

Today we'll consider one of the greatest works in world literature, Dante's¹¹ Divine Comedy.¹² We have to understand that to gain even a little insight into this work we must go back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Goethe has Faust say:

The spirit of our times, as you will say,
is basically just the gentlemen's own mind
acting as mirror for the times.¹³

When someone wants to discuss a work written in earlier times he usually does so from his own point of view, finding in it the things that come from his own subjective feelings.

In the case of Dante's Divine Comedy we can see how hard it is to go back to the Middle Ages in one's mind. All kinds of interpretations are available, among them Cameri's translation into German.¹⁴ The introduction shows that Cameri was attempting something very difficult. He said the Divine Comedy was always spoiled for one because it was given theological interpretations. He himself had given it a purely human interpretation. Cameri was the ethic philosopher of Darwinism.¹⁵ Basing himself on Darwinism, he developed noble ethics which, however, were materialistic, with no awareness of spiritual powers in the world. The whole of his translation reflects a materialistic attitude. That is ‘the gentlemen's own mind acting as mirror for the times’.

But let us now really enter into the spirit of that past time. For once let us forget everything we have taken in from childhood and enter into those times. People both thought and felt very differently about things then. We have learned that the planets and the sun are one system and that this system is one of many. At school we learn that the sun is at the centre of this one system, with the planets orbiting around it. Abstract rational laws govern everything which is in orbit there, everything that lives and moves in the infinity of cosmic space around us. Anyone who thinks like that sees nothing but cosmic bodies orbiting in a vast empty space, cosmic bodies that have life forms on them.

The people who lived in Dante's time saw the world very differently. No one would then have thought of such abstract ideas. The earth was to them the centre of the whole world system. It was not only a solid planet, however, for within it were spirits that related to human beings. These were the powers that made man animal-like. They were at the centre of the earth. The different stages of ‘hell’, as it was called, were there. Dante described things that were wholly real to people in those days. He did not invent them. Anyone who thinks even for one moment that Dante believed it all to be mere superstition does not understand him. The idea people had at that time was that yonder, on the other side of the earth, the pull of gravity went in the opposite direction. In medieval times people thought of the forces that were in opposition to man, forces that removed him from everything there was by way of earthly gravity in mind and spirit. That was kama-loka, the purging fire.

Looking out from there into the starry heavens people had very different ideas then. The moon was not a mineral but the body of a spiritual entity and the abode of many spirits—a cosmic body. The spirits who lived there had gone through similar evolutional states as human beings, but had fallen deeper than man. Their vices were, however, of a more spiritual kind than the animal vices of humanity.

Mercury was also seen as a body encompassing a spirit. Just as we derive man from his innermost soul qualities, so did medieval people see the sun, the moon, mercury, venus, mars, jupiter and saturn as spiritual entities. People saw spirit everywhere then. The world was populated by spirits for them.

The Christ lived in the region of the fixed stars since he had left this world. Beyond the fixed stars was the empyrean, the tenth heaven, where the source of all being was. People thought the spirits which were not here on earth and in this body dwelt in some region or other beyond the earth. A warrior who had gone through death would have to be sought on Mars. Someone who had lived a contemplative life would be on Saturn. Those who had risen even higher had to be sought in the region of the fixed stars, where the Christ was after he died. Beyond this would be even higher spirits.

Dante wrote his Divine Comedy out of this way of thinking. Today people have simply no idea that people in his day still saw something of the spirit in everything material. For them, nothing was wholly physical and nothing purely spiritual. Interweaving matter and spirit was something entirely natural for them. If we enter into such a way of thinking we are alive to the feelings out of which the Divine Comedy was written. It is pointless to fight over whether Beatrice was just a symbol or Dante's lover. The two are not contradictory. Beatrice was a real person, and she also stood for all that is spirit. For someone not lead astray by learning she was the true personification of Theologia.

Let us consider the atmosphere in mind and spirit in which the work evolved. It gives sublime expression to 13th and 14th century strict Christian Catholicism, before the Church came to be divided. People like Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa,¹⁶ whose thinking was that of scholasticism. Dante was a student of scholasticism. He saw the world the way his teacher Thomas Aquinas did.¹⁷

What was the mission of Christianity? It was to create a new basic religious approach. Before that, a girdle of religious views spread around the whole world. Christianity brought a different basic approach to religion.

We have to go back a long way to enter into the basic tenor of Dante's work. About ten thousand years before the Christian era¹⁸ the vast continent known as Atlantis was gradually sinking. Theodor Arldt¹⁹ has given scientific proof of the existence of Atlantis in the journal Kosmos.²⁰ The Flood, as we call it, refers to that continent gradually becoming flooded. The ancestors of the people who now live in Europe and Asia lived on Atlantis. The mythologies of all these nations show profound similarities. German mythology speaks of Atlantis, calling it Niflheim, home of mists. A view of the world has come down through tradition that gives us the figure of Wotan, the ruler. Wotan is the same as Bodha or Buddha. And Veda and the Edda have the same linguistic origin, for example.

These views, which are, as it were, a sediment from the past, have something in common. Reincarnation was originally taken as a matter of course in all of them. Buddhism then spread among Mongol tribes, however, and not among Aryans. The Semitic element entered into the views of Aryan peoples, and reincarnation is unknown in this. The most sublime expression of this type of religion, which thinks in terms of one incarnation only, is Christianity. It is a characteristic feature of Christianity that it considers one incarnation only. This was not the case with esoteric Christian teachings, but the popular teaching did not include the idea of reincarnation. Ancient Judaism and Arabism knew nothing of reincarnation.

Knowing this, we have the basic tenor of Dante's magnificent work. It represents a vision beginning on Good Friday. That was the day to mark life's victory over death. People did not think of this in abstract terms. They would feel that the sun was given new powers of spring on Good Friday and at Easter. It rises, entering into the sign of the Ram or Lamb,²¹ letting the plant world come into active growth. The sun was considered to represent a particular spirit. People thought that the powers of spirit and soul related to the spirit of the sun body. And Good Friday night was felt to be the best time for the soul to enter the realm that lies beyond death.

Dante's work is a vision of the kind initiates know, something real in the world of the spirit. Dante was truly able to perceive the spiritual. He perceived the world of the spirit with spiritual senses. He gained his images as a strictly Catholic initiate. As he had his visions he brought into them the catholic world that had come alive in his organism, but he would see it in the spirit. People always see things of the spirit through the spectacles of personal experience. As the child's presence in the mother's womb relates to the physical level, so does one's presence in the world of the spirit relate to the things we know in the spirit here on earth. Our life on this earth is like a maternal womb in which we grow mature so that we may later arise in the spirit. The senses we have developed for things of the spirit depend on our life here on earth. Here we mature for the other world, preparing spiritual eyes and ears for the other world. Dante had thus developed his spiritual organs in the way made possible in a strictly Catholic world.

When we enter into the other form of existence we are able to perceive the things that are now inside us. They then become outwardly visible. We say that passions, instincts and drives are ours. When we have entered into the worlds of spirit, the contents of our soul organism become something that exists outside us, just like the objects we perceive around us in physical existence. The things that live in our souls become visible in symbolic form.

Dante wrote of three symbols representing three main qualities in his astral body, the body of drives or lower soul—a leopard, a lion, a she-wolf.²² His three main passions thus appeared to him in the form of three animals. This was no mere symbol, however. When man enters the astral level, his lower passions truly appear to him in the form of animals. The she-wolf represented one passion. This is the she-wolf who once suckled Romulus and Remus. It is the passion people adopted at the founding of the Roman nation, the passion which lives in everything connected with property—the desire to possess and on the other hand the right to have personal possessions. This passion was implanted in human beings at the time when the wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. Before this, humanity gained the power of courage, indicated by the lion, which can become lust for power. Even earlier came the increased cunning that developed from priestly rule—the leopard, the ability shown by Odysseus.²³ When Virgil²⁴ came to meet Dante he said: cannot make those animals go away, least of all the she-wolf? He said so because Dante had grown up in what remained of those old Roman passions in Italy. Virgil, who had given a picture of the initiation process in his Aeneid,²⁵ had to be Dante's guide. It was from the works of Virgil that people learned most about the other world in those days. They saw that world as having three levels—hell, purgatory and heaven.

There are only two consistent views of the world—that of Augustine²⁶ and that of reincarnation and karma. Augustine said: ‘Part of humanity on this earth is destined to be good and part to be evil’. According to the other view we develop through many incarnations. These are the only two possible views. Dante took Augustine's view, according to which human beings prepare here on earth for a destiny that will be eternal. Because of this, life on earth is immediately followed by hell, purgatory or heaven. The one life was all that counted. The person was all that was considered.

If we go beyond the person we are beyond birth and death. The principle that enters at birth and departs again at death goes beyond the personal. It is the individual. Anything the individual has done wrong must be compensated for in a next life. If we take away reincarnation and karma, everything has to be compensated in a single life. If one looks for retribution for everything concerning one person, a counter image of the personal is created and that is hell. Hell is nothing but being utterly caught up in the personal. The counter image of the personal in this world is hell in the other world. The personal must not be caught up in this world to such an extent that it beautifies existence. Christianity brought the view that everything depends on the one life between birth and death. The earth world had therefore to be made into a vale of sorrows, and people had to be told to let go of earthly things. Art on the other hand was a pagan element that made people be caught up in the personal aspect. The artists of old sought to make this earthly realm beautiful. Someone who sees only the personal element will say: ‘This personal aspect must do away with all that is beautiful. The earth must be made less beautiful, the person must be torn away from all that belongs to this world.’ It was therefore perfectly logical for Homer and all the poets of antiquity to appear to Dante in hell.²⁷

Dante gave a true picture of avaricious and prodigal people on the astral level.²⁸ There people see their own passions in mirror images. On the astral level an avaricious person will see what he has done with his avarice in the image of a prodigal. The prodigal will see his attributes in the counter image of an avaricious person.

In the city of Dis, Epicurus represents the approach to life that aims to expand and develop this world.²⁹ The city of Dis stands for physical reality. There people are in coffins. The materialists are living dead. They have been saying that man is but a corpse. As dead souls they now have to lie in coffins.

From hell Dante is taken into purgatory. Princes who neglected their soul's salvation over affairs of state also need to be purified in the fire.³⁰ The strictly Catholic view is that the personality must be developed. Princes who have not done so must therefore languish in the fire.

The next region between purgatory and heaven Dante enters is the Garden of Eden.³¹ Here we are introduced to the truly Christian view, which is that the origin of the Church rests in the realm of the spirit. Anyone wishing to understand the medieval view of the ideal Church must organize himself in a higher way so that he may see its original image in the other world.³² Dante used the views of the heavenly hierarchies held by Dionysius the Areopagite³³ for this. Dionysius wrote of a ranking order of angels, archangels, principalities, powers, virtues, dominations, thrones, cherubim, seraphim. The ranks in the temporal hierarchy of the Church were meant to reflect those heavenly hierarchies. Dante wrote of the hierarchies in symbolic form in the Garden of Eden.

Then Beatrice took on the role of guide.³⁴ We distinguish between a female element in the soul, which is inner soul nature, and a male element, which is the spiritual principle in the universe that impregnates the soul. The female soul draws us upwards. Medieval alchemists called the female aspect of the human being the ‘Lilium’.³⁵ This is also why Goethe spoke of the ‘beautiful Lily’ in his Tale.³⁶ In the Dantean way of thinking Beatrice represents the edifice of scholastic theology.

Spirits of the moon who had broken their spiritual vows were first of all brought before Beatrice.³⁷ They had broken their vow to serve only the spiritual and had fallen back into sensuality. In ancient Greek theosophy Mercury³⁸ was still the spirit who had a role to play when the ancient Atlanteans advanced to a concept of the I. The earliest Atlanteans were not yet conscious of the I. The personal comes under the sign of the god Mercury, Hermes. Man came to the personal level when he fell into I-nature, egotism. This also made us into people who want to have possessions and is the reason why Mercury was also the god of merchants.

On Jupiter Dante found the princes who exercised justice.³⁹ Something very important occurred on the sun.⁴⁰ Dante was shown the true nature of eternity on the sun; how to see the day known as the Day of Judgement. The Day of Judgement changes everything. Two people made their appearance—Thomas Aquinas and King Solomon. Thomas Aquinas represented life in terms of Christianity, of the New Testament, and King Solomon was the teacher of the Old Testament.

Christians saw the priesthood as a physical expression of what the Christ meant to them in spiritual development. After life on earth the Christ had gone away and was now triumphant in the fixed star heaven. Someone who has prepared his spiritual embryo here on earth so that he has spiritual vision is able to see the Christ in the fixed-star heaven. The disciple who had been most profoundly initiated, John, appeared as the teacher of this view.⁴¹ Only the Christ and Mary were able to take their bodies up into the fixed star heaven. A master also has his body fully in hand. Just as people are learning to master their passions with moral ideas in our present civilization, so does someone who has reached a higher level truly learn to control the physical body. Jesus and Mary had hallowed their physical body to such a degree that they were able to take it with them to the highest regions.

Then St Bernard⁴² became the guide for the higher regions where God is beheld and one enters wholly into the divine self. There Dante went beyond the teachings of the Church. He saw the three cycles, the threefold original essence of the world, father, son and spirit. They are called Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in Indian religion. Here the trinitarian nature of the universe became apparent, with Dante rising to pure vision in the spirit, to contemplation.

In the end we are shown how we live, move and are in God but must not presume to understand God.⁴³ In the end, Dante only wrote of growing certainty in the human ability to recognize God. For him, this work was the drama of the world seen from the other side.

• 11. Dante Alighieri (1265–1321).
• 12. Rudolf Steiner was here considering the fundamental aspect of La Divina Commedia, the Divine Comedy. He spoke of this in a very different style in the lecture given to the workers at the Goetheanum on 14 March 1923, published in GA 349, Vom Leben des Menschen und der Erde. Über das Wesen des Christentums (in process of publication). The influence of Brunetto Latini was discussed in a lecture given in Dornach on 30 Jan. 1915, published in GA 161, Wege der geistigen Erkenntnis und der Erneuerung künstlerischer Weltanschauung (not yet translated) and a number of lectures given in 1924, especially in Dornach on 10 Sept. 1924, published in translation as Karmic Relationships vol. 4 (in GA 238). 10 lectures, Dornach 5-23 Sept. 1924. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1957. For the translation of this lecture I have followed the terminology used in Dante Aleghieri, The Divine Comedy, text with translation by Geoffrey L. Bickersteth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1981. Translator.
• 13. Faust I, 577-578.
• 14. Cameri, B. Sechs Gesänge ausDantes Göttlicher Komödie, in German, with an introduction on Dante's use of alliteration. Vienna 1896.
• 15. Sir Bartholomaeus Cameri (1821–1909). See essay ‘Bartholomaeus Cameri, der Ethiker des Darwinismus’ (not translated) in GA 30, also in Steiner R. The Riddles of Philosophy (GA 18). Tr. F. C. A. Köllin. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1973.
• 16. Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464). See Steiner R. Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age (GA 7). Tr. K. E. Zimmer. Blauvelt: Steinerbooks 1980. Also Steiner R. The Origins of Natural Science (GA 326). Tr. M. St Goar, N. Macbeth. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1985.
• 17. Aquinas, Thomas (1225–1274). In his teachings high scholasticism reached its pinnacle. Rudolf Steiner spoke about him at Whitsun 1920 in Dornach (see The Redemption of Thinking. A study in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (GA 74). Tr. A. P. Shepherd, M. R Nicoll. London: Hodder and Stoughton 1956.) Concerning his relationship to Aristotle, see lecture given in Munich on 20 March 1908 (in GA 108, not available in English).
• 18. The first German edition said ‘thirty thousand years’. It is doubtful, however, if the figure was written down correctly. See Steiner R. Occult History (GA 126) lecture of 31 Dec. 1910. Tr. D. S. Osmond, C. Davy. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1957.2nd edn Rudolf Steiner Press 1982.
• 19. Arldt, Theodor, b. 1878, palaeontologist and palaeogeographer.
• 20. Das Atlantisproblem. Kosmos 1905; 2: Nr. 10.
• 21. Dante's Divine Comedy, Inferno 1,38f The general view held at the time was that the sun was in the Ram when god made the heavenly bodies move in orbits. Thus be the day when Dante set out on his journey would have been the first day of spring. (Comment on 1,38 in W. v. Wartburg's German translation). The German translation has ‘panther’ instead of ‘leopard’ (translator).
• 22. In Roman mythology, the twin brothers Romulus and Remus, sons of Mars, who later founded Rome were suckled and reared by a wolf.
• 23. Odysseus or Ulysses, in Greek mythology king of Ithaca. Homer spoke of him in his Odyssey as being cunning and wise.
• 24. Divine Comedy, Inferno 1,94 f. Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70–19 BC). Roman poet highly esteemed in the Middle Ages.
• 25. Virgi's Aeneid, a great epic about the role ofRome in ancient history, speaks of the wanderings of Aeneas after the sack ofTroy before he finally settled in Italy.
• 26. Augustine (354–430), greatest of the Latin church fathers. He taught that because of Adam's fall into sin humanity was incapable of goodness (original sin), with individual people chosen for eternal salvation by an act of grace (predestination). See Steiner R. Christianity as Mystical Fact and The Mysteries of Antiquity (GA 8) chapter on Augustine and the Church. Tr. H. Collison, rev. C. Davy, A. Bittleston. Bristol: Rudolf Steiner Press 1992.
• 27. Divine Comedy, Inferno 4, 25 f
• 28. Inferno 7.
• 29. Inferno 10.
• 30. Purgatorio 7, 64 f.
• 31. Purgatorio 27, 124 f; 28 f.
• 32. Purgatorio 29 f.
• 33. Dionysius the Areopagite, member of the Areopagus, the highest judicial and legislative council in ancient Athens, converted to Christianity by Paul (Acts 17:34). The works published in his name in the 6th century were much venerated by scholastics and mystics and translated from Greek to Latin by Johannes Scotus Erigena in the 9th century. They include the treatises On Divine Names, On Mystical Theology, On the Heavenly and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies, and 10 epistles. See also Steiner R. The Spiritual Hierarchies and their Reflection in the Physical World (GA 110) lecture given in Düsseldorf on 12 April 1909. Tr. R. Querido. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1983.
• 34. Purgatorio 30.
• 35. Purgatorio 30, 21.
• 36. Goethe's Tale (of the green serpent and the beautiful Lily) first appeared in the literary magazine Horen in 1795, concluding the story ‘Conversations of German emigrants’. See Allen PM, Allen J deRis, The Time is at Hand! Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press 1995., and Steiner R. Goethe's Standard of the Soul. As illustrated in the Fairy Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (GA 22). Tr. D. S. Osmond. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1925.
• 37. Paradiso 3.
• 38. Paradiso 5,91 - VII.
• 39. Paradiso 18, 70 f.
• 40. Paradiso 10-14.
• 41. Paradiso 26, 1-69; 31, 58 f
• 42. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). See Steiner R. A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future. Lecture given in Berlin on 16 July 1918. Typescript translation C 50, Rudolf Steiner House Library, London: ‘Perhaps the most significant figure in the 12th century.’
• 43. Paradiso 33, 124 to the end.

The religious beliefs and world views of different peoples show awareness of two opposing powers. We also find this in Christianity. This has a little bit to do with the question we want to consider in detail today.

There are indeed powers that cannot be said to be absolutely good nor absolutely evil. Something which in some respect is a good power, may become an evil power in another respect. We only have to think of fire, a natural phenomenon. We owe infinitely much to fire. The discovery of fire started a new epoch in nature and civilization. But it also has terrible effects. Schiller described this beautifully in a long poem about the casting of a bell, speaking of the great benefits fire offers if tamed and guarded by man and the terror it can unleash if unfettered. On the one hand fire is a beneficent power, on the other it brings destruction.

Anyone able to see more deeply into existence will get out of the habit of judging something to be absolutely good or evil. In Christianity the serpent is called the tempter of humanity, and Lucifer's name is uttered with loathing. The view of the luciferic principle has changed, however, though Goethe was right when he said the average Christian's way of expressing his views was to say that nature and spirit are not fit subjects for Christians. It's dangerous talk, something for which atheists go to the stake. Nature is sin, spirit the devil. Between them they cherish doubt, their misshapen hermaphrodite offspring.¹²⁹

This is not the view held in early Christianity but something that came later. For Christian mystics of the first centuries, for the gnostics, the serpent was not in fact a symbol of evil but a symbol for the spiritual guidance of humanity. The wise individual who was the guide was known as ‘the serpent’. That was the name given to someone who guided humanity to insight. The serpent is the symbol of Lucifer.

The changes in the way Lucifer was seen can be followed by studying the changes in the Faust legend. Faust was a medieval figure, half mountebank, half black magician. He used all kinds of arts, but gradually became a distinct type in people's minds. The Faust legend is the direct opposite of the Luther legend, with Luther the man of god who stands up to face evil, Bible in hand, throwing his inkwell at the devil's head. Faust on the other hand put the Bible aside initially and became a medical man who was looking for wisdom rather than mere belief in revelation. Faust was taken by the devil and he perished. The great thing is that in Goethe's work Faust is saved. That is the complete transformation which has come in the views of Faust in recent centuries. Goethe placed the luciferic principle in opposition to Faust in the figure of Mephistopheles. Mephis means liar, tophel spoiler, a Hebrew name that has come down from ancient magic doctrines. Faust is the white magician compared to Mephistopheles who represents the beginnings of black magic. Goethe did not let Faust fall into the clutches of Mephistopheles.

The name Lucifer means ‘bearer of light’. Lux is light, fero, I bear. This cannot be the principle of evil. To really understand this principle we must go back to very early times. To understand the principle of Lucifer we have to think the god principle and the man principle the way they were thought of in early Christianity. When man began to develop, spirits existed who were lower than man and others who were higher than man. The latter were the gods. They also had to go through a long period of evolution to be such. These sublime spirits no longer need to receive the teachings which man has to receive. The idea is that earthly existence was preceded by another planetary existence and there the gods developed who later became creative powers. The gods are ahead of us. They have completed their studies at the school which man is now attending. At a particular point, when they were at the beginning of their evolution, the gods, too, were still human beings.

We have to consider how the different levels of existence relate to one another. Let us begin with the mineral, plant and animals worlds.

When we look at the mineral world we have to ask ourselves how it actually arose. This question takes us to a profound occult truth. Look at a piece of coal. It is a stone today. A few million years earlier in earth evolution the material we use to heat our stoves today was still part of a beautiful forest of ferns. A catastrophe on earth buried those trees and they then went through a process that gradually changed them into coal. We can state that coal is a life form that has grown lifeless. Among the rocks you find elements where one cannot establish this so easily—diamonds, for instance, and rock crystal. These, too, were once part of life forms. If we were to go further back in time we would find plants that later fossilized to become these minerals. Everything dead has come from one and the same life. If all life were to be fossilized one day, the earth would be a rigid body. Our present-day plants are something life has saved and preserved from an earlier general life. Part has become fossilized, but life has saved another part. The ancient fern forests have become fossilized, a new realm came into being, with new life arising from it. There was first a time when there was nothing but life. Then came a new time when part was fossilized and a younger plant world arose. The mineral world does not show itself to be chaotic but beautifully organized. Wisdom lay in this. The whole skeletal structure of the earth was organized in great wisdom. The plant world took life onward.

We are however able to see life itself coming from a realm that was yet higher, so that everything that lives has come from a realm that was even higher, and that is the realm of love. There must have been a spirit originally that had love within it. The realm of life differentiated out from this, and from the realm of life the realm of wisdom. Furthermore, the more recent realm of love also differentiated out from that realm of love. Here the creatures were at the animal level, but love did already show itself. We now come to something even higher. The divine principle is above all those realms. All other realms differentiated out from the divine principle. Now we see that at the beginning of planetary evolution man and god were face to face, just as in the natural worlds mineral and plant were face to face.

In earlier times a plant world existed that had no need of the mineral world. But the more recent plant world needs the mineral world. In the same way the gods needed human beings in the beginning of earth evolution. Without human beings, the gods could no more have thrived than plants would without stones. Now consider the animal and plant worlds. A specific relationship exists between the two. The animal exhales carbon dioxide, the plant oxygen. They are dependent on one another. The lower world, the plant world, shows wonderful love in giving back to the animals what they need. Plants keep the carbon for themselves and return the oxygen. So there is a wonderful continuous toing and froing between the lower and higher worlds. Such interaction also exists between the plant and mineral worlds. Plants are continually taking earth's substances from the mineral world, taking them up into a vital process. This is how the higher world influences the lower one. And that is also how the world of the gods influenced the human world in the beginning of earth evolution. Initially their interaction was like that between plant and mineral and between animal and plant.

The interaction between gods and human beings initially came to expression in what we call love among human beings. When man first appeared on earth, two sexes developed. This power of love, of kinship, was the divine principle coming to expression in the beginning of earth evolution. The gods received the love pulsating in human beings and lived on it, just as an animal lives on the oxygen which the plant prepares for it. The love living in the human race was food for the gods. Initially everything built on this love. Blood kinship formed a bond among human beings. Tribes, hordes, nations and so on were based on it. This love, entwined around the two sexes, is the foundation for all the power the gods had in the beginning of human evolution. Love was there first, before the two sexes evolved. Originally it was a love existing in full conscious awareness. Then, when bisexual man evolved, awareness became obscured. Love became a blind drive, sensuality, no longer filled with limpid clarity but only coming into play as a dark drive. Awareness of love had ascended to the gods. The gods were then enthroned above, in conscious awareness of love, whilst human beings exercised love in a blindly driven way. The gods fed on this blind drive, it became clear light for them.

There is a way of clairvoyance where everything that lives in man by way of blind drives becomes visible. The gods had this vision in the beginning of human evolution, whilst human beings did not have the gift for it. They were filled with passions, with the element that drives the sexes to unite. The gods lived in astral light. They saw those drives, they lived on them. Just as the earlier plant world remained behind in earlier times, rejecting the mineral world, so did an old world of the gods become a new one, with humanity assuming its present condition. For there were also spirits who did not gain full conscious awareness in the astral light. They were between gods and humans when humanity began its existence on this earth. We call these spirits the shadows of Lucifer. Under the influence of the gods who had gained perfection in their earlier evolution, man would have continued without having the astral light, without knowledge. The interest of those gods did not go beyond having human beings living on earth. Lucifer had to catch up on what he had failed to do earlier, however. And he could only do it at this stage by also making use of human nature. Human beings existed in the senses. Lucifer did not exist in the senses. He had to use human bodies for his own progress. He therefore had to give human beings the ability to see what the gods had implanted in them, to see it in the light. The gods had implanted love in them, Lucifer had to induce them to see this love in the light. So we now have the human being, the created form, the wisdom; also Lucifer who gave light to humanity; and the god who let love flow in human beings.

Man - wisdom
Lucifer - light
God - love

Lucifer had a much more intimate relationship to human beings than the gods enthroned in love. Lucifer opened man's eyes. When man opened his eyes and looked out into the world, Lucifer was inside him, looking out into the world. He completed his evolution in man. In so far as man rested in the keeping of the gods he was a child of god. In so far as he sought knowledge, he was Lucifer's friend. This comes to expression in the story of paradise. Jehovah created man. He is the spirit of form. He would have made human beings such that they lived in love but without light. Then came Lucifer, the serpent, and brought the light of knowledge to humanity and thus also the potential for evil doing. Jehovah then told man that love which has united with the knowledge given by Lucifer would bring pain. Jehovah set limits to the activities of the spirit who had implanted knowledge, the light of love, by adding pain to love.¹³⁰

In Cain we see someone who rebelled against anything created out of blood-bound love. He cut the bonds of kinship. He also stood for independence. Passive love combined with active, light-filled work to gain knowledge. Love—gift of Jehovah, knowledge—gift of Lucifer. Love needs to be regulated. The law of Sinai ordered family bonds. In addition to this there is the gaining of knowledge, the light that must come from human beings themselves, its origin being in the light bearer within man. This, too, must be deepened, going through a new phase. This can only happen if there is more than just the law applied from outside. The law brought compulsion to bear from outside. The Christ brought the principle that works from inside. It is the light taken up into love, the law born in the soul itself which Paul called grace. The law, born again out of the inmost nature, was both love and light. It set the beginning for a new evolution on earth. Paul called Christ the inverse Adam.

Man had the god of love above him, and Lucifer, the light, within him. To reach love one must first be light. With the coming of the Christ, this light was transformed into love. Christ Jesus represents the raising of light to love.

In the past, people spoke of Lucifer as the other pole, the one that brought light to humanity. Two powers must be active on earth-Christ, the bearer of love, and Lucifer, the bearer of light. For man, light and love are the two poles. Man now lives under the influence of these two polar opposite powers. The gods, who gave the impulse for love, were light once; the light is meant to be love again. The light can be misused and lead to evil, but it must be there if human beings are to be free.

The early Christians saw Lucifer as something that must certainly be active in human nature. This view only changed later. It is necessary to go through the torment of doubt in order to be firm in our knowledge. In its early days, Christian humanity still had to be protected from the light. But now the time has come where the union between love and wisdom must again be created. This happens if knowledge is born as wisdom in human hearts through love. This knowledge, born in human hearts as wisdom and elevated into love—that is the science of the spirit.

In antiquity, people had the law. Through the Christ, the law has become grace, with the law lifted up out of the individual's own breast. Now knowledge is to be elevated to be love again. Inner Christianity is to be added to the external organization of Christianity. Until now, Christianity has only been able to bring love to realization in its institutions. But now we must take love down into the deepest depths of the human breast. Today each is still enamoured of his own opinions. Love will only rise above opinion when people are able to live in harmony even if their opinions differ greatly. All kinds of different opinions side by side—and above it all, love. Then the individual opinion does not reign on its own but all will unite in a great choir.

• 129. Faust 2: 4897-4902
• 130. Concerning Jehovah, Lucifer and Cain, see also Steiner R. The Temple Legend (GA 93). 20 lectures, Berlin 23 May 1904 - 2 Jan. 1906. Tr. J. Wood. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1985.

We can say that there are two kinds of people on earth. Two great spiritual streams may be seen among human beings. The difference between the two is that one kind seek to see everything in the light of knowledge whilst the other kind want to be guided, in a way. The very way in which the view of the world presented in the science of the spirit is received shows that the desire to look for bright, clear light is not widespread. The majority of people still have not reached the point where they want to know about everything. Many rather like to be befogged; it embarrasses them to be given complete clarity with regard to something. It will, however, be necessary to let go of anything that may cause the mind to be befogged. This also applies to the whole way we lead our lives. We need to be restrained also in feeding ourselves and avoid anything that will cloud consciousness, such as alcohol, for instance. Countless other things also prevent the clarity that is needed. Doing without such things will also make us more practical in everyday life. Belief in authority also puts us in darkness. We should let ourselves be stimulated by authority but not build on it.

Clarity, as it is meant here, has least to do with a subordinate way of seeing the higher worlds. Such a subordinate way is in fact connected with soul mists clouding the conscious mind. In earlier stages of human history this was widespread. In Atlantean times the human mind was much less clear than it is today. Today even the most savage tribes have gone far beyond the Atlanteans' state of mind. Going further and further back in human evolution we come to conditions where human beings had inner vision but did not grasp things with the rational mind. Rationality first began to dawn in the Atlantean race. At one time the Atlanteans lived in the place where Ireland is today. When another individual was approaching, astral images would arise in the Atlantean's mind. He was not yet able to reflect. Man was only able to say ‘I’ to himself when the forebrain had developed. Human beings first began to develop self-awareness in the part of Atlantis which is Ireland today. From there they spread through Europe and into Asia. The human bones found in the Neander valley came from the descendants of Atlanteans; these still had sloping foreheads. From then on, man very slowly learned to think rationally and develop self-awareness. When man began to live his life bearing the seed of the spirit in him here on earth he was already well beyond the animals, but as yet unable to speak or to think.

Divine spirits known as devas existed at the time who did not need a physical body but floated in astral space. They had gained the things they needed by being in a physical body on the moon. Other spirits had not completed their evolution on the Moon, had not been able to manage it. These are the luciferic spirits which lagged behind the devas. The gods, or devas, lived on something that had become a characteristic of humans on earth—love between two sexes. Love between human beings is the air, or the food, which the gods enjoy. In Greek mythology it was called nectar and ambrosia.

The cohorts of Lucifer had no real function in humanity for as long as human beings were still somnambulant. It was only in the fifth root race that they really made man their very own child. Human thinking is not all that old. Ancient wisdom lived among the earliest peoples. This ancient wisdom was revealed from within to the priests. True insight and perception only came a few centuries before the birth of the Christ, in about 600 BC. The power of judgement also only developed later in the world.

This brings us to an important mystery, a fact to be found among early peoples. To grasp this, we must be able to shine a light into the sphere of the soul. In a North American Indian tribe one hears strange terms used for family relationships. Among the Iroquois, first cousins were called ‘brothers and sisters’, but only the children of brothers, not those of sisters. This is a relic of ancient Atlantis. At that early period in human history, the family was all that mattered. A woman would have several husbands and it was impossible to say who was a child's father. All peoples originally had ancestors who would unconcernedly marry close relatives. Close blood bonds were not an obstacle to marriage. It was said that children from closely related parents were the most enlightened; they would be somnambulant. As evolution progressed, it happened more and more that people would marry who were not related by blood. It is a law that the union of individuals who were not so closely related the ether body came loose from its connection with the physical body. With marriages between blood relations the ether bodies of offspring would be firmly lodged. They would be illumined from within. They would still think more with the solar plexus but have no powers of judgement. This grew with distant marriages and showed itself to the degree to which the old marriages between blood relations disappeared. The old somnambulant vision would vanish then, and a new way of seeing things develop, power of judgement. This new period was referred to as the development of the Dionysian principle. Dionysus was cut to pieces, with only the heart preserved. When the Dionysian principle arose, people were cut to pieces and then brought together again through the heart, a meeting of souls, and this brought a complete change in sexual life. The rational mind is the earlier sexuality between relatives transformed.

The earlier developmental stages of humanity are recapitulated in seven-year rhythms in individual human lives. From the first to the seventh year, the child's ether body is still very much in the background. We therefore should not develop children's powers of memory before they reach their seventh year, only their senses. That is the time when we can influence the senses, rousing their inner powers with the help of the senses. We should stimulate those powers by giving children toys that bring their powers of imagination to life, perhaps a block of wood with dots painted on for eyes, and so on, but not dolls that are so complete that the child cannot add anything using his powers of imagination. From the seventh to the fourteenth year it is above all important to get children to develop firm habits that will give them something to hold on to later on in life. These are the years when everything by way of memory must be brought to the human being. It is thus better not to invoke the child's powers of judgement at this period in life. A child should have authority around him at that time but not be an authority himself. Influence him by telling stories, not preaching morals but refer to great examples. For moral development it would be necessary then to develop a feeling for it in the old Pythagorean form. Pythagoras¹³¹ said to his pupils: ‘Do not strike into the fire with your sword’—indicating that one should not do useless things. Another Pythagorean axiom of this kind was: ‘Do not turn back on the road before you have reached the end of it.’ Human beings should only learn to make their own judgements and form their own opinions once they have reached sexual maturity. The ether body loosens at this time, and the astral body will only then be ready to take action in the outside world.

This evolution, today gone through by every individual in seven-year rhythms, was gone through by humanity in the course of its great periods of evolution. Some of the subordinate powers in the human being were raised to a higher level so that the power of judgement could develop. And only then was it possible for Lucifer's cohorts to intervene. This luciferic power comes to expression in people's independent judgement. In those times, when the luciferic principle was intervening, people for the first time did independent work. If you study the past, you can say to yourself: in those early times, all that came about was what was needed to make a family. The individuals who wanted to put a purely spiritual element in the place of blood relationship were working in the name of Lucifer. The Church had developed as a continuation of ancient priestly wisdom. But parallel to it the stream arose where people sought the light, luciferic people such as the Templars, for instance.¹³² They said one had to find one's own light and truth. There was a sect in the middle ages, its members calling themselves Luciferians, who understood this. They would say: ‘Man may be truly blessed indeed, but without the light of knowledge; this is not for us; we want to fight our way through to the light.’¹³³

These are the two streams in humanity. One seeks only to be blessed, the others want the light. Those who are afraid of knowledge consider Lucifer to be evil. But for the others Lucifer is the light-bearer, the bringer of light. This is written in a manuscript kept in the Vatican, but the Church is keeping it a secret, and the people who take this direction in the Church warn people against Lucifer.

Dogma may indeed contain truth. The Pythagorean theorem is dogma for those who do not understand it. But if they do understand it they gain clear, lucid insight. Dogmas are presented as something given by authority. When one understands them they, too, become lucid insight.

At the time when Paul lived, the nature of Christianity was such that it could lead to general love of humanity. A tribal and national religion was to become a world religion. Belief in revelations was connected with the blood-based community. Moses gave established laws. The Christ did not give established laws, and instead of the law there was grace. The inmost human soul was coming alive.

The aims pursued in the Church are a wave that is going down; those of people who want freedom of opinion a wave that is rising. Some brotherhoods, like the Templars for instance, endeavour to seek the light. The race which is striving for the light—those are the children of Lucifer.

At a time when Christianity is beginning to be strictly organized, Edouard Schure¹³⁴ published his play The Children of Lucifer.¹³⁵ This is one stream in the Church, and there is also the other one, the luciferic principle. The children of Lucifer are the children of the inner light, not of belief in revelations. Those who seek to move on into the future must feel related in the spirit. It has been said in the science of the spirit that we must reach the light by our own efforts. Profound, most deeply inward freedom is to develop in the human soul.

The theosophical journal has been called Lucifer for good reason.¹³⁶ It is connected with the inmost nature of the theosophical movement. It needs to be stated for once that the luciferic principle was deliberately cast into the world. When the Roman Catholic Church established the dogma of infallibility,¹³⁷ the emphasis on the luciferic principle provided the counter pole. Conversely we might say that the dogma of infallibility arose in polar relationship to the declaration of spiritual freedom in theosophy, for this was the only way the Church could save itself.

• 131. Pythagoras(C.582–C.507 BC), pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. It has not yet been possible to identify the quotes given here
• 132. See Steiner R. Inner Impulses Working in the Evolution of Mankind (in GA 171). 7 lectures, Dornach 16-18, 23-25 Sept., 1 Oct. 1916. Tr. not known. Manuscript translation R 45, Rudolf Steiner House Library, London; and The Templars (in GA 171). Tr. not known. Lecture given in Dornach on 2 Oct. 1916. Manuscript translation Z 156, Rudolf Steiner House Library, London.
• 133. Followers of Bishop Lucifer von Cagliari (d. 370), existing for a time in Sardinia, Spain, Gaul, Italy and Africa
• 134. Edouard Schur
  é (1841–1929).
• 135. Authorized translation into German by Marie von Sivers and published in Leipzig in 1905. Rudolf Steiner then rewrote it in free rhythms (1909), published in Rudolf Steiner/Edouard Schuré Lucifer. Die Kinder des Lucifer, Dornach 1955.
• 136. See Lucifer-Gnosis. Gesammelte Aufsätze, 1903–1908 (GA 34). See also reference to this in Steiner R. Rudolf Steiner, an Autobiography (GA 28). Tr. R. Stebbing. New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1977.
• 137. 1869–70 Vatican Council—infallibility of the pope when he speaks ex cathedra on faith and morals.

The spiritual science movement has not developed in our time as the wilful action of an individual or of someone or other. It has to do with the whole of human evolution and as such must be considered to be one of the most important cultural impulses. To gain insight into this mission of the spiritual science movement we need to enter into the past and future life of humanity. Individuals have gone through a process of evolution from the time when they first came down out of the keeping of the godhead and became individual souls, and humanity as a whole has also gone through a process of evolution.

Just consider the differences, the changes and development to be seen in the earth's surface through the millennia—how thoroughly everything has changed. ‘Humanity’, as we are wont to call it, is only the outcome of the ‘fifth root race’, as it is called. A different, earlier humanity preceding it was the fourth root race whose continent, Atlantis, lay somewhere between present-day Europe and America. Our forebears on Atlantis looked very different. They also had a completely different civilization. The ancient Atlanteans did not have a fully developed rational mind and way of thinking but were instead provided with subtle, somnambulant clairvoyant powers. Logic, rational thinking capable of making connections, science and art as we know them today did not exist in ancient Atlantis, for human beings then had a very different way of forming ideas, thinking and feeling. They would not have been able to make connections, calculate, count or read the way we do today. But somnambulant clairvoyant powers of the spirit lived in them. They were able to understand the language of nature, what God said to them in the lapping of the waves, what the woods were murmuring, and what the subtle scents of flowers brought to expression. They understood this language of nature and were in harmony with all nature. No legislation, no jurisdiction then served to make neighbour communicate with neighbour. No, the Atlanteans would go outside and listen to the sounds of the trees and the wind and they would tell them what they should do.

The memory of ancient Atlantis or Niflheim [home of mists] has survived most beautifully in folk legends such as the Nibelungenlied¹⁰⁵ which have never been works of fiction produced at random. The word Nibel or Nifl indicates that the Rhine and all the rivers in the area are waters remaining from the masses of mists in ancient Atlantis. The wisdom that has survived from Atlantis is referred to as the treasure that lies hidden in the waters. We must also look for the nursery of the ancient adepts in that continent. Individuals went there who had the abilities needed to become pupils of the great minds we now call the ‘masters of wisdom and of the harmony of inner feelings’.¹⁰⁶

The location of the adept school, which had its flowering during the fourth sub-race on ancient Atlantis, must be sought in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Pupils were taught in a very different way there than they are today. It was then possible to have a tremendous influence go from one human being to the other with the power that still lay in words at that time. Today, a little bit of feeling for the inner, spiritual, occult power of words still survives among the people. You simply cannot compare the power words have today with the power they had at that time. It was something quite tremendous. The word in itself would awaken powers in the pupil's soul. A mantra such as we have it today does not have anything like the power which words had at that time, when they were not so full of thoughts. Powers of soul would arise in the pupil under the influence of those words. We might call it human initiation through the language of nature, with tremendous power. A definite language was then also spoken by burning substances such as incense.

The connection between the teacher's and the pupil's soul was much more direct in that place. Any written signs existing at the adept school of ancient Atlantis imitated natural processes. They were drawn in the air with the hand, and had an effect, also a lasting effect, on the mind and spirit of the people at that time. They would awaken powers in the soul.

Every race thus has its mission in human evolution. The mission of our own, the fifth main or root race, is to bring the manas element into the four elements of human nature, that is to awaken insight and understanding by means of concepts and ideas. Every race has its mission. The mission of the Atlantean race was to develop the I. Our own, the fifth root race of the post- Atlantean period, has to develop manas, the spirit self.

The achievements of Atlantis did not perish with it. The most important elements of everything that existed in the adepts' nursery was kept by a small core group of people when they left. This small group, guided by Manu, went into the area where the Gobi desert is today. There they recreated the earlier civilization and teaching, but now more for the thinking mind. The earlier powers of spirit were transformed into thoughts and signs. From there, from this centre, the different lines of civilization then went out like radii, like rays. First of all the wonderful, most ancient pre-Vedic civilization, where the wisdom that came streaming in was for the first time transformed into thoughts.

The second civilization to arise from the ancient adept school was the most ancient Persian civilization. The third was the Chaldean and Babylonian civilization with its wonderful star wisdom, the magnificent knowledge its priests had. The fourth civilization to come into flower was the Graeco-Latin with its personal colouring, and finally our own developed as the fifth. We are moving towards the sixth and seventh. I have thus identified our mission in human evolution. It is to transform into thoughts, to bring right down to the physical plane, the cosmic wisdom which has existed as such until now.

When an ancient Atlantean listened for the note that lay between the sounds he could hear around him, he would hear the name of something he had perceived to be the divine: Tao. In the Egyptian mysteries this note was transformed into thoughts, writings, signs—the Tao sign, the Tao books. Everything that exists as knowledge, writings, thought only came into the world in post-Atlantean times. It could not have been written down before, for it would have been beyond human understanding. We are now in the middle of manas development. Our race works to take cultivation of the intellect, and at the same time also of egotism, to its extremes. We may certainly say, even if it does sound grotesque: ‘There has never been so much power of understanding and so little inner vision in the world as there is now.’ Thought is furthest away from the inner essence of things, far removed from inner spiritual vision.

When a priest on Atlantis wrote signs in the air, the effect of this would above all be an inner experience in the pupil's soul. In the fourth, the GraecoLatin period, the personal aspect was more to the fore. The Greeks developed personal art. In Rome, the personal element came into government affairs and so on. In our time we live with egotism, a dry personal element, a dry intellect. It is, however, our mission to grasp the occult in the purest thought element. Grasping the spiritual in this, the finest distillate of the brain, is the true mission of our age. To make this thought so powerful that it will have something of an occult power—that is the task we have been given so that we may do what is needed for the future.

Massive fires destroyed ancient Lemuria, massive floods ancient Atlantis. Our own civilization will also perish, and this will be through the war of all against all—this lies before us. Our fifth root race will perish because of egotism taken to its extreme. But a small group of people will out of the power of thought develop the power of buddhi, life spirit, and take it on into the new civilization. Everything that is productive in the human being will grow and grow until his individual nature has risen far enough to reach the summit of freedom. Every individual will have to find a kind of guiding spirit in his inmost soul in our time, buddhi, the power of the life spirit. If we were to go into the future being able to take in civilization impulses only the way it has been done in earlier times, we would move towards humanity shattering into fragments.

What is it that we have in our present age? Each wants to be his own master. Egotism, selfishness is going to extremes. A time is coming when no authority will be accepted other than authority people are able to accept of their own free will, so that its power will base on freely given trust. The mysteries based on the power of the spirit are called ‘mysteries of the spirit’. The future mysteries built on a basis of trust, on the power of trust, are called ‘mysteries of the father’. We bring our civilization to its conclusion with them. This new impulse, the power of trust, must come, otherwise we shall shatter into fragments and shall have a general ego-based and egotistical civilization.

In the times of the mystery of the spirit, based on a power, authority and might of the spirit that did have its justification, individual great sages had wisdom in their possession. They could only initiate people who had gone through severe trials. We are now moving towards a future that will hold the mysteries of the father and have to make every effort to see that every individual is wise. Will this help against egotism and being shattered? Yes! For human beings can only be united if they gain the greatest wisdom, a wisdom in which there are no personal vagaries, opinions or standpoints but one common view. If people were to continue in the way of being different, having points of view, and so on, they would again and again go their separate ways. The most sublime wisdom, however, always creates the same view for all people. True wisdom is one wisdom that brings all people together again in the greatest possible freedom, with no coercion or authority. As the members of the great white brotherhood¹⁰⁷ are always in harmony among themselves and with humanity, so will all human beings be united in this wisdom at a future time. This wisdom alone will create the true idea of brotherhood. The mission of the science of the spirit therefore need be no more than to guide humanity towards this idea, now in the unfolding of the spirit self, later of the life spirit. The great goal of the spiritual science movement is to make it possible for human beings to be free and truly wise. Its mission is to let this truth and wisdom flow into human beings.

In the modern movement for a science of the spirit, one began with the most elementary teaching. Much that is important has been unveiled in the years since the movement started, and even more important things will be gradually unveiled. The work of the movement is therefore to let the wisdom of the great white brotherhood that had its origin in Atlantis flow out gradually. Such work has always been preceded by a long period of preparation. The great and unique event of the coming of Christ Jesus was thus prepared for by all the work of the founders of religions—Zarathustra, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras. All their teaching had the same goal—to let wisdom come to human beings, though always in the form most appropriate for the people concerned. And it is not what the Christ said that was really new. The really new thing that came with the coming and teaching of Christ Jesus was that Christ Jesus had the power to bring to life everything which until then had only been teaching.

Through Christianity, humanity has gained the power that all may be united in acknowledging the authority of Christ Jesus and yet be utterly individual, and that human beings can unite and be brothers in their faith in Christ Jesus, his coming, his divinity. Between the mysteries of the spirit and those of the father we thus have the mysteries of the son, with the school of St Paul its planting site, the school put in the care of Dionysius the Areopagite. The school had its flowering under him, for Dionysius taught those mysteries in a very special way, whilst Paul spread the teaching exoterically.

Let us now provide an explanation from another direction, so that we may understand what it means to say: the mysteries of the father are coming. The teachers of the ancient Atlantean adept school were not human beings but spirits higher than man. They had completed their development on earlier planets. And these teachers, coming from ancient planetary evolutions, taught the mysteries of the spirit to a small select band. In the mysteries of the son, Christ Jesus himself would appear as the teacher on special occasions. He, too, was a teacher who was not human but a god. It will not be until we have the mysteries of the father that the teachers will be humans. Individuals who have developed faster than the rest of humanity will be the true masters of wisdom and of harmony. They will be called the fathers. In the mysteries of the father, therefore, the guidance of humanity will be no longer in the hands of spirits who have come down from other worlds, but in the hands of human beings themselves. This is the important point.

To prepare people to be a core group for this goal, to prepare them for a common wisdom, for authority based on trust, and to develop understanding, initially for a small core group of people—that is the mission of the science of the spirit. The evolution of material civilization reached its high point in the 19th century. This was the time when the science of the spirit first came into the world. A counter impulse to materialism, going in the opposite direction, toward the spirit, was created by this means and therefore existed. The science of the spirit is nothing new, nor the spiritual scientific movement—it merely continues what was there before. Materialism, egotism cause humanity to shatter into fragments, with individuals seeing only their own interests. Wisdom must bring human beings together again who have been separated by this. In utter freedom, with no coercion, people are brought together in wisdom. That is the mission of the spiritual scientific movement in our time. We must clearly understand that we need to gain wisdom in very real terms. We all know the story of the stove whose mission it is to get the room warm. We may present this to the stove in the most moving words, asking it to get the room warm, but it will not do so. It is only if we turn it on that it can fulfil its mission. And so there is little point in just talking about brotherhood and love of one another. Insight alone will take us closer to our goal. For every individual and for humanity as a whole, the road to wisdom, to brotherhood, can only be found through insight.

We have now considered this road, going through three kinds of mysteries. Science of the spirit must make it possible for a small core group of people to understand what has been said, so that understanding may come alive in the masses in the sixth race. This is the mission which the science of the spirit must accomplish. A small part of the fifth root race will anticipate evolution; it will spiritualize manas and unfold the spirit self. The greater part, however, will reach the summit of selfishness. The core group which develops the spirit self will be the seed for the sixth root race, and the ones who are most advanced among them, the masters who have come from the ranks of humanity, as we call them, will then guide the human race. This is the goal of the movement for spiritual insight.

• 105. Middle High German epic poem from the early 13th century, based on the legends of Siegfried and the Burgundian kings.
• 106. Rudolf Steiner was referring to highly evolved individuals who are of the greatest possible importance to humanity. 'These sublime entities have already followed the path which the rest of humanity still has before it. They now work as the great 'teachers of wisdom and of the harmony of man's inner feelings/ (From a letter to a member, Berlin 2 January 1905). See also Rudolf Steiner/Marie von Sivers Correspondence and Documents 1901–1925 (GA 262). Tr. C. von Arnim. London and New York: AP & RSP 1988.
• 107. In one set of lecture notes it says ‘of the white lodge’.